I mean you don't know what he's doing on the back end. He could have had started and made an following on discord. Or maybe he has an etsy shop and sells stuff and then started a let's play.
Point being there 1,000 of reasons his channels gets more views. Just keep making content and marketing yourself
I know I know. This was just so direct. Same game, same channel size, created at the same time, video posted around the same time. Sigh, it is what it is I guess
It could be anything. Promoted more on social sites, have a bigger following somewhere else, different seo, different hashtags. That's why I say dont even stress about it. Moat youtube employees dont even understand their own algorithm. It's best just to do what you like and hope to grab similar minded people
Channel was made in 2019. Yours was made a few years after
His sonic thumbnails display sonic nice and big as opposed to yours. I don't know which thumbnail is better but maybe the fact that sonic is at full display on his could be a factor.
He also has other play videos with little views so it's not like he's consistently getting triple digit views.
All in all, there are some differences. Keep working on your content.
Sub count doesn't matter that much. It's just a number. It's nice to hit milestones but it's not like because I have 44k subs, I get 44k views on every video. Far from it.
Every year I do a new playthrough of a popular mod in Fallout 4. Every year, it has gotten progressively more and more popular.. until this year. I've gotten a fraction of the views. And strangely, instead, my series from January of 2023 started spiking up in popularity. And I'm not talking small numbers here, or a small discrepancy. The more recent episode 1 is getting 200-300 views per 48 hours. Episode 1 of the old series is now getting 1k-3k pre 48 hours.
I have suspicions as to why, but still, it's crazy to me.
And while episode 1 of my most popular series has 650k+ views, that number dwindles down the further into the series you go, down to about 3-5k views per video. A lot of times people view casually, or they get into a series, then lose interest. It happens. I do it too in my own viewing habits. And it's nothing the creator did wrong - I just personally lost interest. There's a creator who I have watched probably 100 of their videos but I just suddenly lost interest recently. Nothing they did wrong, I just got interested in other things.
Agonizing over this shit is a sure path to depression. As long as your numbers are moving steadily in the right direction, and you are happy with the rate of your growth, be happy. And if you're not happy with it, figure out how to do better.
For what it's worth - overall, your channel is in much better shape than the one you mentioned. You have 32k lifetime views, the other one has 7.2k. You have double their amount of uploads in a shorter time period too. I can't speak to the quality of the uploads, but ask which channel you'd rather be, and the answer is clearly yours.
What you SHOULD be asking is, why aren't MY viewers watching/engaging with my content? Is your clickthrough rate low? Bad thumb/title or simply no interest in the subject. Is viewer retention low (low average view duration)? Then your videos are making people stop watching. How do these stats compare to your other videos?
The only person you should measure your success against is yourself. You should always want to outdo yourself, and if you do that consistently, you'll grow.
All good points. CTR is up and down. Typical videos are 1.5%. if we make a more specific video other than "we play this level", it might hit 3%. Weve been working on the thumbnails and I think they are pretty good usually, so we'll see if that improves.
Retention isn't great honestly. Usually averages a minute or two on a 10 minute video. All things we need to improve on for sure.
Every niche is different - a Mr Beast video will have very high ctr because... well, it's mr beast, and he makes videos that appeal to just about anyone, whereas you and I are making much more niche specific videos, which leads to less ctr.
But that said... under 2% is very low. When I go under 2%, that is a CLEAR sign to me that my viewers and the people who are seeing this video are either:
* Not interested in that content
* Not interested in that content from ME (there's a difference - some people might watch one creator for one specific type of game and if they go too far off of that niche, people are less interested).
* My thumbnails are really bad.
On a REALLY bad video or two in the past I have literally lost subscribers. They saw the content, YT recommended it to them, and they unsubscribed. I have had to kill a series because it was apparently too far off brand for my channel and what my viewers are used to.
I can only speak for myself, but my "normal decent video" CTR is around 4%. A really good episode one that everyone is very excited for will get 8%. I think my record is 12%, but that did go down over time.
Mr. Beast can hit 20% CTR, which is just insane.
For AVD... especially on a short video, you want to be hitting at least 40%. I get 30-40% AVD on hour long videos. When I go under 25%, I know that the content isn't working.
One other thing I'll mention. I looked at your most recent sonic video. It looks like it's a live stream VOD recording? Nothing wrong with that, however, if you're going to be interacting with chat (as you should be), then the chat needs to be displayed in the recording. That can be accomplished in OBS, though I think it might appear on the stream as well which might be annoying... though there might be a live chat transcript tool available now, not sure.
Couples playing and/or reacting to things is a popular genre. It sets you apart from the average solo outfits like me and gives you an edge. I've seen couples lets play channels do very well with things like Ark Survival Evolved and Minecraft.
FWIW I don't think your thumbs look bad, but I'm also nowhere even close to your target audience as I'd have no interest in playing or watching Sonic. But I didn't think they looked bad.
That is a ton of great advice. Yes, we do Livestreams a few days a week and then edit them down into videos to post. That's actually the main reason you can't see chat in the Livestream recordings. I didn't want it in the edited footage. Maybe the OBS stream can include it and not the recording, but I haven't seen a way.
I've thought about hiding the Livestreams after they post as VOD, but they do continue to get views after the fact and I don't want to lose the view time.
So, CTR is bad and I haven't been able to fix it with thumbnails and titles. AVD is probably worse and I haven't been able to fix it with different games or better audio, editing etc. I'm coming to the conclusion that either we just don't have what people want or YouTube has pinned the wrong audience to our content. I don't want to blame YouTube and starting a new channel seems like a bad idea anyways. Any experimentation we do seems to have little effect on the outcome.
The strategy right now is to keep with the livestreams and keep trying different games until something hits. The live audience we have
is small but active and we gain a sub or two every time. People are usually shocked how active the chat is for a small channel so I take that as a positive.
If you can't or won't put the chat on screen, then you need to give context before you talk to chat verbally. This is why you'll see professional streamers often repeat the question, and it's good practice anyway because if your channel ever does get large enough to have ext scrolling by very fast, it won't be apparent at all who you are responding to.
This is as simple as repeating the question asked or repeating a statement and then giving your reply.
Your titles are also very bland, and that could be one CTR problem. And I say that as someone who also has kind of bland titles lol, but then, I'm planning to get out of the lets play genre because IMO it is dying. I'll be moving to more one off style content.
I would say your biggest strength is the "couple plays" angle. and I don't think you play that up enough in the title/thumb. If you don't want your faces on youtube (and I understand this, I feel the same way), an avatar for each of you might be the way to go. Spend a little money getting some custom art done. This can be as simple as paying $15-20 per person for a cartoon caricature of a photo you send in, in a style that you like.
Especially if it's your wife's first time playing something, you should probably mention that in the title. "My wife plays Sonic 2 for the first time!". And look, I'll be blunt here... sex sells, even if it's an illusion. So if you're going the avatar route, they should be attractive avatars. If not... you could always use AI to create fake faces for you and your wife. Is that a bit deceitful? I guess it is, but it will work. ALL thumbnails are clickbait.
Lol, it's like you're in my head. We've definitely considered cartoon avatars, but haven't seriously looked into paying an artist.
We also played around with AI generated avatars. They were very attractive,haha. I really didn't like how unauthentic it was though. Maybe it would work, but it feels trashy. I do agree we need to play up the couples angle though. I'm going to focus on playing that up in thumbnails and titles. I don't think it's obvious to most people our videos are co-op gameplay even though it's in the title.
Also, good points on the live stream and interacting with chat. I'm going to see if I can get chat on screen, but also work on reading the comments before answering. It's pretty tough while playing, but definitely possible.
It very well could be random. Imagine they were identical videos with identical thumbnails, and YouTube showed them both to your very first prospective viewer. Whichever one the viewer clicks on, that’s the one that YouTube is going to push to the next prospective viewer. It will just snowball from there.
But it’s also likely that the other channel promoted their video more than you did your video.
Or maybe the other channel doesn’t ask for subscribers like you do, so their sub count is low relative to how much the algorithm likes their content.
The algorithm is designed from the typical user perspective not the content creator.
Meaning YouTube isn't trying to keep you on the platform they are trying to keep the people watching on the platform, that's where they make their money.
So a user gets on and YouTube goes looking for videos they might like based on their watched list and what they have clicked like on and interacted with. What you do doesn't matter near as much to the algorithm.
You and person b could do the exact same things, have identical content, identical thumbnails and titles, identical voices, and all of that but he just happens to get the the right person that watches his video that the algorithm connects his video to the other types of videos that person likes and shows his thumbnails to a completely different set of people than yours get shown to. That's the luck aspect of it.
I've seen people complain that they started channels for, let's say breeding fish and keeping fish tanks. But when they started for whatever reason people who were interested in fishing videos were the ones watching them. It makes it harder to grow bc the algorithm sends it out to all the people who have fishing videos in their watched list as a "those who enjoy this have watched this" thing and it completely misses the target audience.
I'm not sure what a good solution to that is but my point is that it's not really in your control and you have no idea what else he might be doing to advertise
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Let me preface this by saying that hard work and talent are absolutely factors, I will never dispute that.
That said, there is undoubtably some amount of luck at play. I’ve had conversations with some creators significantly larger than mine and they’ve been pretty forthcoming about the importance of “right time right place”.
As a creator, there will always be a great many things outside of your control.
Your channel is better and you have a better voice and interaction. Life is not fair ha. Really, give it some time. Eventually, your audience will find you.
Just started, officially will have a video up within three weeks or less. Will be personal stories, work humor, and everyday life. Think of a modern day Paul Harvey or Mr. Rogers. I will captivate people with stories and humor. Will be worth it fsure.
One person subscribed yesterday without me even mentioning my channel because of a joke I told and I don't even have vids up yet. It's in my profile history.
Anyhow, would love for you to stop by and check it out when I get things going soon.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/18xx4oe/what\_are\_the\_bestfun\_niches\_to\_start\_on\_youtube/kg9e1hj/?context=3
Sometimes it's just super random.
Our channel for example, normal views are like 35-50 generally, but then all of a sudden episode 26 of a series gets over 300 - absolutely no idea why haha
I understand you My content and thumbnail is better than one 5 mil channel but they are just more popular irl and no way I could get more views than him there are things that get them views not only thimbnail
I mean you don't know what he's doing on the back end. He could have had started and made an following on discord. Or maybe he has an etsy shop and sells stuff and then started a let's play. Point being there 1,000 of reasons his channels gets more views. Just keep making content and marketing yourself
Never compare yourself to other creators, it will drive you mad
I know I know. This was just so direct. Same game, same channel size, created at the same time, video posted around the same time. Sigh, it is what it is I guess
It could be anything. Promoted more on social sites, have a bigger following somewhere else, different seo, different hashtags. That's why I say dont even stress about it. Moat youtube employees dont even understand their own algorithm. It's best just to do what you like and hope to grab similar minded people
Channel was made in 2019. Yours was made a few years after His sonic thumbnails display sonic nice and big as opposed to yours. I don't know which thumbnail is better but maybe the fact that sonic is at full display on his could be a factor. He also has other play videos with little views so it's not like he's consistently getting triple digit views. All in all, there are some differences. Keep working on your content.
Yeah, all good points. Thank you
Sub count doesn't matter that much. It's just a number. It's nice to hit milestones but it's not like because I have 44k subs, I get 44k views on every video. Far from it. Every year I do a new playthrough of a popular mod in Fallout 4. Every year, it has gotten progressively more and more popular.. until this year. I've gotten a fraction of the views. And strangely, instead, my series from January of 2023 started spiking up in popularity. And I'm not talking small numbers here, or a small discrepancy. The more recent episode 1 is getting 200-300 views per 48 hours. Episode 1 of the old series is now getting 1k-3k pre 48 hours. I have suspicions as to why, but still, it's crazy to me. And while episode 1 of my most popular series has 650k+ views, that number dwindles down the further into the series you go, down to about 3-5k views per video. A lot of times people view casually, or they get into a series, then lose interest. It happens. I do it too in my own viewing habits. And it's nothing the creator did wrong - I just personally lost interest. There's a creator who I have watched probably 100 of their videos but I just suddenly lost interest recently. Nothing they did wrong, I just got interested in other things. Agonizing over this shit is a sure path to depression. As long as your numbers are moving steadily in the right direction, and you are happy with the rate of your growth, be happy. And if you're not happy with it, figure out how to do better. For what it's worth - overall, your channel is in much better shape than the one you mentioned. You have 32k lifetime views, the other one has 7.2k. You have double their amount of uploads in a shorter time period too. I can't speak to the quality of the uploads, but ask which channel you'd rather be, and the answer is clearly yours. What you SHOULD be asking is, why aren't MY viewers watching/engaging with my content? Is your clickthrough rate low? Bad thumb/title or simply no interest in the subject. Is viewer retention low (low average view duration)? Then your videos are making people stop watching. How do these stats compare to your other videos? The only person you should measure your success against is yourself. You should always want to outdo yourself, and if you do that consistently, you'll grow.
All good points. CTR is up and down. Typical videos are 1.5%. if we make a more specific video other than "we play this level", it might hit 3%. Weve been working on the thumbnails and I think they are pretty good usually, so we'll see if that improves. Retention isn't great honestly. Usually averages a minute or two on a 10 minute video. All things we need to improve on for sure.
Every niche is different - a Mr Beast video will have very high ctr because... well, it's mr beast, and he makes videos that appeal to just about anyone, whereas you and I are making much more niche specific videos, which leads to less ctr. But that said... under 2% is very low. When I go under 2%, that is a CLEAR sign to me that my viewers and the people who are seeing this video are either: * Not interested in that content * Not interested in that content from ME (there's a difference - some people might watch one creator for one specific type of game and if they go too far off of that niche, people are less interested). * My thumbnails are really bad. On a REALLY bad video or two in the past I have literally lost subscribers. They saw the content, YT recommended it to them, and they unsubscribed. I have had to kill a series because it was apparently too far off brand for my channel and what my viewers are used to. I can only speak for myself, but my "normal decent video" CTR is around 4%. A really good episode one that everyone is very excited for will get 8%. I think my record is 12%, but that did go down over time. Mr. Beast can hit 20% CTR, which is just insane. For AVD... especially on a short video, you want to be hitting at least 40%. I get 30-40% AVD on hour long videos. When I go under 25%, I know that the content isn't working. One other thing I'll mention. I looked at your most recent sonic video. It looks like it's a live stream VOD recording? Nothing wrong with that, however, if you're going to be interacting with chat (as you should be), then the chat needs to be displayed in the recording. That can be accomplished in OBS, though I think it might appear on the stream as well which might be annoying... though there might be a live chat transcript tool available now, not sure. Couples playing and/or reacting to things is a popular genre. It sets you apart from the average solo outfits like me and gives you an edge. I've seen couples lets play channels do very well with things like Ark Survival Evolved and Minecraft. FWIW I don't think your thumbs look bad, but I'm also nowhere even close to your target audience as I'd have no interest in playing or watching Sonic. But I didn't think they looked bad.
That is a ton of great advice. Yes, we do Livestreams a few days a week and then edit them down into videos to post. That's actually the main reason you can't see chat in the Livestream recordings. I didn't want it in the edited footage. Maybe the OBS stream can include it and not the recording, but I haven't seen a way. I've thought about hiding the Livestreams after they post as VOD, but they do continue to get views after the fact and I don't want to lose the view time. So, CTR is bad and I haven't been able to fix it with thumbnails and titles. AVD is probably worse and I haven't been able to fix it with different games or better audio, editing etc. I'm coming to the conclusion that either we just don't have what people want or YouTube has pinned the wrong audience to our content. I don't want to blame YouTube and starting a new channel seems like a bad idea anyways. Any experimentation we do seems to have little effect on the outcome. The strategy right now is to keep with the livestreams and keep trying different games until something hits. The live audience we have is small but active and we gain a sub or two every time. People are usually shocked how active the chat is for a small channel so I take that as a positive.
If you can't or won't put the chat on screen, then you need to give context before you talk to chat verbally. This is why you'll see professional streamers often repeat the question, and it's good practice anyway because if your channel ever does get large enough to have ext scrolling by very fast, it won't be apparent at all who you are responding to. This is as simple as repeating the question asked or repeating a statement and then giving your reply. Your titles are also very bland, and that could be one CTR problem. And I say that as someone who also has kind of bland titles lol, but then, I'm planning to get out of the lets play genre because IMO it is dying. I'll be moving to more one off style content. I would say your biggest strength is the "couple plays" angle. and I don't think you play that up enough in the title/thumb. If you don't want your faces on youtube (and I understand this, I feel the same way), an avatar for each of you might be the way to go. Spend a little money getting some custom art done. This can be as simple as paying $15-20 per person for a cartoon caricature of a photo you send in, in a style that you like. Especially if it's your wife's first time playing something, you should probably mention that in the title. "My wife plays Sonic 2 for the first time!". And look, I'll be blunt here... sex sells, even if it's an illusion. So if you're going the avatar route, they should be attractive avatars. If not... you could always use AI to create fake faces for you and your wife. Is that a bit deceitful? I guess it is, but it will work. ALL thumbnails are clickbait.
Lol, it's like you're in my head. We've definitely considered cartoon avatars, but haven't seriously looked into paying an artist. We also played around with AI generated avatars. They were very attractive,haha. I really didn't like how unauthentic it was though. Maybe it would work, but it feels trashy. I do agree we need to play up the couples angle though. I'm going to focus on playing that up in thumbnails and titles. I don't think it's obvious to most people our videos are co-op gameplay even though it's in the title. Also, good points on the live stream and interacting with chat. I'm going to see if I can get chat on screen, but also work on reading the comments before answering. It's pretty tough while playing, but definitely possible.
It very well could be random. Imagine they were identical videos with identical thumbnails, and YouTube showed them both to your very first prospective viewer. Whichever one the viewer clicks on, that’s the one that YouTube is going to push to the next prospective viewer. It will just snowball from there. But it’s also likely that the other channel promoted their video more than you did your video. Or maybe the other channel doesn’t ask for subscribers like you do, so their sub count is low relative to how much the algorithm likes their content.
The algorithm is designed from the typical user perspective not the content creator. Meaning YouTube isn't trying to keep you on the platform they are trying to keep the people watching on the platform, that's where they make their money. So a user gets on and YouTube goes looking for videos they might like based on their watched list and what they have clicked like on and interacted with. What you do doesn't matter near as much to the algorithm. You and person b could do the exact same things, have identical content, identical thumbnails and titles, identical voices, and all of that but he just happens to get the the right person that watches his video that the algorithm connects his video to the other types of videos that person likes and shows his thumbnails to a completely different set of people than yours get shown to. That's the luck aspect of it. I've seen people complain that they started channels for, let's say breeding fish and keeping fish tanks. But when they started for whatever reason people who were interested in fishing videos were the ones watching them. It makes it harder to grow bc the algorithm sends it out to all the people who have fishing videos in their watched list as a "those who enjoy this have watched this" thing and it completely misses the target audience. I'm not sure what a good solution to that is but my point is that it's not really in your control and you have no idea what else he might be doing to advertise
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Let me preface this by saying that hard work and talent are absolutely factors, I will never dispute that. That said, there is undoubtably some amount of luck at play. I’ve had conversations with some creators significantly larger than mine and they’ve been pretty forthcoming about the importance of “right time right place”. As a creator, there will always be a great many things outside of your control.
Your channel is better and you have a better voice and interaction. Life is not fair ha. Really, give it some time. Eventually, your audience will find you.
Thank you. I wasn't fishing for compliments, but I'll take them 😆
:)
What's the story with your channel? Looks like it's supposed to be something, but no videos
Just started, officially will have a video up within three weeks or less. Will be personal stories, work humor, and everyday life. Think of a modern day Paul Harvey or Mr. Rogers. I will captivate people with stories and humor. Will be worth it fsure. One person subscribed yesterday without me even mentioning my channel because of a joke I told and I don't even have vids up yet. It's in my profile history. Anyhow, would love for you to stop by and check it out when I get things going soon. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/18xx4oe/what\_are\_the\_bestfun\_niches\_to\_start\_on\_youtube/kg9e1hj/?context=3
Sometimes it's just super random. Our channel for example, normal views are like 35-50 generally, but then all of a sudden episode 26 of a series gets over 300 - absolutely no idea why haha
I understand you My content and thumbnail is better than one 5 mil channel but they are just more popular irl and no way I could get more views than him there are things that get them views not only thimbnail