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Didn't realize this thread was here! I've had off-and-on ambitions of building a proper YouTube channel for awhile that keep getting sidelined by other obligations, but I think I'm at a point to put some actual effort and attention into it so I'm attempting another run. Channel URL: Drew Plays Games Type of crit wanted: Specific video feedback & general channel aim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZI23OHO8vk Any specific issues you want help on: Would like feedback on the video above. I spent longer than I probably should have on this video but I was trying to feel out & establish a tone to use moving forward. I have a bullheaded aversion to just doing things normally and wanted to take a slightly different approach to the oversaturated genre of "mediocre guy in his 30s talking about the games he liked when he was young," even if I'm still very firmly in that category. I would describe the end result as a store-brand Jeremy Parish, or a miniature "babby's first Noah Caldwell-Gervais video," but I also tried to be conscious of building a few short jokey segments that can stand alone(ish) as YT Shorts/FB Reels/TikToks/etc. Main things I'd like to know are: does the weird b-roll in lieu of standard talking head stuff work, and is it actually additive? And, is the presentation and my dorky analysis actually decent enough to work for a wider audience who has no pre-existing interest in the specific game I'm covering? Moving forward, I've got a rough idea of focusing on semi-obscure racing games, because that's an area I'm interested in that hasn't been mined completely to death that I've seen, but it's also super demoralizing to dump a bunch of hours into videos that get seen by 6 people. I'm not necessarily looking to turn YouTube into a full-time career, but I would like it to at least evolve past the "shouting into the void" stage and would like to know how viable that is with this type of content. Super appreciative of any feedback, thanks y'all!
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Jun 26, 2023 15:04
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That's the exact type of feedback I was looking for, thank you! Just to follow on up a couple points:Leng posted:Just how wide of an audience are you aiming for? Because while I did/do enjoy playing racing simulators in arcades, I don't actually enjoy playing them on emulators on a PC. I'd probably guess that I'm not actually part of the audience you're aiming for though my husband might be. (He plays a lot of racing games so I will get him to have a look and see if he has any comments.) Oh I certainly don't expect a "wide" wide audience with that sort of content, but I follow a handful of channels in a vaguely-similar "reevaluating relatively obscure older games" niche in the 100-300k subscriber range that regularly bring in 50K+ views on the lower-performing videos. I don't expect those numbers of course, but kind of use that as a rough framework that there is an audience for it beyond people with preexisting interest in the game being covered. FWIW I kinda view the target audience as the intersection between car nerds and gamers, who exist in a reasonably large quantity and I feel like there's not an overwhelming amount of content that caters to them outside of something like the simracing community, which isn't necessarily where I'd like to be. I've had consistently decent engagement with the sporadic car content I've created on various platforms over the years, and wildly inconsistent but occasionally great engagement on gaming content. I'd like to find some kind of middleground between those two worlds. Leng posted:[Great feedback on the thumbnail & title] Totally fair! The people/monsters are all from short asides/gags in the video (except for the cars which are from the game), the idea being that "wtf does Burt from Tremors/Tim Robinson/Random Lovecraft Tentacle Monster have to do with a racing game?" would be intriguing enough to click even if they don't recognize the specific characters (and trigger an "aha!" when they appeared). That definitely isn't how it's actually panned out, though! I'll chop the "Does it hold up?" and maybe the name off the title and rework the thumbnail because yeah, the CTR started out below 1% although it's been very slowly creeping up. Weirdly enough, the highest CTR on my channel (9.1%) is one of the older car videos with a randomly generated thumbnail from the video. The other video I did in that 'series' with a similar title and a 'proper' thumbnail is 3% lower ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Leng posted:[Great feedback on the video itself] Yeah I made a lot of deliberately weird choices with the camera footage here with the lingering opening shot, oddly-framed speaking footage, etc. I figured it would be a love or hate deal and that's exactly how it's played out, but with more leaning toward the "it's weird and offputting" end of the spectrum than I would've liked. Will try to either pull it back to something more typical or at least execute in a less bad way next time, hah. Good call on the different types of footage being confusing. The stuff with the animated background is all outside footage from other videos and the stuff in the CRT-style border is my gameplay footage. I did an abysmal job communicating that and that delineation is probably pretty unnecessary in the first place. Leng posted:[Great general feedback and advice] Without responding to every point because, like Trabant said above, that would be intolerable to read, I greatly appreciate the insights and you taking the time to give feedback. I especially didn't realize that YT scanned the thumbnail and video content for keywords, that will definitely inform my approach moving forward. Thank you! edit: Changed the thumbnail, adjusted the title, and used YT's trimming tool to cut out a chunk of the long intro shot 
SchwarzeKrieg fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 18:40
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