YouTube shorts quality vs quantity

You have to do enough quantity to understand what quality actually is.

You'll see some videos pop off more than others.

Make more of them. ;)

It helps to analyse other successful channels in the same niche to you so you can model them as well.
 
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andreaissabel said:
Thanks

Maybe I will close the year with 40k subs and 15 million views

It's in part of two months of intense work, but also about to having some luck with a couple of shorts
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Any chance that the 6.5M views short went viral on other platforms before? TikTok, Insta, etc.?
 
You are thinking too much. Just make good content and it will start ranking on youtube for some keywords.
 
kukuruziuz said:
I'm willing to bet that there's not a single person that knows how shorts algorithm works.

I've been doing long format videos for a while. The best performing video has over 3 million views. As long as I'm hitting certain metrics (mostly CTR%), the video performs.

It does not work the same way with shorts.

10kk views short on my gaming channel has the following metrics: 23s long 110% retention 85% view rate

Now shorts on my other channel have these metrics

#1 16s long 105% retention 73.5% view rate 32.8k views 1 comment 718 likes 77 shares
#2 20s long 101% retention 87% view rate 6.7k views 2 comments 77 likes 2 shares
#3 36s long 99.9% retention 81% view rate 5.7k views 1 comment 162 likes 1 shares
#4 6s long 164% retention 76% view rate 95.6k views 28 comments 2347 likes 22 shares

Short #1 outperforms short #2 despite the fact that it has 73.5% view rate versus 87% view rate and got less watch time.
Short #1 also outperformed short #3 despite having 73.5% view rate compared to 81% view rate on short #3.
Also short #1 has only 105% retention on 16s video compared to 99.9% retention on 36s long video (short #3).

I picked out these examples cause they perfectly illustrate that metrics like view rate and retention makes a relatively small difference.

Making a 36s video is clearly not better than making 16s video.
High view rate means nothing. A short with 73.5% view rate outperforms another short with 87% view rate.

I probably made more than 1000 shorts (all channels combined). I have a stupid amount of data on this.

Nothing makes sense.

Putting in more work in a short (length, editing to improve retention, etc.) does not mean better results.

Some shorts have the perfect metrics i.e. 91% view rate and 110% retention on 22s video and it doesn't get pushed.

Some shorts have terrible metrics and it gets pushed.

Most Tik Tok channels that I follow and have 2-15kk followers, publish 10-20 videos a day. The same videos that go viral on Tik Tok often go viral on Facebook and X (twitter).

So what is the better route?

Spending 2-3 hours making a 60s short or blasting out 3-4 15-20s shorts in the same time?

High effort shorts or accuracy by volume?

From my personal experience, shorts that I don't put much effort in, often exceed my expectations and shorts that I put a lot of work in often flops.

Still none of them got the views that I was expecting.

What was your experience? If anyone wants to point out any flaws in my logic - any input is welcome.
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Great breakdown of the unpredictability of Shorts! It really seems like consistency and volume might outweigh perfection in this game
 
I have an update on this... and it looks worse than I thought.

I went through hundreds of shorts that I uploaded on multiple channels.

The fact that none of probably around 900 shorts went viral is statistically impossible, not with the quality of shorts that I make.

Reminder: I had 10 million views short on my gaming channel. 10kk views short metrics: 23s long 110% retention 85% view rate.

I found this short (see the atachment) on one of my channels - 82.8% view rate and 116% retention on 27s short. This is 5-10 million views metrics. It got 1.3k views and it completely stopped getting impressions.

I found more shorts with 91-92% view rate and 110-120% retention that got 1-3k views. There were some that landed in the 10-16k views zone.

I've viral shorts data from my gaming channel, I've seen about a dozen of other people's viral shorts metrics. Mine are much better and it's not even close. If you go to the 1st page of this thread, there's someone who got 7 million views with 57% view rate and 106.9% retention on 10s long short. There's Segaru's thread on this forum, he had a lot of success with shorts. My metrics beats his too.

It feels like all my channels perhaps excluding my gaming channel are just not allowed to go viral. No matter how good my metrics are (91% view rate and 110% retention are objectively viral shorts metrics) and no matter how many shorts I upload (around 900 shorts on 5 channels).

It feels like there's some sort of artificial limitation that I can't explain. Other people get 0 views or their shorts don't get views cause their metrics are objectively bad, and this is not the case here. I've tried different niches, I've tried everything... Improving the quality or uploading more shorts is clearly not the answer.

I'm open to suggestions. If someone wants to share their viral shorts metrics that would be cool too.

edit: another example of someone who went viral. His viral short metrics : 13s long – 76.4% viewed - 133.8% retention - 10.6m views
 

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The trick for shorts is to keep the video in a reasonable time frame, the intention of shorts is that people could quickly watch the content and then swipe to the next video, the way shorts algorithm works in youtube is retention and it means overall how consistent your shorts retention is, just because 2-3 shorts have good retention does not mean you will get the same amount of views in the other ones, the way to achieve this is by balancing your running time to the "perfect time", and this means the attention span of viewers while watching shorts and that would be 20-30 seconds and not more than that, if you make short running time of video, viewers will be interested to watch throughout the shorts increasing your retention rate [which youtube highly favors] and stick to this particular timing so your consistent throughout.

Goodluck.
 
Shorts are unpredictable, and the algorithm often feels random. Focusing on quantity with decent quality gives you more chances to go viral
 
kukuruziuz said:
I'm willing to bet that there's not a single person that knows how shorts algorithm works.

I've been doing long format videos for a while. The best performing video has over 3 million views. As long as I'm hitting certain metrics (mostly CTR%), the video performs.

It does not work the same way with shorts.

10kk views short on my gaming channel has the following metrics: 23s long 110% retention 85% view rate

Now shorts on my other channel have these metrics

#1 16s long 105% retention 73.5% view rate 32.8k views 1 comment 718 likes 77 shares
#2 20s long 101% retention 87% view rate 6.7k views 2 comments 77 likes 2 shares
#3 36s long 99.9% retention 81% view rate 5.7k views 1 comment 162 likes 1 shares
#4 6s long 164% retention 76% view rate 95.6k views 28 comments 2347 likes 22 shares

Short #1 outperforms short #2 despite the fact that it has 73.5% view rate versus 87% view rate and got less watch time.
Short #1 also outperformed short #3 despite having 73.5% view rate compared to 81% view rate on short #3.
Also short #1 has only 105% retention on 16s video compared to 99.9% retention on 36s long video (short #3).

I picked out these examples cause they perfectly illustrate that metrics like view rate and retention makes a relatively small difference.

Making a 36s video is clearly not better than making 16s video.
High view rate means nothing. A short with 73.5% view rate outperforms another short with 87% view rate.

I probably made more than 1000 shorts (all channels combined). I have a stupid amount of data on this.

Nothing makes sense.

Putting in more work in a short (length, editing to improve retention, etc.) does not mean better results.

Some shorts have the perfect metrics i.e. 91% view rate and 110% retention on 22s video and it doesn't get pushed.

Some shorts have terrible metrics and it gets pushed.

我关注的大多数 Tik Tok 频道都有 2-15kk 的粉丝，每天发布 10-20 个视频。在 Tik Tok 上传播的相同视频通常会在 Facebook 和 X （twitter） 上传播开来。

那么更好的路线是什么呢？

花 2-3 小时制作一部 60 年代的短片或同时制作 3-4 部 15-20 年代的短片？

高强度短裤还是按体积计算的精度？

从我个人的经验来看，我没有花太多心血的短裤往往会超出我的预期，而我投入大量精力的短裤往往会失败。

他们仍然没有一个人得到我所期望的景色。

你的经历是什么？如果有人想指出我的逻辑中的任何缺陷 - 欢迎任何意见。
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If it's a 10 minute long video, have you tested it
 
To go viral with shorts, you need to upload videos regularly within a niche. It could take some time to get many views though.
 
lienhevkt said:
Shorts are unpredictable, and the algorithm often feels random. Focusing on quantity with decent quality gives you more chances to go viral
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Yes, it does feel random. But with 900+ uploads in a span of about a year and with the metrics that I'm getting, I'm either the most unluckiest person on the planet earth or something else is the issue, because quality and quantity is clearly not. BTW not a single one of these videos hit 100k views. The math doesn't math here.
 
kukuruziuz said:
Yes, it does feel random. But with 900+ uploads in a span of about a year and with the metrics that I'm getting, I'm either the most unluckiest person on the planet earth or something else is the issue, because quality and quantity is clearly not. BTW not a single one of these videos hit 100k views. The math doesn't math here.
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Could it be that you tube is becoming saturated in some niches, and you tube thinks there are too many videos in that niche?
 
NO-CLUE-SEO said:
Could it be that you tube is becoming saturated in some niches, and you tube thinks there are too many videos in that niche?
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1) All 5 channels are in different niches, even if that would be the case, this would not apply to me.
2) If that was the case, YouTube would want to show the best performing videos that people watch/enjoy the most. There's 0% chance my shorts are not outperforming most of the shorts on the platform.
3) My latest short in the attachment.
 

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I understand that you found something but sometimes could be real or the algo just randomly selected you the content and quality also affect and draw people attention but if is something you being able to keep consistent and replicate many times well that is chiken with the golden eggs you just need to take care of it.
 
More on the randomness of the algo.

a 6 second clip with 26 million views uploaded on 11th of January. I've seen this clip uploaded on a different channel about 2 months ago. This is a simple reupload that got 26 million views


I can't find 80 million view short that was uploaded about 2 weeks ago. That seems to be the original upload. I just saw it like 30 minutes ago.





These are copies of the exact same clip uploaded on different channels. At least 5 million views on each of these videos that are simple reuploads. I saw 5 more channels uploading the same clip and getting 200-500k views on it.

I can 100% guaruantee their metrics are nowhere near as high as mine. But there's something with viral clips, if it goes viral on one platform, it often goes viral on other platforms too. That includes reuploads of the same clip on the same platform.

Maybe if you have exeptionally hight metrics like 90%+ view rate and 90%+ retention on 60s shorts you can get viral that way and be consistent. Other than that randomness factor beats numbers. That's not the case with long form videos. If I get 15%+ CTR on long form videos from browse features, the video is gonna have 100-500k views. If I get 18-22% CTR from browse features it's gonna get 1-3 million views. Every single long form video that went viral for me were consistent. Higher numbers - higher views.

YouTube shorts it's straight up gambling. You either get lucky or you don't. Numbers don't matter.
 
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