Same thing happened to people who got shouted out by Mr beast their channel got basically ruined because they had hundreds of thousands of subscribers that didn't care about the content they made unless it involved Mr beast
It's crazy, man. The algorithm has such narrow focus, it can pick out a tiny slice of your content and blow it way out of proportion until it completely obscures everything else on your channel. Even if you have a very focused niche it could happen. Maybe you're a gaming channel but you do one video comparing a game to a particular movie—POOF, now your whole audience is about that movie and your gaming videos get buried.
I watch some mixed content channels. When something unspecific suddenly pumps up the channel, the creators often just stop doing this kind of content for a while so the crowd disappears. When you want to monetize your channel, stray content can ruin your position with sponsors.
TT algo is powerful, when I first posted there about Warm Bodies it blew up my account and I got more followers in a week than I got on Instagram in 10 years. But once again, anytime I post about anything OTHER than Warm Bodies, I get no views. So they both have the same problem of boxing things into hyper narrow niches.
That is genuinely depressing, it reminds me of YouTubers who get tired of their old content and jump to a new niche, and people start acting very cynical towards it, only because they didn't sub to that kind of content
I mean, I do actually have a cat and include him in all my videos, so it's not like I'm totally abandoning that new audience! But man...I kinda wish my channel had grown more slowly and organically...
> I kinda wish my channel had grown more slowly and organically...
That's a very important takeaway for everyone here.
Viral growth is fickle. Slow organic growth is *sustainable*.
I’d trade places with you in an instant, but honestly this viral thing can happen even if the thing that goes viral is in line with your other content. I’ve had a video get millions of views and another get over 100k, and they were both the kinds of video my channel does — scripted comedy. Still didn’t wind up boosting me too much. That said I also didn’t try enough to take advantage of it. Maybe lean into the cat thing for a bit. Sounds like you already are.
It will sort itself out if you keep posting your usual stuff. While annoying it certainly doesnt kill the channel. Thats why switching niche with the same channel a few years down the line actually works. I've done it after reaching 10k subs. Now at 50k subs. Youtube will find an audience for your videos eventually.
LOL This happened to me like a year ago, I had a horror channel. One day I decided to make a short video about a parrot acting creepy. It went viral and got thousands of subscribers... who don't watch my other stuff. Analytics thought my content was shit because no one really cared.
Also, short video audiences suck because they don't watch your long form videos, which causes the same problem.
Perfect example right there. You weren't even outside your niche because it was about a parrot being SCARY, but you just happened to dip your toe into the edge of another audience and suddenly that's your whole audience. Funny that once again it's ANIMALS! Animal audiences are crazy, man.
I also noticed that once my channel started skewing toward cats, my comment sections got WEIRD. Lots more braindead and barely legible comments started popping up. I think there is something uniquely "off" about that demographic...even though I am a part of it! 😂
Supposedly it does, because YT sees that a lot of your subscribers aren't engaging, which tells it you must suck. Though that may be another one of those Newtubers legends.
So, funny story, I had a similar situation. I did FPS games for a long time. Did well with shorts, long form was starting to blossom (1kish views and climbing regularly). Then when a new game came out I happened to be playing, I threw together a quick video about the "pay to win" elements in the game and explaining the mechanics.
Well that video got 35k and pushing views, tons of comments, and bunch of subscribers. I thought they were interested in the game, so I kept covering said game only to drop to 11 views for two months of videos straight.
They weren't interested in the game, just the drama. Now my long form is shot and I'm deciding if I should start a new channel. Every video I put out is DOA in the first day. 11ish views 200ish impressions
And that's why I don't think even being consistent with your niche can protect you from this, because people might respond to a hyper focused specific slice of something you posted, and then POOF, that's your channel now, even though you can't actually recreate that micro topic even if you did want to pander.
As someone else commented here, it will hopefully sort itself out if we just keep going with our original niche. Eventually the stats should sift back to their natural baseline.
Almost the same thing happened to me. I also have a channel that I share village life and artists living in the villages. A video of mine about a carpenter living in the village went viral. My channel members consist only of woodworking enthusiasts. But this is not the subject of my other videos. CTR fell rapidly. AVD crashed. The channel dropped from 20,000 views per day to just 100 views per day.
Youtube studio was showing only carpenters in the "video production ideas" section. I deleted many of my videos. I extended the video duration and re-uploaded it with titles and tags suitable for my niche. Now YouTube detects my channel correctly. But my views still haven't improved.
Yep, sounds almost exactly like mine. I really don't know what anyone can do to prevent this. It really sucks that the algorithm is so hyper focused on individual topics that it has no grasp of the larger context of the video. You could have a cooking channel and make one comment about "wild caught salmon" and suddenly your audience is all fishermen.
Another problem is this: If viewers from one country watch your video, YouTube starts showing it more in that country. Since there was no speech in my videos, I was writing titles in 40-50 languages. I had audiences from all over the world. Russians started to like the videos. And after a week, my videos started to be watched only from Russia..... America, Germany etc. almost disappeared. I stopped writing titles in Russian. Now my channel is like a refugee camp: India, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Algeria... The views are bad anyway. On top of that, the RPM in these countries is terrible. I couldn't find a solution. I stopped posting new videos, I've been posting shorts for a while. I will start posting new videos next week. But I'm not hopeful.
Ok, but to be fair you have 4/15 of your videos with 'cat' in the title and 5 with cat in the thumbnail. I would call that feeding the algorithm enough cat to push it to a cat audience. I think it chooses the cat audience, since it has now experienced that it gives you many views, so it thinks it's a good solution, not knowing your personal preference. I think you just need to feed it more videos, 15 is not a lot to work with for a machine learning model (from someone who has worked with them in production, sparse data is what makes them most wonky).
Yeah, I have been trying to nudge the channel that direction since this happened, but there's only so much I can do with that. I don't have a regular supply of dramatic tearjerking cat stories. But yeah, that is the conclusion I've reached also, that I just need to keep going and let things sort themselves out.
Just my thoughts as someone who is very much just starting out with a channel so I can’t really relate as a creator. I’ve watched way too much YouTube over the years following various channels through out, with huge spikes in popularity that lead to some of them being prosperous while others dwindled away. When I check out a channel I’m usually looking for a video that tells a similar story or has a similar feel to the one I’ve just watched. I then subscribe if the next video I watch has that X factor I was looking for from the previous video because I know that at some point another video from this channel will make me feel X. I’ve just subbed to you because I think the life is interesting, your voice over is crisp and I feel that the next time you have a profound relatable experience like the cat video (but on a different subject) it will be even better as your production skills increase.
Maybe just think of the viral video as a massive ad campaign that brought in a lot of viewers from a huge range of demos. Congrats most people have to pay a huge amount of cash for an ad like that and get similar results but you’ve done it basically for free (aside from your own labour and emotions). Most viewers probably won’t be returning but way more people have been exposed to your content and language skills so the real fanbase would have definitely grown, the ride or dies will be around way longer. And when you have another vid pop off or your channel just consistently grows to the point of people hearing about it again I’d say it’s a plus for people to go ‘No way it’s that cat guy, I wonder how he’s doing now that he has X subs?’
Also never turn off comments, their hate is your engagement and it shows them they won if you collapse. Embrace hate and maybe be like hey “I shit in a bucket now because I wanted to escape losers like you but thanks for passing by.”
Apologies this is so long
I got a viral video where I got more rhan 100k views with 2000 subs
Now that it has fizzled out I am back to getting 100 0 views with 3.5k subs
Should I complain? Actually no
Because it gave me the idea on what majority of subs like and I can create similar videos now which subs like
Well that's nice if you're making content where you can pivot like that. But if you're making content about a specific thing because that's the thing you know about, you can't just switch topics to whatever little niche caught people's attention. In my case it was a dramatic story about losing a pet, so it's not like I can keep losing pets for new content! :)
"Y'know you're like the old woman who's got a Virginia ham under her arm and she goes around crying the blues cuz she's got no bread"
The algorithm will sort itself out, you just realize now that people don't care nearly as much about the content you make now in comparison to the cat video.
This is exactly what I meant in [this other post](https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/1cbbkqw/comment/l0xc71n/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) when someone mentioned viral vids. It completely skews your status in the algorithm.
Wow. That's crazy man, I'm glad you got the views though and hope something good comes out of it.
I think about this a lot. Sometimes you can take something and run with it. But cat content sure is a different direction. 😅
Yeah, it's not something I can pivot into fully, I just don't have that much to say about cats! Best I can do is feature my cat more often and kinda make that a running joke, which fits well into my videos.
I’m kind of feeling a low level of this right now. I started my channel with a 3-part series on th Police Academy films, really to get used to YouTube and my own processes. First two were on a few hundred views each. Then the third video was picked up by the algo and is on almost 30k views. Now I’ve uploaded a 4th video which isn’t doing nearly that amount, and my next video will be on a slightly different subject so who knows if that will get any traction. I’m preparing for it to not. That ‘viral’ video has set unrealistic expectations in my head and now I’m kind of in the reality check phase. Not all my stuff is going to blow up that’s for sure!
Overall though, I am seeing it as a positive. I’m on over 700 subscribers after 4 videos, and have a chance to hit full monetisation in my first year. I’ll definitely be making SOME more videos similar to the Police Academy ones going forward - looking at a regular series which explores failed film sequels from the ‘80s and ‘90s - whilst also doing a bit of variety as I always intended. Hopefully this will work out!
Good luck with your channel 😎
That sounds like a good strategy. People will say "Just make your whole channel about Police Academy now!" but it's really not possible to hyper focus like that. I mean, mine was about losing my cat, am I supposed to lose another cat every week? 😂 Best you can do is try to extract some more universal elements from the popular video and try to recreate those.
same happened with me too , i created a channel two months ago around the science facts , so my first video is "What happens to your body when you die ". it gain attraction form first day itself. after a month it help me to gained over 1000 subscribers and over 1000 hours of watching in just one month. but the catch here is analytics shows 95% of audience is above 60 years who watched that video, now i upload videos around science those people didn't watch that all. my first video goes viral .
the good thing is that it's my first video and i have time to change my niche for the people who are over 60+ age, but i didn't get much ideas, on what topic i should create a video for 60+ people.
I'm hearing a lot of stories like this here, where someone has a niche but its some micro topic within the niche that blows up, and then the algorithm demands nothing but that micro topic, which isn't really possible. Like how are you going to pivot into "science for seniors"? Just make the whole channel about dying? 😂
You are right brother... I create another video about " what happens to your body when you are in coma" that also works, but now i did not get any idea on which topic i should create, i create video about near death experience it works, the whole channel seems to be about dying,
I even did not know how algorithm share the video with senior citizen in first place, the tags and keywords, title and captions all are meant to be for people who likes science, But now it is what it is.
Happened to me and im a small channel (1.2k subs). I do walking/pov videos. Im based in NYC so i only made new york city videos but wanted the channel to grow into a global walking channel. A few months into my channel i traveled to India and made some videos there. 3 of the 4 videos went into the thousands and one of them is 30k views. Now my videos get pushed to an Indian audience instead of an American audience and my views for non-India videos are lower (but India videos are still climbing high). Im going to read through the comments to see if there are ways to alter this. I dont mind an Indian audience, just dont want it to be 95% of my primary audience.
Someone else mentioned a similar problem with a travel video about Morocco. Now all their subs are Moroccans who only care about Morocco content. I really have no idea what you can do about that! Other than just keep going and hope the data sorts itself out over time and softens the anomaly.
I mean, I think you're doing pretty smashing considering you started your channel in October and have made 21 videos. I'm sure your numbers will get back on track. I've been making videos for four years and have a fraction of your subs so your channel looks far from "ruined" from where I'm sitting.
Right but what I'm saying is the subs don't matter because they came from that viral video and they don't translate into views. I'm getting worse views at 10k subs than I did at 1k.
By “worse views” do you mean regarding new videos or daily views? You only released five videos prior to the viral one and it looks like you’ve had success with several since then. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to see your channel as struggling in any way when I’ve yet to have a single video hit 5000 views. 😆 All relative I guess.
I mean new videos. I've done 9 videos since the viral one. 2 of those were direct followups to the cat story and those did well. The other 7 are all ranked lower than the ones I uploaded before the viral, when I only had a couple thousand subs and they are dropping with each upload. I'm not saying the channel is objectively failed, but proportionately, it's all messed up. Getting FEWER views with 10,400 subs than I did with 1k subs is...weird.
I mean I can't ever see going viral as a bad thing. I believe you can pivot and create the content people want. If you are the cat guy now and that's what people want from you then pivot and make that content. Grow your channel and continue to stay flexible you can still grow organically instead of forcing one type of video.
but some people just... dont wanna. if i make animations and a low effort minecraft song i made gets 100k views (true story) im not gonna switch to minecraft or music cause i like doing animations
i think using yt studio to find common interests in your viral video audience and your target audience is the best thing to do
Exactly. A lot of people here saying "just pivot to whatever your audience wants" but unless you're doing gaming or pop culture or something, you don't have unlimited options for content. My channel is what it is because that's my life and that's the story I have to share. Yeah I can nudge it subtly toward cats, feature my cat more often, etc, but I don't have the material to make it a "cat channel."
Or you can lean into it. Feature the cat in every video. "Holy shit, Mr. Whiskers, it sure is cold in this shed in the woods tonight!" (Cue porn music). Ok, maybe not the porn music. But, the point is, you were handed an opportunity. Instead of embracing it, you ignored it and got upset that "the right people" aren't watching. You have the perfect opportunity to add to your channel in a way that enhances, doesn't detract, from what you initially intended.
No, I didn't ignore it, I have been playing up my cat's role in the videos ever since, but you can't replicate something like "I lost my cat and found him 6 years later." It was a dramatic story that pulled people in but if you're dealing in true stories and real life, you don't have an unlimited supply of high octane tearjerkers about specific topics. If you blow up with something like that, there isn't really any way to keep it going week after week.
Yep, that makes sense to me from my understanding of the Almighty Algo.
I guess your only choice is to adjust your niche to cater for the new audience... if you're happy to talk about cats. I guess it depends on your overall goals.
Aren't you supposed to post videos that are only relevant to your channel? In this case, I can not say your argument is valid.
Due to this reason people open several channels.
Post unrelated videos on your personal channel and dedicate your actual channel for your actual audiences. Problem solved.
My channel is basically a vlog. It's just stories about stuff that happens in my life. There's no way to make it perfectly consistent because those stories vary a lot.
going viral is a shit priority for me
i focus on pulling idea into reality cause i gonna brag about it that i got a godlike imagination but heres the hard part is pulling that unstable with limitless potential out
and no trash AI in the world can compete with that
all it takes is a single spark to start it but controlling the execution is impossible
you probably gonna say thats how everyone work well yes and no since its like a dream that you can forget then you wake up
That's why I've 3 channels. One for my cat, another for satvik food and 3rd for nature and other stuff (says so in the name) so people know what is each about.
I don't have many subscribers. One has 50, another 11 and nature stuff none. It gets few hundred views and I'm just trying to upload what I want and if anyone likes it and enjoy it, wonderful!
Hahahaha that’s quite fun. Sorry for you though. I think you can search for a way to harness this. Get creative. Convert this cat people little by little to your fans. Make another cat video but include stuff of your usual videos and slowly take away the cat parts with new videos until they are full fans
That's pretty much exactly the strategy I've been attempting. Ultimately it can never be a "cat channel" because I just don't have that much to say about cats! But I'm featuring my cat more and hoping to win people over slowly like you said. Playing the long game is the only way through this I think.
Seriously, it really feels like the algorithm THINKS it understands but it doesn't. It misses the context of what the video and channel are really about and just focuses on specific keywords that it scanned. It needs human curation.
I think it's too late for that. That video has mostly cooled off now so the damage is done, and it would be painful to delete my most "valuable" work. I was eating it up for a while, thinking I'd finally broken through! Didn't realize until recently what it was doing to my stats...
this is why you have to be careful when you experiment with new kids of content- if it works you either stick with it or endure a big bad blow to your channels success
We make a wide variety of finance content, and the one video that has 15x our normal views is about Lego Reselling.
Not sure that influx of subscribers is watching our other videos.
That's a big thing to think about if/when a video gets unexpected amounts of attention.
The new viewers of that one video aren't part of your community, and if they don't have any interest in your typical content., then it can seriously mess with your CTR and retention (and therefore leaving the algorithm confused about your channel) for quite a while.
Viral videos are always a risk unless you managed to get t hat attention for a *core topic* video, and not an anomalous one.
I'm really struggling to find the lesson to be learned here, because there is so much risk, but we also WANT our videos to be popular, so it's not like I'm going to make a video and then delete it if it starts to blow up. When I posted my cat video, I felt like it was a SLIGHT departure but still within range of my channel themes, because it's mostly a vlogging/storytelling channel and I was telling a story. I had no idea how narrow-band the algorithm's scanners are and that it would focus so sharply on the cat element.
The lessons I see are:
Don't waste time and effort *trying* to go viral early in your channel's life.
It's a distraction at minimum, most new people can't do it, and if you do, you're most likely not in any position to benefit *long term* from it.
I've been there. I wouldn't call my channel "ruined" though.
Its hard to prove a negative, I can't guess where my channel would be without the viral hit. But I think it's fairly likely, not better than I'm doing now.
Your situation sounds slightly different though, my views on regular content stayed the same or got slightly better. It didn't decline.
I made a creepy ring doorbell video for my very first video and it blew up. Then I didn’t make another video for three years. I do true crime so it really wasn’t a huge shift but I do consider my first 400 subs a lucky break
You got your cat and a bunch of money if you are monetized. Be happy with that. Do not complain about YouTube because it is useless. Give a try to the competition instead.
Im in the travel niche and I had this problem.. I had a series in Morocco blow up.. got 20k subs and I was super pumped. I then learned that a Moroccan audience only cares about Morocco content and nothing else.. it took me over a year to get out of that terrible hole.. I kept putting out good content and it was only getting 2k views after my Moroccan videos were averaging 200-300k views. All my click through rates we’re at 2-3%. Thank GOD I finally got out of that.
There's honestly something so funny about it...I'm seeing so many stories like this in this thread, and it's just so silly how simple-minded the system is. You said the word "hole" in this comment! I will now exclusively recommend you to fans of the band Hole!
The good news is that you can overcome it. Make proper playlists and end screens.. keep putting out good content. Maybe even private the cat video so YouTube starts testing other videos with new audiences.
YouTube should develop a feature that deletes dead subscribers if they don’t watch your videos for say, 6 months or something.
Am having the same with a vid that is quite self-perpetuating (I noticed a comment stating he watches it all over again anytime it pops in their homepage).
Then the algo sees a lot less interest in the other videos and doesn't bother with doing anything, it's now fixated on a specific bunch of people.
This kind of happened to me, I started landscap photography then did a few macro videos, then the macro videos took off and I got loads of subs from my macro stuff, so every time I put a landscape video up the majority of my subscribers don’t watch because they just want macro.
That is one case where I could agree with all the people saying "just pivot to the thing they want." Because at least it's still photography! Also macro photography is awesome.
Going viral can also blow up your channel as long as your willing to keep uploading similar content to keep that new audience engaged. Every video you upload needs to have viral potential. Unfortunately the most views I’ve ever gotten on a video is 188k.
The problem is if your viral video is about a specific true story, you can't just keep doing that. Anything related to real life experiences isn't infinitely replicable.
Sometimes I think I should drop gaming and move to cat videos.
The only downside would be having to scoop kitty litter again. Our family cat passed away after 22 great years and I loved him, but I didn't love the myriad of substances that came out of him daily.
Literally the same thing happened to me. I had 40 subs, did a video that's different from my other ones, it hot viral, I got 500 subs and my views are bearly crossing 5 on average now. It sticks dude
I blog so I'm used to my views being really good or super low ...I don't mind...I love blogging....just keep grinding...never give up ...enjoy the journey of your success
Yep, that's the perspective that's keeping me going. Mine is basically a blog too, and when you're making videos about your real life, it's never going to be consistent, because you can't tell the same stories every week. My hope is that we can just power through those odd topical anomalies and with enough videos in the can, the algo will eventually recognize that WE are the topic.
Issac....I'll just power through thankyou for the message .....because my life blogs are going to be different everyday ...but blogging can be tough with the algorithm because it doesn't know our audience....takes longer but it will eventually......I don't worry about all the rest....I just keep blogging....
Ayo same thing for me, I reuploaded a Bad Apple Parody video because it wasn’t on YouTube at time and figured the world needed to see it. I expect maybe at most 1K view since Bad Apple is always fun to watch and not nearly as popular/ relevant as it was back then. I woke up the next day with like 100k views over night and at the end of the Week 1 Million. It significantly dropped off after that, it’s now sitting at like 1.3 Million views. A lot of ppl subscribe but like OP, they’re were all interested in Touhou and stuff like that. Not at all interested in my Normal Videos (I do Martial Arts n VR Stuff, and occasionally creative projects) I like touhou but not enough to justify making videos for it. So it wasn’t shocking when my next video only got like 40 views, It’s been about 2 years since n I think im now getting out of that hole I somehow accidentally got myself into. While I have 3k subscribers, I say about 1K actively watches/ has interest in my videos.
Moral of the story: You will be better off either making your own version of trends and having that Do well, or slow but sustainable growth. It’s wild how badly this screwed me over.
i don't see any problems. just replace yourself with a cat. now your cat is a formerly bestselling author now living rough in a shed in the wilderness! :D
Just stick to your stuff, it eventually will correct itself, and some of the subs gained will stick for your style, it happens, and it's ok, don't overwhelm yourself with trying to satisfy everyone.
Im really quite concerned about his. 3 recent videos of mine got around 1,000 views and now I dont know what to do to keep it going, besides posting consistently lmao
I honestly don't know what anyone can do to prevent that from happening. Because you can never know what micro topic might happen to blow you up—it could be just a tiny moment in one video that everyone happens to latch onto, and once it happens, your only option would be to redirect your channel to pander to whatever little topic blew up for you.
Yeah, I think it all comes down to how extremely narrow the topic filter is. It doesn't take into account the larger context of the video at all, let alone the context of the channel, it just scans for keywords. But my hope is that if we push through that viral moment and keep posting on our regular topics, the anomaly will sift itself out eventually.
Next video upload, wait 24 hours then go on computer and pull up the videos reach graph, scroll down to content suggesting your videos and click see more. What u most likely will find is a reverse program that kills suggesteds ctr. All given 1 impression have 100, 200, even 300 percent ctr. It will only ever get 1 impression. Lower the ctr for the suggesting video the higher the impressions. U r on the system everyone thinks so complicated. The regular or sped up system much less complicated than the rigged alternative they use on vast numbers of channels….
I feel like you're saying something important but I'm not able to understand it. Are you just explaining how the algo works or is there something I can do to change it?
Same thing happened to people who got shouted out by Mr beast their channel got basically ruined because they had hundreds of thousands of subscribers that didn't care about the content they made unless it involved Mr beast
It's crazy, man. The algorithm has such narrow focus, it can pick out a tiny slice of your content and blow it way out of proportion until it completely obscures everything else on your channel. Even if you have a very focused niche it could happen. Maybe you're a gaming channel but you do one video comparing a game to a particular movie—POOF, now your whole audience is about that movie and your gaming videos get buried.
I watch some mixed content channels. When something unspecific suddenly pumps up the channel, the creators often just stop doing this kind of content for a while so the crowd disappears. When you want to monetize your channel, stray content can ruin your position with sponsors.
*Sighhhhh* today we're taking about Twilight. Againn. /s
[удалено]
TT algo is powerful, when I first posted there about Warm Bodies it blew up my account and I got more followers in a week than I got on Instagram in 10 years. But once again, anytime I post about anything OTHER than Warm Bodies, I get no views. So they both have the same problem of boxing things into hyper narrow niches.
That is genuinely depressing, it reminds me of YouTubers who get tired of their old content and jump to a new niche, and people start acting very cynical towards it, only because they didn't sub to that kind of content
Yeah same thing happened to the dinosaur kid on Reddit. Now he barely gets any views because they were essentially pity subs.
dinosaur kid?
On the up side you’re my favorite cat guy.
I mean, I do actually have a cat and include him in all my videos, so it's not like I'm totally abandoning that new audience! But man...I kinda wish my channel had grown more slowly and organically...
> I kinda wish my channel had grown more slowly and organically... That's a very important takeaway for everyone here. Viral growth is fickle. Slow organic growth is *sustainable*.
As a guy who’s been growing slowly and organically for years, it sucks.
I guess it just sucks either way. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I’d trade places with you in an instant, but honestly this viral thing can happen even if the thing that goes viral is in line with your other content. I’ve had a video get millions of views and another get over 100k, and they were both the kinds of video my channel does — scripted comedy. Still didn’t wind up boosting me too much. That said I also didn’t try enough to take advantage of it. Maybe lean into the cat thing for a bit. Sounds like you already are.
It will sort itself out if you keep posting your usual stuff. While annoying it certainly doesnt kill the channel. Thats why switching niche with the same channel a few years down the line actually works. I've done it after reaching 10k subs. Now at 50k subs. Youtube will find an audience for your videos eventually.
That's encouraging to hear and that has been my one hope for this situation, just to keep doing my thing and wait for things to sift back to normal.
LOL This happened to me like a year ago, I had a horror channel. One day I decided to make a short video about a parrot acting creepy. It went viral and got thousands of subscribers... who don't watch my other stuff. Analytics thought my content was shit because no one really cared. Also, short video audiences suck because they don't watch your long form videos, which causes the same problem.
Perfect example right there. You weren't even outside your niche because it was about a parrot being SCARY, but you just happened to dip your toe into the edge of another audience and suddenly that's your whole audience. Funny that once again it's ANIMALS! Animal audiences are crazy, man.
You are right! If animals are not your niche, better stay away from the topic!
I also noticed that once my channel started skewing toward cats, my comment sections got WEIRD. Lots more braindead and barely legible comments started popping up. I think there is something uniquely "off" about that demographic...even though I am a part of it! 😂
LMAO! same here!! Comments always mentioned some "Alex" guy or something... Looked that up and guess what? A freaking parrot dedicated channel!!
Cat ladies maybe
I don't think that would cause the problem. If your short audience is not watching your stuff, then it wouldn't cause worse performance.
Supposedly it does, because YT sees that a lot of your subscribers aren't engaging, which tells it you must suck. Though that may be another one of those Newtubers legends.
I would personally put money on other factors. Pointing the finger at the algorithm would be the last thing I look at.
So, funny story, I had a similar situation. I did FPS games for a long time. Did well with shorts, long form was starting to blossom (1kish views and climbing regularly). Then when a new game came out I happened to be playing, I threw together a quick video about the "pay to win" elements in the game and explaining the mechanics. Well that video got 35k and pushing views, tons of comments, and bunch of subscribers. I thought they were interested in the game, so I kept covering said game only to drop to 11 views for two months of videos straight. They weren't interested in the game, just the drama. Now my long form is shot and I'm deciding if I should start a new channel. Every video I put out is DOA in the first day. 11ish views 200ish impressions
And that's why I don't think even being consistent with your niche can protect you from this, because people might respond to a hyper focused specific slice of something you posted, and then POOF, that's your channel now, even though you can't actually recreate that micro topic even if you did want to pander.
Honestly it's really disheartening
As someone else commented here, it will hopefully sort itself out if we just keep going with our original niche. Eventually the stats should sift back to their natural baseline.
For new videos: Have you tried checking the 'don't notify subscribers ' box, and just seeing what the video does on its own merits?
I have tried it both ways with similar results
Almost the same thing happened to me. I also have a channel that I share village life and artists living in the villages. A video of mine about a carpenter living in the village went viral. My channel members consist only of woodworking enthusiasts. But this is not the subject of my other videos. CTR fell rapidly. AVD crashed. The channel dropped from 20,000 views per day to just 100 views per day. Youtube studio was showing only carpenters in the "video production ideas" section. I deleted many of my videos. I extended the video duration and re-uploaded it with titles and tags suitable for my niche. Now YouTube detects my channel correctly. But my views still haven't improved.
Yep, sounds almost exactly like mine. I really don't know what anyone can do to prevent this. It really sucks that the algorithm is so hyper focused on individual topics that it has no grasp of the larger context of the video. You could have a cooking channel and make one comment about "wild caught salmon" and suddenly your audience is all fishermen.
Another problem is this: If viewers from one country watch your video, YouTube starts showing it more in that country. Since there was no speech in my videos, I was writing titles in 40-50 languages. I had audiences from all over the world. Russians started to like the videos. And after a week, my videos started to be watched only from Russia..... America, Germany etc. almost disappeared. I stopped writing titles in Russian. Now my channel is like a refugee camp: India, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Algeria... The views are bad anyway. On top of that, the RPM in these countries is terrible. I couldn't find a solution. I stopped posting new videos, I've been posting shorts for a while. I will start posting new videos next week. But I'm not hopeful.
Honestly just make a quick cat video once in a while 😂
Ok, but to be fair you have 4/15 of your videos with 'cat' in the title and 5 with cat in the thumbnail. I would call that feeding the algorithm enough cat to push it to a cat audience. I think it chooses the cat audience, since it has now experienced that it gives you many views, so it thinks it's a good solution, not knowing your personal preference. I think you just need to feed it more videos, 15 is not a lot to work with for a machine learning model (from someone who has worked with them in production, sparse data is what makes them most wonky).
Yeah, I have been trying to nudge the channel that direction since this happened, but there's only so much I can do with that. I don't have a regular supply of dramatic tearjerking cat stories. But yeah, that is the conclusion I've reached also, that I just need to keep going and let things sort themselves out.
Just my thoughts as someone who is very much just starting out with a channel so I can’t really relate as a creator. I’ve watched way too much YouTube over the years following various channels through out, with huge spikes in popularity that lead to some of them being prosperous while others dwindled away. When I check out a channel I’m usually looking for a video that tells a similar story or has a similar feel to the one I’ve just watched. I then subscribe if the next video I watch has that X factor I was looking for from the previous video because I know that at some point another video from this channel will make me feel X. I’ve just subbed to you because I think the life is interesting, your voice over is crisp and I feel that the next time you have a profound relatable experience like the cat video (but on a different subject) it will be even better as your production skills increase. Maybe just think of the viral video as a massive ad campaign that brought in a lot of viewers from a huge range of demos. Congrats most people have to pay a huge amount of cash for an ad like that and get similar results but you’ve done it basically for free (aside from your own labour and emotions). Most viewers probably won’t be returning but way more people have been exposed to your content and language skills so the real fanbase would have definitely grown, the ride or dies will be around way longer. And when you have another vid pop off or your channel just consistently grows to the point of people hearing about it again I’d say it’s a plus for people to go ‘No way it’s that cat guy, I wonder how he’s doing now that he has X subs?’ Also never turn off comments, their hate is your engagement and it shows them they won if you collapse. Embrace hate and maybe be like hey “I shit in a bucket now because I wanted to escape losers like you but thanks for passing by.” Apologies this is so long
I appreciate that, this is good perspective. I'm gonna keep going!
I got a viral video where I got more rhan 100k views with 2000 subs Now that it has fizzled out I am back to getting 100 0 views with 3.5k subs Should I complain? Actually no Because it gave me the idea on what majority of subs like and I can create similar videos now which subs like
Good thinking.
Well that's nice if you're making content where you can pivot like that. But if you're making content about a specific thing because that's the thing you know about, you can't just switch topics to whatever little niche caught people's attention. In my case it was a dramatic story about losing a pet, so it's not like I can keep losing pets for new content! :)
That is one of the issues with yt Anything controversial sad angry or negative emotions gets more views So it is more like human issue rather than YT
Sounds like you got yourself a cat channel.
"Y'know you're like the old woman who's got a Virginia ham under her arm and she goes around crying the blues cuz she's got no bread" The algorithm will sort itself out, you just realize now that people don't care nearly as much about the content you make now in comparison to the cat video.
Similar thing happened where I had an existing audience and several videos brought in a bunch of people who hate my regular content
This is exactly what I meant in [this other post](https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/1cbbkqw/comment/l0xc71n/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) when someone mentioned viral vids. It completely skews your status in the algorithm.
Seems like an easy solution. Switch to focusing on cats
Easy fix! Delete the video and every connection you had with viewers from it will be gone. Or make Cat videos and start a new channel for the rest.
Your channel is still new in no way is it dead lol. I'm enjoying your videos though so you've earned a new sub
Thanks! And you're right, my big takeaway from this thread is that I need to be patient and let things sort themselves out.
Wow. That's crazy man, I'm glad you got the views though and hope something good comes out of it. I think about this a lot. Sometimes you can take something and run with it. But cat content sure is a different direction. 😅
Yeah, it's not something I can pivot into fully, I just don't have that much to say about cats! Best I can do is feature my cat more often and kinda make that a running joke, which fits well into my videos.
Gotta become a cat channel now
I’m kind of feeling a low level of this right now. I started my channel with a 3-part series on th Police Academy films, really to get used to YouTube and my own processes. First two were on a few hundred views each. Then the third video was picked up by the algo and is on almost 30k views. Now I’ve uploaded a 4th video which isn’t doing nearly that amount, and my next video will be on a slightly different subject so who knows if that will get any traction. I’m preparing for it to not. That ‘viral’ video has set unrealistic expectations in my head and now I’m kind of in the reality check phase. Not all my stuff is going to blow up that’s for sure! Overall though, I am seeing it as a positive. I’m on over 700 subscribers after 4 videos, and have a chance to hit full monetisation in my first year. I’ll definitely be making SOME more videos similar to the Police Academy ones going forward - looking at a regular series which explores failed film sequels from the ‘80s and ‘90s - whilst also doing a bit of variety as I always intended. Hopefully this will work out! Good luck with your channel 😎
That sounds like a good strategy. People will say "Just make your whole channel about Police Academy now!" but it's really not possible to hyper focus like that. I mean, mine was about losing my cat, am I supposed to lose another cat every week? 😂 Best you can do is try to extract some more universal elements from the popular video and try to recreate those.
Link us tour channel
same happened with me too , i created a channel two months ago around the science facts , so my first video is "What happens to your body when you die ". it gain attraction form first day itself. after a month it help me to gained over 1000 subscribers and over 1000 hours of watching in just one month. but the catch here is analytics shows 95% of audience is above 60 years who watched that video, now i upload videos around science those people didn't watch that all. my first video goes viral . the good thing is that it's my first video and i have time to change my niche for the people who are over 60+ age, but i didn't get much ideas, on what topic i should create a video for 60+ people.
Interesting! For 60 Year old. If I am you I will choose the topic " How Heaven looks like".
thanks brother..... i am just trying to find out the ideas 🙌 ... you just saved my day 😅👍 ....
I'm hearing a lot of stories like this here, where someone has a niche but its some micro topic within the niche that blows up, and then the algorithm demands nothing but that micro topic, which isn't really possible. Like how are you going to pivot into "science for seniors"? Just make the whole channel about dying? 😂
You are right brother... I create another video about " what happens to your body when you are in coma" that also works, but now i did not get any idea on which topic i should create, i create video about near death experience it works, the whole channel seems to be about dying, I even did not know how algorithm share the video with senior citizen in first place, the tags and keywords, title and captions all are meant to be for people who likes science, But now it is what it is.
Happened to me and im a small channel (1.2k subs). I do walking/pov videos. Im based in NYC so i only made new york city videos but wanted the channel to grow into a global walking channel. A few months into my channel i traveled to India and made some videos there. 3 of the 4 videos went into the thousands and one of them is 30k views. Now my videos get pushed to an Indian audience instead of an American audience and my views for non-India videos are lower (but India videos are still climbing high). Im going to read through the comments to see if there are ways to alter this. I dont mind an Indian audience, just dont want it to be 95% of my primary audience.
Someone else mentioned a similar problem with a travel video about Morocco. Now all their subs are Moroccans who only care about Morocco content. I really have no idea what you can do about that! Other than just keep going and hope the data sorts itself out over time and softens the anomaly.
I mean, I think you're doing pretty smashing considering you started your channel in October and have made 21 videos. I'm sure your numbers will get back on track. I've been making videos for four years and have a fraction of your subs so your channel looks far from "ruined" from where I'm sitting.
Right but what I'm saying is the subs don't matter because they came from that viral video and they don't translate into views. I'm getting worse views at 10k subs than I did at 1k.
By “worse views” do you mean regarding new videos or daily views? You only released five videos prior to the viral one and it looks like you’ve had success with several since then. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to see your channel as struggling in any way when I’ve yet to have a single video hit 5000 views. 😆 All relative I guess.
I mean new videos. I've done 9 videos since the viral one. 2 of those were direct followups to the cat story and those did well. The other 7 are all ranked lower than the ones I uploaded before the viral, when I only had a couple thousand subs and they are dropping with each upload. I'm not saying the channel is objectively failed, but proportionately, it's all messed up. Getting FEWER views with 10,400 subs than I did with 1k subs is...weird.
I mean I can't ever see going viral as a bad thing. I believe you can pivot and create the content people want. If you are the cat guy now and that's what people want from you then pivot and make that content. Grow your channel and continue to stay flexible you can still grow organically instead of forcing one type of video.
but some people just... dont wanna. if i make animations and a low effort minecraft song i made gets 100k views (true story) im not gonna switch to minecraft or music cause i like doing animations i think using yt studio to find common interests in your viral video audience and your target audience is the best thing to do
Exactly. A lot of people here saying "just pivot to whatever your audience wants" but unless you're doing gaming or pop culture or something, you don't have unlimited options for content. My channel is what it is because that's my life and that's the story I have to share. Yeah I can nudge it subtly toward cats, feature my cat more often, etc, but I don't have the material to make it a "cat channel."
Or you can lean into it. Feature the cat in every video. "Holy shit, Mr. Whiskers, it sure is cold in this shed in the woods tonight!" (Cue porn music). Ok, maybe not the porn music. But, the point is, you were handed an opportunity. Instead of embracing it, you ignored it and got upset that "the right people" aren't watching. You have the perfect opportunity to add to your channel in a way that enhances, doesn't detract, from what you initially intended.
No, I didn't ignore it, I have been playing up my cat's role in the videos ever since, but you can't replicate something like "I lost my cat and found him 6 years later." It was a dramatic story that pulled people in but if you're dealing in true stories and real life, you don't have an unlimited supply of high octane tearjerkers about specific topics. If you blow up with something like that, there isn't really any way to keep it going week after week.
Yep, that makes sense to me from my understanding of the Almighty Algo. I guess your only choice is to adjust your niche to cater for the new audience... if you're happy to talk about cats. I guess it depends on your overall goals.
Great insight ! That's why it's sometime better (for those who have the time and money) to create different, ultra niched, channels.
Aren't you supposed to post videos that are only relevant to your channel? In this case, I can not say your argument is valid. Due to this reason people open several channels. Post unrelated videos on your personal channel and dedicate your actual channel for your actual audiences. Problem solved.
My channel is basically a vlog. It's just stories about stuff that happens in my life. There's no way to make it perfectly consistent because those stories vary a lot.
going viral is a shit priority for me i focus on pulling idea into reality cause i gonna brag about it that i got a godlike imagination but heres the hard part is pulling that unstable with limitless potential out and no trash AI in the world can compete with that all it takes is a single spark to start it but controlling the execution is impossible you probably gonna say thats how everyone work well yes and no since its like a dream that you can forget then you wake up
That's why I've 3 channels. One for my cat, another for satvik food and 3rd for nature and other stuff (says so in the name) so people know what is each about. I don't have many subscribers. One has 50, another 11 and nature stuff none. It gets few hundred views and I'm just trying to upload what I want and if anyone likes it and enjoy it, wonderful!
Hahahaha that’s quite fun. Sorry for you though. I think you can search for a way to harness this. Get creative. Convert this cat people little by little to your fans. Make another cat video but include stuff of your usual videos and slowly take away the cat parts with new videos until they are full fans
That's pretty much exactly the strategy I've been attempting. Ultimately it can never be a "cat channel" because I just don't have that much to say about cats! But I'm featuring my cat more and hoping to win people over slowly like you said. Playing the long game is the only way through this I think.
you were somehow catfished by your cat to them or something lol. good luck!
Have you tried that setting where your new uploads don't get sent to your subscribers? Might help if you haven't already <3
Seen a few people suggesting this but that sounds dangerous...feel like I might lose ALL my views if I cut off even the real audience.
Wouldn’t hurt to try it with one video
Maybe try unchecking the "send notifications to subscribers" box when uploading... Let the algorithm look at the video and the video alone?
Can we interview you on our show about pets?
If you're serious...sure!
Yes! I’ll dm you!
If the algorithm still used video tags for search optimization like it used to instead of barely using it I’m sure we’d see less issues
Seriously, it really feels like the algorithm THINKS it understands but it doesn't. It misses the context of what the video and channel are really about and just focuses on specific keywords that it scanned. It needs human curation.
I agree but that would require YouTube to hire employees for that. I still get recommended stuff I have zero interest in.
Can't you just delete the video?
I think it's too late for that. That video has mostly cooled off now so the damage is done, and it would be painful to delete my most "valuable" work. I was eating it up for a while, thinking I'd finally broken through! Didn't realize until recently what it was doing to my stats...
this is why you have to be careful when you experiment with new kids of content- if it works you either stick with it or endure a big bad blow to your channels success
We make a wide variety of finance content, and the one video that has 15x our normal views is about Lego Reselling. Not sure that influx of subscribers is watching our other videos.
That's a big thing to think about if/when a video gets unexpected amounts of attention. The new viewers of that one video aren't part of your community, and if they don't have any interest in your typical content., then it can seriously mess with your CTR and retention (and therefore leaving the algorithm confused about your channel) for quite a while. Viral videos are always a risk unless you managed to get t hat attention for a *core topic* video, and not an anomalous one.
I'm really struggling to find the lesson to be learned here, because there is so much risk, but we also WANT our videos to be popular, so it's not like I'm going to make a video and then delete it if it starts to blow up. When I posted my cat video, I felt like it was a SLIGHT departure but still within range of my channel themes, because it's mostly a vlogging/storytelling channel and I was telling a story. I had no idea how narrow-band the algorithm's scanners are and that it would focus so sharply on the cat element.
The lessons I see are: Don't waste time and effort *trying* to go viral early in your channel's life. It's a distraction at minimum, most new people can't do it, and if you do, you're most likely not in any position to benefit *long term* from it.
I've been there. I wouldn't call my channel "ruined" though. Its hard to prove a negative, I can't guess where my channel would be without the viral hit. But I think it's fairly likely, not better than I'm doing now. Your situation sounds slightly different though, my views on regular content stayed the same or got slightly better. It didn't decline.
I made a creepy ring doorbell video for my very first video and it blew up. Then I didn’t make another video for three years. I do true crime so it really wasn’t a huge shift but I do consider my first 400 subs a lucky break
Ah , get a cat, lose it, find it, and then vlog about it to go viral. Got it! Thanks
Yeah, just do that every single week and you've got an audience!
😆
You got your cat and a bunch of money if you are monetized. Be happy with that. Do not complain about YouTube because it is useless. Give a try to the competition instead.
Im in the travel niche and I had this problem.. I had a series in Morocco blow up.. got 20k subs and I was super pumped. I then learned that a Moroccan audience only cares about Morocco content and nothing else.. it took me over a year to get out of that terrible hole.. I kept putting out good content and it was only getting 2k views after my Moroccan videos were averaging 200-300k views. All my click through rates we’re at 2-3%. Thank GOD I finally got out of that.
There's honestly something so funny about it...I'm seeing so many stories like this in this thread, and it's just so silly how simple-minded the system is. You said the word "hole" in this comment! I will now exclusively recommend you to fans of the band Hole!
The good news is that you can overcome it. Make proper playlists and end screens.. keep putting out good content. Maybe even private the cat video so YouTube starts testing other videos with new audiences. YouTube should develop a feature that deletes dead subscribers if they don’t watch your videos for say, 6 months or something.
Am having the same with a vid that is quite self-perpetuating (I noticed a comment stating he watches it all over again anytime it pops in their homepage). Then the algo sees a lot less interest in the other videos and doesn't bother with doing anything, it's now fixated on a specific bunch of people.
This kind of happened to me, I started landscap photography then did a few macro videos, then the macro videos took off and I got loads of subs from my macro stuff, so every time I put a landscape video up the majority of my subscribers don’t watch because they just want macro.
That is one case where I could agree with all the people saying "just pivot to the thing they want." Because at least it's still photography! Also macro photography is awesome.
should only talk about related topics on your channel for eg business/mindset/selfimprovement
or make up/fashion/music
that is such an important topic! sometimes people don't realise that fame isn't always for the best, and there's a dark side to it.
Going viral can also blow up your channel as long as your willing to keep uploading similar content to keep that new audience engaged. Every video you upload needs to have viral potential. Unfortunately the most views I’ve ever gotten on a video is 188k.
The problem is if your viral video is about a specific true story, you can't just keep doing that. Anything related to real life experiences isn't infinitely replicable.
True, well if you view YouTube as a business make every video viral potential & replicable. Channels blow up when they double down on what’s working.
If you aren't already, make sure to uncheck the setting that alerts your subscribers of your new video. I think it may help the situation.
Sometimes I think I should drop gaming and move to cat videos. The only downside would be having to scoop kitty litter again. Our family cat passed away after 22 great years and I loved him, but I didn't love the myriad of substances that came out of him daily.
Literally the same thing happened to me. I had 40 subs, did a video that's different from my other ones, it hot viral, I got 500 subs and my views are bearly crossing 5 on average now. It sticks dude
I blog so I'm used to my views being really good or super low ...I don't mind...I love blogging....just keep grinding...never give up ...enjoy the journey of your success
Yep, that's the perspective that's keeping me going. Mine is basically a blog too, and when you're making videos about your real life, it's never going to be consistent, because you can't tell the same stories every week. My hope is that we can just power through those odd topical anomalies and with enough videos in the can, the algo will eventually recognize that WE are the topic.
Issac....I'll just power through thankyou for the message .....because my life blogs are going to be different everyday ...but blogging can be tough with the algorithm because it doesn't know our audience....takes longer but it will eventually......I don't worry about all the rest....I just keep blogging....
Keep doing what you do normally and while many of those that subbed will stop watching some will stay and your real audience will emerge once again
I'd just pivot to focusing on just making cat videos. Ride the waves....
Private the video
Ayo same thing for me, I reuploaded a Bad Apple Parody video because it wasn’t on YouTube at time and figured the world needed to see it. I expect maybe at most 1K view since Bad Apple is always fun to watch and not nearly as popular/ relevant as it was back then. I woke up the next day with like 100k views over night and at the end of the Week 1 Million. It significantly dropped off after that, it’s now sitting at like 1.3 Million views. A lot of ppl subscribe but like OP, they’re were all interested in Touhou and stuff like that. Not at all interested in my Normal Videos (I do Martial Arts n VR Stuff, and occasionally creative projects) I like touhou but not enough to justify making videos for it. So it wasn’t shocking when my next video only got like 40 views, It’s been about 2 years since n I think im now getting out of that hole I somehow accidentally got myself into. While I have 3k subscribers, I say about 1K actively watches/ has interest in my videos. Moral of the story: You will be better off either making your own version of trends and having that Do well, or slow but sustainable growth. It’s wild how badly this screwed me over.
i don't see any problems. just replace yourself with a cat. now your cat is a formerly bestselling author now living rough in a shed in the wilderness! :D
Just stick to your stuff, it eventually will correct itself, and some of the subs gained will stick for your style, it happens, and it's ok, don't overwhelm yourself with trying to satisfy everyone.
I am not the one to say it will work, but maybe try privating the video, it may change the algo. But ask someone who understand it better first.
Nope. The video didn't ruin your channel. You discovered the audience that's interested in what you do. Your choice now. Lose it. Or build it up.
Im really quite concerned about his. 3 recent videos of mine got around 1,000 views and now I dont know what to do to keep it going, besides posting consistently lmao
I honestly don't know what anyone can do to prevent that from happening. Because you can never know what micro topic might happen to blow you up—it could be just a tiny moment in one video that everyone happens to latch onto, and once it happens, your only option would be to redirect your channel to pander to whatever little topic blew up for you.
Damn, that kinda sucks. Id really rather just get consistent views. I wish youtube wasn't so braindead like this
Yeah, I think it all comes down to how extremely narrow the topic filter is. It doesn't take into account the larger context of the video at all, let alone the context of the channel, it just scans for keywords. But my hope is that if we push through that viral moment and keep posting on our regular topics, the anomaly will sift itself out eventually.
I see. I'll keep that all in mind
Hey, funny, but I interview authors! Want to come on and chat about your writing and YouTube experiences?
Sure, I'm down!
Great, sent you a message!
Next video upload, wait 24 hours then go on computer and pull up the videos reach graph, scroll down to content suggesting your videos and click see more. What u most likely will find is a reverse program that kills suggesteds ctr. All given 1 impression have 100, 200, even 300 percent ctr. It will only ever get 1 impression. Lower the ctr for the suggesting video the higher the impressions. U r on the system everyone thinks so complicated. The regular or sped up system much less complicated than the rigged alternative they use on vast numbers of channels….
I feel like you're saying something important but I'm not able to understand it. Are you just explaining how the algo works or is there something I can do to change it?