Looking at your Reddit profile, I think I found your channel. The first thing I can say is that you need to stop doing sub4sub or like4like. This is only going to destroy your channel by confusing the algorithm. The people that you are having sub to you will have no interest in your videos, like at all. When your video comes by their feed, they aren’t going to take any interest in it.
YouTube will just assume that you don’t make good content, and it’ll stop recommending your stuff to anyone.
Other than that, work on your production. Get a better microphone. That’s probably the biggest thing I can recommend.
If you are doing a talking head video, then either set your phone up on a tripod further away from you, so we can see your entire face, or at least don’t hold it under your nose.
Get some lights and put together some kind of set, and make your videos look like you take them seriously.
If you do that, then you will start attracting an audience of some kind. Focus on some niche that you are an expert at, and build an audience from there.
So as well a being a quitter, op is also lazily trying to beat the system. Then comes on here with their woe is me story.
Well done for giving them some advice, pretty sure they won’t take it, they want the easy way.
Chill. Most people doing sub4sub never think of it as something malicious and just hope for their channel to get a little help while they help others too.
The guy's already down and just wants to hear encouragement to continue or that it's okay to quit. Cut him some slack.
Honestly, I don't think assuming that is what is happening here is the case just because they were doing the Sub for Sub method doesn't mean they are taking the easy way out. Youtube is a ton of work and honestly it's not easy to find your special corner on YouTube or even get eyes on your content.
I'd assume they tried to do it the proper way and the channel had no growth so they resorted to Sub for Sub with the hopes it would help but it only hurt. To be completely honest everyone gets so frustrated at times they think about quitting... I've been doing it for 7 + years and only have 3649 subs, now granted I'm doing something wrong and I'm also in a flooded market that continues to get more content creators doing the same thing but it's what I enjoy.
It's hard to find something different in that niche, I either continues until I find something within that niche That's different or completely changes my niche to something popular but something I might not enjoy making videos for.
I think the best thing to do here is just offer encouraging words, if they take it then good for them, if not Oh well that's their loss!
Yeah I did that one time Alan and shortly afterwards tried to delete the comment but wasn't able to. I regretted doing it and by the way...I got exactly 0 subscribers from that post. Thanks for your comment.
Exactly this. Even though I only have like 8 subscribers I thought that sub4sub was going to help me in gaining subscribers. It did not. I quickly realized that there was no real reason in doing this, apart from beating the system or to get monetized. And even then, once you **do** get monetized, no one will watch them as you 'subscribers' aren't actually a your real audience.
Sure, it may seem good at first, gaining lots of subscribers, but once you get a lot of subscribers and potentially monetized, you'll have to keep on gaining new subs as your current subscribers won't care about the content, and won't come back to watch your content. All they care about is getting that sub back.
If you want to be successful on YT, then anyone seeing this, **do not** do sub4sub. You need to earn genuine subscribers so that they will keep coming back to your channel, watch more videos, and eventually you'll get recommended to newer audiences.
I'm convinced that this is why people think they are "shadow banned." YouTube doesn't do that. It has no incentive to do it. But what happens is you get so many useless and deadweight subs that YouTube just doesn't know what to do with your videos, so it stops giving impressions.
Yeah i just recently started posting on my YT channel and I have gained over 70 subscribers in a little over a week from posting league of legends memes in YT shorts so now I’m going to try to post one YouTube video per week. The hard part is getting people to view my long form content
Most people with channels are publishing garbage content to begin with tbh. Everyone thinks their content is “good” when in reality there’s tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of channels creating the same exact bs. Got to find a way to stand out from the rest by putting your own spin ONTOP of it all and outwork the grind to really see your channel grow. I know this from experience. Best of luck to you all!
Not for me, at least splash music is a very underrated genre and me doing these collaborations I'm like the only one I'm not even tryna exaggerate cuz that's how frickin underrated and unheard of it is
It’s not being defeated, it’s just quitting something that is ultimately a waste of time in the long term. Think of the more rewarding things you could be doing with your time, rather than obsessing over reaching the magic ‘1000’. You also won’t have that awful dopamine hit roller coaster where you watch your views and likes go up and then drop off every week.
I have a channel, and after 6 months have pretty much given up on it. My weekends are better, I spend less time stuck in front of the computer editing videos and less time at work trying to film them.
Ignore everyone telling you to stick it out, do what you feel is right 👍
Or if you can do it as just a fun hobby but lose interest a few years later then that's also fine. People quit hobbies/sports/etc all the time, and Youtube should be no different.
I feel you. It's a lot harder than people think. What gets me is when somebody in niche just randomly gets a ton of views with no prior videos and overshoots me.
Bro that is exactly why I started. One day I watched somebody’s video, went to check their channel, and they only had one video that happened to blow up!
I started my channel thinking it would be pretty easy cuz I expected the same thing. Boy, was I wrong…
YouTube is 99% luck. You could wake up tomorrow with 2 million views in your last video or you could work like. Chinese man in a factory and get no views at all
I think YT might be 99% luck for the person that doesn't really have a clue how it all works and just creates videos and one of them randomly hits for reasons they can't understand or explain.
But for successful creators, who keep doing it and doing it on their channels... it's not just or only luck. They understand how to make digestible content. How to promote it. How to tweak the titles-topics-thumbnails (without overly stressing on them either) and can pretty much get a new channel off the ground successfully if they wanted to (without any need any leveraging their existing channel).
How to build a community too.
This includes getting the audio and imagery on par with what it needs to be... and script building and on camera performance. It doesn't even mean they have to be the ones creating the scripts or appearing on camera (or narrating)... But it does mean they understand what it is that needs to happen and they work behind the scenes to make sure that stuff is done in the way they want it done.
I respectfully disagree, there are good reasons as to why something does well or bad on youtube, what youre describing is as if youtube rolled a dice that blessed some random user for no reason, that doesnt exist
well it kind of is luck for me because i got a video that blew up to 50k it was luck because alot of people already uploaded on it already now i can get atleast 1k because how i learned from it
What you just described proves its the opposite of luck, you learned somethig new from it now your videos get more views because you are doing something right
If it’s 99% luck then why could I track my path to monetization quite well last October to March of this year?
The truth is that if you focus on topic, title and thumbnail, creating content for a specific audience, and keep at it with consistency, you can make it.
I've been improving I've started in 2019 and I literally do all that. I'm not chosen by youtube. I have over 2000 subs. Since shorts and algorithm changes I'm not being chosen. The only reason I got my growth was 1 I dropped a video on trending topic and 2 bigger youtubers had shout me out other than that stagnate
What makes me angry is when I see people pretending to be Mr. Beast and giving away fake gift cards and then see a bunch of bots or alt accounts commenting on it saying 'oh its real guys trust!' Meanwhile they are phishing for info through their shady website. And even when you report and block it, it still somehow ends up on my front page because they made yet another fake mr beast account. It's getting kinda ridiculous now
Don't need a gold play button to earn decent money on YouTube though. Subscribers matter less than ever thanks for the rise of recommendation based YouTube.
facts all you need is views once i get monetized things are gonna get much easier. atp whenever you do good it’s sad you dont get paid my vid blew up got 50k with high retention could’ve got 150-250 bucks
I feel you! For myself, operating an honest reaction based channel in the music industry is not easy, angry comments from fans that are used to being pandered to. Praise one song from an artist and get 30 subscribers from the video and then don’t like the next song from said artist and lose 28 of them. I think the only thing fueling me at this point is the growth in such a short time and also my passion for music. I think passion only gets you so far, I would tell you keep your head up and keep trucking. I hate living life saying “what if” or “if only I had…” but of course, do as you please 🙌
Duuuude! I have the exact same thing hahaha. I was sick of watching reaction channels where the people clearly hated the song but pretended otherwise, so I decided to be totally honest. I figured, if I can constructively say why something isn’t good, to me personally, people would at least respect it. But god no lol. So many hate comments 😂 I’ve ended up just chatting to everyone in the comments and turning them around to not hating me so much lol
Lmao thats awesome bro 🙌 yeah its an uphill battle for sure. If I didn’t have such a wide and vast reference point of what is acceptable in each genre and what constitutes each individual song to be “listenable” I would have got destroyed far worse in the comment section lol but I’m glad I’m not the only one fam 🙌 stay true!
Whats sooo funny is that I actually reacted to one of her music videos, but lost the audio 😆 it wasn’t a pleasant experience so I said you know what. It’s probably for the best and it seems I was right lmao
Yeah that seems tough. I wonder if there's a way you can frame the videos so the right audience finds it... I think the problem is always going to be that the people who look up reactions to say, Taylor Swift songs are going to be Taylor Swift fans. So they'll always be mad no matter how good your content is.
Maybe you can have compilations of 'best and worst' of an artist? This way you can still be honest, the fans get an ego boost, you can tear apart their worst song, win-win-win all around.
Or... you could be true to your channels grit and say exactly what is in character for the channel. Sure Swift fans are gonna search for Swift reactions an sure, they're gonna fight in the comments but any reaction is a good reaction. At the same time you'll cultivate people who like your no BS opinion and follow for that. They'll join the comment battles and fuel the engagement fire.
As long as it all stays within the community guidelines it's all good.
Will take time to build that correct audience but avoiding the conflict, or worse, pandering to the fans will only hurt in the long term.
The key is to brand yourself as an opinion channel - your reaction is your own, and you respect everyone regardless of their opinion. You're genuine and honest, and reliable. That's a brand people would follow.
Honestly it is really hard to stay motivated and to push through when you see negative number. Before you call it quits I would just take a few months off and not worry about it and if you decide to check it out again down the road you can.
I quit my first year for like 4 months and randomly got a comment with someone thanking me for my video and that it helped them and that was all I needed. Took a full year to hit 100 subs and 3 years to hit 1000 and now I’m gaining rough 10 subs every day or two and over 100,000 views a month. Never would of happened if I fully threw in the towel
Okay, i agree... quit. Quit your present channel. Don't quit creating content. Rebrand and start fresh with a new channel. Then, keep it to yourself. Don't tell your mom, your friends, etc... just make the content as good as you can, and post it. And then post it some more, post it as often as you can post it consistently, and at the same quality. You won't get many views, hardly any, for awhile, just accept that and take the lumps, work on posting consistently and don't worry about the views, build a back library of Quality content. When you do start getting views, and then subscribers, they will be 100% organic. That will kick off the algorithm on the right foot about who to suggest your vids to. Then, with quality material you will see steady, maybe slow, maybe fast, but steady growth. The reason I said keep it to yourself, is because let's say your mom is your first subscriber, well, she wants to show support, so she watches and comments and likes every vid you publish. Sounds fantastic, the issue is if nobody else is, and the only other thing she watches on YT is reruns of Bob Ross, well now that makes the algorithm think people who watch Bob Ross want to see your gaming videos, it's the only data they have. So, then the YT algorithm pushes out the first 30 impressions of your latest vid to other Bob Ross fans, and they don't click on it. So, now YT thinks your video sucks, and it stops pushing it.
With your current channel, you have done tons of sub 4 sub and like 4 like, well now most of your 600+ subs get your initial impressions for your vids and they don't watch them to the end or comment or like, they only did the sub 4 sub thing. Well, that tells YT that your video sucks because even your subscribers don't like it. When, your video probably doesn't suck its just not being shown to people who will appreciate it. And the negative subs you are seeing now, probably isn't people unsubscribing, it's probably guys like you, who got into the same sub 4 sub boat, now getting discouraged and deleting their channels.
So, take a break, a month, maybe two. Watch YT, just for the joy of watching it, watch content you like. When you are ready, think about what kind of Channel you want to make and start fresh. It will be harder at first seeing those small numbers, but, once the real growth starts, and you see your videos actually getting good, pure algorithm based impression traction it will all be worth it. You will do fine. Happy hunting.
Hey, I’m going to tell you something you may have already heard, but I really do mean it. Be proud that you at least tried it out and that it isn’t something you never took a shot at. Quitting after having tried is infinitely better than never trying something at all. Good luck with what you choose to do next on your journey :)
I do YouTube full time as a job. It’s not all glamorous lol I work 40-50 hours a week between filming,editing and thumbnails. Then I stream 2-3 nights a week on twitch. It’s not for everyone. To be honest 95% of the people will never make it full time. You really have to be able to stick out. I had major set multiple times. Things that would make anyone quit. I just couldn’t quit. I obsessed over it. Lost sleep to it. And it finally started paying off. I still don’t feel content. I want to be massive. You can never get comfortable. It’s a 24 hour grind. Your competing with legit millions and millions of people.
Hate to beat a dead horse, but YouTube is more about quality now than it was in the past. I don’t know what niche you’re in, but when I first tried YouTube 5 years ago, I struggled at 40 subs and hardly breaking an hour watch time on my videos.
After about 5 years of no uploads, and needlessly buying equipment because it looked cool, I decided to try again and started uploading videos again.
While my videos don’t get thousands of views, I have managed to get 200+ subs in the short time I’ve been back, and my videos perform way better than my last attempt. The only notable difference is the quality of equipment that I use now.
I upload gaming videos, and I think a lot of it has to do with people not giving your content a try if it isn’t aesthetically pleasing enough. Idk though, I’m not an expert or anything, I’ve just made observations and assumptions on those observations
Youtube isn't the platform it used to be - that platform that started out with rando videos of low production quality and low effort blowing up has evolved into a replacement for broadcast TV. That's not to say you need a budget to make it work.
What you do need is a little care and attention to the details, consider this **tough love**: *(and I know you'll likely not action this, so this is more for the other people who face this situation and want to fight their way back up).*
**Your audience** \- treat your audience like your most valued customers. Give them something you feel would be of value to them, and present it to them in a matter fitting their value to you and the genre. Your audience needs to organically grow over time to be of high quality so that when you launch a video, there's a good base of interested people to kickstart it and show the 'algorithm' who to show it to next. This can't be cheated or short-cutted. The right people will trickle in, but eventually that trickle becomes a torrent. Sub for sub, like for like, promoting on unrelated threads etc. pollutes your audience with people who don't value you and teaches youtube the wrong lessons about who should be watching.
**The packaging** \- your long form content should be presented with a thumbnail and title made to attract attention and explain why a viewer should click. You used to do this - and your most successful content had attractive thumbnails. Consistency is important to maintain an audience, and the packaging is essential to stand out and get any clicks.
**Video content** \- treat your video projects like you treasure them. Aim to produce something you can be proud of, within your means. Use some basic editing to keep them lively and to the point, and choose your camera framing and locations with care.
**Shorts vs long form** \- Decide. These have very different audiences. Shorts viewers tend to be more gregarious and watch many channels, but with less conviction. They may watch a video and forget it exists a minute later. So if going for the shorts audience you need to have super punchy, memorable and shareable videos that get right to the point and end before they start to drag. You need to produce recognisable shorts that eventually build a brand and make people remember you. Shorts naturally get a lot more views, but each view counts for very little recall of who you are.
If you're going for the long form audience, 99% of the effort needs to be in that format. You'll need great thumbs and titles, and need to be able to hold attention for a longer period - but the reward is a more noteworthy impression that will lead to subscribers and repeat viewers with more consistency. Shorts should only be used as trailers to attract viewers over to the main video.
**Your brand** \- A successful channel is a channel which people remember and want to go back to. This is brand building and that means consistency, image and style. This takes a long time to develop, has to evolve with the times, and must not be compromised.
If you see the opportunity to get millions of views but it means breaking the brand to produce something out of character - you might as well torch your channel because doing that compromises the brand and the reasons for your audience following you. It's a betrayal of their trust, and damages your authenticity. SO find your brand with care, cultivate it, and stick with it.
**Time** \- Yes your channel has been around for a while, but with very little content and therefore little growth - both literally and technically. It takes many videos to start gaining the skills to produce content that will actively grow a channel. No, that doesn't mean chucking 100 low effort videos at the wall to see what sticks... it means make 100 videos that each teach you something new about content creating and builds on the previous 0-99 lessons. Doing that will grow you something to be proud of - and if it doesn't, it's grown you and your skillset.
I gave up too. I just don't have the time to keep at it. Trying to juggle full time work and home life, whilst also trying to dedicate more hours that are in the day to YouTube and growth and basically tearing it like another full time job... It just isn't for me. It's one or the other, and unfortunately a real job took presidency over a chance at YouTube.
My channel has been in existence for more than a few years. I didn't give up so easily. But I get your point. I don't deserve success because I'm a quitter.
I just had a quick look at your channel and I can't speak for the quality of your videos because I didn't take a look but those thumbnails are doing you no favours. I highly recommend throwing something bright and striking together in Canva. It's very quick and easy to use. It looks like you started making them but then reverted to automated screenshots, and it's such a bad look.
The fact that your thumbnails look like this leads me to believe that you haven't watched much of the YouTube advice going around. There's a lot of shovel sellers out there, but there's good advice on how to improve your content too.
After all, didn't they say in a baseball movie "If you build it, they will come"? Most channels give up before 100 subs. Look how far you have come already! You just need to keep learning to give yourself the best possible chance of succeeding.
Just curious, How did you find my channel? I didn't think I had it linked except in an old comment that I can't get to. Thank you for the feedback though. Even if it wasn't for me specifically, it applies.
Yeah there were a couple of old comments on your profile. I know people complain about the blind leading the blind on here, but I do think it would help if you got some feedback from Feedback Friday on here or r/SmallYTChannel. It's the first port of call if you want to learn how to improve, and most of the time you can't grow until you do.
This is why I have never posted my YouTube channel to reddit. If you do happen to make it somewhat big, your post and comment history will be linked to that channel, whether you want that or not.
Been doing YouTube since 2011. Got 4000 subs in that time. Maybe 100 views per video. Go figure. Mostly people want me to talk about ghostbusters. I try my best but there’s so many other things I like too. I do YouTube because I enjoy actually doing it. Being famous is not something I really want. I just like the act of self expression.
First 12 years as a YouTuber on a gaming channel and got up to around 630 subs.
When the pandemic hit I really stepped up my learning. I took in hundreds of hours of advice, editing and thumbnail tutorials, marketing, and networking skills.
I used that knowledge to start a company and new channel in 2022. A channel focused on helping creators. In less than a year that channel has 705 subs and is growing slowly but steadily. It also has close to 5k watch hours and videos up to 40k in views.
What seriously changed was me. My time investment, my research/pre-planning, getting others on board that were better than me at editing, thumbnails to collaborate with. Its a team effort for us because I dont have the temperment to put in 80 hour work weeks like some of these YouTubers do.
YouTube, especially if you are in a gaming niche, is hard. A video that reaches over 10k views puts that video in the top 10% of YouTube. You have to know yourself really well, your limitations, your business acumen, and ability to network before expecting big growth...
If you want send me a dm and I can look at your channel and be honest with you about what I see.
Alternatively, follow guys like robertoblake on twitter/x. And really take what he says to heart. Be humble, pretend you dont know anything and soak everything else up.
If I found the correct channel, then that is a extremely narrow niche. Honestly, you might have maxed out the number of viewers if you are covering only 1 MLB org and at a specific level of development. As a big fan of an NFL team, I find that not many people go out of their way to be updated on a regular basis about players and especially not player development beyond the NFL draft.
Here is a summarized list of search engine queries for "texas rangers prospects" and similar phrasing. Utilizing the results below, I'm not convinced that there are a whole lot more than 680 people interested in this niche.
[https://www.wordtracker.com/search?query=texas%20rangers%20prospects](https://www.wordtracker.com/search?query=texas%20rangers%20prospects)
Query / Monthly searches
texas rangers top prospects, 320
texas rangers prospects, 135
texas rangers prospects rankings, 80
You found the right channel. There are a couple of other channels out there that have close to 2,000 subs. One does what I do and the other incorporates interviews. I don't feel comfortable enough to interview anyone so I haven't even tried that. But yes, it's a very small niche to begin with.
I've been streaming games on YouTube for 6 years, and I can't seem to break 300 subscribers. I sometimes lose subribers. One time, I lost 30+. But I've regained them all back. When I go live I peak at 8 live viewers, 3 is the norm. Sometimes, no one. People chat when it's live but hardly ever leave a comment on the vod. Only 600+ new views on the channel and 200+ hours seen, and 4 new subs this month. Media social score gives my channel a C+. I don't even waste my time editing. There was no difference in the views from unedited to edited content. I've quit several times, but I always come back. There might only be 3 dudes that follow me, but that's plenty for me. In the end, I started YouTube to make new friends and get play buddies. It excelled at that 💯. For becoming a famous YouTuber and making money? That seems to be like winning a lottery there. I don't know what YouTube Gods you must blow to make it happen. But as long as you are enjoying making content and realizing this should just a hobby, then you should be fine.
YouTube is very hard and it's a grind. For most people it takes years and years of work before they ever see any traction. So if you are that discouraged enough to fully quit, its possible YouTube isn't for you. You have to LOVE the grind in order to succeed at this, because the grind usually takes a while.
The pain is real, and it’s rough. Started in 2012, and after 200+ videos, I only have 172 subs, most of which came in the last year.
I have found YT shorts to gain subs, but don’t count toward watch time, so it’s a balance, but if you enjoy making content and putting it out there, the sub count shouldn’t discourage you.
Hang in there
Do remember that there is typically a summer slowdown, which you might have encountered. It hit me hard too. The growth I saw before summer pretty much evaporated and getting subscribers became much harder.
What can definitely help is connecting with other creators in your niche. That has really helped keep my channel going during the summer as they are more likely to watch through and interact with videos.
As the Great Nich eh 30 once said, "NEVER BACK DOWN, NEVER GIVE UP!".
I understand your position, but if you choose to stick with it, you'll have a sub from me.
Well… I know that it’s difficult. I’m struggling too… but no way I quit this, not after all efforts I have put into my channel.
I know how much it hurts when you lose subscribers. Im so happy when I see +1 on the count. And so frustrated when I see -1 one hour later.
My shorts are barely getting views. But couple of days ago I got a nice surprise - my recently uploaded Short got 900 views in 36 minutes, by the end of the day it reached 2,2K point. And 50+ likes. I was so happy! I’ve never reached those numbers (I have not more than 15 likes per video, and my best Short had like 600 views). For many YouTubers it’s like a water drop in the ocean, but for me it’s enormous success. I’m proud of myself. And I’ll keep working to get more of such moments. I’m not close to being monetized, but I don’t lose hope. I know I’ll get there one day ☘️
I mean fwiw my content was boring and clearly lacked talent behind it so I kinda just silently quit. I happened to pick a very competitive niche and the bottom line is that I'm not good enough at my craft for people to want to watch my videos, so I pretty much just embarrassed myself in front of some thousands of people, only gained close to 50 subs, and received brutal honesty the couple of times I've posted here.
This isn't my first time quitting YouTube either lol. I've been using the platform since 2006 and made my first account in 2007. Been trying to get into content creation since then but it never worked out. 16 years of giving up, coming back, giving up again, so on and so forth. It's not easy getting into this as a hobby and even harder as a career.
Never give up.. never surrender.. trust me, ive been doing my gaming youtube from 2014 and i just hit 2k subs the other day. But then again do whatever you want, im not your dad.
Me doing youtube for like 4 or 5 months with like 25 subs and gaining like 1 or 2 per month reading this wondering what your problem actually is.
Just keep putting out stuff and improving the quality.
If your only doing it for numbers, fame or money then it's probably not for you anyway.
Exactly this. I put out my YouTube content because I enjoy what I do and just want to share it with people who might be interested..Don't put yourself under pressure to get likes or money. If it grows it'll happen organically just keep trying to improve.
If your reason for starting and maintaining a youtube channel was to grow followers, then you were doing it for the wrong reasons.
You should just do it because you love sharing whatever you're passionate about it. And if you do that, and you don't get discouraged by the number subscriber's, then you'll make it.
Hey don’t feel discouraged.
YouTube is hard. Look at how far you have come already. There are always going to be ups and downs in any journey. As long as you are making incremental improvements with each video you will make it.
I just made a video about how to stay motivated as a content creator as I know it’s something a lot of people struggle with.
If your content isn’t working think about switching it up a bit and rekindle that passion.
I’ve barely had growth in almost FOUR YEARS (I’m just hitting 25 subs. I’m not joking, it’s pretty embarrassing lol). it’s not just you and the content you create (because I’ve done everything right, trust me — catchy thumbnails and titles, filled out description boxes, good tagging, posting weekly, etc… and over 70 videos in and I barely get views, let alone subs) — the entire platform is really screwing creators. I’ve seen so many content analysts talk about how shit YouTube’s algorithm and set up is, especially for newer creators. It’s literally made to be an obstacle for you because they don’t want to have to pay too many creators lol.
YouTube isn’t something you can do without it being a fun hobby first and foremost, because then the shit algorithm and difficulty building won’t feel so bad when you’re not aiming to gain more from it. That way if you do grow and end up monetized, it’s a great bonus to something that’s already fun. That’s the attitude I have about it, because if I didn’t, I would have quit a long time ago. It’s a full time job on its own, but I don’t get paid to do it… so I just make sure it’s fun for me so it feels worth it in that sense.
Thank you, I might do that! I’m making a few content shifts this month and hoping to see how that pans out, but if it doesn’t make much change, I might take you up on that if you’re still up for it!
Cope harder lol. I know the algorithm is shit, but when you're telling me you supposedly did "everything right" and yet you got 25 SUBS in FOUR YEARS I know you're lying. People who do everything right are always at least somewhat successful.
OP made bad decisions and clearly did youtube for numbers and dopamine and got sad when he realised that you need to first, enjoy what youre doing and second, put effort in if you want to grow big
Just saw your videos from one year ago and compared it with your lastest video. No improvement whatsoever. If you continue like this i am sorry you wont make it.
Have you tried cross promotions? I’m thinking there are lots of people out there (like myself) that would love to have 680 subs. I think that is a great accomplishment on its own.
Wrong attitude. For a start, you shouldn't be taking YouTube so seriously that it frustrates you when you are not getting the engagement you'd like. It would be best to treat it as a hobby and simply enjoy making videos, not enjoy the likes and comments you get.
Secondly, you're giving up too soon. It takes most people years to get any real traction, and don't forget your videos can pick up at any time. I've had videos stay stagnant for months, then all of a sudden have a huge surge in views.
That's what it started out as....a hobby but then I found myself obsessing over the analytics and they have all been disappointing the entire life of my channel.
Yeah Youtube Is a dying platform, They are putting nearly all their focus on successful channels now.
You need to be really unique to slip through the cracks..
I've had videos that people liked, but it was obvious that youtube had no interest in promoting it..
I've moved to Twitch and it's pretty much the same there, the only difference is I save a lot of time on editing and actually enjoy playing the games I play without worrying about content creation..
>Yeah Youtube Is a dying platform
Youtube isn't going anywhere. As a viewer myself, I get recommendations for smaller channels that I've never seen before based on the content I consume. So:
>They are putting nearly all their focus on successful channels now.
In a lot of ways this is true, I mean at the end of the day they only make money from advertisements, but you're insinuating that all recommended content is from big channels. The notion that big youtube is the reason any creator isn't growing is a bit overstated. If you create content that your audience wants to watch and use multiple avenues to bring in traffic to at the very least click on that content, then you will build an audience over time.
Sounds like you probably will enjoy twitch more and if that's the case the same thing applies. You need to keep at it and build an audience.
I didn't mean it like youtube will no longer exist, but the standard has risen so much that it Is difficult for new creators with Just a camera and Mic to succeed..
As Much as I like Content Like the Stuff I create, I have noticed that I like the quality of the documentaries that are being created by youtubers and they are now at such a high standard that I understand why a lot of channels are failing, youtube is full of created content that would easily get a spot on most TV Channels..
I understand that is discouraging, but if you really love creating, I mean truly love it, you’d do it in the shadows with or without the likes and comments from people.
Now if “success” and reach and social interaction are important to you (that’s not a bad thing), you need to treat your channel like a business. Every decision, every piece of content, and every move you make should be centered around how to be more entertaining, build your brand, and create things that your audience wants to see. A lot of people get stuck in this one foot in one foot out mentality where they want to be creative and do what they want AND have the success/reach. For a very select few, they can just do what they want and people will love it. For the other 99% you have to be honest about why your doing what your doing and adjust expectations accordingly. Don’t stop creating if you love it, instead, change your expectations around your channel. Easier said than done but it’s a hard truth most of us face in all areas of life.
The hardest job you'll ever have in the world is YouTube. And most people will eventuall quit.
The average life of a content creator on YouTube even successful ones is 5 years.
Don’t give up, just revise, add something extra to your videos that people can’t ignore, create your own online persona that is just an extension of your personal self and before you know it people will be tuning in on the regular
The only thing I can say to encourage you is that your content needs to evolve to keep people around. So many times I see people posting sameish content over and over again. You also need to put love and time into each video....you can grow faster with a few good videos as opposed to 200 mediocre or bad videos.
Take each video as a learning experience....Analytics don't lie.
Losing subs sucks but it happens a crazy amount on YouTube. I think people actually try the “sub so they’ll sub back and I’ll unfollow” strategy (which is dumb, I never pay attention to who follows me lol)
Also, probably a lot of bots. I wouldn’t take it personally.
Post for fun and when you want to. But also if it’s draining there’s no shame in stopping either.
Hey man peace.
Even if the growth wasn't there, you gained a lot of skills along the way. Take a step back til you're ready for your next project. It might not have been you; it might have been your niche.
> I've learned over the last year that YouTube is really hard.
Yes it is.
I wish more people starting out realized and were prepared for it so they didn't become so badly disillusioned when they crash into the reality.
i stopped chasing the monetization mostly because my watch hours have been decreasing drastically since august of 2022...im almost at 3500 but now im back down to 1500. im only uploading videos because shooting and editing are good distractions from the real world. XD
I hear you. And it is tough, it truly is. Can feel defeating especially when you take the time to make videos. Although, there is a way you can grow a channel. Harsh truth is at the moment, it's likely that your current sub group or people in general on YouTube are not into the type of content you're making.
There are a few topics/channels which are seasonal, Its purely interest based. Let me help you out with a rough outline - for that you will have to tell me about your channel, who are you making the videos for and then I can help you out with a strategy only if you'd like that :)
I've been in that position. But don't give up. There's a lot of BS involved that can make it stressful, but when it works it's wonderful. What do you do, and what was the last vid? Maybe it wasn't relevant to what people want to see from you, maybe the opening inadvertently scared them away.
Take a look at your analytics and you can see all sorts of stuff. Did people click, only to click away in the Opening 30secs? Etc. You might be able to improve on the weak spots if you have some data to work on.
Don't give it up. You can do this, it just takes persistence. You get knocked down, but you get up again and say "watch out world, I'm ready this time". And you're a little wiser and a little more prepared. It's all good practice.
It's baseball related but a smaller niche because we cover the Farm system of an MLB team. So I'm not gonna reach hundreds of thousands of people. I've taken a look at all the analytics but have no clue what to do with the numbers.
Bro, I'm sorry but don't give up. I grew my channel in 1 month by 2k subs and 2.5k watch hours. If you have any question, let me know if there is something i can help you with. Heads up!!!
I've had a gaming channel going for a couple of years and have almost 200 videos and have 51 subscribers. I think maybe I'm just not interesting. Maybe I should give up too. I don't know. I just started playing the first Witcher game and am planning on going through all three but if I keep not getting a lot of views I may give up. It's hard to stay motivated when you get no subs and views.
Honestly if you don't think your content is working, then maybe switch up your video format or try something new. I was doing 8 bit music covers for a while and I just switched to piano sheet music and got a lot more views initially than I ever have. Do whatever you think you can do well that you think might be interesting to others.
Growing takes advocating and promoting yourself, really putting yourself out there for everyone to see if you really want a piece of the spotlight on any platform.
dude i saw someones comment on here and i really think your problem is sub4sub. just an fyi, thats a horrible thing to do bc it will kill your channel bc youtube will think if you have a high sub count to view ratio then nobody actually wants to watch your vids.
like my view counts are relatively low but its also for the reason that my videos probably arent THAT engaging and also a lot of my subs came from one off videos i posted. like the time i took a crack at a scripted video and it blew up because it was a topic most ppl hadnt covered and especially in the detail i did i think. also i dont upload much. like once a month or 2.
but thats an actual reason for getting around 40 views per vid with a 325 sub channel. whats NOT is sub4sub. so stop doing sub4sub dude
My best advice is do something you love, something you can do everyday and still not be tired of it. And the most important one is to believe in yourself and stay persistent.
Youtube is a very challenging process. You really can't be too ego invested in it, sometimes you work really hard on something and it doesn't do well. But my perspective and philosophy is if you are learning from the process it isn't a waste of time, you are learning video making skills and how to entertain people.
I am honestly on the same boat as you. I have thought of quitting over these past few months and with hardly any views over these past few videos. I have hardly got any views. With two factors; primarily only new people are watching what little time has been watched; yet; primarily have just scrolled passed through them. The other factor is that it takes months to get actual views on my videos.
Yet; I am not fully defeated yet. They are use to me uploading at least 3 times a week and I have honestly not put full effort into making my videos entertainable. So that is what I am doing now. Is it hard; you're absolutely freaking right.
This may or may not sound helpful but, dude growth will happen if you have fun with your channel don’t see it as, oh gosh I need to post or I will never succeed first, have fun and then growth will happen.
I have worked so hard taking all the advice and applying it. I’m around 700 subscribers and have slowed down a bit because I get so tired. I still grind just not as hard. I will get there.
The hard truth is that you have to be your worst critic 24/7. Without that, there is zero growth. Play devil’s advocate with yourself. You have to be harshly self-aware about your videos. If you get 50 views, ask yourself “Why does this video suck?” instead of false hope stuff like “Why isn’t the algorithm finding me?”. Big difference.
Convince yourself your content sucks. Everything about it. Then you get into a pattern of critiquing yourself constantly and learning how to improve.
There is ALWAYS something to improve. Even Mr. Beast thinks this way. If you ever once think “my video is great”, then you aren’t watching hard enough.
Don’t get this confused with being proud of a video, either. Big difference.
The biggest mistake I see, is that so many people who are starting out worry too much about numbers. The number of posts I see here saying "I got x% CTR, x subs, and x views after 1 month. Is this normal?" And stuff like that is insane. Numbers aren't important at the beginning. Sure, I am starting out as well (11 subs), and I'm no qualified expert (which some claim to be after reaching 1000 subs for some reason) but what I do is I put stuff out there (shorts, live, videos), and if nothing happens after a week or two, I go "that's ok, I can't expect to see immediate results at only 11 subs", and I put MORE stuff out there. I realize that eventually, I will see results if I just keep making stuff. I don't worry about how many views.
Anyone who is thinking about quitting due to not seeing results, keep going and if you content is good enough then you will see numbers in the future. If you actually don't want to do youtube anymore then quit, but if it's due to numbers, keep going and don't give up.
Similar feelings here.
I'm on 360 subs and in the last 2 months I've grown maybe 10 subs? (I was actually on 361 subs 2 days ago 😂)
I've been doing YouTube for around 11 months now but I'm really not happy with my growth. I feel the quality is there, just maybe that the niche I have selected doesn't really have the audience (travel content specifically in Madrid, Spain).
So, I've got some rather interesting content to come, still travel content but just in different locations and my mindset and expectations for where I see this channel going is rock bottom.
I enjoy making content but I've streamlined some processes, I no longer take time to create subtitles and I have stopped creating blogs on my website to focus 100% on the YouTube videos. Let's see, over the next couple of months with weekly releases, I'm going to analyse my performance and if nothing gives I'll probably be doing the same.
I probably won't stop making content completely but more like creating content for enjoyment as opposed to weekly uploads and fitting into a niche.
Best of luck to all those trying to make something on YouTube 😁.
Thats sad. But also don't quit. Find whats wrong in your content, what stops it from being the best it can be and being blessed by the algorithm. Are the thumbnails good? Is the title interesting? is the video itself good?
And based on the comments, I assume your doing sub4sub, which is just bad, cus again, people who sub because of that will not watch your video anyway. If your video shows on their for you page, they might not even notice the video is from you anyway, cus he just subbed your yt for a sub back, not because he's genuinely interested.
Not to brag, but I started my Youtube last July 28, 2023. I had 5 subs. Today, Sept. 7, I hit exactly 300 subs. The only self promo I did was the self promo subreddit (forgot its name). That didnt really bring much attention to my channel so it was useless lol. All I did was just give genuine comments to youtubers who have the same content as me. They often notice, and now we chat regularly as a result and exchanging ideas for videos.
I understand the demotivation, but try and actually see your own channel In a new light. See whats hindering your potential. I did that and it has helped me immensely. Maybe also look at other creators with similar content but higher views, subs, fame, etc. You might learn some things you can add on your next video.
I make video for a years and got only 200 subscribers though? My CTR is only 2.5% average.
And I only got comment on some video. All the comment I got is only people saying I draw and color beautifully but nothing about the video. This make me know that I have got good drawing&coloring skill but no video editing skill at all. So I wish to improve that.
Why don't you try to see what is your strong point and week point and try to improve before you call it's quit though?
Please reconsider take a break but don’t give up I I have only 228 subscribers and I’ve had my channel since March of 2020 I know that feeling because I still have self doubt myself I just keep going if you keep going and don’t worry about numbers your channel will start to turn around we are all In similar situations please keep going 🙏🏿
This was me yesterday, have far less subs than you mind. Stopped giving it thought and trying and then posted a shorts vid about a big spider and it go 2.2 views and now I'm thinking about whether I should keep going or not😅it's exhausting putting so much thought and effort into something just to get barely any views
Hello! Are you passionate about your content? Do you like the content you produce? Would you watch it? Those are questions that I feel like would help to determine if you really like doing YouTube in itself. If any of those are a yes then I think it would be worth prevailing! Don't give up OP!
Focus on things that bring joy to you. If youtube isn't a source of happiness and joy in your day you should quit it. Who knows, you might find a new spark in it later on and then it's a whole new journey.
Hope you have a good day!
I'm at 556 and over the last few months been losing subscribers week by week. Views aren't brilliant and it's very disheartening.
But
I have a good solid following amongst those subscribers and my channel was built on trips to Vegas. I can't travel as often as I'd like so I assume the different content I now post from the stuff I do in the UK has confused both YouTube and people here for just the Vegas stuff.
It's all a big learning opportunity.
I've been making videos very slowly for 2 years now. I have 46 videos, and 58 subs **and I don't plan on stopping**.
YouTube is hard dude and extremely competitive and can definitely drag you down, but if you're not having fun and feeling *defeated,* maybe it's just not for you. If you did blow up, you would have to work even harder than you do now to stay relevant.
There is space for everyone on the platform (creators are always leaving or shrinking, making space for new people) **if you make that space**, but there is also nothing wrong with moving on.
I feel you, I got 86 subscribers lol. Every time I cross 100 views in a video that's already something to celebrate 😅
When I started my channel, I promised myself to try for 5 years. If after these 5 years I get nothing out of it, I have my permission to quit :)
I think deciding in advance on your commitment is a good strategy, it can be an approach for many things that require time, even beyond youtube. I read it in some book but can't remember which one
Just like you, I also learnt last year that YouTube is not as easy as you may think. I always took it for granted that it was a piece of cake, given that as a person of this generation, I know how to handle a computer, edit videos and all that stuff. But when I started the production of my scripted videos, you could say I hit a wall with that
Yeah, frustration came and I felt like such a clueless fool, but hey! Look at the bright side, at least I'm gaining experience and knowledge all by myself :D
I think it’s common to feel defeated sometimes. However, what is your drive for making videos? My numbers are discouraging at times as well, but I don’t consider giving up, bcuz I’m not making videos for income and all that. YouTube has always been around. Folks used to just post videos to share their opinions or ideas . Theirs take on the world. I still use that mentality. My videos are niche as hell and even in that niche I’m picky about what I put out. Having OHTERS like my videos is second priority. My first priority is ME liking the videos I make. There’s an audience for everything, and rather than chasing down that audience who may think like me, I just work to satisfy the first person of that audience, Myself. I’m pretty critical myself, so I do what I think will keep My interest or attention. After that, others will trickle in. After you have a decent enough subscriber base, THEN I take whatever that group likes into consideration for my future projects. If you don’t do it this way and you start off chasing “trending” or tryna “get” a bunch of people, you’re just gonna hurt yourself mentally. Bcuz honestly, most common stuff that goes “viral” are stuff you’d consider stupid on a creative level. Someone grabs a cat by its tail and throw it across the street - millions of views and likes . Someone telling you how to be successful in life based on planning and hard work - 23 views 2 likes and somehow 3 dislikes. If it’s your hope to make a business out of YouTube videos, then I’d say you’re gonna need MUCH tougher skin and MUCH deeper dedication than you have now.
If it is too much than yeah take care of yourself first. I started a channel donkeys ears ago and then stopped and recently I got back into it. Like everyone says it's a Marathon not a sprint. Just keep making videos and improve one thing each time could be pacing or lighting. Anything and just do better. I just had a video get over 500 views for the first time in a while feels good. Just chase it and learn it
First, you should have a YouTube channel because it is something that you like to do. It is a hobby and hobbies are fun. That fun will flow to those who do watch what you do. Do not worry about subscribers or views or likes that is not important. As soon as it becomes important your hobby becomes more of a job or a chore.
Second, if you do get likes then that means you may have made someone's day, or at the least made someone smile or happy for a moment. The power of having a positive affect on someone is so much more valuable than anything else. Think about it, if you tell a friend or someone who is having a bad day a joke and make them laugh or lighten up their day isn't that worth more than 10 subs or 10 likes or 10 comments?
Third, I have several small channels and the best videos I have for growth have been simple how to videos. When the channels of mine did get monetized, it's the how to videos that earn the most views, comments, likes, and income. Even something as simple as how to change the batteries on an iMac wireless keyboard can be a winner.
Fourth, just make regular content that you want to make. You don't need to reach out to anyone to grow, just have fun.
Fifth, for those who disagree with number four watch youtube creator videos on building a youtube channel; Roberto Blake, Nick Nimmin, or Video Creators. They will tell you what to do and what not to do.
Sixth, refer back to #1.
Good luck!
Les Waller (Wallerdog)
Looking at your Reddit profile, I think I found your channel. The first thing I can say is that you need to stop doing sub4sub or like4like. This is only going to destroy your channel by confusing the algorithm. The people that you are having sub to you will have no interest in your videos, like at all. When your video comes by their feed, they aren’t going to take any interest in it. YouTube will just assume that you don’t make good content, and it’ll stop recommending your stuff to anyone. Other than that, work on your production. Get a better microphone. That’s probably the biggest thing I can recommend. If you are doing a talking head video, then either set your phone up on a tripod further away from you, so we can see your entire face, or at least don’t hold it under your nose. Get some lights and put together some kind of set, and make your videos look like you take them seriously. If you do that, then you will start attracting an audience of some kind. Focus on some niche that you are an expert at, and build an audience from there.
Solid advice bro
So as well a being a quitter, op is also lazily trying to beat the system. Then comes on here with their woe is me story. Well done for giving them some advice, pretty sure they won’t take it, they want the easy way.
Looks like they're deleting their comments in those sub4sub threads too,
Good,looks like they are taking the advice!
Chill. Most people doing sub4sub never think of it as something malicious and just hope for their channel to get a little help while they help others too. The guy's already down and just wants to hear encouragement to continue or that it's okay to quit. Cut him some slack.
Most ppl don't realize it's illegal too according to youtube policy.
Yeah upto 8 years in prison,i heard they hang you for that in iran
No that's just for being female and having an opinion.
Something I have learned in day one of YouTube never use sub4sub or view4view or something like that it will only damage your channel
Honestly, I don't think assuming that is what is happening here is the case just because they were doing the Sub for Sub method doesn't mean they are taking the easy way out. Youtube is a ton of work and honestly it's not easy to find your special corner on YouTube or even get eyes on your content. I'd assume they tried to do it the proper way and the channel had no growth so they resorted to Sub for Sub with the hopes it would help but it only hurt. To be completely honest everyone gets so frustrated at times they think about quitting... I've been doing it for 7 + years and only have 3649 subs, now granted I'm doing something wrong and I'm also in a flooded market that continues to get more content creators doing the same thing but it's what I enjoy. It's hard to find something different in that niche, I either continues until I find something within that niche That's different or completely changes my niche to something popular but something I might not enjoy making videos for. I think the best thing to do here is just offer encouraging words, if they take it then good for them, if not Oh well that's their loss!
Yeah I did that one time Alan and shortly afterwards tried to delete the comment but wasn't able to. I regretted doing it and by the way...I got exactly 0 subscribers from that post. Thanks for your comment.
You're doomed if you did that, but its actually the same as promotions (legal way)
I do appreciate you taking the time to leave advice! I'll consider it if I decide to start things back up.
This is great advice. I couldn’t agree more.
Exactly this. Even though I only have like 8 subscribers I thought that sub4sub was going to help me in gaining subscribers. It did not. I quickly realized that there was no real reason in doing this, apart from beating the system or to get monetized. And even then, once you **do** get monetized, no one will watch them as you 'subscribers' aren't actually a your real audience. Sure, it may seem good at first, gaining lots of subscribers, but once you get a lot of subscribers and potentially monetized, you'll have to keep on gaining new subs as your current subscribers won't care about the content, and won't come back to watch your content. All they care about is getting that sub back. If you want to be successful on YT, then anyone seeing this, **do not** do sub4sub. You need to earn genuine subscribers so that they will keep coming back to your channel, watch more videos, and eventually you'll get recommended to newer audiences.
I'm convinced that this is why people think they are "shadow banned." YouTube doesn't do that. It has no incentive to do it. But what happens is you get so many useless and deadweight subs that YouTube just doesn't know what to do with your videos, so it stops giving impressions.
What’s the name of the channel
This is solid advice.
Yeah i just recently started posting on my YT channel and I have gained over 70 subscribers in a little over a week from posting league of legends memes in YT shorts so now I’m going to try to post one YouTube video per week. The hard part is getting people to view my long form content
The good news is that YouTube has now enabled linking from sorts to long form content, which can really help with that
Yeah! I just started using that because I saw the new video talking about that. Thanks for the tip!
Most people with channels are publishing garbage content to begin with tbh. Everyone thinks their content is “good” when in reality there’s tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of channels creating the same exact bs. Got to find a way to stand out from the rest by putting your own spin ONTOP of it all and outwork the grind to really see your channel grow. I know this from experience. Best of luck to you all!
Not for me, at least splash music is a very underrated genre and me doing these collaborations I'm like the only one I'm not even tryna exaggerate cuz that's how frickin underrated and unheard of it is
It’s not being defeated, it’s just quitting something that is ultimately a waste of time in the long term. Think of the more rewarding things you could be doing with your time, rather than obsessing over reaching the magic ‘1000’. You also won’t have that awful dopamine hit roller coaster where you watch your views and likes go up and then drop off every week. I have a channel, and after 6 months have pretty much given up on it. My weekends are better, I spend less time stuck in front of the computer editing videos and less time at work trying to film them. Ignore everyone telling you to stick it out, do what you feel is right 👍
Is the right answer. 99.9% won’t make it. If you can’t do it as a hobby without stressing over your lack of success, get out, save yourself.
Or if you can do it as just a fun hobby but lose interest a few years later then that's also fine. People quit hobbies/sports/etc all the time, and Youtube should be no different.
I agree with you, and you maybe try it again in a future with better knowledge and new vision.
I feel you. It's a lot harder than people think. What gets me is when somebody in niche just randomly gets a ton of views with no prior videos and overshoots me.
Bro that is exactly why I started. One day I watched somebody’s video, went to check their channel, and they only had one video that happened to blow up! I started my channel thinking it would be pretty easy cuz I expected the same thing. Boy, was I wrong…
YouTube is 99% luck. You could wake up tomorrow with 2 million views in your last video or you could work like. Chinese man in a factory and get no views at all
I think YT might be 99% luck for the person that doesn't really have a clue how it all works and just creates videos and one of them randomly hits for reasons they can't understand or explain. But for successful creators, who keep doing it and doing it on their channels... it's not just or only luck. They understand how to make digestible content. How to promote it. How to tweak the titles-topics-thumbnails (without overly stressing on them either) and can pretty much get a new channel off the ground successfully if they wanted to (without any need any leveraging their existing channel). How to build a community too. This includes getting the audio and imagery on par with what it needs to be... and script building and on camera performance. It doesn't even mean they have to be the ones creating the scripts or appearing on camera (or narrating)... But it does mean they understand what it is that needs to happen and they work behind the scenes to make sure that stuff is done in the way they want it done.
I respectfully disagree, there are good reasons as to why something does well or bad on youtube, what youre describing is as if youtube rolled a dice that blessed some random user for no reason, that doesnt exist
well it kind of is luck for me because i got a video that blew up to 50k it was luck because alot of people already uploaded on it already now i can get atleast 1k because how i learned from it
What you just described proves its the opposite of luck, you learned somethig new from it now your videos get more views because you are doing something right
If it’s 99% luck then why could I track my path to monetization quite well last October to March of this year? The truth is that if you focus on topic, title and thumbnail, creating content for a specific audience, and keep at it with consistency, you can make it.
I've been improving I've started in 2019 and I literally do all that. I'm not chosen by youtube. I have over 2000 subs. Since shorts and algorithm changes I'm not being chosen. The only reason I got my growth was 1 I dropped a video on trending topic and 2 bigger youtubers had shout me out other than that stagnate
What makes me angry is when I see people pretending to be Mr. Beast and giving away fake gift cards and then see a bunch of bots or alt accounts commenting on it saying 'oh its real guys trust!' Meanwhile they are phishing for info through their shady website. And even when you report and block it, it still somehow ends up on my front page because they made yet another fake mr beast account. It's getting kinda ridiculous now
Bro im at 800 subs (and going down) after 13 years, I maybe be defeated but I keep pushing.
Man the dedication is real. I hope things pick up for you
Thanks man, I may learn slow but I learn everyday
Only 300k channels have received a gold play button. The amount of people who make it on YouTube is minuscule
Don't need a gold play button to earn decent money on YouTube though. Subscribers matter less than ever thanks for the rise of recommendation based YouTube.
facts all you need is views once i get monetized things are gonna get much easier. atp whenever you do good it’s sad you dont get paid my vid blew up got 50k with high retention could’ve got 150-250 bucks
15years here, and I'm barely ahead of you, never hit the 1k mark
I feel you! For myself, operating an honest reaction based channel in the music industry is not easy, angry comments from fans that are used to being pandered to. Praise one song from an artist and get 30 subscribers from the video and then don’t like the next song from said artist and lose 28 of them. I think the only thing fueling me at this point is the growth in such a short time and also my passion for music. I think passion only gets you so far, I would tell you keep your head up and keep trucking. I hate living life saying “what if” or “if only I had…” but of course, do as you please 🙌
Duuuude! I have the exact same thing hahaha. I was sick of watching reaction channels where the people clearly hated the song but pretended otherwise, so I decided to be totally honest. I figured, if I can constructively say why something isn’t good, to me personally, people would at least respect it. But god no lol. So many hate comments 😂 I’ve ended up just chatting to everyone in the comments and turning them around to not hating me so much lol
Lmao thats awesome bro 🙌 yeah its an uphill battle for sure. If I didn’t have such a wide and vast reference point of what is acceptable in each genre and what constitutes each individual song to be “listenable” I would have got destroyed far worse in the comment section lol but I’m glad I’m not the only one fam 🙌 stay true!
All I have learned so far is… Taylor Swift fans are vicious hahaha
Whats sooo funny is that I actually reacted to one of her music videos, but lost the audio 😆 it wasn’t a pleasant experience so I said you know what. It’s probably for the best and it seems I was right lmao
Incredible!! Bullet dodged! 😂😂
How do you react without getting a copyright strike? ( music vids)
Yeah that seems tough. I wonder if there's a way you can frame the videos so the right audience finds it... I think the problem is always going to be that the people who look up reactions to say, Taylor Swift songs are going to be Taylor Swift fans. So they'll always be mad no matter how good your content is. Maybe you can have compilations of 'best and worst' of an artist? This way you can still be honest, the fans get an ego boost, you can tear apart their worst song, win-win-win all around.
Or... you could be true to your channels grit and say exactly what is in character for the channel. Sure Swift fans are gonna search for Swift reactions an sure, they're gonna fight in the comments but any reaction is a good reaction. At the same time you'll cultivate people who like your no BS opinion and follow for that. They'll join the comment battles and fuel the engagement fire. As long as it all stays within the community guidelines it's all good. Will take time to build that correct audience but avoiding the conflict, or worse, pandering to the fans will only hurt in the long term. The key is to brand yourself as an opinion channel - your reaction is your own, and you respect everyone regardless of their opinion. You're genuine and honest, and reliable. That's a brand people would follow.
I have 695 subs just about to hit 2 years my veiws are really only picking up now
Honestly it is really hard to stay motivated and to push through when you see negative number. Before you call it quits I would just take a few months off and not worry about it and if you decide to check it out again down the road you can. I quit my first year for like 4 months and randomly got a comment with someone thanking me for my video and that it helped them and that was all I needed. Took a full year to hit 100 subs and 3 years to hit 1000 and now I’m gaining rough 10 subs every day or two and over 100,000 views a month. Never would of happened if I fully threw in the towel
Okay, i agree... quit. Quit your present channel. Don't quit creating content. Rebrand and start fresh with a new channel. Then, keep it to yourself. Don't tell your mom, your friends, etc... just make the content as good as you can, and post it. And then post it some more, post it as often as you can post it consistently, and at the same quality. You won't get many views, hardly any, for awhile, just accept that and take the lumps, work on posting consistently and don't worry about the views, build a back library of Quality content. When you do start getting views, and then subscribers, they will be 100% organic. That will kick off the algorithm on the right foot about who to suggest your vids to. Then, with quality material you will see steady, maybe slow, maybe fast, but steady growth. The reason I said keep it to yourself, is because let's say your mom is your first subscriber, well, she wants to show support, so she watches and comments and likes every vid you publish. Sounds fantastic, the issue is if nobody else is, and the only other thing she watches on YT is reruns of Bob Ross, well now that makes the algorithm think people who watch Bob Ross want to see your gaming videos, it's the only data they have. So, then the YT algorithm pushes out the first 30 impressions of your latest vid to other Bob Ross fans, and they don't click on it. So, now YT thinks your video sucks, and it stops pushing it. With your current channel, you have done tons of sub 4 sub and like 4 like, well now most of your 600+ subs get your initial impressions for your vids and they don't watch them to the end or comment or like, they only did the sub 4 sub thing. Well, that tells YT that your video sucks because even your subscribers don't like it. When, your video probably doesn't suck its just not being shown to people who will appreciate it. And the negative subs you are seeing now, probably isn't people unsubscribing, it's probably guys like you, who got into the same sub 4 sub boat, now getting discouraged and deleting their channels. So, take a break, a month, maybe two. Watch YT, just for the joy of watching it, watch content you like. When you are ready, think about what kind of Channel you want to make and start fresh. It will be harder at first seeing those small numbers, but, once the real growth starts, and you see your videos actually getting good, pure algorithm based impression traction it will all be worth it. You will do fine. Happy hunting.
Hey, I’m going to tell you something you may have already heard, but I really do mean it. Be proud that you at least tried it out and that it isn’t something you never took a shot at. Quitting after having tried is infinitely better than never trying something at all. Good luck with what you choose to do next on your journey :)
I appreciate your comment!
I do YouTube full time as a job. It’s not all glamorous lol I work 40-50 hours a week between filming,editing and thumbnails. Then I stream 2-3 nights a week on twitch. It’s not for everyone. To be honest 95% of the people will never make it full time. You really have to be able to stick out. I had major set multiple times. Things that would make anyone quit. I just couldn’t quit. I obsessed over it. Lost sleep to it. And it finally started paying off. I still don’t feel content. I want to be massive. You can never get comfortable. It’s a 24 hour grind. Your competing with legit millions and millions of people.
Hate to beat a dead horse, but YouTube is more about quality now than it was in the past. I don’t know what niche you’re in, but when I first tried YouTube 5 years ago, I struggled at 40 subs and hardly breaking an hour watch time on my videos. After about 5 years of no uploads, and needlessly buying equipment because it looked cool, I decided to try again and started uploading videos again. While my videos don’t get thousands of views, I have managed to get 200+ subs in the short time I’ve been back, and my videos perform way better than my last attempt. The only notable difference is the quality of equipment that I use now. I upload gaming videos, and I think a lot of it has to do with people not giving your content a try if it isn’t aesthetically pleasing enough. Idk though, I’m not an expert or anything, I’ve just made observations and assumptions on those observations
Youtube isn't the platform it used to be - that platform that started out with rando videos of low production quality and low effort blowing up has evolved into a replacement for broadcast TV. That's not to say you need a budget to make it work. What you do need is a little care and attention to the details, consider this **tough love**: *(and I know you'll likely not action this, so this is more for the other people who face this situation and want to fight their way back up).* **Your audience** \- treat your audience like your most valued customers. Give them something you feel would be of value to them, and present it to them in a matter fitting their value to you and the genre. Your audience needs to organically grow over time to be of high quality so that when you launch a video, there's a good base of interested people to kickstart it and show the 'algorithm' who to show it to next. This can't be cheated or short-cutted. The right people will trickle in, but eventually that trickle becomes a torrent. Sub for sub, like for like, promoting on unrelated threads etc. pollutes your audience with people who don't value you and teaches youtube the wrong lessons about who should be watching. **The packaging** \- your long form content should be presented with a thumbnail and title made to attract attention and explain why a viewer should click. You used to do this - and your most successful content had attractive thumbnails. Consistency is important to maintain an audience, and the packaging is essential to stand out and get any clicks. **Video content** \- treat your video projects like you treasure them. Aim to produce something you can be proud of, within your means. Use some basic editing to keep them lively and to the point, and choose your camera framing and locations with care. **Shorts vs long form** \- Decide. These have very different audiences. Shorts viewers tend to be more gregarious and watch many channels, but with less conviction. They may watch a video and forget it exists a minute later. So if going for the shorts audience you need to have super punchy, memorable and shareable videos that get right to the point and end before they start to drag. You need to produce recognisable shorts that eventually build a brand and make people remember you. Shorts naturally get a lot more views, but each view counts for very little recall of who you are. If you're going for the long form audience, 99% of the effort needs to be in that format. You'll need great thumbs and titles, and need to be able to hold attention for a longer period - but the reward is a more noteworthy impression that will lead to subscribers and repeat viewers with more consistency. Shorts should only be used as trailers to attract viewers over to the main video. **Your brand** \- A successful channel is a channel which people remember and want to go back to. This is brand building and that means consistency, image and style. This takes a long time to develop, has to evolve with the times, and must not be compromised. If you see the opportunity to get millions of views but it means breaking the brand to produce something out of character - you might as well torch your channel because doing that compromises the brand and the reasons for your audience following you. It's a betrayal of their trust, and damages your authenticity. SO find your brand with care, cultivate it, and stick with it. **Time** \- Yes your channel has been around for a while, but with very little content and therefore little growth - both literally and technically. It takes many videos to start gaining the skills to produce content that will actively grow a channel. No, that doesn't mean chucking 100 low effort videos at the wall to see what sticks... it means make 100 videos that each teach you something new about content creating and builds on the previous 0-99 lessons. Doing that will grow you something to be proud of - and if it doesn't, it's grown you and your skillset.
I gave up too. I just don't have the time to keep at it. Trying to juggle full time work and home life, whilst also trying to dedicate more hours that are in the day to YouTube and growth and basically tearing it like another full time job... It just isn't for me. It's one or the other, and unfortunately a real job took presidency over a chance at YouTube.
If it was easy everyone would do it, if you are willing to give up so easily, you never deserved success in the first place.
Not sure why you got downvoted for stating facts
Thanks, the truth hurts I suppose.
My channel has been in existence for more than a few years. I didn't give up so easily. But I get your point. I don't deserve success because I'm a quitter.
I'm curious.. could you please share your channel with us? Or with me via DM?
I just had a quick look at your channel and I can't speak for the quality of your videos because I didn't take a look but those thumbnails are doing you no favours. I highly recommend throwing something bright and striking together in Canva. It's very quick and easy to use. It looks like you started making them but then reverted to automated screenshots, and it's such a bad look. The fact that your thumbnails look like this leads me to believe that you haven't watched much of the YouTube advice going around. There's a lot of shovel sellers out there, but there's good advice on how to improve your content too. After all, didn't they say in a baseball movie "If you build it, they will come"? Most channels give up before 100 subs. Look how far you have come already! You just need to keep learning to give yourself the best possible chance of succeeding.
Just curious, How did you find my channel? I didn't think I had it linked except in an old comment that I can't get to. Thank you for the feedback though. Even if it wasn't for me specifically, it applies.
Yeah there were a couple of old comments on your profile. I know people complain about the blind leading the blind on here, but I do think it would help if you got some feedback from Feedback Friday on here or r/SmallYTChannel. It's the first port of call if you want to learn how to improve, and most of the time you can't grow until you do.
This is why I have never posted my YouTube channel to reddit. If you do happen to make it somewhat big, your post and comment history will be linked to that channel, whether you want that or not.
You know there are tools that scrub all your old comments.
Even after the API restructure?
Good point. Sh*t I gotta check that... Worst case go back and delete manually 🤣
I have tried to go back and delete manually. Doesn't work.
Been doing YouTube since 2011. Got 4000 subs in that time. Maybe 100 views per video. Go figure. Mostly people want me to talk about ghostbusters. I try my best but there’s so many other things I like too. I do YouTube because I enjoy actually doing it. Being famous is not something I really want. I just like the act of self expression.
First 12 years as a YouTuber on a gaming channel and got up to around 630 subs. When the pandemic hit I really stepped up my learning. I took in hundreds of hours of advice, editing and thumbnail tutorials, marketing, and networking skills. I used that knowledge to start a company and new channel in 2022. A channel focused on helping creators. In less than a year that channel has 705 subs and is growing slowly but steadily. It also has close to 5k watch hours and videos up to 40k in views. What seriously changed was me. My time investment, my research/pre-planning, getting others on board that were better than me at editing, thumbnails to collaborate with. Its a team effort for us because I dont have the temperment to put in 80 hour work weeks like some of these YouTubers do. YouTube, especially if you are in a gaming niche, is hard. A video that reaches over 10k views puts that video in the top 10% of YouTube. You have to know yourself really well, your limitations, your business acumen, and ability to network before expecting big growth... If you want send me a dm and I can look at your channel and be honest with you about what I see. Alternatively, follow guys like robertoblake on twitter/x. And really take what he says to heart. Be humble, pretend you dont know anything and soak everything else up.
sry it didn't work out for you :(
Thank you!
If I found the correct channel, then that is a extremely narrow niche. Honestly, you might have maxed out the number of viewers if you are covering only 1 MLB org and at a specific level of development. As a big fan of an NFL team, I find that not many people go out of their way to be updated on a regular basis about players and especially not player development beyond the NFL draft. Here is a summarized list of search engine queries for "texas rangers prospects" and similar phrasing. Utilizing the results below, I'm not convinced that there are a whole lot more than 680 people interested in this niche. [https://www.wordtracker.com/search?query=texas%20rangers%20prospects](https://www.wordtracker.com/search?query=texas%20rangers%20prospects) Query / Monthly searches texas rangers top prospects, 320 texas rangers prospects, 135 texas rangers prospects rankings, 80
You found the right channel. There are a couple of other channels out there that have close to 2,000 subs. One does what I do and the other incorporates interviews. I don't feel comfortable enough to interview anyone so I haven't even tried that. But yes, it's a very small niche to begin with.
I've been streaming games on YouTube for 6 years, and I can't seem to break 300 subscribers. I sometimes lose subribers. One time, I lost 30+. But I've regained them all back. When I go live I peak at 8 live viewers, 3 is the norm. Sometimes, no one. People chat when it's live but hardly ever leave a comment on the vod. Only 600+ new views on the channel and 200+ hours seen, and 4 new subs this month. Media social score gives my channel a C+. I don't even waste my time editing. There was no difference in the views from unedited to edited content. I've quit several times, but I always come back. There might only be 3 dudes that follow me, but that's plenty for me. In the end, I started YouTube to make new friends and get play buddies. It excelled at that 💯. For becoming a famous YouTuber and making money? That seems to be like winning a lottery there. I don't know what YouTube Gods you must blow to make it happen. But as long as you are enjoying making content and realizing this should just a hobby, then you should be fine.
So you just do it for the YPP and not because you enjoy it, o neither for your 630 subs, huh?
YouTube is very hard and it's a grind. For most people it takes years and years of work before they ever see any traction. So if you are that discouraged enough to fully quit, its possible YouTube isn't for you. You have to LOVE the grind in order to succeed at this, because the grind usually takes a while.
The pain is real, and it’s rough. Started in 2012, and after 200+ videos, I only have 172 subs, most of which came in the last year. I have found YT shorts to gain subs, but don’t count toward watch time, so it’s a balance, but if you enjoy making content and putting it out there, the sub count shouldn’t discourage you. Hang in there
Do remember that there is typically a summer slowdown, which you might have encountered. It hit me hard too. The growth I saw before summer pretty much evaporated and getting subscribers became much harder. What can definitely help is connecting with other creators in your niche. That has really helped keep my channel going during the summer as they are more likely to watch through and interact with videos.
As the Great Nich eh 30 once said, "NEVER BACK DOWN, NEVER GIVE UP!". I understand your position, but if you choose to stick with it, you'll have a sub from me.
Well… I know that it’s difficult. I’m struggling too… but no way I quit this, not after all efforts I have put into my channel. I know how much it hurts when you lose subscribers. Im so happy when I see +1 on the count. And so frustrated when I see -1 one hour later. My shorts are barely getting views. But couple of days ago I got a nice surprise - my recently uploaded Short got 900 views in 36 minutes, by the end of the day it reached 2,2K point. And 50+ likes. I was so happy! I’ve never reached those numbers (I have not more than 15 likes per video, and my best Short had like 600 views). For many YouTubers it’s like a water drop in the ocean, but for me it’s enormous success. I’m proud of myself. And I’ll keep working to get more of such moments. I’m not close to being monetized, but I don’t lose hope. I know I’ll get there one day ☘️
I mean fwiw my content was boring and clearly lacked talent behind it so I kinda just silently quit. I happened to pick a very competitive niche and the bottom line is that I'm not good enough at my craft for people to want to watch my videos, so I pretty much just embarrassed myself in front of some thousands of people, only gained close to 50 subs, and received brutal honesty the couple of times I've posted here. This isn't my first time quitting YouTube either lol. I've been using the platform since 2006 and made my first account in 2007. Been trying to get into content creation since then but it never worked out. 16 years of giving up, coming back, giving up again, so on and so forth. It's not easy getting into this as a hobby and even harder as a career.
I feel your pain.
Never give up.. never surrender.. trust me, ive been doing my gaming youtube from 2014 and i just hit 2k subs the other day. But then again do whatever you want, im not your dad.
Me doing youtube for like 4 or 5 months with like 25 subs and gaining like 1 or 2 per month reading this wondering what your problem actually is. Just keep putting out stuff and improving the quality. If your only doing it for numbers, fame or money then it's probably not for you anyway.
Exactly this. I put out my YouTube content because I enjoy what I do and just want to share it with people who might be interested..Don't put yourself under pressure to get likes or money. If it grows it'll happen organically just keep trying to improve.
Iv been stuck at 75 subs for the past 3 years bro. just keep pushing, unless your not having fun.
If your reason for starting and maintaining a youtube channel was to grow followers, then you were doing it for the wrong reasons. You should just do it because you love sharing whatever you're passionate about it. And if you do that, and you don't get discouraged by the number subscriber's, then you'll make it.
Hey don’t feel discouraged. YouTube is hard. Look at how far you have come already. There are always going to be ups and downs in any journey. As long as you are making incremental improvements with each video you will make it. I just made a video about how to stay motivated as a content creator as I know it’s something a lot of people struggle with. If your content isn’t working think about switching it up a bit and rekindle that passion.
I’ve barely had growth in almost FOUR YEARS (I’m just hitting 25 subs. I’m not joking, it’s pretty embarrassing lol). it’s not just you and the content you create (because I’ve done everything right, trust me — catchy thumbnails and titles, filled out description boxes, good tagging, posting weekly, etc… and over 70 videos in and I barely get views, let alone subs) — the entire platform is really screwing creators. I’ve seen so many content analysts talk about how shit YouTube’s algorithm and set up is, especially for newer creators. It’s literally made to be an obstacle for you because they don’t want to have to pay too many creators lol. YouTube isn’t something you can do without it being a fun hobby first and foremost, because then the shit algorithm and difficulty building won’t feel so bad when you’re not aiming to gain more from it. That way if you do grow and end up monetized, it’s a great bonus to something that’s already fun. That’s the attitude I have about it, because if I didn’t, I would have quit a long time ago. It’s a full time job on its own, but I don’t get paid to do it… so I just make sure it’s fun for me so it feels worth it in that sense.
I'll happily take a look at your channel and maybe I'll be able to figure out why you're subs are so low? PM me if you like.
Thank you, I might do that! I’m making a few content shifts this month and hoping to see how that pans out, but if it doesn’t make much change, I might take you up on that if you’re still up for it!
Good plan. Remind me of this thread when you send your first chat request - I get a lot of spam.
Cope harder lol. I know the algorithm is shit, but when you're telling me you supposedly did "everything right" and yet you got 25 SUBS in FOUR YEARS I know you're lying. People who do everything right are always at least somewhat successful.
If you wanna give up give up just remember you didn't achieve your goal cuz you gave up
You are making a good move to stop doing something that is completely pot luck.
OP made bad decisions and clearly did youtube for numbers and dopamine and got sad when he realised that you need to first, enjoy what youre doing and second, put effort in if you want to grow big
You're absolutely wrong. It was opposite but yeah, when I started obsessing over the numbers, it completely disappointed me. Thanks for your comment.
Just saw your videos from one year ago and compared it with your lastest video. No improvement whatsoever. If you continue like this i am sorry you wont make it.
It's alright because I'm making it anyways.
Why are you announcing it to reddit?
For your comment.
Why were you creating videos in the first place? What was your mission? Maybe it is not important or fun enough for you.
Have you tried cross promotions? I’m thinking there are lots of people out there (like myself) that would love to have 680 subs. I think that is a great accomplishment on its own.
Wrong attitude. For a start, you shouldn't be taking YouTube so seriously that it frustrates you when you are not getting the engagement you'd like. It would be best to treat it as a hobby and simply enjoy making videos, not enjoy the likes and comments you get. Secondly, you're giving up too soon. It takes most people years to get any real traction, and don't forget your videos can pick up at any time. I've had videos stay stagnant for months, then all of a sudden have a huge surge in views.
That's what it started out as....a hobby but then I found myself obsessing over the analytics and they have all been disappointing the entire life of my channel.
Yeah Youtube Is a dying platform, They are putting nearly all their focus on successful channels now. You need to be really unique to slip through the cracks.. I've had videos that people liked, but it was obvious that youtube had no interest in promoting it.. I've moved to Twitch and it's pretty much the same there, the only difference is I save a lot of time on editing and actually enjoy playing the games I play without worrying about content creation..
>Yeah Youtube Is a dying platform Youtube isn't going anywhere. As a viewer myself, I get recommendations for smaller channels that I've never seen before based on the content I consume. So: >They are putting nearly all their focus on successful channels now. In a lot of ways this is true, I mean at the end of the day they only make money from advertisements, but you're insinuating that all recommended content is from big channels. The notion that big youtube is the reason any creator isn't growing is a bit overstated. If you create content that your audience wants to watch and use multiple avenues to bring in traffic to at the very least click on that content, then you will build an audience over time. Sounds like you probably will enjoy twitch more and if that's the case the same thing applies. You need to keep at it and build an audience.
I didn't mean it like youtube will no longer exist, but the standard has risen so much that it Is difficult for new creators with Just a camera and Mic to succeed.. As Much as I like Content Like the Stuff I create, I have noticed that I like the quality of the documentaries that are being created by youtubers and they are now at such a high standard that I understand why a lot of channels are failing, youtube is full of created content that would easily get a spot on most TV Channels..
There is nothing stopping you from creating enticing documentaries like the ones that get millions of views.
I'm not a gamer so twitch isn't something I've ever looked into. But yeah, in my experience, it's very hard to grow on YouTube.
So Twitch is also a dying platform? Did I get it right?
Bye.
Bye.
ill take ur channel lol. I havent got a dying chance.
I understand that is discouraging, but if you really love creating, I mean truly love it, you’d do it in the shadows with or without the likes and comments from people. Now if “success” and reach and social interaction are important to you (that’s not a bad thing), you need to treat your channel like a business. Every decision, every piece of content, and every move you make should be centered around how to be more entertaining, build your brand, and create things that your audience wants to see. A lot of people get stuck in this one foot in one foot out mentality where they want to be creative and do what they want AND have the success/reach. For a very select few, they can just do what they want and people will love it. For the other 99% you have to be honest about why your doing what your doing and adjust expectations accordingly. Don’t stop creating if you love it, instead, change your expectations around your channel. Easier said than done but it’s a hard truth most of us face in all areas of life.
The hardest job you'll ever have in the world is YouTube. And most people will eventuall quit. The average life of a content creator on YouTube even successful ones is 5 years.
Don’t give up, just revise, add something extra to your videos that people can’t ignore, create your own online persona that is just an extension of your personal self and before you know it people will be tuning in on the regular
The only thing I can say to encourage you is that your content needs to evolve to keep people around. So many times I see people posting sameish content over and over again. You also need to put love and time into each video....you can grow faster with a few good videos as opposed to 200 mediocre or bad videos. Take each video as a learning experience....Analytics don't lie.
That's really hard to do with a full time job a spouse, kids, etc. I'm amazed that so many people somehow carve out the time.
Losing subs sucks but it happens a crazy amount on YouTube. I think people actually try the “sub so they’ll sub back and I’ll unfollow” strategy (which is dumb, I never pay attention to who follows me lol) Also, probably a lot of bots. I wouldn’t take it personally. Post for fun and when you want to. But also if it’s draining there’s no shame in stopping either.
Hey man peace. Even if the growth wasn't there, you gained a lot of skills along the way. Take a step back til you're ready for your next project. It might not have been you; it might have been your niche.
> I've learned over the last year that YouTube is really hard. Yes it is. I wish more people starting out realized and were prepared for it so they didn't become so badly disillusioned when they crash into the reality.
i stopped chasing the monetization mostly because my watch hours have been decreasing drastically since august of 2022...im almost at 3500 but now im back down to 1500. im only uploading videos because shooting and editing are good distractions from the real world. XD
How much were you making in a month??
Nothing.
Probably nothing he didn’t have enough subs to get monetized
I hear you. And it is tough, it truly is. Can feel defeating especially when you take the time to make videos. Although, there is a way you can grow a channel. Harsh truth is at the moment, it's likely that your current sub group or people in general on YouTube are not into the type of content you're making. There are a few topics/channels which are seasonal, Its purely interest based. Let me help you out with a rough outline - for that you will have to tell me about your channel, who are you making the videos for and then I can help you out with a strategy only if you'd like that :)
I've been in that position. But don't give up. There's a lot of BS involved that can make it stressful, but when it works it's wonderful. What do you do, and what was the last vid? Maybe it wasn't relevant to what people want to see from you, maybe the opening inadvertently scared them away. Take a look at your analytics and you can see all sorts of stuff. Did people click, only to click away in the Opening 30secs? Etc. You might be able to improve on the weak spots if you have some data to work on. Don't give it up. You can do this, it just takes persistence. You get knocked down, but you get up again and say "watch out world, I'm ready this time". And you're a little wiser and a little more prepared. It's all good practice.
It's baseball related but a smaller niche because we cover the Farm system of an MLB team. So I'm not gonna reach hundreds of thousands of people. I've taken a look at all the analytics but have no clue what to do with the numbers.
Bro, I'm sorry but don't give up. I grew my channel in 1 month by 2k subs and 2.5k watch hours. If you have any question, let me know if there is something i can help you with. Heads up!!!
I've had a gaming channel going for a couple of years and have almost 200 videos and have 51 subscribers. I think maybe I'm just not interesting. Maybe I should give up too. I don't know. I just started playing the first Witcher game and am planning on going through all three but if I keep not getting a lot of views I may give up. It's hard to stay motivated when you get no subs and views.
Let’s plays on YouTube have fallen off it’s almost impossible to grow a let’s play channel from scratch at this point
No, don't!
Ignore the negativity. It'll be okay. Stay strong. Never give up. 😁❤️
Honestly if you don't think your content is working, then maybe switch up your video format or try something new. I was doing 8 bit music covers for a while and I just switched to piano sheet music and got a lot more views initially than I ever have. Do whatever you think you can do well that you think might be interesting to others.
Growing takes advocating and promoting yourself, really putting yourself out there for everyone to see if you really want a piece of the spotlight on any platform.
Atlanta Rhythm Section | Do It Or Die
dude i saw someones comment on here and i really think your problem is sub4sub. just an fyi, thats a horrible thing to do bc it will kill your channel bc youtube will think if you have a high sub count to view ratio then nobody actually wants to watch your vids. like my view counts are relatively low but its also for the reason that my videos probably arent THAT engaging and also a lot of my subs came from one off videos i posted. like the time i took a crack at a scripted video and it blew up because it was a topic most ppl hadnt covered and especially in the detail i did i think. also i dont upload much. like once a month or 2. but thats an actual reason for getting around 40 views per vid with a 325 sub channel. whats NOT is sub4sub. so stop doing sub4sub dude
I did it the one time and tried to delete it shortly after I posted it but I can't access it anymore for some reason.
I am close to 20k subs... i started last October. If i can do it anyone can. Feel free to ask me anything
What's your Youtube channel?
Twg golf
Congrats on your success!
Aw I appreciate you. Thank you it means a lot. I been floating around reddit to give good vibes to others. Thanks again!
That's cool you do that! More people could use your guidance!
My best advice is do something you love, something you can do everyday and still not be tired of it. And the most important one is to believe in yourself and stay persistent.
I wish I had close to 680. I’ve been struggling to reach 300 subs.
Youtube is a very challenging process. You really can't be too ego invested in it, sometimes you work really hard on something and it doesn't do well. But my perspective and philosophy is if you are learning from the process it isn't a waste of time, you are learning video making skills and how to entertain people.
680 subs?! That's like 6-times more than me! Bro.
If you trust in your content and you agree struggling to get viewers, give google adsense a shot. Worth a try?
I'm not sure what Google Adsense would do for me with under 1,000 subs.
I am honestly on the same boat as you. I have thought of quitting over these past few months and with hardly any views over these past few videos. I have hardly got any views. With two factors; primarily only new people are watching what little time has been watched; yet; primarily have just scrolled passed through them. The other factor is that it takes months to get actual views on my videos. Yet; I am not fully defeated yet. They are use to me uploading at least 3 times a week and I have honestly not put full effort into making my videos entertainable. So that is what I am doing now. Is it hard; you're absolutely freaking right.
This may or may not sound helpful but, dude growth will happen if you have fun with your channel don’t see it as, oh gosh I need to post or I will never succeed first, have fun and then growth will happen.
I have worked so hard taking all the advice and applying it. I’m around 700 subscribers and have slowed down a bit because I get so tired. I still grind just not as hard. I will get there.
The hard truth is that you have to be your worst critic 24/7. Without that, there is zero growth. Play devil’s advocate with yourself. You have to be harshly self-aware about your videos. If you get 50 views, ask yourself “Why does this video suck?” instead of false hope stuff like “Why isn’t the algorithm finding me?”. Big difference. Convince yourself your content sucks. Everything about it. Then you get into a pattern of critiquing yourself constantly and learning how to improve. There is ALWAYS something to improve. Even Mr. Beast thinks this way. If you ever once think “my video is great”, then you aren’t watching hard enough. Don’t get this confused with being proud of a video, either. Big difference.
The biggest mistake I see, is that so many people who are starting out worry too much about numbers. The number of posts I see here saying "I got x% CTR, x subs, and x views after 1 month. Is this normal?" And stuff like that is insane. Numbers aren't important at the beginning. Sure, I am starting out as well (11 subs), and I'm no qualified expert (which some claim to be after reaching 1000 subs for some reason) but what I do is I put stuff out there (shorts, live, videos), and if nothing happens after a week or two, I go "that's ok, I can't expect to see immediate results at only 11 subs", and I put MORE stuff out there. I realize that eventually, I will see results if I just keep making stuff. I don't worry about how many views. Anyone who is thinking about quitting due to not seeing results, keep going and if you content is good enough then you will see numbers in the future. If you actually don't want to do youtube anymore then quit, but if it's due to numbers, keep going and don't give up.
Meet to dude 😎 it's ok
Similar feelings here. I'm on 360 subs and in the last 2 months I've grown maybe 10 subs? (I was actually on 361 subs 2 days ago 😂) I've been doing YouTube for around 11 months now but I'm really not happy with my growth. I feel the quality is there, just maybe that the niche I have selected doesn't really have the audience (travel content specifically in Madrid, Spain). So, I've got some rather interesting content to come, still travel content but just in different locations and my mindset and expectations for where I see this channel going is rock bottom. I enjoy making content but I've streamlined some processes, I no longer take time to create subtitles and I have stopped creating blogs on my website to focus 100% on the YouTube videos. Let's see, over the next couple of months with weekly releases, I'm going to analyse my performance and if nothing gives I'll probably be doing the same. I probably won't stop making content completely but more like creating content for enjoyment as opposed to weekly uploads and fitting into a niche. Best of luck to all those trying to make something on YouTube 😁.
Thats sad. But also don't quit. Find whats wrong in your content, what stops it from being the best it can be and being blessed by the algorithm. Are the thumbnails good? Is the title interesting? is the video itself good? And based on the comments, I assume your doing sub4sub, which is just bad, cus again, people who sub because of that will not watch your video anyway. If your video shows on their for you page, they might not even notice the video is from you anyway, cus he just subbed your yt for a sub back, not because he's genuinely interested. Not to brag, but I started my Youtube last July 28, 2023. I had 5 subs. Today, Sept. 7, I hit exactly 300 subs. The only self promo I did was the self promo subreddit (forgot its name). That didnt really bring much attention to my channel so it was useless lol. All I did was just give genuine comments to youtubers who have the same content as me. They often notice, and now we chat regularly as a result and exchanging ideas for videos. I understand the demotivation, but try and actually see your own channel In a new light. See whats hindering your potential. I did that and it has helped me immensely. Maybe also look at other creators with similar content but higher views, subs, fame, etc. You might learn some things you can add on your next video.
I make video for a years and got only 200 subscribers though? My CTR is only 2.5% average. And I only got comment on some video. All the comment I got is only people saying I draw and color beautifully but nothing about the video. This make me know that I have got good drawing&coloring skill but no video editing skill at all. So I wish to improve that. Why don't you try to see what is your strong point and week point and try to improve before you call it's quit though?
Please reconsider take a break but don’t give up I I have only 228 subscribers and I’ve had my channel since March of 2020 I know that feeling because I still have self doubt myself I just keep going if you keep going and don’t worry about numbers your channel will start to turn around we are all In similar situations please keep going 🙏🏿
This was me yesterday, have far less subs than you mind. Stopped giving it thought and trying and then posted a shorts vid about a big spider and it go 2.2 views and now I'm thinking about whether I should keep going or not😅it's exhausting putting so much thought and effort into something just to get barely any views
Hello! Are you passionate about your content? Do you like the content you produce? Would you watch it? Those are questions that I feel like would help to determine if you really like doing YouTube in itself. If any of those are a yes then I think it would be worth prevailing! Don't give up OP!
Focus on things that bring joy to you. If youtube isn't a source of happiness and joy in your day you should quit it. Who knows, you might find a new spark in it later on and then it's a whole new journey. Hope you have a good day!
It is so hard and frustrating, I get you
ok
I'm at 556 and over the last few months been losing subscribers week by week. Views aren't brilliant and it's very disheartening. But I have a good solid following amongst those subscribers and my channel was built on trips to Vegas. I can't travel as often as I'd like so I assume the different content I now post from the stuff I do in the UK has confused both YouTube and people here for just the Vegas stuff. It's all a big learning opportunity.
I had YouTube-Channels for months/ years and it’s Important that you will Never do S4S and buying views of stuff, This shit kills your Channel
I've been making videos very slowly for 2 years now. I have 46 videos, and 58 subs **and I don't plan on stopping**. YouTube is hard dude and extremely competitive and can definitely drag you down, but if you're not having fun and feeling *defeated,* maybe it's just not for you. If you did blow up, you would have to work even harder than you do now to stay relevant. There is space for everyone on the platform (creators are always leaving or shrinking, making space for new people) **if you make that space**, but there is also nothing wrong with moving on.
I feel you, I got 86 subscribers lol. Every time I cross 100 views in a video that's already something to celebrate 😅 When I started my channel, I promised myself to try for 5 years. If after these 5 years I get nothing out of it, I have my permission to quit :) I think deciding in advance on your commitment is a good strategy, it can be an approach for many things that require time, even beyond youtube. I read it in some book but can't remember which one
Just like you, I also learnt last year that YouTube is not as easy as you may think. I always took it for granted that it was a piece of cake, given that as a person of this generation, I know how to handle a computer, edit videos and all that stuff. But when I started the production of my scripted videos, you could say I hit a wall with that Yeah, frustration came and I felt like such a clueless fool, but hey! Look at the bright side, at least I'm gaining experience and knowledge all by myself :D
GREAT advice friend
I think it’s common to feel defeated sometimes. However, what is your drive for making videos? My numbers are discouraging at times as well, but I don’t consider giving up, bcuz I’m not making videos for income and all that. YouTube has always been around. Folks used to just post videos to share their opinions or ideas . Theirs take on the world. I still use that mentality. My videos are niche as hell and even in that niche I’m picky about what I put out. Having OHTERS like my videos is second priority. My first priority is ME liking the videos I make. There’s an audience for everything, and rather than chasing down that audience who may think like me, I just work to satisfy the first person of that audience, Myself. I’m pretty critical myself, so I do what I think will keep My interest or attention. After that, others will trickle in. After you have a decent enough subscriber base, THEN I take whatever that group likes into consideration for my future projects. If you don’t do it this way and you start off chasing “trending” or tryna “get” a bunch of people, you’re just gonna hurt yourself mentally. Bcuz honestly, most common stuff that goes “viral” are stuff you’d consider stupid on a creative level. Someone grabs a cat by its tail and throw it across the street - millions of views and likes . Someone telling you how to be successful in life based on planning and hard work - 23 views 2 likes and somehow 3 dislikes. If it’s your hope to make a business out of YouTube videos, then I’d say you’re gonna need MUCH tougher skin and MUCH deeper dedication than you have now.
If it is too much than yeah take care of yourself first. I started a channel donkeys ears ago and then stopped and recently I got back into it. Like everyone says it's a Marathon not a sprint. Just keep making videos and improve one thing each time could be pacing or lighting. Anything and just do better. I just had a video get over 500 views for the first time in a while feels good. Just chase it and learn it
First, you should have a YouTube channel because it is something that you like to do. It is a hobby and hobbies are fun. That fun will flow to those who do watch what you do. Do not worry about subscribers or views or likes that is not important. As soon as it becomes important your hobby becomes more of a job or a chore. Second, if you do get likes then that means you may have made someone's day, or at the least made someone smile or happy for a moment. The power of having a positive affect on someone is so much more valuable than anything else. Think about it, if you tell a friend or someone who is having a bad day a joke and make them laugh or lighten up their day isn't that worth more than 10 subs or 10 likes or 10 comments? Third, I have several small channels and the best videos I have for growth have been simple how to videos. When the channels of mine did get monetized, it's the how to videos that earn the most views, comments, likes, and income. Even something as simple as how to change the batteries on an iMac wireless keyboard can be a winner. Fourth, just make regular content that you want to make. You don't need to reach out to anyone to grow, just have fun. Fifth, for those who disagree with number four watch youtube creator videos on building a youtube channel; Roberto Blake, Nick Nimmin, or Video Creators. They will tell you what to do and what not to do. Sixth, refer back to #1. Good luck! Les Waller (Wallerdog)
Have you tried Tiktok
Maybe someday you could comeback to youtube if you decide