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The more I read about driving engagement on YouTube the less I want to have anything to do with it. I spend far more money on gear that I will ever make from my videos. It's such a rat race and my goals for my videos are clearly not aligned with what actually makes a channel successful. Oh well, I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and continue trying to push the bounds of the visual quality of my videos regardless of whether anyone actually cares about it or not.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:53
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Anyone have experience doing Kids content on YouTube? I'm working on a little animated series and I'm wondrin' how to go about doing it. YouTube's guides offer very little practical information.
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Nov 15, 2023 12:56
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Gaspy Conana posted:Anyone have experience doing Kids content on YouTube? I'm working on a little animated series and I'm wondrin' how to go about doing it. YouTube's guides offer very little practical information. I have a channel that does kids content. What specifically were you after? In my experience, there's a few extra restrictions you have (no comments etc) but by and large, the same principles apply. For an animated series, make sure to organize in playlists. You could consider trying the podcast playlist feature which is new-ish (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12751636) but I haven't personally tried these. The main feature seems to be discoverability via YouTube Music?
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Nov 19, 2023 11:29
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Leng posted:I have a channel that does kids content. What specifically were you after? In my experience, there's a few extra restrictions you have (no comments etc) but by and large, the same principles apply. Thanks for the information! I guess I was looking for ways to make sure the stuff doesn't immediately tank because of an accidental violation of the algorithm's preferences. Terrified of investing so much effort and then being deprioritized because of mysterious algorithm stuff. Also things like short vs long videos, etc. The thing I'll be making is patterned after Mr. Rogers structurally, albeit more concise and with more of a song focus.
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Nov 19, 2023 12:43
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Gaspy Conana posted:Terrified of investing so much effort and then being deprioritized because of mysterious algorithm stuff. That is the thing; if you put all your eggs in someone else's basket, you're always going to be vulnerable to stuff like that. I listened to Chris Gillibeau's "Side Hustle" podcast for a while and a recurring theme was people experiencing success on a platform (not necessarily YT) and then having months/years of hard work vaporise instantly when the algo or ToS changes. If you're looking into having it as an income stream, I think diversification is key. Can you drive parents to Patreon and get them to sign up for something? Can you develop merch around characters, or put albums for sale on iTunes? That kind of thing. I am very much in the "curious about it" stage, but my understanding is that unless you're wildly successful, YT is often best used as a means of publicity/generating interest in whatever it is you do.
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Nov 19, 2023 15:37
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I had my last video get picked up by the algo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hwgJYqbwHE 20k views in a week and 200 new subs - I'm dead chuffed. I got the analytics back and can post them here if anyone's interested. I imagine it got picked up because it's a bit of a hot button topic. I've really enjoyed interacting with folks in the comments, but I was not prepared for the level of pendantry from people with differing opinions. I tried to say "I really like this company and things could be better" but a lot of people didn't pick up on that and just focussed on the negatives, so I'm going to try to be more conscious of the words I'm choosing in the future. I was planning on making the next video a fairly throwaway Top 10 Games of the Year summary, but I've read that once you have a video picked up your next video is pretty important in terms of YouTube figuring out who your audience is. Is there any truth to that? EDIT: I was also trying to stay anonymous online, but I managed to trace my own name with a simple Google search, so I guess that's out the window and I haven't been as clever as I thought I was. I'm also not far off of monetising the channel just from one video. But one of the requirements is to have three videos uploaded in the last 90 days. I met the requirement last week, but fell outside of it in the last few days. If I get another hit and meet the other requirements, is there anything stopping me from just throwing up a twenty second video to meet the requirements and get myself locked in to monetision or are the requirements rolling? One more observation - I haven't had any of my other videos pick up many views off the back of this, but I have had a few people who went through and watched all of my stuff and say that they liked it. That got me pretty stoked, but I think from now on I'm gonna have an ending that flashes my thumbnails and a subscribe button as soon as the main body of the video is over. It's tricky though - I want to have a Patreon callout and a nice attributions scroll, but end cards can only be on screen for twenty seconds, so that means I need to get everything squeezed in on one screen pretty much. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 11:28
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7seven7 posted:I had my last video get picked up by the algo: quote:I was planning on making the next video a fairly throwaway Top 10 Games of the Year summary, but I've read that once you have a video picked up your next video is pretty important in terms of YouTube figuring out who your audience is. Is there any truth to that?  So I would say there may be some truth to that, I'd be sure your next video is one that can resonate with a mainstream audience. quote:I'm also not far off of monetising the channel just from one video. But one of the requirements is to have three videos uploaded in the last 90 days. I met the requirement last week, but fell outside of it in the last few days. If I get another hit and meet the other requirements, is there anything stopping me from just throwing up a twenty second video to meet the requirements and get myself locked in to monetision or are the requirements rolling? quote:One more observation - I haven't had any of my other videos pick up many views off the back of this, but I have had a few people who went through and watched all of my stuff and say that they liked it. That got me pretty stoked, but I think from now on I'm gonna have an ending that flashes my thumbnails and a subscribe button as soon as the main body of the video is over. It's tricky though - I want to have a Patreon callout and a nice attributions scroll, but end cards can only be on screen for twenty seconds, so that means I need to get everything squeezed in on one screen pretty much. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 16:57
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Gaspy Conana posted:Thanks for the information! I guess I was looking for ways to make sure the stuff doesn't immediately tank because of an accidental violation of the algorithm's preferences. Terrified of investing so much effort and then being deprioritized because of mysterious algorithm stuff. Also things like short vs long videos, etc. The thing I'll be making is patterned after Mr. Rogers structurally, albeit more concise and with more of a song focus. Ok so I see this a lot and it's the worst mindset to have going into YouTube or any other type of content creation for that matter. The algorithm is not some whimsical chaotic entity bent on suppressing creators. The algorithm is a like-for-like recommendation engine with one purpose and one purpose only: to recommend videos that viewers will watch for as long as possible. Every time you find yourself thinking about "the algorithm" force yourself to replace it with "my target audience". No one's clicking? Your thumbnail/title doesn't appeal to your target audience. Could be that the thumbnail/title is crap, could be that you've made a video that nobody in your target audience wants to watch. Retention tanking in the first 30 seconds? Your opening isn't resonating with your target audience. Could be your hook, could be how you've framed it, could be because the editing is off, could be because you take too long to get to the point, could be because your thumbnail/title paired with your opening makes it seem like bad clickbait, etc. You can do this thought exercise for every single aspect. Kids' series can do really really well if you nail your target audience and what they want. There is an animated YT series called "Donut and Ah Meow" that I binge watch with my daughter because it ticks all the boxes for me: it's fun for her, each episode is educational, and the whole thing is in Cantonese, which is great when I'm trying to reinforce speaking our native language at home. TL;DR -  so you can get some data, analyze it, then adjust and adapt and repeat all over again, instead of worrying about "the algorithm". 95% of the time someone complains about being suppressed by the algorithm, I go to look at their channel and there's like 10 glaring, basic mistakes they're making causing the issue of no views.
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Nov 20, 2023 22:26
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Leng posted:Ok so I see this a lot and it's the worst mindset to have going into YouTube or any other type of content creation for that matter. Maybe I should've been clearer with my language but everything you listed is exactly what I meant by 'the algorithm' and was more-or-less the kind of advice I was asking for. I'm no stranger to producing things with target audiences in mind that have been successful at reaching them. On Steam there are seemingly innocuous decisions you can make with how you structure your store page that'll hurt your visibility, so it follows that YouTube could work the same way. On Twitter as well, misspelling a word or including an off-site link will absolutely tank the visibility of a tweet. Not being cocky but I have no doubts regarding the quality and appeal of what I'm producing. I've been researching and developing the process and tech of what I'm making for years. It's super high quality visually/sonically. There's very little in the way of 2 to 6-year-old music education available so if I'm smart with my word/tag choices I'll probably come up first for relevant searches. This still may only appeal to a limited audience, but it's something that I wished existed for my own kids that I haven't been able to find. Also my son has been pretty into the early test versions which is a decent litmus because it's hard to break him away from familiar things.  I just want the people who'd be interested in it to find it. I wasn't planning on monetizing or even running a Patreon but as per the advice of the other poster that seems pretty important for visibility so I'll have to figure it out.
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Nov 21, 2023 13:12
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Gaspy Conana posted:Maybe I should've been clearer with my language but everything you listed is exactly what I meant by 'the algorithm' and was more-or-less the kind of advice I was asking for. I'm no stranger to producing things with target audiences in mind that have been successful at reaching them. Ok this context is more helpful. You're a little different because you're basically producing a web kids serial so you kind of have to work with the dictates of that format and I wouldn't suggest you allow YT to dictate how you produce those. That said: YT algorithm likes watch time. It really, really, really likes long watch sessions. Now that it has started showing auto play muted footage, the first 30 seconds are even more important. Kids content is a bit weirder in that the kids aren't the ones browsing for stuff, it's usually the adult in charge of the watch session. Mostly I find stuff either via search or word of mouth. Gaspy Conana posted:Not being cocky but I have no doubts regarding the quality and appeal of what I'm producing. I've been researching and developing the process and tech of what I'm making for years. It's super high quality visually/sonically. There's very little in the way of 2 to 6-year-old music education available so if I'm smart with my word/tag choices I'll probably come up first for relevant searches. This still may only appeal to a limited audience, but it's something that I wished existed for my own kids that I haven't been able to find. If your content is good, I'd focus on title/thumbnail, ranking for search and finding your target audience off site, like a parents Facebook group or wherever, and launching it there. There's a Cantonese cooking channel called Made By Lau that's closing in on 1.5m subs that I remember first seeing the guy post recipes in a Cantonese parents Facebook group that people LOVED, and then he did a video, and fast forward like a year and the channel had found its audience and it had become a full on family business. Gaspy Conana posted:I just want the people who'd be interested in it to find it. I wasn't planning on monetizing or even running a Patreon but as per the advice of the other poster that seems pretty important for visibility so I'll have to figure it out. There are multiple ways of monetizing but they all require an audience. Build your audience first.
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Nov 22, 2023 11:15
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Ethics_Gradient posted:That is the thing; if you put all your eggs in someone else's basket, you're always going to be vulnerable to stuff like that. I listened to Chris Gillibeau's "Side Hustle" podcast for a while and a recurring theme was people experiencing success on a platform (not necessarily YT) and then having months/years of hard work vaporise instantly when the algo or ToS changes. Going full time from ad revenue on YT alone doesn't work unless you can pull huge views and/or are in a niche with a very high RPM. Monetization routes: - products/merch - affiliate marketing - sponsorships (this is the main one) - YT channel is actually a funnel for main business (coaching, courses, services, etc) - membership/Patreon Diversification is important, yes, but trying to do everything at once will dilute your focus and you will be slower and less effective at all the things—and I'm saying this as somebody who did that and is dropping the ball on all fronts right now (and has been for the whole year). To succeed on YT or anything right now is about building a community. I've seen several small channels I follow go big and what all of them are doing is having phenomenal content to begin with and then working extra hard to foster a community.
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Nov 22, 2023 11:27
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Leng posted:Ok this context is more helpful. You're a little different because you're basically producing a web kids serial so you kind of have to work with the dictates of that format and I wouldn't suggest you allow YT to dictate how you produce those. Ah this is all great stuff, thank you! I hadn't even considered Facebook but skipping that seems really stupid now that you mention it.
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Nov 22, 2023 13:13
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Sardonik posted:Hell yeah, congrats! Thanks! This is all great! I've changed the next subject to something a bit more mainstream, but I'll probably not be able to sustain a mainstream audience. I liked getting views on this new thing, but I still want to do this for fun, so I guess I should make my peace with less views. I'm also not really expecting to make any money off of YouTube, but it would be nice if it happened!
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Nov 22, 2023 15:48
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Oooh nice thread! I made a Youtube channel a couple years ago with a focus on the very original content of comic book movie reviews  but my true ongoing dream project has been a deep dive series on Wonder Woman comics, which is currently on its third episode focusing on the late 60s/early 70s Mod Era for the character. If anyone's interested!I'll have to take my time to peruse the info in this thread at some point, but I find that the most time-consuming part of editing is definitely dealing with audio issues. Like, you expect the video editing to be cumbersome, and that's fine, but sometimes editing the audio takes just as long or even longer, which sucks. Does anyone have a guide on making your recorded audio sound good in an efficient, less time-wasting manner? My general process is to go into Audacity and use noise gate to get rid of breathing sounds, although sometimes that seems to go awry and I end up clipping a lot of consonants as well. Then I normalize and compress to try and get the volume standardized...but in my experience that really doesn't...like, do enough. There are still parts of the audio that are too quiet or parts that are too loud and I end up having to manually edit those parts one-by-one, which can be really tedious when your videos are an hour or longer. I'd appreciate any suggestions on what else I should be doing here, or if anyone has a particularly good audio workflow they can share, or perhaps a magic button you can just press to automatically fix all sound issues in any videos. 
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Nov 26, 2023 18:52
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BrianWilly posted:My general process is to go into Audacity and use noise gate to get rid of breathing sounds, although sometimes that seems to go awry and I end up clipping a lot of consonants as well. Then I normalize and compress to try and get the volume standardized...but in my experience that really doesn't...like, do enough. There are still parts of the audio that are too quiet or parts that are too loud and I end up having to manually edit those parts one-by-one, which can be really tedious when your videos are an hour or longer. I'd appreciate any suggestions on what else I should be doing here, or if anyone has a particularly good audio workflow they can share, or perhaps a magic button you can just press to automatically fix all sound issues in any videos. Sounds like you do about the same I do, though have you tried using noise reduction instead of noise gate? I've had good results with that. Also some of this may come down to the microphone type and settings, have you tried changing the gain settings? You may have them a bit on the high side if it's noticeably picking up a lot of breathing. In terms of magic button solutions if you have an NVIDIA GPU you could try Nvidia Broadcast to process your audio as you record. Just install it, turn on noise reduction, and use its audio output device as an input in audacity. I don't use it myself because for whatever reason it hitches for the first few seconds of each recording and sometimes has weird distortions, but maybe it may work better with your setup. If you're on the paid version of Davinci Resolve its voice isolation effect is exceptionally powerful and might be able to help, though I haven't used it for this purpose. I'll also say for volume issues after compression, a lot of the time I'll use volume keyframes to manually even things out in Resolve, rather than manually amplifying segments in Audacity. That might be a bit faster. Sardonik fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Nov 26, 2023 |
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Nov 26, 2023 19:54
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Gaspy Conana posted:howdy thread! after a bit of severe burnout working on my game I've decided to start a streaming sideproject using a program I threw together in a game engine. here's the first experimental stream. I'd love any feedback or ideas as I'm pretty darned new to streaming, especially regarding interacting with chat. thanks! Finally getting to this. Sorry for not getting to you earlier; it's been a helluva few months for me and I've been dropping the ball all over the place, including replying in this thread. Anyway, I've finally jumped in to watch a bit of the stream replay of the opening and then skimming through most of it. First, I'm gonna preface everything I say in this post with a note to go watch EposVox's video on planning a stream here: Leng posted:4. Let your stream audience know what to expect when you’re live. What you have now I think is a stream that caters ONLY to the core fans of your channel. The people who aren't just there for your content, but there for YOU specifically. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if what you're trying to do is to grow your channel a bit by streaming, then I think this execution doesn't do it. The worst part is, the core concept is good and I think there would be a lot of people who aren't part of your existing audience who WOULD watch the hell out of both the stream and the replay! You've just not planned the stream at all to take this into account. In order of priority: Thumbnail Sorry dude your stream thumbnail sucks. You're not Ludwig or Disguised Toast or Spiffing Brit or penguinz0 or any of the big streamers who will pull a ton of viewers regardless of whatever same default screencap YT generates. And even Ludwig will do proper thumbnails for some of his livestreams, like his 24 hours in the wilderness stream, etc. Make a proper thumbnail/title that clearly communicates what the video is about. Flow So I can see you put a lot of thought into your stream overlay (using a program made with a game engine is pretty cool) but apart from that, you come across as not having really planned much about the stream besides "ok here are the tracks I'm gonna listen to" and it's made worse by the experimental nature of the stream. The problem this creates for me as a viewer is I have no clue what to expect. Tech issues with getting the right track to play aside, your intro is non-existent and in this particular case, I desperately need one. Who are you? Don't know; you never introduced yourself. What are we doing today and how is this gonna work? You open with "let's react" and then quickly detour into a bit about a lost civilization sending a "thing" (your overlay) to you and determining if "they" should be "exposed to it". I'm so lost. This looks like a game (because game engine overlay), but it's not a game I know or am aware of. Is this some sort of kayfabe thing that you're doing for fun that I'm unaware of? Which could be cool, but we've known each other for like 10 seconds so I do not know you and you're not dressed up in cosplay and stuff so I don't understand what's going on. Also, if "they" sent you the "thing" then wouldn't they, by definition, be the ones exposing us to it? I don't get it and this makes me feel confused and I don't want to feel confused so I'm gonna click off, probably. The other thing with streaming to keep in mind is that unlike other YouTube videos, you'll often get people joining the stream in the middle of it. They need to be able to pick up IMMEDIATELY on what's going on in order to stick around. Your overlay could be better in this regard. There's no current status of what you're doing, no display of the live chat (if you had any chats going at the time), no progress timer, no label on your face cam to let people know who you are, nothing to orient me as a new viewer. Things that confused me about your overlays:
You have a stream concept that is made for audience interaction but it seems like you haven't really planned it out to maximize that. The biggest advantage of doing a live stream instead of just a normal upload is the audience interaction! So make a whole thing of it—run this as if we were both sitting in a living room with the tape deck on having a listening party. I don't mind the live verbal commentary as you're listening but seeing you type your notes (especially if the notes are basically what you just verbally said) kind of ruins that experience. The typing sound effect is also way too loud and intrudes on the track. What would be more inclusive and welcoming of audience participation is if I could see your notes pop up as icons on the timeline but I have NO IDEA what they contain. That would make me want to hang around for the discussion after, so we can literally compare notes. You also basically handed down your judgment on the tracks like a verdict. Which is normally what you'd do for a standard react video but doing it this way on a live kind of misses the entire point of doing something like this as a livestream. As a viewer, it'd be really cool to be able to go, nah man, I reckon it deserves THIS MERIT for THIS bit of the track because <insert reasoning here> and it would have been a nice jumping off point for a discussion. Ultimately as the streamer, obviously you decide to give the track whatever you decide to give it, but letting the chat feel like they had some input into swaying you is pretty important in creating a good stream experience. Not sure what streaming set up you're using but get a thing that will allow you to highlight chat messages on your screen. Also—and especially if you don't incorporate this into your overlay—get into the habit of reading out the chat message you're responding to out loud. If you touch the YT editor on the video afterwards, it deletes the live chat replay, and as a replay viewer, not being able to see or hear the thing you're responding to makes me feel lost. On the other hand, as somebody who is attending a live, seeing your comment get highlighted on screen/read out lout is a really cool thing. What I would do if I were you: 1. Take the "let's react" concept and really run with it. Really emphasize the listening party aspect. 2. Come up with a snappy intro along the lines of: "Hi, my name is Jay and today, we are going to listen to five random tracks that have been sitting on my hard drive, forgotten, for like ten years, and evaluate whether these tracks deserve to be listened to by more people." 3. Lay out your judging criteria from the start. "Here's how it's going to work. First, we're gonna listen to the track together. I'm gonna be taking some notes as I go. You'll see my notes pop up on the track's timeline as I write them. Yellow means <this> and red means <this>. Make sure to pop your reactions in the chat so we can compare notes. Once we're done listening, we're gonna rate the track. There's eight merits available: <explain the merits>." 4. Do the thing with the tracks and interact with the audience/chat as much as possible. 5. Do an overall session wrap up by tier ranking all the tracks you listened to during the stream, or something. Gives people an incentive to go back and re-watch the bits on the tracks they missed. Ok, I think that's it. It's a lot of words and I hope some of it is helpful. Feel free to disregard whatever you don't think is helpful. But yay, I'm glad you decided to dive into streaming; streaming is a lot of fun and you can build up a really great community that way.
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Nov 27, 2023 07:38
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BrianWilly posted:I find that the most time-consuming part of editing is definitely dealing with audio issues. Like, you expect the video editing to be cumbersome, and that's fine, but sometimes editing the audio takes just as long or even longer, which sucks. Does anyone have a guide on making your recorded audio sound good in an efficient, less time-wasting manner? First question: what mic are you using? Second question: what's the acoustic environment like where you're filming? The thing with audio is it's always better to improve your audio capture rather than trying to fix it in post because some things, no matter what you do in post, can't be fixed to a good level. That said: Leng posted:Another great resource for anybody who is super confused by audio mixing and mastering (and I cannot for the life of me remember if the two mean the same or different things because I am not an audio nerd). I've finally gotten a lav mic (a cheap Boya M-1) and moved to a new place but I haven't done much filming lately so I can't really report on this yet. Once I get around to doing a few videos with it, I'll report back, but this is supposed to be a pretty good budget lav mic option. Sardonik posted:If you're on the paid version of Davinci Resolve its voice isolation effect is exceptionally powerful and might be able to help, though I haven't used it for this purpose. I'm on the free version of Resolve and the one feature that makes me want to upgrade is the 18.5 release of Studio that includes automatic audio transcription which would save me SO MUCH TIME. Casey Faris did an overview of the feature here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jgo5HoL42w
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Nov 27, 2023 08:03
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7seven7 posted:Thanks! This is all great! I've changed the next subject to something a bit more mainstream, but I'll probably not be able to sustain a mainstream audience. I liked getting views on this new thing, but I still want to do this for fun, so I guess I should make my peace with less views. Well I royally hosed the follow up with this one. 25k views to less than 100 on the next release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-Zy9q1Bmw I changed the subject to something I thought was niche, but had appeal. I did a bit of research and saw some big channels with videos on the same subject with around a million views, so I thought it might have potential. I hustled to get a quick turnaround and went with a much more YouTubey thumbnail to garner some early clicks for a push, but I don't think the push happened. It got so few views I haven't even got the analytics. If I think about it, the intro for my Bethesda video lasts thirty seconds then goes straight into the title sequence. This one lasts about a minute thirty and I thought if I load it up with jokes and a really punchy sequence people might engage, but I judged it really poorly. Shame, but I'm going to keep going. I do want to get views, but I think what I need to do to get those views is understand what gets people watching whilst still making the videos I want to make. For the next one I'm going to aim for another thirty second intro. I think the subject of the Bethesda video really helped, but I suspect the Net Yaroze one would've done better if I'd cut the intro down. Hard to tell without analytics, but if anyone has any insights I'd really appreciate the advice. 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Dec 1, 2023 |
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Dec 1, 2023 13:49
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7seven7 posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-Zy9q1Bmw The intro might be a factor in drop off and perhaps with the new auto play preview it might contribute to a lower CTR but if I had to guess, I think it's your title/thumbnail. (The way to tell is impressions and CTR. If you're getting impressions but low clicks, it's your title/thumbnail. If you're not even getting impressions, then that's a different problem altogether.) Like 80% of the Internet has heard of Bethesda and Steam. Maybe 0.1% of the same audience has heard of Net Yaroze. You had 3 hooks in your viral video: Bethesda, decline, and predictable. That's speaking to a massive audience, all of whom are fed up with Bethesda getting worse and worse. Some of them will just click for therapeutic shared venting. Others are clicking because they want to know WHY it's all gone to crap and whether it could have been prevented and if there's hope for a turnaround. Still others will be curious because all they know is that Bethesda is a big name and they didn't know there were big issues with it. I haven't watched your follow up but it's clear from title/thumbnail that it's a totally different kind of video—at least, I assume that you're trying to convince people to check out indie games and at a place that's not Steam. In which case, your draw is something like "Steam alternative" or "Steam killer" or "best game store you've never heard of" etc, where the hook is the mystery of what the thing is.
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Dec 2, 2023 00:39
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7seven7 posted:I do want to get views, but I think what I need to do to get those views is understand what gets people watching whilst still making the videos I want to make. Ok so I asked my husband to watch this one too because I suspect he's actually part of the target audience who would vibe with your content (as I'm typing this, he literally saw you had a Ridge Racer video and clicked on that right afterwards without me saying a thing). His feedback: "I watch a lot of indie gaming stuff and that part of the title appeals but I have nfi what the Net Yaroze thing is or what's going on in the thumbnail and there's no hook to get me to click" FWIW he wasn't super bothered about the length of the intro other than saying the self deprecation was maybe a little overdone. I asked what would've got him to click and he suggested a "______ but ________" title that kept in the indie gaming keywords.
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Dec 3, 2023 01:56
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Has anyone solved OBS' problems hearing multiple audio inputs from an interface? It seems like a known issue that the software only wants to listen to your first input pair. Well I have a Scarlett 18i20 and it would be really convenient for me not to have to hot-swap my DJ mixer for my mic every time I want to do something different. Does Sound flower work to this end? Because I haven't been able to get it to work so far. Is there another alternative to OBS that will do what I want? Thanks. EDIT: OK most of this was actually pretty easy to figure out; the app that fixes the audio routing problems is called Loopback. I haven't sussed the sync offset issue (and may have to consider Loopback itself incurring more delay to something, although now that I think of it it might just nudge the audio back enough to offset the video delay. Poking around in OBS now I'm getting excited; looking forward to learning about placing chyrons, graphics etc. (or would it be better to do this in my ATEM?) and I'm stoked it has VST support, so I can basically set up the same dynamics chain I run on my recorded DJ mixes to limit everything and give it that 'radio pump' effect. 
Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 02:05
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Leng posted:The intro might be a factor in drop off and perhaps with the new auto play preview it might contribute to a lower CTR but if I had to guess, I think it's your title/thumbnail. Sorry for the late reply. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up. I'm still wrapping my head around a lot of this, so I appreciate another perspective. The new video ended up getting some views and got me a few subs, but still failed to crack 1k. It made 22.3k impressions with a CTR of 2.6% - so not great. What I'm taking away from your advice is that my thumbnails and titles still need some work. With the Net Yaroze one, when I think about it, I think I failed the concept right out of the gate. I'm not really sure who the core audience would've been. It's a retrospective on the system for people that haven't heard of it. But if you haven't heard of it you're not going to know what's going on in the thumbnail, nor are you going to give a poo poo about the subject matter because it's mega obscure. Really what I'm hoping for is to foster an audience that knows I'm going to talk about something esoteric in a gentle manner, giving you a summary of my subject with some nice vibes, a tiny bit of leftist analysis, and a couple of jokes along the way. Basically I'm going for the HBomberGuy audience without the explicit politicising. I'm starting to consistently get one or two comments saying that my channel is underrated, but I'm guessing that's just because I've been really finnicky about production values and not because I'm doing anything particularly great. I've been really resistant to the idea due to misplaced artistic integrity, but I think I have to make my peace with using some more clickbaity titles and thumbs. I can't naturally foster an audience if nobody watches the things in the first place. I'm going to spend a bit of time thinking about concepts that might engage an audience, but I still think there's a balance to be struck between "You won't BELIEVE what this company did" and a thumbnail with The YouTube Face versus "A Six Hour Appraisal of Jungian Interpretations of Tomb Raider" with no production values. Leng posted:Ok so I asked my husband to watch this one too because I suspect he's actually part of the target audience who would vibe with your content (as I'm typing this, he literally saw you had a Ridge Racer video and clicked on that right afterwards without me saying a thing). This is super interesting to me - thanks again! I tried to make the thumbnail super easy to parse with a two colour background and the devkit highlighted with an outline, but I'm realising I failed at that. Similar to what I wrote above, but I'm taking from this that again, my thumbnails and titles need work. So far I've been concentrating on making the visuals and audio interesting, but I need to seal the deal with more engaging concepts. I'm starting to see small numbers of engagement with my community tab and my next piece is going to be a top 10 of the year wrap up without much visual flare, so it'll be interesting to see what my subs make of something a bit more straight forward. I suspect it'll flop, but I'd like to do a top 10 every December. Thanks again for the advice. I want the channel to be somewhat successful and I've been putting a lot of hours into editing lately so maybe it's time to compromise on making the videos I want to make versus the videos a YouTube audience wants to see. EDIT:: Just to add on to this - is it a valid idea to make some moreainstream videos to garner a following, then gently switch it up to more obscure topics, or is that dooming myself with an inorganic audience? 7seven7 fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 13:58
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7seven7 posted:What I'm taking away from your advice is that my thumbnails and titles still need some work. 7seven7 posted:With the Net Yaroze one, when I think about it, I think I failed the concept right out of the gate. I'm not really sure who the core audience would've been. It's a retrospective on the system for people that haven't heard of it. But if you haven't heard of it you're not going to know what's going on in the thumbnail, nor are you going to give a poo poo about the subject matter because it's mega obscure. Really what I'm hoping for is to foster an audience that knows I'm going to talk about something esoteric in a gentle manner, giving you a summary of my subject with some nice vibes, a tiny bit of leftist analysis, and a couple of jokes along the way. Basically I'm going for the HBomberGuy audience without the explicit politicising. 7seven7 posted:I've been really resistant to the idea due to misplaced artistic integrity, but I think I have to make my peace with using some more clickbaity titles and thumbs. I can't naturally foster an audience if nobody watches the things in the first place. 7seven7 posted:This is super interesting to me - thanks again! I tried to make the thumbnail super easy to parse with a two colour background and the devkit highlighted with an outline, but I'm realising I failed at that. Similar to what I wrote above, but I'm taking from this that again, my thumbnails and titles need work. In your thumbnail you have:
You would've been better off just blacking out or blurring/pixelating the devkit to make that a mystery. Or maybe just featuring an image of the devkit as a CD-ROM. I'm not really sure what would work as not my niche but a simplification would've helped. 7seven7 posted:I want the channel to be somewhat successful and I've been putting a lot of hours into editing lately so maybe it's time to compromise on making the videos I want to make versus the videos a YouTube audience wants to see. If you do a mainstream subject, I'd do it only if you have a unique take to it that's consistent with the other content you want to make. Otherwise you won't get good cross over. Like you want your channel to be cohesive. I need to be able to look at your channel page and understand immediately what you're about so I can decide if I want to subscribe.
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Dec 6, 2023 12:00
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Leng posted:This is only a problem if you keep thinking that your title/thumbnail HAS to feature Net Yaroze. It doesn't. If the draw is sharing an esoteric cool piece of retro gaming history that's just awesome, then make that the hook: "The indie game revolution that never was" or "The indie gaming gold rush history forgot" etc. This in particular is incredibly helpful and really lets me get my head around the general idea and where I went wrong. I don't think I'll be able to do it for the thing I'm working on, but I'm already thinking about how I'm going to go about the next thumbnail with all this in mind. Normally that'd be the part I'd procrastinate over so I'm feeling better about it. Thanks again - I don't really know anyone irl I could talk to about this particular hobby so I can't tell you how nice it is to have somewhere to ask someone about thumbnail theory.
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Dec 10, 2023 05:42
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!!! YouTube is rolling out A/B testing for thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY3MFjPVvwc It's gonna be called "Test and compare" and they'll allow you to upload up to 3 thumbnails. Worth noting that they judge thumbnail performance on "watch time share" (something we can't really calculate previously) and not CTR.
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Dec 14, 2023 04:41
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Leng posted:!!! YouTube is rolling out A/B testing for thumbnails: Oh drat that's awesome. I don't have the feature right now but I'm hoping I'll be part of the rollout before my next one is ready.
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Dec 15, 2023 11:52
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With 2023 winding down, we're about to go into the period of YouTube education channels posting videos about "what I would do if I were starting a new channel" and "is it too late to start youtube" etc. Anyway, for anyone who wasn't following along with YouTube Education drama, Nate Black who was originally the face of the Channel Makers channel (part of Income School) left the team. Personally, I've stopped watching Channel Makers because Nate was who I was watching for and I've been going over to his new channel. He's just posted a new video for planning your channel next year which is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBuZ_erh5UU I've been taking a looooong break from YouTube because I needed it but it's gonna be something I'll come back to for sure. My "problem" right now is I have so many video ideas and I'm not in the right head space and time to film.
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Dec 21, 2023 06:27
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And as a nice follow-up to the above, here's a really good guide on thumbnails from Aprilynne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TolBiTrUg4
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Dec 24, 2023 04:44
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I didn't think I'd make Shorts, but I had a very old project that failed so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8LzeYwV35U
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Dec 26, 2023 05:25
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lmao I put this together in 10 minutes and published it at 10pm on Christmas, got order of magnitude more views than anything else I've published. Shorts are different, I know, but it's still amazing.
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Dec 26, 2023 18:09
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Trabant posted:lmao I haven't had any luck with shorts - congrats. And the concept is cool as hell! I still haven't got the ability to do A/B thumbnails, but I've got three new thumbnails for each of my existing videos ready to go. Also been spending a lot of time researching how to make the concepts of my videos appealing and how to get the idea across in a single sentence. Now that my latest thing is out I've got a few ideas about making the next one something that might get some clicks. I spend hundreds of hours on making the actual thing - it's finally getting through to me that I need to invest a decent amount of time into figuring out an interesting concept, title, and thumbnail if I want to see numbers.
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Dec 28, 2023 18:41
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Trabant posted:lmao Short form content is SUCH a different beast. But all the platforms are pushing them so you can get a lot of reach if you structure them right—and often time spent has very little correlation with how well it does. I've seen the same happen with my attempts at IG reels. Meanwhile, vidIQ has posted a massive, 80 min vid ahead of the new year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8we3bXyAcY
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Dec 29, 2023 05:44
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Leng posted:Short form content is SUCH a different beast. But all the platforms are pushing them so you can get a lot of reach if you structure them right—and often time spent has very little correlation with how well it does. I've seen the same happen with my attempts at IG reels. The funny thing -- and this seems to kinda track with what I've seen elsewhere -- is that the 2.5k views translated to exactly one new subscriber  My other videos are fairly different so I guess it's not that surprising.
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Dec 31, 2023 04:10
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I wanted to post this video here because I wanted to post it SOMEWHERE on this site, and I figured this thread specifically because the edits in this video are insane and what I want people to focus on. You can tell that a TON of time and effort went into the making of this video even beyond the script and research. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEIPa9b3OU
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Jan 2, 2024 05:40
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Firsona: a good name for bonsai/horticulture channel or no?
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Jan 2, 2024 21:07
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Disco Elysium's devs had to eventually change the game's name from No Truce with the Furies to Disco Elysium because it turns out furry jokes whenever someone mentions you can, in fact, get old. If you're willing to take the risk, it's okay I guess.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:17
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Gologle posted:I wanted to post this video here because I wanted to post it SOMEWHERE on this site, and I figured this thread specifically because the edits in this video are insane and what I want people to focus on. You can tell that a TON of time and effort went into the making of this video even beyond the script and research. I'm not the target audience for this in any way, and I'm a complete newbie idiot of an editor, so there are the two salt boulders for when I say: man, that constant movement just did not work for me. Certainly not for a 30-minute video.
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Jan 3, 2024 06:36
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Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1WXSRUiZ5tsUaPm0QmPt8A Type of crit wanted: Mostly videos but also if my channel needs anything, I'm definitely open to criticism. Any specific issues you want help on: Where to even start? I'm not even really sure there's any kind of audience for what I'm putting out there, but I know that I can improve. Basically, I record myself doing art (usually while streaming on Twitch), then shorten the video down to about 10 minutes (is that too long?) and upload it to YouTube. Is that a thing? Do I need to add some voiceover or something? I'm not sure what I'd even talk about for 10 minutes. Maybe edit the videos into highlights and talk over that? I really kind of don't know what I'm doing, but I'm eager to learn! Also, as I mentioned, I stream my art on Twitch (http://twitch.tv/phylodox), but most of my streams are just me doing art with a royalty-free Spotify playlist in the background. Do I need to buy myself a decent microphone and start just...talking while I'm making art? Anyways, I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks!
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Jan 3, 2024 19:00
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Phylodox posted:Channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1WXSRUiZ5tsUaPm0QmPt8A Are these all original characters that you’re drawing? I think getting people interested in them when they don’t know who Dillran is or why they should care is your biggest challenge right now. Consider looking at somebody like Boylei hobby time, who does a lot of arts and diorama projects that are either one-off ideas or his own thing, with the occasional build that is heavily inspired by a popular property if not outright an explicit fan-work (ie his Khazad-Dum Balrog vs Gandalf build is literally just the scene from the book/movie, but he never explicitly comes out and advertises it as such). His thumbnails/video pitches benefit from having really strong concepts in his bespoke stuff and being just recognizable/compelling enough to fans without being outright “Learn To Model Gandalf!!1!!1” when they’re based on a media property. In your position I might consider leaning more into 1) narrative. Draw your characters in interesting situations that you can build a title around (“They Thought This Dungeon Was Safe!”) and/or flesh them out more. Don’t just draw a portrait of Dillran, maybe explain a bit about who he is, what his backstory and personality are. Maybe draw him a few different ways and in different scenarios. Resting, at his job, in combat, smiling, upset, etc. Consider shifting the focus so that there’s more character-building instead of simply illustration. Or draw a series of panels and craft a fun narrative over them while still retaining the technical advice. 2) the utility to your audience. Is Dillran a TTRPG character? A Baldurs Gate OC? Is he somebody’s fantasy book character or comic character? Could he be all four? Etc. Frame your presentation accordingly. This ties into point 1. Instead of just one drawing, make a character bible or D&D character sheet. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 19:21
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trilobite terror posted:Are these all original characters that you’re drawing? I think getting people interested in them when they don’t know who Dillran is or why they should care is your biggest challenge right now. This is good advice, and I think it kind of zeroes in on a major flaw in my whole channel. The characters I've drawn (so far, there are videos with fan art of popular characters in the pipeline) are original...but they're not mine. My process has been to browse the r/characterdrawing subreddit, grab a character concept I found kind of interesting, record myself making art of that character, and then upload the video. I've been thinking of these as, like, process videos with a minimal focus on the characters because, for the most part, there's not a lot to go on for the characters other than, like, a mood board and a vague description. Dillran in particular was someone going "This is my character, he's a purple tiefling" and I had to take that and run with it. I guess I've been assuming people would be tuning in to see the process of making art, and if that's the case then I guess I should have the thumbnails focus on that rather than the characters?
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Jan 3, 2024 20:24
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