Are you wondering why your YouTube videos are not getting views? Don’t worry; you are not alone.
Many creators, even those with established channels and audiences, ask this question.
I will guide you through everything you’ve done wrong in this article. You may not have realized how you were messing up until now, but that’s precisely what we shall cover and get right to why your videos are not getting views and how to fix it ASAP.
- Why Your YouTube Videos Are Not Getting Views
- 1. Your YouTube Video Thumbnails suck
- 2. You Have No Consistency
- 3. Not Making Content For Your Viewers
- 4. YouTube Optimization Is An Afterthought
- 5. Your Audience Retention Rate Is Low
- 6. You’re Only Active On YouTube
- 7. Your Videos Do Not Provide Value
- 8. Horrible Audio Quality
- 9. You’re Not Engaging With Your Audience
- 10. Lack Of Patience
- Final Thoughts On Why Your Videos Are Not Getting Views
Why Your YouTube Videos Are Not Getting Views
I’m not going to be holding back now. Sometimes you need to hear what hurts to improve, so don’t get offended or upset if I say something you’re doing sucks.
This just means that you now know what to improve.
I’ve analyzed and helped hundreds of channels (in the comments of this article alone), and these are the common problems most have. When evaluating if you fall into any of these categories, you need to be honest with yourself.
1. Your YouTube Video Thumbnails suck
The first thing a potential viewer sees when your video appears in their home feed, on the sidebar, or in search results is your video thumbnail.
If your thumbnail doesn’t catch their attention with an accurate image or graphic showing what your video is about, that person will skip right past it.
It doesn’t matter how amazing your video may be or how well you’ve titled it; if your thumbnail doesn’t match that quality, it won’t be interesting for anybody.
And some more common mistakes I’ve made are using low-quality and low-resolution images or just using a bland picture taken as a screenshot from the actual video.
An image with good contrasts almost consistently outperforms similar flat designs because people just don’t notice the flat thumbnails.
So, if your video thumbnails suck, no one will give it a second thought, and you won’t get any views.
Solution:
Create relevant, contrasting, and exciting thumbnails.
You should use custom thumbnails (meaning don’t simply pick a screenshot from the video), and don’t be afraid to oversaturate and turn the contrast up a notch.
While it may look slightly over-processed in a larger format, it won’t look that way when viewed as a regular thumbnail on a smartphone, pc, or tablet.
2. You Have No Consistency
By not showing any consistency on YouTube, your viewers and subscribers have no idea when you’re going to post future videos, what your videos are going to be about, or what your channel is even about, so why would anyone subscribe?
This can also damage your video’s ability to rank on YouTube.
The algorithm places a lot of value on consistency, and by providing consistent value, your channel and view count will grow.
And consistency isn’t just about uploading a certain number of videos per month or week; it’s also about creating videos that have a similar topic, are visually recognizable, and have a similar message, like reviews, DIY tutorials, etc.
Consistency is the key to converting viewers into subscribers, and you can often see this when a video goes viral through social sharing.
The creator often just posted the video for the sake of sharing and doesn’t have much other similar content on their channel, and the millions of viewers they receive may translate to only a fraction of the actual view count.
Which is just a massive opportunity wasted.
Solution:
Be clear with what and when you’re going to post. Create a realistic upload schedule and try to stick to it.
Stay relatively within your niche and establish what type of videos you want to create, whether that’s tutorials, commentary, entertainment, information, etc.
Also, remember, by being consistent on YouTube, you’re giving the YouTube algorithm more information about your channel to suggest it to the right people interested in your videos.
And by creating videos consistently, each of those new videos increases your chances of the algorithm picking up your channel.
3. Not Making Content For Your Viewers
This tip is sort of tied to consistency but has more to do with what your audience wants.
A YouTube channel only grows when people visit that channel to watch videos that they are interested in.
And once you start uploading videos, you will start to build an audience, even if that audience is only 5 or 15 people at first, you need to start somewhere, and if those 5 to 15 people watch your new videos consistently, your channel’s videos will be shown to more people with similar interests.
Now, if you are not making videos for your audience, viewers and subscribers won’t be interested in watching more of your videos as nothing catered to them.
Practically, this could mean you have a channel reviewing laptops, but you also have an interest in Formula 1 races and review the driver’s performances.
Both are reviews that you’re interested in, but the viewers interested in laptops may not be interested in Formula 1 (especially since 2014), and vice versa.
This then results in no clicks on your videos, which therefore underperforms.
Solution:
Look at what your viewers want to see and what topics are the most exciting and watchable within your YouTube niche.
If you’re going for entertainment and humor, try incorporating some popular YouTube challenges into your content.
Or, if you’re in the tech niche, look at what viewers want to see in tech reviews and deliver it.
Check out your YouTube analytics to see which videos are performing the best for you, and you can then use these known topics of interest to create more relevant videos for your audience.
Also, look at the duration of the videos your audience is interested in; perhaps you can find the right viewers by using Shorts. YouTube Shorts can also be difficult to get views on, but you need to find a good way to align your content with your viewers.
4. YouTube Optimization Is An Afterthought
Too many people are just throwing videos out there and hoping for millions of views. And unfortunately, that just will not cut it as a feasible plan for getting views and growing on YouTube.
Not unless you already have a million+ subscribers and a community willing to share for you.
Which, let’s be real, you probably do not have, and even then, YouTube optimization can take those videos that extra step further.
So, if keywords, tagging, custom thumbnails, targeting, search volume, channel design, SEO, etc., all sound foreign to you and you’re not taking action in that direction, well, I have some good news.
You can get many more views by just implementing all of these things.
Most successful YouTubers still implement these things, even those with multimillion sub counts and billions of views. It’s that important.
And this isn’t only relevant for getting found in search results; optimizing videos also helps vlogs and more entertainment-based topics increase their reach.
You just need to focus on a few keywords/phrases for it to take its full effect.
Solution:
Implement YouTube video optimization.
That means incorporating YouTube SEO. Things like keywording should become second nature, tag fields should no longer be left empty, and you should spend more than just 2 minutes filling out a description.
This may sound quite intimidating at first, but thankfully, you can use some free tools to make this process easier.
TubeBuddy is one of my favorites, a great free browser extension that you can use to find the best keywords for your videos to improve your video optimization and a whole host of other optimization features.
5. Your Audience Retention Rate Is Low
Are viewers leaving your videos after only a few seconds, even though your videos are a couple of minutes long? Is watch time hard to come by, and viewers hardly stick around to the middle, let alone the end of your videos?
This means your audience retention rate is low, which hurts your channel for two reasons.
Firstly, YouTube’s algorithm favors watch time and channels that can hold the viewers’ attention for longer.
And secondly, if your viewers can’t sit through an entire video (or at least the main parts of it), they’re probably not going to be interested in subscribing or watching any of your other videos.
There are several reasons why your audience retention rate could be low; your intros are too long, your outro is too long, the audio is too loud, your voice is too monotone, too much pointless rambling, etc., etc., etc.
Solution:
First, we need to try and pinpoint the cause, and luckily, YouTube has a solution built right into the platform for this: YouTube analytics.
With YouTube Analytics, you can get a wide range of valuable information to help your channel grow.
Regarding retention rate, you can look at the average watch time of specific videos and when viewers most often leave your videos.
Allowing you to approximate the time that viewers are bouncing from your video, you can then look at what is happening and pinpoint the cause of your low retention rate.
Once you know what the problem is, correct it.
Protip: include cards at the times when people are leaving, linking to a relevant one of your videos. If you can’t keep people’s attention on a specific video, then the next best thing is to try and keep them at least on your channel.
6. You’re Only Active On YouTube
What other platforms are you currently also active on? Only YouTube?
With the variety of powerful online social networks, it’s a massive waste not to take advantage of the free resources at your disposal.
It may be challenging to get your YouTube channel rolling at first, but maybe you have a small following on Instagram already. Leverage that to get more views on your videos.
Even if you haven’t got an established following on any social networks or communities, your ideal audience may lurk within the walls of an enthusiastic subreddit or pinning away on Pinterest.
Facebook groups, Reddit, social networks, blogs, etc. YouTube may be the platform where you create your main content, but you can and should venture out into the wild. If your audience isn’t coming to you, go out to them.
Solution:
Be active and engage on platforms outside of YouTube. Promote your videos on other platforms, subreddits, Quora, share your YouTube videos on Facebook, etc. but do so mindfully and respectfully, respecting rules and being helpful first.
You can self-promote as much as you’d like on your platforms, but no one wants to see links plastered everywhere when engaging with communities.
Provide value, and by doing so, you’ll become a part of the community and offer your videos when appropriate.
Also, try sticking to a max of 3 platforms at first so that you don’t spread yourself out too thin, and don’t be shy to join forums or Q&A sites like Quora, as large platforms may be more challenging to get the ball rolling, but this can all be dependent on what type of videos you are making.
7. Your Videos Do Not Provide Value
Ask yourself this: Why should someone watch your video?
If you cannot answer that question, you’re probably not providing any value, and then why should someone spend their valuable time watching your videos?
Value is an integral part of being a YouTuber and is essential to recognize what you bring to the table in the viewer-YouTuber relationship.
You give them a reason to watch your videos, whether that’s entertainment, information, etc.; in return, they watch, like, subscribe, comment, share, and so on.
You cannot expect one without the other, and you may have to take a step back and look seriously at what you’ve been creating and ask yourself why someone would watch your videos.
Solution:
Take a step back, get the full perspective, and then create within context.
You need to be honest with yourself because there’s no point in wasting your own time. And when I say create within context, you need to understand the value you can provide.
We all have some type of value that can be shared because there will always be people that lack your knowledge; even if you’re not an expert in the field, they can still learn from you.
People will always share similar humor or just find you relatable.
Then look at what value your audience wants, what you can provide them with, and what is the most trending, searchable, and relatable topics within your niche. Then, start creating videos that answer questions, provide entertainment, and are what your audience wants to watch.
This also goes back to the previous point about making YouTube videos for your audience.
8. Horrible Audio Quality
When it comes to making quality YouTube videos, audio is often the most overlooked.
It can be hard to comprehend how important audio is when you’re starting, but just think of how many times you’ve watched a video with horrible audio.
Did you subscribe to that channel, or did you just bounce straight away as it became unbearable?
Audio quality is as important, if not more important, than your video quality.
A lot of times, people may be able to overlook a video shot on a potato camera as long as the audio is clear, crisp, and of good quality.
The same cannot be said of a great-looking video with audio recorded on a cassette player from the ’80s.
Solution:
First, realize that you should improve your audio before considering your video quality. The investment will represent a far better value if you can afford a high-quality microphone than a camera upgrade. You can, after all, get a great microphone for a fraction of the cost of a mirrorless camera.
The Rode NT-USB is a great high-quality USB condenser microphone with a pop filter and table stand included in the delivery.
Alternatively, a lavalier mic can represent excellent value for money at a much more affordable price.
Once you have a quality mic, the next step is removing unnecessary noise while filming.
Do not record into the wind if you’re vlogging (or use a dead cat/windscreen), and speak clearly.
If you find some interference in the audio, try turning on airplane mode on your mobile devices, as this can often solve the problem.
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, do not put loud music in your video when you’re talking/narrating/etc.
It may seem like an obvious tip, but I can’t tell you how often I still run into videos where I can’t understand a word the creator is saying, as their background music is just blaring away.
Pay attention to your audio.
9. You’re Not Engaging With Your Audience
Do people comment on your videos, and you just don’t respond to them?
Engaging with your audience creates a connection, and your channel becomes more important for the people you reply to and for the viewers who just see the interaction and can get a better sense of who you are.
By commenting, you’re showcasing more of your personality, which in return means it’s more likely that they will watch more of your videos favorably.
This means they’ll ask more questions, leave more comments, like your videos, and maybe even subscribe.
Engagement shouldn’t stop on your videos, though.
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of channels that will cross topics with your content that could have viewers interested in what you create.
Solution:
Be active in your community, whether on your channel, other YouTubers’ channels, social networks, blogs, face-to-face, and so on.
Be an active and valuable community member, and watch how that community will support you.
Also, reply to your comments and make sure to add value.
At the very least, use a personalized response to show that you’ve read the comment.
10. Lack Of Patience
So, it’s been two weeks since you started your YouTube channel, and you still haven’t gotten a million views. You might as well pack it up and move on then, right?
This is what I feel like shouting at people when they say they do not see any results when they’ve just started implementing these best practices and tips and just started taking their YouTube channel seriously.
What results can you expect to see in such a short space of time? If things could happen that fast, as the cliché goes, everyone would be doing it.
This is also one of the biggest differences between those that just started YouTube and those that are successful on YouTube; the ones that have the determination and patience are the ones that can reap the rewards.
Be patient.
Even those that seem to have skyrocketed to fame have required time to grow.
On the positive side, the growth scale on YouTube is exponential. You may only get a couple of subs a day at first, but as your channel grows, that couple will turn into dozens, which will turn into hundreds, then thousands, and then who knows, the sky is the limit.
Solution:
Allow at least four weeks before making judgments on changes you’ve implemented. Both for judging successes and failures on your videos and channel.
Give yourself and your videos enough time to reap the benefits of your work and look at improvements over a longer period than 24 hours.
Things may look like it’s starting to stagnate when you look at minor changes every 24 hours, whereas viewing your analytics and results every couple of weeks can present an entirely different picture.
A positive one if you’ve implemented these tips.
Final Thoughts On Why Your Videos Are Not Getting Views
As you can see, if you focus on what your target audience wants to see and create good content catered to them, you will get more views on YouTube.
This is often the main reason you have no views on YouTube.
Remember that patience is crucial to growth, but don’t be afraid to communicate with your audience to see what they may be interested in, which can speed things up.
Let me know what you’re struggling with in the comments below.
And if you want to scale up your channel faster, let’s work together.
Good tips but none of these are my problem. The YouTube algorithm just doesn’t give newER channels any cheddar like they did years ago. I grew 1000 legitimate subs easily years ago. Now, not so much.
Thanks, and I understand where you’re coming from. There is a lot more thought and planning required to grow a channel, as well as consistency, these days than in years past. Optimizing your videos effectively and choosing the right topics are still the best way to get views though, and then depending on the rest of your content and consistency, subscribers will follow.
My problem is my relatives not getting notified by my videos and they are viewing my videos but on views its stucked on a single number
Hi Omama,
Have you looked at the exact numbers in your analytics, the “shown” view count can often be quite inaccurate on a videos front end.
Also, have your relatives clicked on the bell-notification icon to be notified when you upload?
Best regards,
David
Hey thanks for posting these tips. I was wondering if you could check out my channel and let me know what I need to fix. It’s been a little past a month and only 28 subscribers. I’d appreciate it thank you
Hi Lilian,
As you’re just starting out, check through the comments here on other channels that are starting out.
Here are 3 main things to look at quickly though:
– Fix your channel banner.
– Implement Tags.
– LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS.
This page has become a resource of people not implementing long-tail keywords, but in addition to that, there are tons of things that you can find in the comments to implement on your channel which WILL grow your channel.
Have a look through and it is sure to help.
Best regards,
David
I am Issac I have started a youtube channel . I am not even getting 5 views in all . I am consistent I am uploading good thumbnail . I can even wait but I just need more than 30 views on my viedo without sharing to anyone
Hey Isaac, thanks for the comment.
Without seeing your channel, all I can say is to look to optimize your videos, provide value & be consistent.
Check out this Complete YouTube Optimization course I’ve put together (it’s free): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6JyIBGM87emaVInlHqDvC4bNUqzM5MMp
Let me know if you have any questions ?
Create valuable, informative, engaging content consistently. It would pay off for sure.
I published 55 videos to gain 314 subscribers. Now the channel shows a little growth everyday. I expect it would gain the traction further.
Hi Sibi,
Thanks for the comment, and good work so far.
I would suggest that you use the exact question keyword you’re targeting in your title, description, tags, etc.
I.e. the “MOTOR, BATTERY, and GEAR selection | Design YOUR own Electric Scooter” video would be better suited to “How to calculate the battery capacity for electric vehicle” which you’ve only included in the description, or “How to design your own electric scooter” which is in your tags.
These are far better long-tail keywords and you should focus on one of these and include it in the title to avoid confusion for the viewer & YouTubes algorithm.
This would be the main thing, to focus on a specific solution to someone’s problem and use that as your title. Currently, you’re providing a lot of information in your titles, but for the potential viewer, there’s no clear reason to click through or a clear solution to a problem they may have (or something they may want to do).
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
David
Hi David ,
I’ve been doing YouTube since January this year and I’ve only gained 75 subscribers , I wasn’t expecting thousands in my first year but I thought I’d atleast be close to 1K by now. The last 4-5 months I’ve been using more better keywords and titles and doing my own thumbnails which aren’t the best but I feel they are decent considering I do everything off my phone as I have no computer but my views is very low and I just don’t know what I’m doing so wrong to see basically zero progress. If you could check out my channel I’d appreciate any advice. Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5mtoYIS28YYc03IZuv6sNQ
Hey Joey,
Check through the comments here as I’ve replied to a gaming channel with similar problems.
Here are 3 main things to look at:
– LONG tail keywords
– Why should people watch your video, what’s your USP?
– Clearly visible in title & Thumbnails.
As I said though, check out the comments and the article here, there’s plenty of free information on this page alone.
Hope that helps. ?
Best regards,
David
Tips are good. But in My case My videos have 50-60% retention rate, 6-7% CTR. I post Thrice a week. Now my Channel has 28 videos. My even Use CTA to get subscribers. My audience engages a lot. But VidIq shows 40-60 SEO score for every video.
But YouTube is not pushing my videos. On many videos I have just 20-40 views and just 100 Impressions. What should I do?
In last 4 months I have got only 92 subs because YouTube is not pushing my videos.
Hey Yogesh,
Those SEO scores from VidIQ can be quite misleading with just the overall number. For example, you could use keywords in titles, descriptions, etc. and use them enough times to get your score up to 50, but those could be garbage keywords and the score would still reflect that (although the keyword score should also increase if they’re good, but again, then the score should be higher).
Just off of that and without having any other knowledge about your channel, I’d recommend looking into finding keywords and terms that people are looking for more. There’s no point trying to rank for keywords no-one is looking for.
Thanks David for your Insight, what would you recommend that I Go for While doing Keyword research. Because now I use VidIq and YouTube Search Box to find out the Keyword Volume and Competition. Let me know what you recommend because you know that 6 months is a lot of time and I am just at 100 subs. You can check my channel for better judgement https://bit.ly/YogeshPandey
Hi Yogesh,
I would recommend using thumbnails that clearly show what the video is about. Your thumbnails are clear in terms of quality, but the message and what the video is about isn’t clear without reading the title. I’d work on making that clearer. Also, you are putting a lot of external links in your descriptions. Aim for more internal links first.
Your descriptions can also go into more detail regarding the topics your videos are about. Give YouTube more context so that it can rank your videos appropriately. Also, utilize your keywords more frequently and look at what other online entrepreneur channels are using on their channel and make better content.
P.s. I noticed your descriptions didn’t have an affiliate disclaimer, don’t forget that you need to include a disclaimer if you’re doing affiliate marketing, which some of those links definitely are.
Best regards,
David
Hey David, Maybe What you are telling me is right. Can you take a look a my channel https://bit.ly/YogeshPandey and recommend me How should I do Keyword research.
Hey itz been 2 years 1st year i was not consistent but after that iam very much now itz nearly 150 videos avrg view is just 84 and iam dedicated and creating a lot which the audience prefer making tag thumbnail whatever is there still
Just 2099 hrs and 1.7I sub dont know what to do …cant think of giving up as this much effort will be of waste
Hi there Shilpa,
Congrats on the 1,7k subs first off. Now unfortunately I don’t understand Malayalam but from what I can make out from the thumbnails I’d guess you’re in the make/up and vlogging niches. There in is one problem, it isn’t immediately clear what your niche is. I would recommend focusing more on the make-up side if you enjoy that. Your thumbnails also seem quite busy and it’s difficult to tell what the videos about. Here I recommend to simplify things and make any text more contrasty to the image so it’s clear. SEO wise, your descriptions are quite bare and it will help you to provide more info about what the videos are about and to link to more videos. ?
Hi David,
I don’t have views in my youtube, what should I do? Please check my channel
https://m.youtube.com/c/JJDineros
Hi Jessica,
Please have a look at the comments here as your main issue is Keywording & you will find at least 10 relevant things I’ve mentioned in reply to other comments. Also, I’ve addressed the majority of these things in the article.
I’ll be happy to help you specifically if you implement the things mentioned and you’re still having trouble. ?
Best regards,
David
new channel 2 months in and 40 videos. 30 subscribers
I used a tag generator and youtube doesnt use any of them.
could use help.
thanks
Campbell’s Freedom Farm
Hi Sabrina,
Having looked at the last 3 videos on your channel, it doesn’t seem like you’ve been utilizing the tags section properly at all. There seems to be max 4 tags included with things like “live” & “recently uploaded” being used.
The tags is a section to provide YouTube with more context about what your video is about and how people should find your videos. Use all 500 characters available. ALL of them. If someone says you can play the lottery 100 times, are you only going to enter 3 tickets? Make use of everything YouTube is giving you and the tags are a relatively easy way to make a big difference.
I don’t know what tag generator you’re using, but I would recommend TubeBuddy for reliable tags, even the free version is great at suggesting tags you may not have thought of. Furthermore, think about what would your audience be typing into YouTube in order to find your videos. For example, your deck building video, this is targetted at people interested in building their own deck as well, so use things they would type in your tags, for example, “How to build a deck”, “Deck building for beginners”, “DIY Deck Build”, “Garden inspection before a deck build” and things like that.
Provide more information to YouTube so that the algorithm knows what it should do with your video.
Does that make sense? ?
Hey thanks for posting these tips. I was wondering if you could check out my channel and let me know what I need to fix. It’s been a little past a month and only 35 subs. I’d appreciate it thanks. Andy Mcnav Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKxe6_OezvSfFol8pA8KEBw
Hey Andy,
The first steps can be a quite hard, but you’re on a good way.
With only 7 videos and after a month it can be quite difficult to make any definite judgments, I’d say go over numbers 2, 3 & 4 from this article as you seem to have a variety of different topics and should stick to one or two to build a following interested in those topics. YouTube optimization is also something that can be improved upon quite a bit. I’d first off recommend making full use of the Tags feature on YouTube, and I’d fill out your channel’s tags.
You seem to be doing alright in terms of getting views as your channel is still very new, but to convert more viewers to subscribers, I recommend making it easier for them to subscribe. Put a subscribe link in the comments, pin it to the top so people see it when they scroll down, do the same for your description. Link to your videos so people stay on your channel and will see more of your content and then be more likely to subscribe.
Work on how your channel looks when people visit it. Set up relevant playlists and showcase them on your channel front page, create a higher quality Channel banner image which highlights what people should expect from your channel (Covers & Fitness for example). Fill out the channel description so viewers can make a deeper connection with you. (also fix your Instagram link, it seems to be broken)
These are just a few quick changes I know will make a big difference for you Andy, I’d recommend checking out my recent article on getting monetized fast, you can check out my youtube archives for it or use search.
I’d also recommend Canva as a free tool to create a high quality channel banner easily. ?
Hi
A very interesting blog you have written.
I have recently started making food videos on youtube but my channel is not getting any views. I put alot of time and effort into it. Iv been working on tags, title and thumbnails but nothing seems to be working.
This is my channel link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo2TAcyMhsAcT8Vgbq1heoA
Hi Seher,
Thanks for commenting.
I’ve taken a look at your channel and these videos are perfect for Facebook & Pinterest. I’d recommend also sharing onto those platforms and linking to your YouTube channel (occasionally on Facebook only).
Your channel is still very new, so I wouldn’t worry about the subscriber numbers right now, you first need some more content!
Your video titles, I would remove SIMS cooking from the title, it’s your channel name and no-one is searching for it (and it’s your channel name, so it’s already right there). I like that you’ve included “recipe” in your videos, but I would include additional terms like “How to make XYZ”, “The best XYZ Recipe”, “Quick & Easy XYZ Recipe”, “How to Make XYZ in ABC Minutes” “…without an oven”, etc. I stress long-tail keywords in pretty much all my articles and if you look through these comments, it’s probably the thing I’ve mentioned the most. They are REALLY IMPORTANT. Especially for new channels.
I’d rework your channel tags as well, get rid of the SIMS cooking again (conflict with the video game probably as well) add what your speciality is, so stick with the Indian recipes, etc. but add some LT keywords, like “recipes in XYZ minutes” etc.
Add more video tags and use the LT keywords & LSI keywords in the your tags and then write them in natural sentences in your descriptions.
And link internally to other recipe videos and playlists. ?
That’s just a few suggestions I have that will improve your channel, I hope that you can implement them fast. ?
Best regards,
David
hello,
i need some help about views
i upload videos every other day
since 1 month i got 60+ subs
but the problem is
when i gap on uploading video
views stops coming (gaming channel)
my channel==>>> BAKROASTER
Hi Naresh,
You’re still early, so the first thing is that you should just keep ongoing. YouTube growth can be exponential when it comes to getting views and one video can be the one that breaks the ice ceiling.
As for the videos, they’re targeting a very competitive scene, and going after less competitive keywords can help you make way into the niche.
I would recommend LT & LSI keywords, so for this niche and the videos you’re doing, think really long tail keywords-> “best trolling of noobs in pubg mobile funny moments” for example would be ONE keyword that would be the main keyword to target and these type of keywords can be your entry into the high view videos. Also, look at what your competitors are doing and add similar wording to your title, keywords, descriptions, etc. to “piggyback”.
Add some more to your description and use your keywords in natural sentences, and work on linking to other videos as well as playlists.
Best regards,
David
Non of these-tips helped one bit.
Is it possible that some of us just are not likable people?
Hey Robbie,
Even unlikable people would be relatable to other unlikable people. ?
This isn’t a popularity contest, it’s very simple: Provide value consistently & optimize your videos so the people looking for the value find out.
What’s your channel? Maybe I can help. ?
Cheers,
David
Hi David. I’ll have to agree with CourseNode.
Other than #6, faithfully I have followed your nine other suggestions since my channel began 15 months ago. While I have seen some growth, there are many other travel channels posting similar topics but with exponentially higher views and subscriber counts.
I could point out differences between Borders on Budgets with other channels, though that could be subjective.
So, what do you recommend to achieve more growth?
Hi Matt, thanks for the comment.
Overall it comes down to the implementation of the tips above.
I had a quick look at your channel and I’d recommend working on your channel optimization.
Some tips for your channel I found upon cursory viewing:
Your Thumbnails don’t provide much context (apart from the country), your channel name is in all your video titles (?) with the main keywords and focuses often cut off towards the end, the videos I looked over had tags that weren’t the actual keywords in your titles and weren’t found in the description, etc.
I believe you also aren’t targetting the optimum keywords for your audience (long distance train trippers, hiking, etc.) I recommend using more searchable terms as your main key phrases and considering these whilst filming aswell.
Furthermore, your channel isn’t set up, i.e. when someone looking at your channel visits your channel page to decide whether they want to subscribe or not, there is nothing there for them to see. There’s no top videos, channel trailer or latest video autoplay, no schedule when they can expect new videos and your channel itself doesn’t have any tags.
Hope these tips can help you on your Russian adventure.
Best regards,
David
Great tips I’m not a tiny youtuber but I changed content and it hurt me massively I’m hoping that time will heal my channel as I feel my titles and thumbnails are good as I replicate the popular ones
Definitely, if you have the consistency to push through you can make it happen.
Hello david i have some questions
first sorry for my bad english
my channel is 6 week old we have 27 videos and in the first 24hours from uploaded video we get 30 views but after that nothing maybe like 40 views per 48hours? what changes we need to do thanks
Hi Erdon & Bajram,
great to hear you’ve started a channel and are making some progress.
For long term views, make sure you are optimizing your videos well to appear in search results and to appear in the suggested areas on YouTube.
After a quick look on your channel, your descriptions can be used to describe the content of the video more. There appears to only be one sentence that’s pretty much just repeating the title and not providing any more context or utilizing any similar keywords and phrases.
Also, judging by the latest video, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of overlap on the tags you’re actually using and the title and description of the video. The tags are very competitive, but the main long-tail keyword isn’t present in your tags. This should be one of your first. ?
P.s. I like your profile pic.?
I was continuously laughing at my self how i was horrible at many of the aspects you pointed out.
Thanks buddy I’ll try to fix it.
Glad I can help Kumar.
Goodmorning David
My channel is not improving atall
Just 8 subs and 700 views
Please what changes can I make
Thank You https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg9B_yhRxqDFbd12w7SoRJg
Hi Gift,
Please look at the best practices in the article and then implement them. I’ve gone over the problems on your channel a number of times already in the comments for channels with similar problems, so have a look through the feedback I’ve given them, I don’t want to have to repeat myself here. ?
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
I have over 141,000 + subscribers … I’m starting to hate YouTube … I made more money on YouTube when I have 10,000 subs … I took a break and now I’m back uploading consistently but the views are soooo low it’s sad … the content i post is amazing but maybe I need to switch it up because at this point I’m getting discouraged
What type of content are you posting now, what were you posting before?
How long have you been away? Are you optimizing your videos to be found?
I’ve been on YouTube for a month & a half right now, & I haven’t gotten 0 subs from strangers (24 subs from people I know). I also upload daily content. I’ve also tried sharing it through social medias (reddit,Facebook, IG) but it hasn’t been working. What am I doing wrong ? Channel Name : HuskStation
Hi Alex,
First, a month and a half isn’t an awful long time, but definitely a time span that you should be seeing better results than that.
So having a quick glance at your channel, you’ve been themed with your thumbnails, intro etc. But I would say that the intro is way to long, 20 seconds of intro is about 18 seconds too much. What’s the point of an intro? I’d scrap it entirely and let the people get straight to the content.
The purple consistency is good, but the thumbnails are frankly quite mundain and don’t capture the attention, or let me know what the video is about beside what game it is. There are tons of gameplay videos out there, why should people watch yours? Try highlighting the main topic of the video in the thumbnail whilst incorporating some form of “wow” effect. This can just be a screenshot with some form of shock, or impressive feat that happened in that particular video.
I’d also target keywords more specifically. I.e. Your retro games are titled and seem to be targetting the specific game title, but unless you’re doing a speed run, no-one is searching for super mario 64. Try targetting retro gaming keyphrases and use long tail keywords as your channel is still new and hasnt gained credility in the eyes of the algorithm yet.
P.s. It’s worth saying again, ditch the 20 second intro, it really doesn’t provide any value to your viewers or your channel. Once people watch more of your videos, they’ll notice who you are.
Cheers,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for your wonderful tips and I am also followed for my channel. I just started my channel and getting all traffic from external sources. Can you please suggest me what I am doing wrong in my channel in terms of keyword, thumbnail, and overall performance.
Hi Sanjay, from what I can see, it looks like you’re doing OK having just started 3 weeks ago. I would recommend focusing on something more specific as it seems like your niche is quite broad. Think about why should people subscribe to your channel and why should your current viewers watch new videos when they’re not remotely related to the topic they subscribed for. As for your thumbnails, try testing out one design and focus on one thing instead of trying to get everything into the picture. Cheers ?
Great advice david .it was a great read. can you please give me some suggestion on how can i bring more traffic to my channel n what more should i do to get more subs n view… hoping for a reply
My channel link:
https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UC2xZ2wBYO8d0Hcs_QpUXMxw.
Hi Rita,
Thanks for the comment.
I’ve had a look at your channel and the first thing I notice is that I cannot tell what this channel is about immediately. Even once I look at the thumbnails.
So what I would recommend is to go through this article again and implement the tips one by one, pay special attention to making your thumbnails more attention-grabbing, sometimes less is more and you don’t need to overwhelm viewers with everything in a thumbnail, focus on the hero of the video and put it front and centre in the thumbnail, add SOME text if the hero isn’t clear enough. ?
Check out another article in my Youtube category on how to set up your Youtube channel, as you can then make your channel page more enticing for viewers and set up channel tags.
Best regards,
David
Thank you for a great article! I didn’t think I’ll find such useful info why I googled “why no views YouTube videos” lol. Could I try to get a free channel audit from you too? I’ve started my daughter’s channel almost 2 months ago but the number of subs and views are not good. Thank you!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoKjiHnBQOmBf773ZdrAygg
Hi Tea,
Two months is really not that long and new channels need time to build momentum and generate views, I see you’ve already got a few videos with 70+ views, which is alright for a channel your size. Videos seem to be quite short though, intro is unnecessary, keywords are competitive (Long-tail keywords as I seem to mention in every comment ?, especially in tags). Thumbnails are eye-catching though, so just keep at it, YouTube growth is exponential. ?
P.s. Include a call to action to get people to subscribe-> Tell people what’s in it for them instead of what’s in it for you (i.e. reaching 100 subscribers needs to go), include it in your description, the video & you can even add it to the comments.
Hope this helps,
best regards,
David
Hi Matt!
I just started my YouTube channel about a month ago. Now I know it’ll take some time but some of my videos aren’t getting any views at all. I’m definitely going to incorporate these tips.
Ok
Hello. I know all of this and I have already done all of this, but still it seems to be a curse over a channel that I am trying to grow. The weird thing is that my other channel where I sometimes post random stuffs, gets a lot more views than the channel I am trying to be serious with. Very strange
Hi Veejay, it all really depends on how you are implementing these things.
Cheers,
David
How long does it take for a person to have millions of views? So far I’ve posted two videos and the thumbnails are eye-catching, and my videos are the ones that are trending in youtube right now.
Hi Renz, it can take weeks & months to start to generate hundreds of thousands of views. YouTube is (generally) about building up momentum, growth is exponential, as your videos start to rank, your channel as a whole can prosper and other videos can also rank. As a new YouTuber, I would recommend looking at making videos that can target specific keywords in order to get “solid” views. Once you’ve built up a small following, it can be easier to capitalize on trending topics as long as they also interest your following.
Cheers,
David
Hi,
Great content,
Can you kindly check my channel and give me advice, please?
Hungry Books
Hey there,
Your channel is about 3 weeks old I see and you’ve started implementing many things I have discussed in this article. I would suggest researching your video topics beforehand to create videos that cater to the keywords people are looking for. I would also suggest providing more info, in the channel banner for example, on what the channel is about and why people should subscribe, books are a wide topic, and adding book summaries would avoid a lot of confusion. Additionally, I would also provide more internal linking in your descriptions & fill out your description, use Playlists more for what people are searching for and add more info to your playlists to optimize them. A big thing I will change is to remove the welcome message and subscribe being the first thing people see in every video.
Cheers,
David ?
Hi David,
Thanks so much for all the useful tips!
It’s now 2 years since I started my food channel and I have not been getting views despite my hard efforts at making the videos.
Please can you quickly browse through my channel and make some suggestions?
https://youtu.be/mHG6RoXhljE
Hi Sujatha,
thanks, I would recommend using more channel tags and making your thumbnails more contrasty.
Link internally to other videos as well as playlists and change your channel banner to something with better quality (canva is free & a great tool for this). I would also make more playlists and focus more on the vegetarian aspect (I only noticed it once I was in your about section I should be finding this immediately as it’s a popular topic right now)
That should be enough to get started with for now. ?
Best regards,
David
Hi,
What a great blog! I been on youtube for five years and been struggling gaining subs. I started off in 2013 posting random videos for fun and then towards 2015 i started taking it seriously. I have two trending videos that gained thousands of views, but after i still didn’t see any growth. I post once a week (every Sunday) and share them to all my social accounts. You mentioned to have value in your content. My aim for my channel is to gravitate to people who are bored and need entertainment.
Could you take a look at my channel and provide feedback on something i should work on? Is it my thumbnails that are lacking, my videos, my description, my titles, my topics. I just do not know.
My Youtube Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/TreyDewitt
Thanks!
Hey Trey,
Thanks for the comment and the compliment, much appreciated! ?
As for your channel, I can see you’re going after trendy/vlog related topics, which is OK, if you can create something regularly with shock value. This is what would be the entertainment value you’re referring to. This shock factor is what locked in the viewers to the popular videos on your channel, asking your crush out for example, is something that’s open ended, relatable & something you really can only find the answer to if you actually click through & watch the video.
Your thumbnails are overall ok, but the titles of videos & the content in the thumbnail leave me wondering what’s the video about and don’t provide me with any reason to click through. If your titles aren’t being used to rank for SEO keywords, then you should utilize them in a way that viewers are left with a question. I.e. the first time baking video, the question would be, how did it come out, and the result is already in the title, which leaves nothing left for the imagination. One of the videos that caught my eye, would be the TikTok video you made recently, it caught my eye, but the title & thumbnail didn’t align. Looking at the thumbnail, I presumed it was a fails video because of the word fail & the TikTok logo, but then the title is talking about some mystery.
If you’re going to explain something, you might as well target the people that are looking for an explanation of that thing to avoid confusion & to take advantage of the other people putting the questions in their minds; in this case, Emma Chamberlain.
I recommend highlighting the hero of your video in the thumbnail with some element of suspense. For example, the recent hair dying video, because of the thumbnail size, it’s quite difficult to even see that you’ve masked over your hair and the question mark is quite small and doesn’t capture attention. Make things more obvious, people scroll past videos quickly.
Titles, I think I’ve mentioned enough to make the changes in that regard, so onto descriptions & some basic YouTube optimization, I see you’re missing.
1. Include more internal links and create a path for viewers to watch more of your videos. Link to similar videos & playlists so viewers that enjoyed your videos can easily find similar content. If you’re linking two videos together, it’s far more likely from a visitors perspective to think that those videos are similar and they would also enjoy that.
2. Describe your videos more. Use about 300 words to describe what your videos about, the main topic of the video, some things that could be interesting and maybe add some value in the description. Help YouTube understand what your video is about so that the bots can recommend it to the right people.
3. YouTube Tags: Use tags to describe your video and to target search terms, a lot of the tags for the TikTok video, for example, are not representative of your video. “Becoming TikTok Famous in 24 Hours” has nothing to do with the video topic, it could be a video to make, and that could be the main keyword to go after for that video, but this video it is irrelevant and the video will not rank or become associated with that keyword because it is so off topic.
4. Utilize the tags sparingly throughout your description. So once you’ve got tags that accurately describe the video, you should include them in your description in a natural way without spamming them everywhere.
5. Channel Tags, add some channel tags to help classify the content on your channel. Look for the main topics & subtopics.
6. Update your about description to describe what viewers can come to expect on your channel. What is it they will receive when they subscribe & what type of videos do you make. How often do you make those videos (which you have included, which is good), if there a particular style of video you focus on, Are you a humour based channel, what’s your video inspirations and just give the viewers a reason to subscribe instead of only telling them subscribe and turn on notifications. Instead something like “subscribe with notifications on for XYZ…”, dazzle them and reassure any doubts they may have. Be clear.
7. Why is your subscriber count off? No-one is checking up on you to see if you’ve lost or gained a couple of subscribers Trey, if anything, having a smaller sub count whilst creating good content could be a reason for people to actually WANT to share your content as they could see you of deserving more subs and wanting to help. It also doesn’t help you asking people to subscribe to reach a particular goal when they can’t actually see the goal themselves, for all they know, you could just be lying, which is no way to go about building a rapport with your audience.
Anyway, I’ve gotten a little carried away in the comment section here. ?
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Nice
Hello, David!
Thanks for the tips, but I am not sure on how to apply them to my channel. At first, it seems to me that I’ve taken all the steps mentioned: I’ve upgraded the quality of my videos, thumbnails and my YT game in general, studying analytics and using Tube Buddy. I’ve also studied other channels in the same niche (tarot readings) and fail to see how any of the problems I thought could mess up with my results can be relevant. After doing everything you’ve suggested, I started considering that being a non-native speaker of English could be an issue for instance. But I see many tarot related channels from non-native speakers with a wide range of variation when it comes to image quality (and even thumbnails) that have reached <5000 followers in less than 6 months. I'm entering my seventh month and don't know what to do. If you can check my channel, I'd be truly grateful: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFUNB9HJ5Mk4Yf1KwDFrsZw?view_as=subscriber
Hi Sabine,
I’ve had a look at your channel and you do seem to be on the right track. Well done. ?
Some suggestions:
1. Utilize your long-tail keywords more. I.e. in your august predictions video, your main long-tail keyword (AUGUST 2020 TAROT PREDICTIONS) is NOT in your description at all and it is also not in your meta tags.
2. Include up to 10 channel keywords that are relevant to you, currently, there are 3 used from what I can tell and I’m not sure they are all even relevant to your current content.
3. I see your thumbnails have improved, but I don’t think the yellow text provides enough contrast and stands out to capture attention. I would play around with some other colors. ?
4. Look into making more content people are looking for, and focus on what they’re searching for. I.e. “tarot reading next relationship” seems to be something good for you to target (this exact keyword).
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
HI! Great suggestions but i believe i am working good on all of the above, but my subscribers and views are not rising as much its been 2 months of opening a channel and i have less than 200 subs
Also I am promoting the video at different platforms. Could you please have a look at my channel and advice something? Channel name : An Actor”s Craft
This is the channel link :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE_eGuLDMsSmFtaJwfbNbtA/
Hi Arvind,
Thanks for the comment. ?
I’ve had a look at your channel and you’re still quite fresh with 16 videos, but you’re heading in a good direction.
Firstly, the content seems to be on point, helpful, and providing value to your viewers and your thumbnails seem to also be alright.
I would look into making some of them slightly clearer and the text more contrasty/eye-catching.
I.e. Body language of an actor, with the face as a focal piece, doesn’t strike me as being the best picture to represent the video, perhaps an actor standing in a confusing way would be more applicable and entice people to click through.
On the body language video for example again, you can focus more on long-tail keywords that viewers would be looking for. I.e. “How to improve body language in acting” would be the ideal LT keyword for this video for your channel IMO. I see in your tags you have “online acting classes for beginners” as a tag, however, these tags are not included in your description in a natural sentence. Something like “free online classes for beginners” could be an LT tag to build content around and have your channel become associated with those terms.
I would recommend including up to 10 channel keywords as well and creating and optimizing playlists on the different acting aspects you are looking into.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Hi,
Thanks for this great post. Having read all, I believe my channel ticks most of the boxes. I am very consistent, post mostly every week and sometimes once a week. I believe my content also adds value but i don’t think youtube pushes my content to my audience. Even my own subscribers to get to watch when i post. I have almost 4000 subs, according to youtube analytics only about 500 of my subscribers are able to get notification when i have new videos and out that number only about 7 click to watch. can you please take a look at my channel to check what i’m doing wrong https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEca-g_4jpt2spFgyUcOJgg
Hi Sombili,
Thanks for the comment ?
From a quick look, it seems like your videos are a bit too diverse for your audience, even under the lifestyle umbrella, not everything is interesting for everyone.
I would say hacks/life tips seem to be the most interesting topics, along with humor (like the worst reviews).
Your thumbnails seem to be a bit wild, but what you can clearly see is that less busy thumbnails perform MUCH better than the thumbnails where there are 3+ pictures and text aswell.
Stick to the hero of the video in the thumbnail, a lot of the times that is you, and what you’re doing/have done and that resonates well with your audience. These people are following you for you and not for the content, so put yourself more in the thumbnail. This would also be why so few click through as they can’t tell what the video is about or even that it’s your video.
Great stuff though and I hope that this helps you. ?
Cheers,
David
I’m in a similar boat — approaching 18K subs but only 550 bell notifications get sent out. Why isnt YT sending notifications to all 18K subs?? Its like a fraction of my subscribers get my content, and it reflects in poor view rates and comments. Meanwhile other channels in my niche with similar, less or slightly more subs have massive views and comment engagement which tells me their videos get pushed to ALL their subscribers. I’m not sure if there’s a bug with YT since they moved to the bell system or what. It just doesn’t make sense if nearly 18K people subscribed, but only 550 get notified in YT analytics… something is wrong.
Any ideas? Is there a way to contact YT about this?
Hey Sean,
I hear you, the bell system is at least a way for subscribers to be guaranteed a notification though, before they introduced the change, the notifications would be random or non-existent and could result in videos underperforming purely based on the raffle. Best bet is to try to get viewers to hit the bell icon and get your videos out when the majority of your viewers are active. Also general CTR tips are very much applicable in order to get your videos spread effectively.
Hope that helps, otherwise let me know what your channel is and I can take a deeper look.
Cheers,
David
I started youtube channel 4 months before, 120 subscribers and views are very few. Will it seriously take 2 years for me to reach 4000 watch hours.
Hey,
When it comes to getting subscribers and reaching that break, it’s often an exponential thing and one video can trigger your channel to explode. This is why you should focus on a specific niche and have similar videos, when a video does become popular, your entire channel as a whole can then benefit from the traffic, not just the one video.
Cheers ?
Hey David,
Could you check out my channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/INVESTINGWITHM
I know my niche doesn’t get big views but I used to get 40k with 1k subs. The channel is bigger now but views have dropped. Every stat I know is good. ctr 10 avg. Engagement 40-50%
What do I do I am not getting the same amount of impressions I was getting before.
Please help
Hi M,
First off what I notice is that your thumbnails all look the same. So when someone sees it in their feed, there’s a good chance that people will think they’ve already seen the video & skip past it, drastically interfering with the videos potential performance. This is something I would change immediately & would be the main restriction, as I don’t know anything about your niche & you’ve already said it isn’t a big view niche, your views look alright and the thumbnails similarity would be the major difference maker IMO. #
Cheers,
David
Hi David,
Kindly review my channel. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Nvyl0HIMKb2dfU0m2eLKg
I was not consistent for quite a while, however in the last four months I have taken Youtube seriously. I have noticed increased subscribers however I strongly feel my videos do not get as much views for a channel my size (almost 150 videos). I don’t know what I am doing wrong, it just feels it’s going no where despite being consistent in posting. How can I get my channel to explode come alive?
Thank you.
Hi Hira,
You seem to be having a niche problem, with the majority of your viewers interested in Food content and the majority of your current content being lifestyle. I would drop your name from the title as it’s already in your channel name and just wasting valuable space you can use for improving your findability.
Add more context to your titles and descriptions to help Youtube classify them appropriately so viewers can find them. That means, think about what people would type or what could convince someone to click on your video. I.e. for your moving to Canada video, the first part is fine but it can be improved and increased for context. “Top 5 Major Reasons To Move To Canada – life in canada for Pakistani immigrants”
The same can be said about your description. As you’re making content on such a wide variety of topics, you need to use this space to say what it’s about and don’t be shy to throw in your main keywords in natural sentences (1/2 times per 300 words).. Make your descriptions (the actual part describing the video, excluding links, etc.) at least 300 words long and use your video meta tags in that description. ?
Best regards,
David
Hi
Can you cheak my channel? please https://www.youtube.com/c/SNMAXPRO/videos
I have 62000 subs right now
I deleted a lot of my videos, there were a total of 20 million views
then I decided to make “Do it yourself” videos
now the view is very low
how can i fix this
Hi Sahrab,
What content was being posted before? Why did you change your niche?
For viewers & for YouTube, your “new” channel has no authority in this new niche so it’s like starting from zero unless you are able to link the two niches and use that to leverage your way over into this new niche. Unfortunately, I can only give you some suggestions once I know what the old niche was and the old content as changing of niches is generally something that should be done slowly as to not alienate the audience.
Give me some more info and I’ll take another look.
Best regards,
David
Hi!
We do have our Theme Park channel since 2006 (!) have millions of view and most videos did good. Over 1100 videos now.
From a few videos a month now 5 vids a week and then….. since about 1 year everything collapsed…. have tried everything…. thumbnails (with text), emoji’s, better titles and and descriptions, descriptions with the best playlist, etc, but every video keeps hanging about 200 views now… and that with 35.000 subscribers. Also nobody reacts on questions/polls, etc. So frustrating. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Hi,
Very strange, without seeing the analytics, and being able to judge your audience’s interests, I’d add more detail to your titles, as your views seem to generate over time, with the best performing videos being multiple years old. Add more action to the thumbnail to get people to convert and with that number of subscribers and a website, I would utilize additional sources you may have (potentially an email list or Facebook page if you have one?).
I would also work on your playlist optimization and include terms that people are searching for. Include more detail in the playlist descriptions.
Action does seem to be the sticking point though and I would include more action in the thumbnails as that seems to be how the niche has developed over the years. People can see Disneyland videos, but now they want to have the FP experience on a ride, or front and center and you should showcase that your videos have that in order to get the click-through.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
hello
you are the best, but you know i created my channel 1 week ago and i started to posting my covers of songs and i used tags,good title,good thumbnails, and anything that any users use for them channel and videos but can you believe it i didn’t even get 1 view!!!!!!
and when i search my video it barely find and i made my channel and videos public and use category but i sick of it really, i tried everything in 2 past years to collect view or subs for my covers but it didn’t work out…..
plz help me???
Hey Moha,
Thanks for your comment, but please, go through this article, each point one by one, and put the effort in as you can only see results if you put in the work.
It’s doable and it may take time, but you need to FIRST put in the work. There is so much more that you can do to improve your videos findability and nothing from this article has been done.
Please implement and get back to me in a few months. ?
Your article is quite helpful! I have so many questions, and you have answered many. Thank you! Such a nice and superb article, we have been looking for this information about why your YouTube videos are not getting views. Indeed a great post about it!!
Thanks ?
Hey David,
Phenomenal blog. Very informative. In my case, I have a doubt on whether I am using the proper keywords in my video description because I don’t know exactly where to find those “APT” keywords and place them on the description part of my videos that could gain more impressions for me. Could you please take a look at my channel and suggest me some changes that could improve my views and subscribe count?
Hi Varun, thanks. ?
Congrats on the 200 subs. ?
As for changes, Your thumbnails seem quite monotoned and don’t really stand out. Text is fine, but maybe shorten it up and make it larger and use more contrasty colors. I would recommend white instead of the mustard yellow for example. Without watching all your videos, are you providing insight to the questions posed? In which case, rephrasing something like “Do emotions cloud your judgment?” to “How to stop emotions from clouding your judgment” provides a clearer reason why someone should click on your video.
Also, you are using the meta tags and the description, but the main keywords are not present, the main long-tail keyword like “Do emotions cloud your judgment?” is not present in either of the description of tags.
I also notice you’ve changed niche from the previous years and your logo & name doesn’t make sense to me (perhaps something cultural I am unaware of).
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
An excellent guide. I’m so glad I stumbled across this.
I REALLY need your help.
I’ve been creating and uploading videos for a little over a year and I only have 27 subs and I get hardly any views.
My niche is video games news so I undertand that there is some big competition, however I do upload consistently on a schedule and my videos are always 100% on topic:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFnnpbEjWa1puaaAm2EO0g?view_as=subscriber
I have taken your advice on thumbnails and will begin implementing the strategy on my next video.
Cheers,
Michael.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the comment. After taking a quick look at your channel, I see you’re in gaming news but are targeting very competitive keywords. Try long-tail keywords and incorporating some elements of anticipation into your titles, give the viewer a reason to click through to your video, as the current titles provide all the info, why would someone need to then watch it? Or is there more info? You see, there’s no reason for someone to click through as the benefit for them isn’t clear.
Hope this helps. ?
Regards,
David
Hi, have started on youtube uploading a month ago but have only been uploading often recently. I have 10 subs would you have a quick look at what I could improve on please as and let me know here.
Thank You
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWIFez8NC98L3qy2GLMtkqw?view_as=subscriber
Hi Jolene,
My advice as you’re still starting out is to find a niche or find something you enjoy making videos about and then stick to it. I can help you grow, but you ultimately need to find out what it is you want to make videos about, once you’ve got that, it’s pretty much just a matter of following the steps I’ve laid out in this post, in some of my other posts, or checking through the comments on the feedback I’ve given to some channels that are a little bit older already.
Keep at it ?
Best regards,
David
I really loved your content and I really appreciate you for responding each and every one of us. I have be publishing videos in youtube from 2018 but not consistently. But, for the last 33 days, daily am publishing video still am not getting any legit subscribers or views. Please Gimme an idea or any clarification. Thanks in advance.
One of my Videos link here,
https://youtu.be/29tZf2YhJYk
Cheers.
Hi Raj,
Thanks for the comment. ?
I’m going to need more information, as I only see lofi music tracks… Are these your own tracks? I don’t know anything about the genre, so I’m not sure what people are looking for, but it seems like you’ve just put in the track name and a quick genre type… Ok, after a quick google & check on YouTube search, I can see the competitive terms would be related to what you would be doing in the background, as you’re a small channel, I would therefore recommend targeting long-tail keywords that incorporate these keywords… I.e. “beats to relax to” would be the competitive keyword, and what you could target for example would then be “Lofi beats to relax to relax to at home whilst chilling in 2020”.
That’s just a quick example of literally 2 minutes of research since reading your comment & checking out your channel, check out the resources on my site for more ways to incorporate these keywords into your titles, tags & descriptions, and install the tubebuddy extension to gauge the competitivity of keywords and find less competitive ones. All the info is on my site, but for a more step by step method, feel free to check out my YouTube SEO course. ?
Hope this helps
Best regards,
David
Hello David, it’s a very good reasons about why my channel didn’t grow, but it’s been more than 6 months since i uploaded a video on youtube and i already use hashtag, titles and description, and a ‘good’ thumbnail (i think it’s a good thumbnail, please take a look https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMfkI0G_78mG4yfkl_qy1yA/videos do you think it’s good) and i also make videos that gets the most views; edamame milk, oatmeal, oatmilk, lotus biscoff. But the most views on my channel is only 3.000 and 1.000 the rest is below 1.000. Only 2 video grows. slowly. Although some audience retention is above average, the view count is the same as the one with low audience retention. So with a small number of viewers i think the analytics is not that accurate? can you please take a look at my channel please i have make a lot of videos but my channel didn’t grow 🙁 and i only got like 1 sub after uploading a new video, the rest is i ask my friends to sub me, but i know my friends are limited and i can’t ask 1000 friends to sub me 😀
Thanks
Hi Dono,
After having a look at your channel, I see you’re going after very competitive keywords, as I’ve mentioned many times in these comments, smaller channels have a much greater chance of ranking and gaining traction with long-tail keywords. I.e. How to make healthy donuts at home without XYZ – Quick & Easy Donut recipe
Also add LSI keywords like recipe, diy, etc.
?
Best regards,
David
hi david thanks for replying. I have tried the long tail keywords like “Healthy donut recipe | Potato and Oat flour Doughnuts | with calories counted “ https://youtu.be/Ewu6e1G7jMc and it only got 124 views after already 96 days, and it’s not growing.. but i will try to include DIY and recipe and other and see how it goes. thanks very much 😀 have a nice day
And also about the competitive keywords, i have tried different kinds of food that aren’t competitive such as ‘mini pink tiramisu’ , ‘pink dalgona’ , ‘edamame ice cream’ (it’s searchable) but it’s just about the same amount of views with the very competitive keywords such as ‘classic cookie recipe’ … i got confused….. at the middle of my journey i also use tube budy keyword explorer to make the title but 60/100 keyword score doesn’t seem like a good title either so i give up using it. or do we need to regularly change the title and thumbnail? thanks very much David, best regards, dono
Hi Dono,
60/100 with the Keyword explorer can be a good score, but it depends on whether that’s the weighted or unweighted score and how far along you are on your channel growth journey. The higher the score the better though, so aim for titles in the 70-85+ range.
You do not need to change the title and thumbnail regularly, but testing different titles and thumbnails can help you discover what your audience is more likely to click on and what they just skip over. So don’t do wholesale changes, but controlled tests to see what works and what doesn’t. ?
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
ok david thankyou very much for the explanation. i will do more on my channel to grow it ??
Hello David,
I have made three videos in a year or so to check out the reviews of my editing style and film making abilities. The responses are good but yet people do not share it at the rate as i expected and also. The youtube stats for youtube features and channel pages comes close to just 10%.
i have no complaints of the views and subs i have right now as i am just beginning to post regular videos from now on. i have decided the theme and the way the videos will be shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3IxxsEX9XI
The above link refers to my recent upload and the channel. Please do take a look and leave your insights which are very valuable to me. Also let me know what will make my channel get better and anything that i should change.
Thank you.
Hi Lohith,
Thanks for the comment & nice work on the videos, you look to be going in the right direction, once you’re able to upload more, I’ll be able to provide more suggestions, but as a rule of thumb, 3 videos is just too little info to make an accurate evaluation.
You seem to be doing well early on, so I look forward to hearing from you more in the future.
Best regard,
David
Hi please help me….I have music channel and I uploaded 20 videos but my channel is not showing up please help me…Visit my channel and please tell me how can I Improve.Thanks My channel Link https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC5reRmzwIelfBrNcEYADC-g
Hi Huzaifa,
Thanks for the comment, please look through the article as you haven’t implemented the things I have written here. Once you’ve implemented the steps, I’ll gladly go over your channel again. Also, spamming won’t bring you anything on YouTube, so remove the spam from your channel as well.
Best regards,
David
Hi, incredible tips and i see you’re responding to all the comments…impressive.
But i have a question…I have been doing everything that you said in the article for a long time now and my highest view count 400 but thats from a video thats been around for a year already! So…why aren’t my videos getting more views because I’ve optimized the title,tags,descriptions and the thumbnails. HECK MY VIDEOS ARE NOW IN 4K AND HD! I make animated cartoons and I’m worried its not getting anywhere…am I doing something wrong?
(lol sorry for the loooooong comment)
Hi Ameer,
Thanks for the comment & nice to hear from a fellow South African ?
First off, I’d say your channel is looking to be heading in the right direction, maybe a little bit inactive (try making a video every week or every two weeks if you can find the time) but looking to be heading in the right direction.
I would recommend that you find your niche within the animation scene. I.e. what is it that people would associate your animations with? I see your broad niche is comedy animations, but I would suggestion either finding a niche by making animated comedy cartoons about a specific topic (think an animated comedy version of some type of current event, I like photography, so if I was to do something like this, I’d make animations about the camera battles, but that’s just me, and I’m awful at after affects, so you won’t be seeing it from me anytime soon ?). What you could also do is create a series that people can follow about a specific character and how they deal with everyday scenes or similar. An example of this would be a channel like “Simons Cat”, the content is shareable and the videos are about a few specific characters, making the audience more likely to watch the rest of your videos & you can become synonymous with a specific character and style, thereby potentially also helping with future work and partnerships.
P.s. having specific topics people are looking for is also easier to optimize for SEO, instead of generic comedy terms which are extremely competitive.
Hope this helps!
Best regards,
David
Hey David !
Thanks a lot for this great post !
I would love to get your feedback about our channel.
We are a young home workout (fitness) channel (3months and a half), we have around 55 videos already, we have good SEO with almost all our videos, we are using good mic, recording in 4k. We are replying to all the comment, have almost 100% like on average. We are putting effort with thumbnails and tittles. We have reached 616 subscribers at this stage.
The issue is the following, I feel that we are following all the steps but YouTube isn’t promoting our videos at all as we usually do not get more than 100 views on averages.
We have recently tried different type of videos (Q&A, or Challenge) to check if it would bring better results than home workout videos but we haven’t got much better results.
My question would be the following. Should we record some very shorts videos with good value (like 2 or 3 minutes) to get a better watch time and maybe get promoted by the algorithm.
Thanks so much for you time and great tips. This is amazing.
Our Channel name is Gravity Lovers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKj7FGT4FUuMrT6haZiql4A
Kind regards
Caroline and Flo
Hi Caroline & Flo,
First off, great channel. Really good thumbnails, and looking at your growth and consistency, it’s only a matter of time before one of your videos goes at least semi-viral. As your channel has been built up so well, people will be very likely to look at the rest of your related videos.
I would recommend sticking with the home workout or DIY workout routines, especially making plans and playlists around these. Your channel is great and is something I would recommend people look at to get an idea of a channel ready to take the next step. This is where most would say you should contact them to get the “secret” or whatever ?
I’m going to leave it right here (p.s. as you probably know, the secret is just hard work).
My recommendations for you guys:
1. Regarding your question of making short videos for watch time, no, don’t do that, your watch time is cumulative, not a percentile of the video length. I.e. if someone only watches 30% of a 10-minute video, you’ll still get more watch time than a 3min video with 80% watch time.
2. You can get promoted by the algorithm by creating videos with a good watch time & a good CTR, that means one thing: create quality videos with a thumbnail & title that captures people’s attention and shows what you can achieve in the video. Your thumbnails are good and your titles have a clear message of what the video is about, so good job there, what I would suggest experimenting with is to incorporate some of the exercises more in your thumbnails, or emphasizing pain points more, over gain points which is the current main focus. Ultimately though, I think your thumbnails and titles are good and maybe focus on the following suggestions first.
3. My favorite topic: SEO. You guys have implemented a lot of good things in terms of SEO already, and the results are clear with your best performing videos being the ones that are older and have had some time to generate the views and subscribers, but to improve your SEO I would suggest a few things:
3.1. Channel tags – Remove the gravity stuff, as your channel name will be sufficient enough for people to find you. Instead, use the 7-10 tags to emphasize what type of home workouts you can find on your channel. i.e. Full body HIIT workouts, 10 minute ab workouts, etc. Your channel is still looking to catch onto one of these bigger topics, and by throwing the hook more directly at them, they’ll be more likely to take the bait. If you get what I mean ?
3.2. About page can be improved with a bit more about what you do on the channel… “Cardio, Resistance, Stretching, Yoga and much more.” isn’t descriptive enough. ?
3.3. Playlists, as I hinted at earlier, playlists can be another useful tool to get traction to your channel. YouTube growth is exponential, so traction is what you’re looking for.
Now playlists are key here and currently, you have them grouped into different types of workouts, which is OK, but a collection of 10 minute XYZ workouts, or 10 Minute XYZ workouts for beginners, would be more useful for the viewer wouldn’t it? After all, who does multiple workouts in a row targetting the same muscle group?
Keep the current playlists, optimize them for longer tail keywords, I.e. “No jumping” should at least be “No jumping home workouts” and include more workout plan styled playlists and themed workouts that people can follow.
P.s. add a playlist description to your videos with keywords in natural sentences. ?
3.4. Keywords in the meta tags: I can see you’ve put effort into long-tail keywords, but these keywords are still quite competitive and many can be extended by one word to make it much better. For example, “low impact full body hiit” is very competitive and shows an unweighted score of 40 with the keyword analyzing tool from TubeBuddy. If I change it to “best low impact full body hiit” then we get a score of 61, and that’s just by adding the “best” to the beginning of the keyword. So this would be a much better keyword to rank for and if you include the original more competitive term in the meta tags as well, the keyphrase with the 61 score could help increase the performance of your video and it may then rank for the more competitive term (and thereafter the even more competitive terms and your channel will start to become associated with these terms).
3.5. Video Description: Overall your video descriptions are good and the inclusion of internal YouTube links is excellent. I would however suggest removing the cuttly link shortener as it is unnecessary and potentially confusing for viewers and possibly even the algorithm (it may recognize it as an external link, even though it is just a shortened version of your subscribe link). So first it is unnecessary as even if you’re using this as a tracking tool, the metric you would be tracking is irrelevant as the more valuable viewer to subscriber information can be attained in YouTubes analytics. And secondly, it can be confusing as your CTA is very vague in the videos I’ve seen “Click Here to change your life forever”. This may make sense to you, but for someone stumbling upon your page, it looks very much like an opt-in for some type of workout course you can buy or something to that degree, more deterring than attracting clicks. Simply state what people should expect and why they should subscribe. Also, move this link to beneath the 2nd paragraph at least, use the first sentence to clearly state what the video is about for the algorithm (viewers have a subscribe button in plain sight at that point still anyway). ?
Lastly regarding this cuttly link, shortening a YouTube link is irrelevant as YouTube links in your description are cut off automatically anyway, so whilst it may look untidy in your YouTube Studio in the description box, viewers on the video will see the trimmed link.
4. YouTube Channel Page: Put some playlists up of the most popular types of workouts people can find (preferably a mix of the themed 10 minute/15 minute ones and the different styles of workouts), don’t be shy to throw in a Playlist section with multiple related playlists.
5. Call To Actions: I haven’t had the time to watch many of your videos entirely, I’ve gone through some quickly to see that they’re good quality and that the value is being provided, so I’m not sure if you’ve included a call to action at the end of all of the videos, but this suggestion is more pointed towards other places to include the call to action. So I’ve gone over the cuttly link, that would be one CTA to adjust. Another place you can include a CTA is in the comment section. Include a CTA in the comments to another video that viewers can watch next, or remind them why they should subscribe (some people skip the description and go straight to the comments). So use the comments to tell people what they should do next, and they’ll be far more likely to do it. ? Also, pin the comment to the top so it’s the first thing they see.
6. I’m going to end things off with a left-field suggestion, as you’re both from France & I assume can speak French (?) have you considered also translating your video titles/descriptions to French as well?
You two have a great channel and there’s some massive potential. Your personalities shine through in your videos, which can be difficult for some, but it is clear you both are very comfortable. ?
This has turned into a bit of an article, which I may turn into an article, would you guys be alright if I use your channel as an example of “how to take a good channel to the next level” style article?
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
I have started my channel about 3 weeks ago now, the “birthday” if you like was the 23rd August. My channel is in the health & fitness niche but more so based on nutrition. I make videos 2x a week and so far the videos have been mainly based on food education, I haven’t yet done anything fitness because I’m a bit nervous to record myself at the gym and I am using a DSLR camera for my sit down videos so I can’t take this to the gym. I have downloaded tube buddy to make sure I am optimising my videos with good search too
It’s been almost a month and I only have 28 subscribers, could I please have an indication of where I could improve? Thank you 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTgm9GjPIvy1LVgZxhLbUw?view_as=subscriber
Hey Tumi,
Your channel is extremely young with less than 10 videos, so from what is there, you look to be on the right track. I’d recommend checking out some other comments I’ve posted on new channels here and check if you can implement that advice… Actually, go through everything to cover your bases. Once your channel is 3 months old and you’ve implemented these things I’d be happy to take a detailed look and recommend any additional changes.
There are far too many people that haven’t even looked at the article or even tried implementing the steps to grow and expect me to spoon feed them, this isn’t targetted at you specifically, but if anyone wants to be successful, you NEED TO PUT IN THE WORK and don’t expect that just because you’ve put in some work, you’re entitled to success, that’s not how things work. You work hard and make your own success, I can help with that, but I can’t help anyone that doesn’t want to implement the help, and I’d rather spend my time helping people who are actually willing to put in the work and have already done so in the past, none of this “I’ll start tomorrow” rubbish, if you want to be successful, You should’ve started yesterday, last week, last month, last year.
So that was a bit of a rant, not directed at you Tumi, just in general. You’re on the right track, just need some time.
Best regards,
David
Hi David, Thanks for your valuable points. I think I have did all the points as you said. But still am not getting more views and subscribers.
I have started to posting videos from August 2020. I have seen your comments it take more time to pick up the channel.
I knew people are doing best videos compare with mine, I dont know i am doing good videos or not. Can you please check once my channel and shre your thoughts. If my videos is good means I will be continue the same way otherwise i can change my plan. Looking forward your response.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2_45RWe5eqQYkcUqlUNQcA
Hey Nachi, just upon first glance, your videos are quite short, Thumbnails are not clear & the text is very hard to read, try simplifying things without the fancy fonts ?
And then optimize your videos more. My opinion frankly doesn’t matter on whether the videos are “good” or not, the market decides, so optimize your videos more so you can see if people are interested in the content. Then you will be able to see for yourself.
Goodluck with your channel Nachi ?
Hey… I’ve been doing youtube for almost 6 months now, and the growth is not as good as I would have thought. I have a few problems that I want to consult:
1. How do you stand out as a gaming channel? There are literally millions of other people out there doing the same thing, and I’m not special in any way (unless you count bad).
2. How do you get subscribers from your viewers? I have quite a bit of views but the subs/views ratio is very bad.
3. How did my video go viral (to my standards)? A rather bad video that I have (no editing & worst voice ever) is about 75% of my views and 90% of my watch time. All the newer and better videos I have are not getting the same impressions that could compare to my bad video.
Thanks for hearing to my semi-rant… Also, this is my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClbgJyNZOOfGtLQZYPwiPsA
Hey,
So before I get to answering your questions, I would suggest implementing the tips in this article, they will definitely help you.
1. There are billions of people watching YouTube videos, billions of hours are being consumed everyday. There are more than enough people to watch your content. Standing out, well that just comes about putting your personality on your videos. You are unique, even if you may think to yourself you’re normal. It may be the laidback, or super hyper way you present yourself that engages with people. It could be the specific type of games you find interesting that connects you with those people. The way to stand out as a gaming channel is to put your unique personality on show – But you still need to optimize your videos so the right people see them.
2. Create consistent content & make subscribing easy for the viewer. If someone visits your YouTube channel, they should know EXACTLY What to expect and if they’ve watched a 4th or 5th video, the subscribe option should be in the end screen, in your description, etc. You can even pin a subscribe comment in the comment section.
3. Your video could’ve appeared in the suggested bar of a similar roblox video, or it was recommended to a roblox audience interested in that content- What you should do is look at that videos analytics and see exactly where the views came from.
Goodluck with your channel ?
Hey David, I found your article helpful. It gave me some ideas on how I could improve the content of my channel. I was wondering if you could give me some direct feedback on how to improve my content so that I am actually building an audience. I’ve only accumulated four subscriptions from people that I know in real life, and its been a few months since I started my channel. When I see other people’s videos in the same niche they just don’t seem as entertaining as mine most of the time, so I’m confused as to why people don’t find my content as valuable.
Thanks for any feedback,
Tales of the Grid, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4avp8RGFSmkfDCzJzj2P7Q
Hey, thanks for the comment.
You need to focus on optimization, Descriptions, Meta Tags & Longtail keywords. Viewers aren’t finding your videos because they’re not showing up in feeds or in search and when they do your thumbnails are very unclear as to what the video is about. Include something or some text to capture attention and then deliver on that promise in your videos.
Good luck with your channel. ?
Hi my channel name is Kingeliee, I’ve looked through this thread and I noticed that I’m not consistent with uploading, and my audience retention is low, and Im starting to think my thumbnails aren’t that great. Could anyone leave a brutal honest review I would really like to know what I’m mainly doing wrong. I’ve also been sharing them to my other social media platforms, I.E, Tik Tok and Instagram, but even then they still don’t get the attention it deserves.
Hey Eliejah,
Great first step recognizing that yourself! Good luck with your channel. ?
Hey thanks for the tips to help get views for my youtube channel. I am not sure why I am not getting any views or subs. I have been making videos for only a short time but I can’t seem to find my own videos when searching on youtube. Can you check out my channel and see what I am doing wrong. I am using tubebuddy as well. https://youtube.com/channel/UCP_DVRyqMzItYp9jJ36AxPA
Hi Jaleesa,
Work more on improving your titles, descriptions & thumbnails. Give the viewer a reason to click through, let them know what the video is about. I.e. add “How to make…”, “… in 10 minutes”, etc.
Focus on longer tail keywords and use TubeBuddy to find keyphrases that have a score close to 100 to make sure you can rank more easily. You’re in a competitive niche, you need to use very long search terms to start building traffic.
Hope this helps ?
Best, David
Hi there David,
Great post, would love to know what long-tail keywords are. Aside from that, I’d appreciate a few minute of your time because I am at a quitting cross-road and after reading articles like yours and watching countless YouTube “how to grow your channel” type videos I am simply clueless as to what my issue is.
I am a 50 year old software analyst that started my channel on July 20 this year. I have had plenty of time to really go at this hard, from a research standpoint and technical – learning to edit better and promote better. My channel is a gaming channel. Hard to break through with Halo MCC , COD Warzone and Red Dead 2 being my main games. I think I am looking objectively at my work when I say that, compared to some channels with many thousands of subs, I am not that far off. Maybe I am deluding myself. Anyway, wanted to be concise, so I will bullet point where I am at.
-82 videos
-44 Subs
-2283 total views
-click thru rate 3.6% – though i have 3 videos in the 20s and 5 in the high teens
-avg view time – 1:16 – most of my vids are 3-6 minutes long
– All thumbnails are custom
– I also post on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook Gaming Page
– I actively participate in several YouTube Gaming Groups
I would love any critique and feedback you can offer and thank you in advance for your time!
Here is my channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMWbPsGH6XqrkrV1yFgQ5DQ
Hi Brian, appreciate your comment.
First off, long-tail keywords are just the phrases that are built around a specific keyword. Often these phrases are not as competitive as the keyword itself. For example, “Grow a YouTube Channel” could be a competitive keyword I@m targeting, but a long-tail variant that would be easier to rank for would be “how to grow a YouTube channel for beginners”, and I can then make that even longer if I wanted to if it was still too competitive, by adding “in 2021” to the end. These keywords just help your channel start to rank, gain momentum, and carve out your space within a particular niche on YouTube.
I think your self-analysis is quite spot on. The recent text in your thumbnails is quite good, but the pictures themselves are very dark and not very clear on what the topic of the video is. Don’t be afraid to be a little over excessive with your graphics here, I.e. that rave glitch video can have a rave overlay or something to really emphasize the point to people looking, or recognizing it. This should help with your CTR, and then titles should use more impact words like: Incredible, Best, Unbelievable, Worst, etc. These are words that create curiosity resulting in people clicking through, obviously you would want to still deliver on this, but you seem to have the quality content to make it happen.
Once you’ve implemented your long-tail keywords, you need to then add a text in the description where your keywords are included. I see you’re including meta tags, make sure you include the full long-tail keywords and different synonyms in there too.
Link to similar videos in your descriptions as well and add some clickable links to subscribe in the description and comments (pin to top). Add some more information about yourself in your about section, including the types of games played on the channel. Always good for context for viewers but also for YouTubes bots.
Active participation in communities on and off the platform is great, how do they find your content?
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Hello David,
very nice article. it gives a detail instruction for a newbie like me on youtube. I have a relatively new channel and got few videos on. but unfortunately as i did not know the niche thing i pretty much have a lot of different videos going on my channel. the channel started out for my baby girls medical video and then just started to post few videos . my son 7 made few games videos and he wanted me to add them also. anyway so i am having same issue with retention. my average view time is about 0.45 seconds. I even tried those guys on fiverr who said to give video more exposure through social sharing but what i got was views with only 0.30 seconds of average view on few videos.
I have worked hard on Titles, Tags , descriptions, even made nice thumbnails( clear ).
can you please check my channel out and guide me. i got 100 subs but most of them are my family & friends.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNAsYUxqHFqCk-emeYZTxGg
Many thanks
Hi Ameer,
You really need to work on settling on a specific niche. I see you’re putting effort into the other aspects, but your niche is one of the fundamental aspects as to why someone should subscribe to your channel.
Best regards ?
David
Thank you so much for your insight. i will work towards working on 1 niche. if you can advice one more thing. if you saw my channel i would like to stick on the dash cam videos and sports car fails stuff. now the question.
what should i do with other videos on my channel like funny videos and other stuff , should i remove them or should i just leave them there.
Thanks again for your help.
Hey Ameer,
you can leave them there for now. If people land on them and start getting confused in the future, you can unlist them, but they won’t really affect you once you’ve chosen your niche.
Cheers,
David
I read this content and i agree with your ideas. If we want more views on our youtube videos then we must care about for these reason. First of all having a good content is must necessary thing for our audience. These tricks are very informative and keep sharing!
Thanks ?
Hi David,
I have a gaming YouTube channel for the past 1 year with 144 videos. The videos are only focused on games of various types. I followed the advice on the internet like thumbnails, tags, playlist, keyword and yet not getting decent views. Can you have a look and point out what is wrong? Your suggestions are much appreciated. Thank you
https://youtube.com/channel/UCZqKXYt38WdVZoERF90GiCw
Implement the advice in this article. Then check out the guide in the sidebar to grow your YouTube channel.
Best,
David
It had been more then 2 years i started youtube channel, i only have 240 subs and 200 average views so i searched on google an came to your blog. I have only uploaded 28 videos uptill now which is too little and i am not consistence and also have to find my niche. Thanks i have jot down all your points and starting to implementting. Thanks a lot ??
Hi Yash, thanks ?
If you put your mind to it you can do it!
Cheers,
David
Hi David.
I learned alot from you.i started my
YouTube cooking channel in July 2020.i am still working hard to improve on everything you mentioned but still some time feels helpless or you can say inpatient as I have 2 young kids to take care off. If you have little time kindly have a look on my channel and plsss guide me a little about where I am going wrong or have my channel any potential to grow.i will b very thankful.many thanks
https://youtube.com/c/SSSweetSpicy
Hi Saira,
Thanks for the comment, first, congrats on the 2.6k subscribers since July & the 30k views.
The first thing that strikes me is that I would showcase the deliciousness of your recipes more. Make the images more vibrant & get closer to many of them.
I would use a longer tail keyword in your titles, use words like EASILY, QUICKLY, AT HOME, SIMPLE, EASY SNACK, etc. Be enthusiastic about your videos. ?
Also, link to similar recipes in your descriptions.
You could even use an email opt-in where they can download your recipes.
Make more Search optimized playlists & group your videos more. Also, with your keywords in the descriptions, try using them in natural sentences instead of keyword stuffing at the end. ?
Hope this helps. Good luck with your channel.
Best regards,
David
Hey David thank you for the tips! It definitely keeps people on track paving the path to a proper growth. In my case, my YouTube content is anime related. I’m currently sitting at 45 subscribers with 27 videos upload, posting twice a week…Unfortunately my click-through rate is poor (around 5% on average) and I’m struggling to understand where I’m failing at which is quite frustrating since I put a lot of effort into it…Would you mind, if possible, taking a look at my channel and give me some specific insight? Thank you!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC203INGSMSxw-hvmtWOQ7ZQ
Hey Daniel, thanks ?
Sure. and I have taken a look… So the first thing that strikes me is that most of your titles are not particularly “interesting”, for example, “weekly anime news” doesn’t pique the interest and apart from the images used, I have no clue what the episode could be about, instead, you could use a headline along the lines of what Philip DeFranco does (for anime though, and I’d loved to have given an example, but I’m not clued up on Anime to write anything that would make sense) but news headlines are meant to do one thing, to catch attention, so use this to your advantage and you can include the “weekly anime news” at the end. Check out Phil’s channel to get some inspiration.
If we look at your most popular video “why is …..” this is a question that leaves people thinking “why is that?” and their curiosity causes a click. The same can be said about your most popular recent video “Top 3 Anime…” this makes people think “what is the top 3…” or “XYZ better be in the top 3 otherwise this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about”.
Do you seem what I’m getting at, if people read your titles and it doesn’t cause some type of thought, they’re not going to be invested in finding out more.
Another tip I would have to improve your video performance is to include more detailed descriptions at the beginning. It’s fine to write about what happens in the description, or at least aloud to it so that the algorithm can recommend it to people who are interested in it. And make sure to include your keywords more organically in the description.
You could also do more with your playlists, optimizing them for search as well.
I’ll leave you with that for now, let me know how it goes, and good luck with the channel. ?
Cheers,
David
Hi David,
Awesome content here you have! I just created youtube channel this november 2020. I upload 3 videos a day on average. And I use VidIQ which you right, sometimes their algorithm is a bit confusing and not match there and here. I target low keywords based on their data.
Which one do you prefer tube buddy or VidIQ? I’d really appreciate if you can give me a quick review of my new channels: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSDvCLCj53OFjtCPs5XIBmw I do everything to follow what is good for a video, but any suggestions or critics are very welcome.
Hi Anne,
Thanks for your comment and welcome to YouTube ?
I personally prefer TubeBuddy, but I also use the free version of VidIQ for additional analysis when I need some things like sub counts of channels without having to click on the channel, and gauging older videos popularity, for example.
I had a quick look at your channel, I would recommend spacing out your videos more, so not uploading multiple videos all at once, utilizing your long-tail keywords in the tags, and your description. The scripted voice-over does seem quite robotic (which it is I’m assuming), which I would change, but there are millions who don’t mind that, so its probably fine. ?
Also, I noticed on Linkedin you’re posting the link, I would recommend uploading these short video directly to LinkedIn, and then add a link to your channel as the first LinkedIn comment. The organic reach there is quite incredible at the moment and only sharing a direct link doesn’t take advantage of that.
Hope that helps.
Best regards,
David
Hi David, thank you so much for quick reviews. Will that hurt if I re-upload same videos to linkedin/facebook page and also have it at youtube? Or you meant some videos?
And yes, I use robot 🙂 thats why I can upload 3 a day. And good idea spreading the video with different time, I will do that. Thanks again!
1 quick question, how long does it usually takes to get ‘momentum’ from youtube? 1 year?
Hey Anne, it won’t hurt, what I mean is they should be uploaded to those pages without linking away, you can generate far greater reach then on those platforms and include links to your YouTube channel and videos more strategically to generate views. Use the viral potential of LinkedIn to build a following there and leverage that following then onto your YouTube channel.
Ok, for the robotic voice, try using a more natural-sounding software, as it isn’t to everyone’s taste listening to the robotic delivery.
Momentum can be difficult to say, some channels can take longer than others, but if you’re consistently putting out good content, then within a year you should see major improvements. ?
Best regards,
David
Hi David,
Nice article. I started a channel 4 months back – “Watch and Learn Hindi” and have only 20 subscribers. I have posted 19 videos till now ( I post once a week) and am getting very few views. I do put tags although I don’t use TubeBuddy etc.
Can you please have a look at my channel and point out what am I missing. Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_5n76bV57jNze_KTXqQtiQ
Thanks
Hi Dana, your channel seems to be growing nicely, well done.
– Your Thumbnails would be better if they were distinct to you, but you’re doing a good job defining what the video is about.
– Interlink to relevant videos.
– Add descriptions to your playlists.
– Include meta tags in your videos, with long-tail relevant keywords.
– Keep it up! ?
Best,
David
Hello there,
I have open my YouTube channel since few months, I am not really happy the way it is growing, feel like very difficult to get a sub and views. I am running my channel outside of my targeted audience, also I always add English subtitles to get some additional views and wherever YouTube suggesting my video so peoples would be happy so view it and would be understandable for new viwer. Right not I am using VidIq. My question is what’s I need to do that Youtube can more suggest my video to the targeted Country or audience. I always put a video once in a week. Could you please have a quick look of my channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurAMYt35hYeogC-x4it1dg
Best regards
Mamun
Hi Mamun,
You seem to be doing quite well now! Congratulations.
I would recommend the following still.
– Your thumbnails are quite “busy”, which can be confusing.
– Link to similar videos.
– Create a less “busy” banner.
But overall your message seems to be clear, quality will increase as you continue growing and working on improving everything gradually.
Best,
David
Hi….i am uploading travel videos in my channel from last 1 year. Now almost 1.3K subscribers but the views i am getting is very few. I am doing travel videos, mostly from Japan and laungauge I am using is Malayalam (indian, kerala state). Every new uploads I used to get only 100-150 views and then stops. Kindly suggest some solution to increase the view or reach?
Hey Amal,
Your main issue is a lack of content strategy, things are all over the place, so I would suggest two options:
Option 1. Stop talking in your videos and become the channel that the world visits to see the interesting & beautiful places of Japan.
Option 2. Focus more on your Malayalam audience, I see you are already doing this with the content of your videos, but you need to optimize around that as well to then reach those people.
Hope this helps, good luck with your channel Amal. ?
Cheers,
David
Hi. Just stumbled upon this great and extremely helpful article. I have the same problem as the rest…no growth at all…currently 7 months in..47 subs..who are mostly people I know…
I have tried to implement most of the things..I’m still learning..but I don’t know whether I am doing it right or not…I know…it’s a long and tiring drill..but I want an honest review..could you please check my channel
Here’s the link:
https://youtube.com/channel/UC2ebqJHm8yL9tJ0Vu5_8SIw
Thank you so much for your valuable time.
Hi there, thanks for the comment, & whilst you have started some of the keywording, there’s still quite a lot that you can do to improve.
I see you’re speaking in Urdu, I would make that clear in the title so that English speakers know to turn on captions or to look for a different video, so they don’t click & then jump away immediately. I see you’ve done this for some, but it isn’t very clear.
I would also target keywords for that language as well, are you translating your video for that audience? As all of your tags are in English, and your primary audience would not be English first language. It can be very enticing to target a larger audience (English speakers) compared to your local language, but if you’re delivering the content in your own language then it makes a lot more sense to primarily target the people who would understand the language.
This would be the most pressing change to make. Thereafter, your thumbnails are crammed full of info, making nothing legible. Short and simple is much better here and don’t use light colors as a background for light text, (I.e. yellow on white).
Your descriptions should elaborate more on the video and they can link to more relevant videos/playlists.
My advice would be to focus on your niche audience and not try to target everyone. There are over 170 million Urdu speakers in the world & if I take the amount of Pakistani & Indian people with internet access & use that as an average, that means that there are approx. 85 million Urdu speakers with internet access currently (although probably more). If you can only reach 0.1% of that number, that’s still 85k people!
Hope this helps ?
Best regards,
David
If i get a 1000 subs within 2021 i will be happy. As you said, realistic expectations.
If you have the time, take a look at my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUi9I6EDvgscqGMYvfdaM-g
Definitely, I think you’re on the right track, you need the content now.
Also, get rid of the long intro would be a suggestion, you don’t need one, especially right at the beginning, it just frustrates viewers that want to get straight to the content.
Good luck with your channel! ?
Best regards,
David
Hi David, I just came across this article and it is extremely helpful! My husband and I started our YouTube channel at the end of September, but we noticed a significant drop off in our videos with about a 30% view rate on average. We are trying different things to improve each video, but I worry it might be either a. we’re not engaging out audience enough (we tend to ramble), b. our thumbnails and titles aren’t attracting viewers, and/or c. our niche isn’t obvious to the viewer.
Here’s our channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_5o4iLqF13I1wVX7vXgUA
Do you have any tips on how to get to the point if we tend to ramble?
Thank you so much!
Hi Antoinette
Firstly, thanks for reading, much appreciated, and glad they could be helpful.
So before I even look at your channel, relax, you don’t need to fix everything at once. Gradual is far better, as then you can see WHAT is making a difference. If you change everything and things start to turn around, then it could be one thing making the difference and the others are still ineffective & can be improved upon, but you wouldn’t know if you get what I mean.
Now, I’ve had a look at your channel.
First off, your video quality is great, so kudos there, really good quality. ?
What I notice when I land on your channel or I look at your name, I have no idea what your channel is about. So your niche clarity needs work. What does the DNA Life mean? I only get a bit of a clue at the end of your about description, and no one is going to go to your channel to investigate what it means, and even then I can only really decipher it as being an acronym of your names as I can see Ant is short for Antoinette. So this is a case of niche clarity, it should be immediately apparent what your channel means when someone lands there…. This could mean something drastic like changing your channel name (to “The Outdoor Family” or something like that) and including a nice high-quality family photo where we can see your faces, or just changing your channel art to explain what it is you do on this channel (regardless, i would include yourselves here as well, it’s clear that you guys are the brand, so put yourselves front and center.)
Staying on the home page, I would suggest building out your home page. Include playlists, a featured video, some channels you guys enjoy. Showcase what you can expect on this channel using playlists & some of your personality with the people you enjoy watching or recommend as well, YouTube is a place to support your competitors. ?
As I mentioned Playlists, group your videos in playlists, this is a way to categorize things in your niche and it makes it easier for people to binge your content (and you appear higher in their feeds)
Now onto Thumbnails, these are letting you down quite a bit. They’re very congested and bland, I can’t immediately make out what the video is about even when trying to read the text. If I don’t know what they video is about, or no curiosity has been made after 1-2 seconds of looking at the thumbnail, then I won’t click on it. And that’s how the majority of YouTube Viewers are.
For your review videos, one thing you need to focus on: Make the product the hero of the image. If I look at the last video, why is there a lighthouse in the background, why is there your channel name taking up 15% of the screen (You can add a thin color frame if you want to try keeping the branding consistent, but you don’t need your logo to be plastered everywhere. If you just type in “cooler box review” on YouTube, you’ll find excellent examples at the top, all with the cooler box front and center as the hero of the thumbnail, then you know exactly what this video is about.
Let’s move onto Titles: Are you using TubeBuddy to check these titles (even the free version)? And looking at what similar videos come up when you search for them on YouTube? Things to do in XYZ brings up compilations, these are listicle videos, as your videos are focused on one places or achieving one objective, title your videos like that and do it right at the beginning. “How to find the perfect christmas tree in XYZ (whichever city, state, or region you went to)”.
You’re titles are half listicle & half vlog-like, and vlogging titles are ok, ONCE you’ve built up an audience interested in your content. So think about what is it that we’re solving with this video and put that solution in your title. For your videos where you visit one place, get rid of the things to do in XYZ, it’s not providing any value to your title or to the viewer, people finding your video will most likely be interested in the location already, so hone in on that: “California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park: Is it any good?!” “California Academy of Sciences: SHOULD YOU VISIT?!”, “California Academy of Sciences: The Perfect Day Trip for families in XYZ”… Now these titles I’ve just come up with on the spot, so I would still recommend checking what people actually search for in relation to the california academy of sciences, etc. & I haven’t watched that particular video, so it could be that you talk about something completely different, but I hope this makes sense to you. ?
Also regarding those thumbnails, make it more clear where the location is and increase the saturation so the image doesn’t look that bland. Make your text more contrast-rich as well, the only thumbnail with decent contrast would be the white and orange, and even then I would use a much darker orange. Make it easier for viewers to read & include limited amounts of text… And once again, please get rid of that logo on the left.
Let’s move onto tags, here you should use all 500 characters, including long-tail keywords.
In your descriptions, link to similar videos.
This has only been a quick audit, but making these changes will improve your channel, once things have been implemented & you’ve uploaded another 10 videos, let me know & I will dive a little bit deeper. ?
Good luck!
Hi David thank you for this informative paragraph, I was just wondering if you give me any tips to improve my YouTube channel thank you
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for the comment, here are a few tips:
– Use your meta tags.
– Include a few sentences about the video to start your description off with.
– Make use of more playlists.
– Showcase these playlists on your home page.
– Write more about yourself and what you’re doing on this channel in your about page.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
hi David
I want to know why my videos aren’t doing well
can you help me?
my channel- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2yIQwboNtoITfGufPvzP7A
Hey,
Try implementing the best practices I’ve outlined in this exact article. Once you’ve done that, I’ll gladly look at your channel.
Goodluck.
David
In my video there are 7 views but in about channel showing only 3 views
https://youtube.com/channel/UCuwcjNcNHxx1-xAHMVpF51Q
Rakesh, you don’t even have a profile picture selected. What do you expect?
Let me know when you’ve implemented every single point in this article (and added a profile pic) and I’ll gladly take a look at your channel. You actually need to put in some effort.
Cheers,
David
Hey David,
Please could you take a look at mine? I have a feeling I need to invest in some Mic quality and better thumbnails as suggested!
Thanks
https://youtube.com/channel/UCRxcSA6NxzGpxW87YYMNBBw
Hi Shannon,
Your feelings would be correct, those would be two good change suggestions.
I would also suggest just creating more content, you only have 4 videos up at the time of writing this, so there isn’t much context for viewers and there is not “proof” that you’re in this for the long haul giving them a reason to subscribe.
Some quick improvements would be:
– You shouldn’t include “#” in your meta tags, just use words and sentences and separate them with a comma.
– Elaborate on your titles and provide more intrigue, i.e. “The best…” “The worst…” “How to get the…” “…in 5 minutes”
– Add some more info to your channel art, create some playlists, etc.
But the most important thing would be for you to just create more content.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
What’s up David can you help me out? I’ve had my channel for months and I still don’t get many views. Is it because they’re age restricted?
Hi Marcus, thanks for writing.
It’s not the age restriction. You should emphasize the value you’re providing in the video, in your case, it would be mostly informative, so find the things people are curious about and answer those questions. Also, work on optimizing your videos by including meta tags & using clearer thumbnails.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Hello! Thanks for writing this article, it’s really informative and helpful. I have a question about views. I used to get quite a lot of views a few years ago, however I stopped posting videos when I went to uni, and now that I’ve started up again I’m really struggling to even reach 100 views! I’ve been reading about SEO & other variants that could come into play, but even when I think I’ve done what is required, my views still stay pretty low. Do you have any tips/advice?
Here is my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzJhmoQcLwucSUaqILwaC9w
Thanks in advance!
Naomi
Hi Naomi,
as you were away for so long, a lot of your audience would’ve moved on to other interests or just forgotten about you, which can make it seem like they’re not interested, even though they may just have not clicked on a video when you returned and YT interpreted that as lack of interest. It’s not a problem, I see you’re slowly building back up. Here’s what I would recommend:
– Get to the point more quickly, as some of your videos start with a little intro. People click on a cover to hear the cover, once you’ve delivered, then you can talk, hopefully, you get what I mean. ?
– Channel Banner: Make it clearer you do covers, a.k.a. a pic of you singing with an upload schedule.
– Group your videos into genre or artist playlists and then include these on your channel home page so people that visit the home page have more context.
– Include all relevant tag variants: Covers have a good variety of different tags you can include, use all 500 characters in your tags.
– Interlink videos.
Hope that helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hello Sir I am working on YouTube from last 5 months I got some good views on some videos which shows my audience is not interested in my work what should I do please suggest me and thanks for this helpfull and beautiful article I have read it whole ❤️
Hi Abdul, I would recommend making your thumbnails and videos clearer, and building out your home page so people can see why they should subscribe.
Follow the tips in this article and once you’re done, implement everything in the guide to growing a youtube channel that you can find in the sidebar.
Good luck with your channel.
Best regards,
David
Hello!
I am grateful for any help/advice on my YouTube Journey!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCykslI3W0BCYI2_KX-SPA9w
Hi Dion,
Just keep at it first, you need to put content out in order to be seen!
Good luck!
Best,
David
Hello, my videos were being shown by YouTube a lot between 25 to 28 December, but after 29 December from getting 200k views in 48 hours on the whole channel, it dropped to 24k views every 48 hours today.
Some videos I uploaded got Copyright claims and were deleted before make them public, edited them instead, but still got a couple more of copyright claims (not strikes) either due few seconds of video or due the audio still triggering claims until I managed to finally upload the video without claims, however I noticed that after that day, the views were dropping hugely.
I got like three new claims on next videos, so I don’t know if my channel will be recommended again by YouTube.
My old videos also got huge boosts until 28 December, but now, ALL but ALL videos got the view count nearly plain, and I don’t know what to think.
Do you think that if the issue was the copyright claims, my channel will recover from this?
Hi,
Without being able to see the channel I can’t give you much of an answer, but it sounds like one of your videos went viral and the rest of your content wasn’t as relevant and so the views didn’t carry over across your channel.
Best,
David
Hello, I have been posting for a year but only get 100 views for one video. Please help.
Hi Gisselle,
Think about why would someone watch your video if they DONT already know you. Vlog content is perfect for people who want to get a behind the scenes of someone they already know, but not random strangers. This means you should focus on things that would interest people whilst getting to know you. For example: the acne video, this is something many people can relate to, so see what people struggle with the most, and if it’s something along the lines of what you’re talking about in the video, title & optimize your videos for those people. It’s more about the viewer than it is about you, so think about your titles from the perspective of a complete stranger. As an example, the acne video could be titled something along the lines of: “How to deal with acne insecurities – Acne motivational video”.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Thanks for posting all of this information in one place. My channel has been up for a while now, very little views, little subs, and i think it comes down to content, there’s just no niche for it. I tried branching out from just video games to ‘all things dad’ but still nothing, i’m open to all ideas, and hey, if it’s just never going to fly, that’s ok, i’ll keep making videos because i like to 🙂
thanks
sean
mlgdad.com (forwards to youtube)
Hi Sean, thanks for the comment. That’s the most important thing, just make content because you enjoy it. ?
Some things I would recommend though for your channel if you want to help it reach people would be to implement YouTube optimization. I.e. Tags, Titles, Descriptions.
I would also spin your titles in a way to add intrigue. “Can a dad actually make Jerk chicken?” or you can go beyond that and use a polarising title: “The best jerk chicken recipe can be done by dads”, these are just ideas, as always, I recommend using TubeBuddy to see search numbers, competition, etc.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Hi Sir, very useful article thanks for sharing with us, I have a YouTube channel, my target audience is from india who is speaking Tamil language and I live in Australia. I’m using tubebuddy for seo and keywords. And I promoted my thumbnail on Instagram but I’m not getting views what is the reason.?
Channel link: https://youtube.com/channel/UC3OP2MNASWAveesYXD5Z70g
Thanks in advance
Hi Sutha,
Your oldest video is only 4 weeks old right now, so I would recommend to keep creating to find your niche. Define the topic of videos you’re creating. Then use longer tail keywords, also in your tags, use clearer thumbnails, define what your channel is about better on your home page, as you have tubebuddy, a basic thing you can implement right now is to try and get your SEO score to 100.
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
David
Hey David, I tried to do some of these tips and they worked very well but one problem is that I’m a mobile youtube so I do the most I can which sometimes I see isn’t enough
Hi Darren, what limitations are you finding? You should be able to do just about everything on mobile as well, it may just be a little bit more inconvenient. Good luck ?
Hi, David.
Thanks for this wonderful article, but I have tried almost everything I know but I get few results, I’m grateful I have monetized my it’s been a month after I get in paid program.
I would like to receive host feedback on how I can get more views.
Here is my channel link
https://youtube.com/c/PositiveMindsetinlife
Hi Mathew, I would advise incorporating more of a message behind your posts. It seems like your channel is trying to be a positive & motivational channel, but the content is very much recycled without providing more. More is important, you need to put your own spin on things. And then it’s the usual thing of including keywords, formulating more interesting titles, using your meta tags, etc. but first I would advise that you restructure your posts, in a way where you are providing value. An excellent example of someone doing just that and leading the way would be Evan Carmichael. Look at some of his earlier stuff for inspiration.
Hope this helps,
David
Wow! David Thanks for your reply. but now I’m writing and speaking my own speech and still I get the same results.
So my question to you is, do you think the problem I have is the content only?
Hi Mathew,
Great, now if you’ve incorporated the message behind your videos, you need to make it clear in your titles and then optimize your videos like that as well. Include more terms that people would be typing in to find your videos (I.e. what is the problem they are looking to have solved for example).
Also, considering it hasn’t been a week yet, you will thereafter have to give it some time to reach the right people.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Dear Mr. Woutersen,
I hope you are well Sir. Thank you for taking the time to write these tips down. My name is Rishi Sharma and I run a non profit organization called Heroes of the Second World War. Basically, I am on a mission to film interview all the WWII combat veterans of the Allied Countries. I started the interviews in high school and I originally just used youtube to put some of the videos so the veterans could watch the videos not realizing the potential the platform has for good. There has been some national news coverage about my mission and the initial subscribers came from that. Around Christmas, the Youtube Channel started receiving a lot of views. I think the Youtube Algorithm chose one of the videos from a year ago and putting it in front of a lot of people. I decided to monetize the channel which is a good thing because the people kept (and still are) coming. I am writing as I would like your advice on what else I should be doing to have more people subscribers and how to have the Youtube algorithm choose more of the videos to put in front of people on their homepage. This is the channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRikw4uCjS8ck3O9Mj-N35Q/videos)…
I am not understanding the types of things I need to put in the descriptions , how to make titles that are catchier and not so wordy, what tags to use, and ideas of more effective thumbnails…
It seems that the Youtube Algorithm chooses particular videos from the channel and put them in front of a huge audience and I would like to know what to do so that the algorithm would do that for every video.
I value you opinion and would appreciate your advice what I need to do to make this the largest WWII channel on Youtube
Thank you Sir.
Hi Rishi,
Well done with the channel so far. To have more videos recommended by the algorithm, keep creating consistent videos. You have a specific niche and topic, find the relevance from the videos that are getting a lot of traffic and incorporate that into the other videos so viewers who are interested in that topic know that they can find it in your remaining videos as well. When people engage with your channel, other videos will also be recommended to them, this is where you need to have a consistent channel and a clear message in your thumbnails.
Your WWII veteran says XYZ seems to be the thing that captures peoples attention, rework your older videos thumbnails, and titles that don’t get many views as these will also be recommended when people watch your content and these videos don’t have a clear message as people don’t recognize the names of these people, but they will recognize an event or a claim.
Best regards,
David
Would love some help to get more views please new to this thank you
Hi Lee,
Great job on staying with your niche, I would recommend you go longer with your keywords to get some initial traction and then make full use of your meta tags and link between your videos in your descriptions for related videos & playlists.
I would also add a link to a similar video in your description and then pin it to the top.
Check out my article on growing a YouTube channel, you can find it in the sidebar.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hii,
The article is really gud on point and honest.
This is my channel,
https://youtube.com/channel/UCPBF8QIyfncrKyftpUw5j6g
Is there anything I’m doing wrong or have to do better?
Please help me out here…
Thank you
Hi Gaminn,
Thanks for the comment, you seem to be doing very well with a new channel. Well done ?
Keep it up and I would recommend using your descriptions more to elaborate on the content of the video more.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hello, I was wondering if you could check out my channel and tell me what I could be doing wrong with a lot of my videos getting such low views. Most could be the thumbnails I’m sure. But I think one of the problems could be that I don’t have a lot of hype in my personality. I find it to be fake. I like being my normal everyday self and I think people find it boring. One video though got picked up by the algorithm and has tons of views but the rest are pretty low. My channel is called The Outdoor Experience. https://youtube.com/c/TheOutdoorExperience
Hi Adam,
Thanks for the comment, it’s perfectly fine not to be the hype man. It just means you have a different audience ?
While you don’t have to be all hype on camera, you can showcase what your videos are about a little better in the thumbnails. This means putting whatever the video is about front and center and ideally showing why someone should watch it. This can be with clear text like you have done on some videos, or by putting a specific product front and center (the ones you have that are doing this alright are your best performing videos currently).
Focus on why a viewer would watch your video and make it clear in the thumbnail, for example, why would someone be interested in your new favorite camping place? They may be more interested in the actual location, or just the practice of solo backpack camping. If that makes sense. Another example would be the DJI videos, your titles are ok, but the thumbnails aren’t very interesting and doesn’t say anything to me as a potential viewer. If you’re doing a distance test, then let viewers know that.
Additionally, make use of all of your meta tags, use your descriptions to elaborate on your video, link to other similar videos, make your channel keywords more specific (max 7-10 most important)…
Good luck with your channel ?
Best,
David
Hi David,
I think I have done everything right but in still struggling to get views and subscribers. At this I’m tire and don’t know what else to do. So I need your help
Hi Lilian,
Thanks for your comment, check out the YouTube article’s linked in my sidebar.
Good luck with your channel! ?
Best regards,
David
Super impressed with your responses to others. Well done. I am always interested in an expert eye on my material. I have pushed hard to produce the last few months and have been a bit discouraged. Changing up the thumbnails a fair bit to find something that works. Ctr is low. Anyway if you have a moment would love your thoughts!
Hi Derek,
Thanks, appreciate it, I try to get back to everyone. ?
I understand how it can be discouraging when results aren’t quite there where they could be.
I took a look at your channel and your Thumbnails & layout seem to be good. Content is also high quality. I would recommend the titling and targeting is looked at a little more & then the SEO behind that.
For example, “How to break into a conversation” can be extended to “How to break into a conversation without feeling awkward” & then you can add “How to master group conversations” or “5 tips for group conversation” (there could be more obvious ones, but I haven’t watched the entire video.
Once the title is set, you should use these full long-tail keywords in your tags, I see you have the first one generally and then quite a few more broad tags, these tags aren’t relevant and don’t provide any value. What you should do instead is utilize synonyms and similar relevant long-tail keywords (And incorporate them in your descriptions). For example, if I continue with the previous example, “5 group conversation starter”, “Conversation starting ideas”, etc. they aren’t exactly what the video is about, but they’re similar enough for people who would be looking for those videos to find your video also relevant. Then I see “Charisma on command” as a tag as well, here it doesn’t have much value including his channel name, instead what you should do is look at what are the keywords he’s using in his video and then incorporate the ones that make sense into your tags and descriptions. If you’re lucky, you can then get some what I like to call piggyback views.
You have a good advantage though having been on Penn & Teller, and I would imagine having an active stage career that can be leveraged more. For example, in the last P&T video you hardly focused on your story being on the show in the title & tags. Just by the video thumbnail & title, it seemed as if you were only doing commentary on the show and it wasn’t actually you in it. Here I would focus more on the aspect of you when titling, either that or focus specifically on the episode name to get more views from your own video of the episode and the others. and then you can weave your other commentary videos around that.
For the latest video, something more intriguing in the title would help convert people initially. The whole “XYZ Reacts” genre is based around the thing being reacted to as being known as a specific subject. I.e. Film-editor reacts to incredible film editing, Lawyer reacts to law show, Magnus Carlson reacts to the Queens Gambit, etc. I’m not sure if the storyteller reacts to some commercials are for the audience as relevant to storytelling that it causes the intrigue required for the click. In which case you should look to be more obvious, I.e. “5 things XYZ got wrong”, etc.
Hope this helps. ?
Best regards,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for the tips, I’m relatively new in the grand scheme of things (channel approx. 2 and a half months old).
I think i can definitely do better on the thumbnails and that’ll be my immediate takeaway but i was wondering if, perhaps, you could take a look at my channel and give me some feedback?
I’d really appreciate it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocMv5Zsm8xWsfOmCsTdt3Q
Thanks,
Will
Hey Will,
Thanks for the comment and great that you have that self-awareness. You’re correct, thumbnails could use some work, but great covers. ?
So some tips, I’ve had a look at your channel and I can see you’re not using all of your meta tags and they’re all very competitive terms. I’d include your full title in the tags, as well as specifics that set you apart from other covers. Electric guitar cover, fingerstyle, etc. Gear used for the cover (i.e. System if a down cover with Fender XYZ).
Add some context in your description, like how long you’ve been playing, why this cover, any other covers of yours that people would also enjoy that are similar. You could even ask for suggestions in the comments.
I’ve got an article here with 38 Tips to grow on YouTube, I highly recommend it, you can find it in my sidebar.
Additionally, your playlists are sorted by month. That might be convenient for you, but it doesn’t provide much value to viewers as they can just sort your videos by date if they want. For your type of channel genres of covers would make more sense, or by the band, as a genre might not be that diverse right now ? Although, I would still include genre, even if it is only one, as this can help provide YouTube with context about what your channel is.
Fill out your about page, let people know a bit more about you, who are your favorite bands, musicians, etc. this makes you more relatable and again, provides YouTube with context about what your channel is about and who it should be showing to. And add some channel art, a guitar would be the obvious choice, but you can be creative with it ?
And you need to set 7-10 channel tags, but I mention this and a whole lot more in that article I linked. Definitely check it out.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Hi,
I have started my channel six month before. I know it will take more time to get the subscribers.
But my doubt is, I don’t know my content is worth or not. can you please check my channel and suggest me I have any mistake or if its ok.
https://youtube.com/channel/UC2_45RWe5eqQYkcUqlUNQcA
Hi Nachi,
Thanks for the comment. I’ve had a look at your channel and you should consider creating your videos by providing the viewer with more value. By just having text appearing on the screen it isn’t immersive and doesn’t provide a good user experience. This is more appropriate for channels like Facebook where videos are watched predominantly with audio off.
If you’re interested in creating video content on YouTube that provides the audience with value. Please let me know once you have at least 5 of these new videos uploaded and I’ll take another look.
Best regards,
David
Thank you David for this tips. I rarely comment on articles about improving youtube channel, but for this time, I had to. I have question tho
Are this tips also applicable on Indonesian youtuber (I’m from Indonesia btw) ? Because from what I observe for the past couple of years on Indonesian youtuber, they’re seems to be ignoring all this kind of youtube optimization, yet they have millions of views and subscribers. Especially if those “youtuber” are actually public figure such as local tv actor/actress, tv presenter, singer, etc, basically they’re already famous even before they hop on youtube. While I always implemented what I could find on internet regarding optimization for my youtube channel, there seems to be no beneficial improvement for myself.
I’m being honest, I’m not that creative person nor do I have the skill to make funny contents on my youtube channel. I spent time and money to optimize my youtube channel, even using youtube ads, but that’s about it, without youtube ads my videos wont get views, maybe 1-10 views. I’ve been doing this since 2010 and have several channel with different kind of content, from trying-to-make-an-appealing content, to just drawing ugly picture on MS Paint, not because I intend to do that, but because I can’t draw. This is the current channel I’ve been focusing for two weeks now. I’ve seen a lot of channel with ugly video format, bad drawing, bad thumbnail, you name it, but they get a lot of views and subscriber. That’s why I just, screw it, I’ll do that too with my drawing.
Having a job here is different from people around the world especially US and Europe. And as for myself, I don’t like to be an employee. So, this is my last resort as being a “successful youtuber”, don’t need to be 10 milllions of subs or 10 millions of view, at least I have an income from it, even $300 per month is enough to make me happy (minimum wage in Indonesia is about $250 per month).
I’m almost 40, I’m not married yet, have very little money, still living with parents, yes this is very very common in my country when you still living with your parents even you’re almost 40. So, this youtube things is all I want to do, as I love the internet, also I love being in front of computer, I do occasionally go outside tho. Ok, back to topic.
So, what do I have to do now ? I’m honestly out of any ideas, I do all the tips, tricks, optimization I could find all over internet to improve my Youtube. Even I do make content based on what’s trending. But still. Sometimes I think youtube just randomly choose video for the recommendation or even impression. Unless it’s viral (and this is the most popular things in my country where yesterday you are nobody, suddenly, boom, you’re a famous youtuber), and that kind of chance is like finding a needle in a haystack. I make content as best as I can, with the gear I could find in my place.
I’m sorry if my comment is so long, I just want to share how I feel right now. Thank you if you’re reading my comment to this end.
Hi Rahmat, I understand your frustration. You shouldn’t compare vanity metrics with others. What works for them wont work for everyone and yes, celebrities will have an advantage as they already have an audience to leverage.
I appreciate your long message, I really do. The one thing that stuck out though is that you didn’t speak about value, what is the value you are giving to your potential viewers? You don’t need to be funny to be helpful, you don’t need to be able to draw to be helpful. You clearly know how to use the internet, the most powerful educational tool ever made, so you can easily learn something and carry that value over to someone else and grow your brand. 40 is nothing my friend. You might not have the audience that others have, but you’ve got this, value ALWAYS prevails.
Goodluck! ?
Best,
David
Hey David,
Hope so you are in good health. after reading your article i am trying to implement some changes in my youtube channel it is still new but came across your article and thinking your content will be helpful in my youtube journey can you please look into my channel and tell me what more i need to change and what kind of content will be more beneficial for my channel in long term. Your few minutes will may be help me alot.
Thanks
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3My2cOktbF9ZVJZns6ZYxg
Hi Nawazish, please check through this article and implement the changes. ?
Once you’ve done that, check out the guide to growing your channel in the sidebar.
Good luck with your channel.
Cheers,
David
Hi David
I was wondering if you could lend us some advice. We have been creating content on Youtube Since March last year and have found it to be very slow. I have read alot online about thumb quality ,tags, descriptions. We have tried advertisement and all sorts since then but it doesn’t feel like it has progressed much in that time. Some of our content is doing okay but some of the stuff that we think is good just doesnt seem to attract people in. We have had some really great comments over this time and I can’t see what I am doing wrong not to grow. I am unsure whether it is due to being to close to it that I am unable to find the faults, Would appreciate you thoughts?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHoac2GPcylILXRWAclMi0Q
Kind Regards
The Gaming Hollow
Hi Doug, TGH,
Nice work on the channel. The first thing that strikes me is there is a lot of unnecessary branding going on.
Your intro is about 6 seconds, but why do you think it’s necessary?
Your channel keywords basically all cover your channel name, you have space for 7-10 keywords to tell YouTube what your channel is about here, what games you play here and the topics covered, Your channel already has your name, there is no need to include it in any tags, YouTube is smart enough to associate your channel with that keyword. And then the question is, who is searching for your channel name at this early stage? Your subscribers can find you in their sub feed if your videos don’t show up in their feed.
As I recommend it with every comment it seems, I’m going to say you should go for longer tail keywords. your latest Minecraft video, for example, there are no real long-tail keywords and some don’t even have spaces in between the words. “Master Fisherman Statue” is still a short keyphrase, but it isn’t in there. And whilst I’m unfamiliar with the topic, a great keyphrase to go after, and make a video on would be “how to build a small fishing boat in Minecraft”… Using TubeBuddy you can find keywords that you have a chance of ranking for and getting more eyeballs on your videos.
Your thumbnail templates seem to take up too much screen real estate, the differences in each episode is very difficult to see and the thumbnails tend to all look quite similar. Put the focal point of the episode clearly front and center.
Good luck with your channel and I hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David
I started a cooking channe in YouTube on December 25th. I’m not getting many views or subscribers also. Don’t know what I’m missing. I’m creating thumb nails, created play lists, cards, tags and have Facebook page, and twitter account. But not able to get views. I feel bad about it. I’m still constantly posting my videos. Almost posted 19 videos till now. All together I got nearly 1.5k views only. Please advise me what I have to do to improve. Tube buddy I’m using free version. But it doesn’t really helpful with this free version I think. For creating I’m using Microsoft image creator. Here is one of my video which has th hugest views. That is nearly 270. Please I need your advise. Thank you
https://youtu.be/bv8Up00GQik
Hi Satya,
Your channel is just over a month old, that’s brand new! YouTube needs time to see what your content is about and then find the right people that are interested in it.
the views you’ve gotten is good for a channel in that age range. ?
My advice looking at your channel would be to keep it up, use meta tags without a hashtag, those are not needed on YouTube, and to make your thumbnails pop more with the food photographed in better light and any text overlay being in a contrasting color or removed completely.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
hello David i have came across here because i feel like my channel is not getting the attention it need i think i make decent content ( not bad nor horrible) i have 820 subs but non of them watch my videos im quite consistent and i tent to share them around please if you can check into it and tell me what is wrong https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG2WtKVf_hwFzcPZyI5EE6Q
would really appreciate it
Hi, thanks for the comment.
I had a quick look at your channel, it isn’t immediately clear what the differences are between your videos, and your thumbnails don’t provide any info as to what the video is about. If you’re unlocking something, put the thing front and center and show the proof right up front.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David,
In trying to optimise my channel I have noticed that I don’t have the “channel recommendation” options under advanced settings. I there a way I can enable this ??
Thanks in advance,
Peter
Hey Peter,
If you’re referring to the legacy feature of where YouTubes algorithm would cluster channels automatically and display them on a channel, unfortunately, this feature has been discontinued.
If you’re referring to how you can showcase other channels on your own home page, that you can find in the YouTube Studio-> Customization-> Featured Section. Here you can add a section of featured channels. ?
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
Hi David, thanks for the helpful tips! I’ve created a channel about 10 months ago, yoga tutorials (PrioryYoga) I’ve been really strict with weekly uploads, SEO, (trying to get strong titles and thumbnails) but not seeming to get many views. Do you think maybe the market just is over saturated at the moment? Or do you think it’s worth continuing, have not had much growth at all.
Hi Cat, the market is definitely not oversaturated. I had a look at your channel quickly and I would recommend looking into less competitive long-tail keywords. Use that as the step through the door.
Try TubeBuddy and aim for long-tail keywords with a score of 90+ (the free version works fine here).
Goodluck with your channel ?
Best
David
Hi David,
I started my channel in 2017.. tried almost everything. Requesting you to have a look at my channel once… and plz guide me … it would of great help. Thanks
Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCjBTYezubt_L8lfaKNJBD6Q
Hi Baldeep,
Firstly, I see you have changed niches, even though you have a video in the food niche with 90k+ views. I would stick to one niche and create a different channel for the other content. Your viewers are familiar with your food content. After that, focus more of your channel branding in the food direction and showcase more of the food in the thumbnails. Use words like “easy”, “quick”, “best”, etc. in your native language in your titles.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
True that David.. I have changed niches.. will surely work on your suggestions. Just one querry Is the SEO okay..Thanks
As I mentioned, the change of niche wont benefit your YouTube SEO because the majority of your audience is alienated. As for the videos other than that, you should push external links down, use the first paragraph for your main keyphrase and introducing the topic of the video, hashtags can be at the end of the description and you should include your long-tail keyphrase throughout your title, tags & descriptions (and video audio).
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for your tips and i really appreciate you for your immediate response to all the comments. Definitely your words help those who are in much frustration. I am the one among them. I am following all your tips as much as I know. But the views for my videos are not in a stabilized manner. I knew youtube is almost saturated with recipe videos. But what bothers me most is even the channel which is very low in quality and without following none of the youtube algorithm is getting more views than mine. This is not because of jealous. I am just breaking my head that where I am going wrong. Can you please have a look on my channel and give suggestions? Just to let you know everything i am doing here is self taught from the internet and using tube buddy free version too.
Hi Malathi,
Thanks for your comment, and I understand your frustration.
Having looked at your channel, you’re doing ok, I think you should make your thumbnails clearer by adding more contrast on your text in your thumbnails (try placing a background so the text is clear).
In your descriptions, link to more of your videos.
Add spaces in your titles & use long-tail keyphrases instead of cramming in multiple shorter keyphrases.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
David
hello I have also recently started my channel. I unlisted some of them that had a different thumbnail style (I changed it up!) to make my channel look neater, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I’ve spent a lot more time editing the videos, yet they don’t seem to be doing well. Do you have any tips or see anything that is wrong? Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYJIlwMe1RRfKXTA0Cj64rA thank you and have a nice day!
Hey Boba, thanks for the comment.
You currently only have 3 videos on your channel. You’ll need to upload more content to see growth. ?
Best,
David
Hi!
So my problem is I’ve opened a channel 8 months ago with high quality vids & everything I work a lot on SEO but I’ve done a mistake by using google ads to promote my channel for 6 months so I had no organic reach and people subscribe but don’t watch & my channel’s average view time is very low & the engagement, but I stopped doing any ads & and my channel didn’t grow or got suggested or got any subscribers. I think youtube flagged my channel as a bad channel cuz people don’t watch the whole video and don’t engage so hiw do i fix this? Should i close it and open another or what?
Thank you.
Hi Sarah,
if you upload high-quality videos, you shouldn’t have any flagging. Sounds more like your CTR is very low so videos are not being promoted by YouTube. Sounds like there could be a lack of niche identity, no clear value for your viewers, or a whole number of other problems, without seeing your channel I can’t really make any suggestions. Send me your YT Channel and I can take a look. ?
Best,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for writing this article and sharing these tips. I have been trying to implement a lot of these tips to improve my channel.
But I’m still not getting many views. I’m more concerned about the views rather than subscribers.
It would be great if you could take a look my channel and let me know your thoughts.
https://youtube.com/c/Freshfrommygarden-Smita
Hi Smita,
Thanks for the comment.
That’s a good mentality, if you can get views, and create quality content, the subscribers will come naturally.
Regarding your channel, I recommend using more enticing titles, give people a reason to click through with more interest, i.e. How to stake a tree properly – Avoid these mistakes… Either go more specific with the long-tail keyphrase, like “how to stake a tree when planting for beginners” or create interest by using exclamation words like “best”, “obvious”, “easily”, etc. i.e. “avoid these 5 OBVIOUS mistakes”
Additionally, use all of your meta tag space.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David, I can’t believe you reply to everyone that is so great. I began my channel four months ago and I just can’t get views. I might get views in first day when I push it out to a few groups on Facebook but then it just drops off. About 250 of my subscribers are from sending personal messages to friends on Facebook and the rest have grown from you tube since I began the channel. I post consistently and my theme is paint pouring videos. I am just not sure why people are not choosing to watch them. Do you have any suggestions please? This is a link to my channel https://youtube.com/c/SyKArT
Many thanks
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the comment.
Great that you’ve established a clear niche and are engaging not only on YouTube. Your problem could be a lack of retention time/low CTR, as I could imagine that if the majority of your audience is your friends, they tend not to actually watch all of your videos as they aren’t actually interested in the topic you’re presenting… Friends hey… Anyway, having checked some of your videos, you should target specific long-tail keywords for individual videos and then incorporate them into your title, description, and meta tags. I.e. Your tags all seem to be the same, your recent “how to…” video doesn’t feature your main long-tail keyword in your tags, your dutch pour video doesn’t feature “dutch pour” in any variant.
Also link to your similar videos. And try looking at what similar channels are doing for inspiration on topics that generate views while using TubeBuddy (for free) to gauge the competitiveness of keywords.
Good luck with your channel and hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
i read all the article, and i guess there is a lot more i can do to improve my channel. The problem is that i don’t know what needs to be fixed (maybe the audio, but currently i’m a bit broke), and why people aren’t interested in my vids. I know that youtube is filled of gaming channels, but i’m trying to build a channel the way i like it; maybe the fact that i do many genres of games can cause trouble, but i’d like to cover more categories because i like them. Also my viewer pool is sort of restricted because i’m italian and i do videos in italian. I’m on the platform since april 2020, but i just can’t grow. Could you please give some advice, that would be appreciated (and sorry for poor grammar)
Any suggestion will be considered.
Thanks for your time
Hi Ugo,
thanks for the comment. If you’re creating a lot of different types of gaming videos, it will take longer and be harder to build an audience. This is just the compromise you’ll have to accept for a building a channel you want rather than for providing value to your audience. If you just enjoy uploading and playing, then this is fine, but if you want to build a youtube channel and grow it, and make money with it, then you need to think about the audience first.
For your channel as it is, make it easier by showcasing the games you play the most on the home page of your channel in playlists. Go onto other platforms and youtube itself, and engage in these groups to help grow your audience.
Your main problem would be your videos being all over the show, why would person x be interested in video y, it has nothing do with person x.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
I found your great post as I was researching topics to understand why my channel or videos are not getting views/subscribers. I started my channel 5 months ago and now I feel I’m stuck in a rut. I’ve tried thumbnails, SEO, tubebuddy, vidiq, upload frequency and anything else I’ve been learning about all these months. The most frustrating part is that my viewers watch but dont leave comments. I’d really appreciate if you could have a look at my channel:-
Thanks and Regards,
Sangeeta
Hi Sangeeta,
Your videos seem to be better formatted for Facebook or Instagram as they’re square.
You also haven’t included meta tags and you should link to other relevant videos in your description.
Some of your thumbnails are not clear and your channel banner isn’t clear. Something along the lines of “Delicious gluten-free recipes every week” would be better, it clearly shows what to expect and when. Now you’re just displaying a question that causes more confusion than much else.
Hope that helps.
Best
David
Hi David! Thank you for such wonderful information of which I will for sure implement on my videos specifically using other platforms to promote. My problem is same as above comment, similar channels to mine have more views and I think my items are nicer ? it’s not jealousy it’s just frustrating. Also as far as keywords according to YouTube when uploading a video it says are mot important. Here’s a link to my channel and let me know what you think
Hi Sara,
I’m not sure what you mean by the last sentence. Keywords and phrases are very important, but audience engagement and relevance is even more important.
Your channel seems to be doing well in the subscriber count ? so well done in that regard first.
I see you have multiple of the same video in different languages uploaded. and that some Spanish(?) video’s took off a couple of years ago. You must be able to see in your analytics the demographics of your audience, judging by the popular posts, spanish speakers are most likely your main audience. Why not focus on them with this channel and create two separate channels for the other demographics? You can then link those channels on the page and try promoting them through your main channel to get the majority of the engaged audience that speak that language over.
Your current problem is similar to those that have no fixed niche, you’re uploading a lot of videos that are not relevant to all of your subscribers, which means that many people who don’t speak the language just skip it or bounce when they realise they don’t understand the content. YouTube mentions this engagement specifically as the main factor of virality: You can increase the chance of YouTube suggesting your content by increasing your click-through rate and your video watch time.
Also, your most popular videos have no CTA in the comments and there are no links to similar videos in the description. This you should leverage (if the videos are still getting a good amount of views every day, then don’t change the description, instead leave a CTA to watch a similar new video in the comments and then pin it to the top so it’s the first thing people see, or send them to your facebook page, website, sign up for an email list, etc.)
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
I post every Friday and in three languages. I try to be dynamic, but I don’t get the views or comments or subs that I would like to see. I recently made a change in format, so I hope that will be better, but not sure how to improve the channel. My delivery was pretty choppy in the beginning, but I have been doing this regularly for two years now (and started the channel 4 years ago). I love what I do, but considering throwing in the towel. Thanks for the article, Ben
Hi Ben,
Danke fürs Kommentar ? … oh wait, one of the 3 languages isnt german and Cologne isn’t referencing the city ?
Anywho, thanks for the comment.
So I just answered someone with a similar problem to you, why do you have 3 languages on one channel? Why not make three?
The problem with multilingual content on one channel is that one video alienates the entirety of the audience of other languages. For YouTube, this just looks like 2/3rds of your audience (at least) aren’t interested in your content and it cant be very good, so why should it then promote it to others.
Also, this prevents new subscribers from finding your content. Because YouTube might see a video that does well on your channel and recognize that the main demographics interested in this are people interested in cologne that are men between the ages of 25-30 that speak English. But then YouTube promotes the Portuguese or Spanish version to potential new subscribers, but as they’re English speakers, they’re not interested. So engagement drops.
I’d definitely split the channel into 3. This way you can also optimize for that specific language as well.
Additionally, for the content, I recommend adding “review” or something along that line to your video, as people interested in the product would be searching for something more specific like a review and this just adds more context as to what your video is about.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
i just watched my youtube video on another browser and the view was not shown.the only views we get counted are my own and my three subscribers.what is going on? we have 56 videos.
Hi Wayne,
YouTube takes some time to count views and removes views that it suspects comes from you.
Good luck with your channel ?
Best,
David
Dear David, I am getting no views, so I went looking for answers and landed here. Thank you.
Hey Daniel,
Awesome, glad to help ?
Cheers,
David
Hi great article.
I am struggling with views. If I use Google ads the video do well, otherwise it just doesn’t get discovered. I am doing descriptions, tags title and use tube buddy but its been more than a year and just hit 500 subs recently. Got more than 100 videos
I would really appreciate if u could give me some insight. Really love making videos and dont wanna give up
Hi Sanj,
Thanks for the comments,
I’ve quickly had a look at your channel and my suggestions would be this:
You need to target longer-tail keywords and add more detail to your descriptions.
The thumbnails are also very busy.
If you have multilingual content, consider creating a separate channel for the other language as you alienate your audience that doesn’t speak the language which negatively affects your channel engagement.
Hope this helps,
Best,
David
hi David,
Thank you very much for your tips, useful!
Can you take a glance at my channel, really disappointed with my videos, I’ve scheduled 4 more videos already in the following days.
i don’t know why there is no view except few views from myself and several of my friends
Thank you very much for your time, tks
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
Read the article, read the comments, & then put in the work.
You haven’t even tried.
Cheers,
David
Hello David,
I am sorry to repost…I am not sure if my original post went through.
Thank you for your detailed blog. There is so much information for new youtubers like me. I have read your blog and have tried to implement and make changes on my channel but it seems like nothing is working. I am not able to get views or subscribers. I would really appreciate if you could take a look at my channel and suggest what I need to do to get better traction. My channel is Cooking Compass
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9zHzvdcQ2xcuJiLziQZyGQ
Hi Madhu,
– Use long-tail keywords
– Include Meta Tags
– Detailed descriptions
– Interlink videos
– More detailed playlists
– Show your value more: Recipes, how-to, etc.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hello David
I’ve been doing YouTube for about a month now and I get no views. I know my earlier videos were pretty bad because I didn’t have the equipment to produce good videos or the little knowledge I’ve learned since then. But, it seems like my views are smaller than before. The whole keyword route still confuses me, but I think I have better quality videos. I looked at the algorithms and people leave my videos within the first thirty seconds of the videos. I’m wondering if it’s my voice, and I’m starting to feel defeated, but I will continue fighting. I know latest videos are much better than my former. I do have to edit my earlier videos because I plan to keep them. But if you could please check out my page and let me know what’s the problem with views I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you so much
Hi David,
Congrats on getting started.
I’ve had a look at your channel and first I would recommend removing the intro screen or moving it to after you’ve showcased what the video is about. You need to hook the audience in the first 30 seconds, so cut out the main part of the video while leaving some intrigue to keep the attention.
You should also focus on a specific genre at first otherwise the majority of your audience will be disinterested.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hey David
Thank you so much for a detailed article. I have been searching exactly for this info. I have been doing few things already and rest I will implement soon. It would be great if you could spare few minutes to look into my channel. I am not sure what am I missing terribly. I know I have got myself into a tough game by starting a food channel and I am still not willing to give up. My channel is about a yr old and what amazes me is that channel younger than mine with less videos have really grown well. Some of them even don’t seem to have good quality images/ thumbnail or videos. I think I have not understood the process yet. I am not a follow-to-follow person and I am mostly interested in real organic followers.
Recently I began following YouTube SEO and I have posted few videos on my website too.
Would really appreciate If you could guide me in this journey.
Thank you.
For your reference: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqaXLkn8s8BwottMFLUM0ZA
Hi Deepti,
Thanks for the comment, definitely stay away from follower for follower stuff, that will only ruin your channel with inactive viewers that will never click on your videos.
Some suggestions:
1. Use all of your meta tags.
2. Link to similar recipes/playlists in your description.
3. Include a subscribe link in your description.
4. Include a comment with a CTA that’s pinned to the top of your comments.
5. Make the food the hero of your image and make your text in the images more readable.
Goodluck with your channel ?
Best,
David
Hi,
I have a gaming channel, I do lets plays and stuff. But i have my YouTube Channel over a year now and so far i have gotten 30 subscribers and on my videos like 10-100 views and no comments at all. I don’t know what i am doing wrong. I think to myself ‘maybe I don’t make content that’s suitable for my viewers’ but wouldn’t they write a comment and tell me what’s wrong my channel’s pluses and minuses? So i’m completely clueless here and I am done assuming and experimenting. It’s really frustrating if you think about it. I’m in desperate need of help. Can you suggest something?
Best regards,
Dave
Hey Dave,
What’s your channel name? Sounds like similar problems many other commenters here have left, maybe have a look at the gaming channels that have commented on these posts and my comments to them. Unfortunately, all I can really suggest based on what you’ve said is that you should find your specific niche and look at what viewers are interested in within that niche and then go after the long-tail terms for that whilst hopping on the current trending stuff. As well as getting active in the community. If you do that, then you will definitely get the feedback that you’re after. ?
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hey David, thanks for the article!
I started an original song Live Lounge series on Youtube 3 months back, where I post a live performance of an original song each Sunday. I was baffled to get 200 views on my first video, then 300 on my second, 500 on my third etc! My views then started averaging between 300-500 views per video… until Episode 9. From then onwards, my views have been decreasing each week and I struggle to hit 100 views now! I don’t know why – I use the same quality thumbnails as I always have, and I don’t think my content has gotten any worse.
I was hoping you could help me figure out what’s changed/where I’ve gone wrong? Thanks a ton!
Best wishes,
Lauren (Loz)
Hi Lauren,
Thanks for the comment and great concept ?
Just off of what you’ve said, without seeing the backend analytics, retention & CTR, traffic sources, etc. It would seem like your earlier videos were promoted more with the algorithm possibly because of good initial engagement for the new concept, which then didn’t sustain itself. I wouldn’t say your content has gotten any worse, content is great, well done ? I would chalk this up to just a sense of false security, i.e. what you were doing had worked, so it must be right, and just continue doing that. But I would say you aren’t optimized to help give YouTube helping hand as well as you could be. Here’s a few quick tips:
1. Drop the “Episode” to “Ep.” and put it right at the end of your title, it’s not actually providing any value, your thumbnails should be the things that tell viewers this is a new video. ?
2. Include some terms in your titles, description and meta tags to describe the type of video you’re making, i.e. “acoustic”, “original song”, “acoustic guitar”, etc.
3. Include the song title more prominently in your thumbnail, the episode number again is not important, a YouTube video is most successful when it can stand on it’s own feet, and then the similar content on your channel makes the channel overall successful, so just use the abbreviated episode for sorting purposes.
4. Just the basic stuff I mention in most of these comments like using all 500 characters in your meta tags, linking to other similar videos, include 7-10 relevant channel keywords, Include a comment with a CTA and pin it, and so on. ?
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
First of all my compliments. I have watched your video and read your article. Out of 10 points I think most of the points are already done by me. Maybe I need to work on 3, 7 and 9.
It’s heartbreaking to see that I don’t get many views. I live in the Netherlands and whenever I go to Pakistan I try to film as much as possible. I know my content may not be very “recent” but I have no other choice. I just want to show the unseen faces of Pakistan.
It would be an honour if you can take a look at my channel sir. Sights and Sounds of Pakistan.
So it’s more about my uploaded videos then about livestream (which I do few times in a month).
Hi Kamie,
Thanks for your comment, I can see you’ve been on YouTube for a number of years, and your problem seems to be a lack of current niche. Your most popular videos are clearly the ones where you’ve done interviews with quite old people and transport systems. why not stick to that? This would be #3, #7 will then come automatically as you’re providing people with entertainment. Number #9 is quite inexcusable though, here the MVP is to just reply to every single comment.
Good luck with your channel ?
Best,
David
Hi Menye, check out the article for help. Some basic things to change immediately: Use Meta tags, Long Tail Keywords, fill out your description by actually describing your video.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi there! Oh my goodness I loved your article. So detailed and helpful. I’m a little confused as to why I’m getting such low views on my channel. I have great thumbnails and titles and if I’m honest maybe it’s because I don’t add text to the thumbnails. Could you just take a gander? I would really appreciate it:
Any feedback would be great. Once again great article
And thank you
Tania
Hi Tania,
You should target longtail keywords
“easy”, “best”, “quick”, etc.
Don’t keyword stuff and you don’t need a million hashtags in your description. 1-2 at the end is enough. Formulate your description with natural sentences.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi david, please review my channel
Do you think my visits during this time when I created my channel are not small(few)?
Hi Mohammad, unfortunately I can’t read your language, so I can’t say much regarding what you’re doing. The content without knowing the language seems gaming, but very diverse, try focusing on a specific genre/style.
Number of views for a small channel is quite normal, especially considering the different genres.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
This was my previous comment and you asked me to send my channel link and here is it:
https://youtube.com/c/Sarolita1
Hope you check it and see the problem
Hi!
So my problem is I’ve opened a channel 8 months ago with high quality vids & everything I work a lot on SEO but I’ve done a mistake by using google ads to promote my channel for 6 months so I had no organic reach and people subscribe but don’t watch & my channel’s average view time is very low & the engagement, but I stopped doing any ads & and my channel didn’t grow or got suggested or got any subscribers. I think youtube flagged my channel as a bad channel cuz people don’t watch the whole video and don’t engage so hiw do i fix this? Should i close it and open another or what?
Thank you.
Hi Sarao,
Your problem is a lack of clear niche. While I dont recommend Google Ads, if used properly with an optimized and clearly defined channel, they can help.
Unfortunately your channel seems to be in the lifestyle niche, which can take a lot of time to grow if you can’t define the value you’re providing your audience with. Lifestyle means you’re the thing people are tying together, but if people don’t know who you are, they won’t care about watching your content. This is where you should focus on a specific topic and build an audience around that and then optimize your channel around that, if your personality is then displayed in these videos, people will naturally connect with you and watch other videos even if they arent in the specific niche and more lifestyle based as they’re interested in you. YouTube will then also have more context to suggest your videos to similar people like the ones that are interested in your personality, and then you can grow as a lifestyle channel. But you can’t skip a step to get there. People need to first know you before “you become the content”.
And then comes the usual optimization stuff like showing why people should subscribe with a relevant banner, including playlists and building out your channel home page, including meta tags, etc.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Thank you for this article. I listed all of your suggestions out and ticked off all the boxes. Well, at least in my head I am doing everything correctly. 🙂
Would you mind taking a quick peek at my channel. I’ve been posting a new video every day and it’s not growing at all.
I’d really appreciate any feedback you can give.
Thank you so much in advance.
Melissa
Hi Melissa,
thanks for the comment.
I’ve taken a look at your channel and this is what I’d suggest:
– Remove the 10 second intro screen
– Go after longtail keywords (I.e. “in 2021”, add Adobe, Microsoft, etc.)
– Show the software in action, I.e. for Excel, most search results show the result in the thumbnail, this gets the most engagement as people can see this video is what they’re looking for, logos, especially ones that change, are not as noteworthy to people as the actual table or software.
– Optimize Playlist descriptions
– Add more detailed video descriptions with your keywords
And if I dived deeper, there will be plenty more things you can do to grow your channel. But this would be a good place for you to start.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
hi just came across this article and seeing you reply to people motivated me to comment. Am a 16 year old youtuber and started youtube 3 months ago. can you please take a look at my channel and give me advice on things you think i should improve on.
Hey Khalid,
Thanks for the comment.
Keep going with your channel, you look to be heading in the right direction. Keep learning and one thing I would recommend is putting in more effort on your descriptions.
Good luck and best regards,
David
HEy thank you very much for your great article. I started my Channel 3 months ago. But youtube doesn’t give me any support to get some views to my channel. Now I have 43 subscribers who are from ig close friends. My biggest dream is making my own audience on my channel. Can you please help me to reach that goal? Can you give me some advices for growing my youtube channel. I used google ads once. only once.
Thanks a ton ???
Hi John,
Thanks for the comment,
I’ve had a look at your channel, here are my suggestions:
– target longtail keywords (“relaxing meditation music for positive energy”, etc.TubeBuddy can help you find popular terms)
– Consider renaming to a more relevant name “Relaxation Melodies” or something like that would be relevant and catchy.
– Build out your channel home page and use less channel tags, only 7-10 most relevant.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hello I cant seem to get any views or subscribers on my channel. What can I do I hear all the same advice about thumbnails. I dont even know if my videos would ever pop up for a suggested video on you tube
Hi Dominick,
You can see in the analytics of videos where the views come from, so if they are suggested, you’ll be able to see that there. You can even see on what videos they’re suggested.
Unfortunately, you did not add your YouTube channel in the website section so I cannot see it to give you any specific advice.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi!
I keep coming across these tips but I have been doing them for months and nothings changed. In-fact my views are getting worse!
I always told that you need have high quality thumbnails, proper tags etc. I have been doing that for months and I feel like I am doing all I can. I have a paid account with Tube Buddy and things still seem to be getting worse.
I’m convinced that the YouTube algorithm is working against my channel and I’m tired of seeing the same tips over and over again which doesn’t make a difference.
If you have time I would appreciate anything that I may have missed and things I can improve on.
Channel: youtube.com/turnleft
Hi Curtis,
Thanks for the comment and I’ll definitely take a look.
Now, I’m going to get straight to the point, you seem to be presenting your channel as if people already know who you are, a common problem many people have, especially new vloggers, the fact of the matter is that people are not interested in you before they get to know you, and when you have no established audience, then no-one knows you. I see you’re doing political commentary and seem to have tried to be the political Phil DeFranco, you can still do that, but you should let the focus of your videos be the hero of your thumbnails.
Keywords and TubeBuddy, I just spent less than 2 minutes finding a better long-tail keyword than the title of your current video, “Violence against women act 2021” – This is about 20 points better than your current title. And I spent less than 2 minutes finding that with TubeBuddy, so there are definitely opportunities to be exploited there. A video title like “Violence against women act 2021 – The Sarah Everard Story” has better and more keywords than your actual title, which simply means that there are definitely better ones if more time was spent digging into it.
Then there are other things like creating playlists, interlinking videos, adding an about section that talks about what your channel is about, not spamming channel tags (7-10, no more), building out your channel home page, etc.
Hope this straight to the point answer helps.
Cheers,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for the valuable tips.
I started my channel 2 months ago. I had been uploading both short and long videos in my channel. I got 1000+ views for all the shorts and 100+ for long ones… Suddenly from last week, my shorts are not crossing even 100 views and the long ones also slowed. I am not sure what’s gone wrong. Please help me with that…
Take a look at my channel and help..
Hi Maria,
Well done with the channel. You seem to be doing well with your channel all things considered, I recommend you incorporate longer tail keywords in your tags, titles, and descriptions. and actually, fill out your descriptions with what your video is about and link to other similar videos.
Best,
David
Hi there,
I have been working on YouTube and other socials for quite some time. I am someone who talks about how to grow, what you should and should not do regarding social media and how to invest in quality gear for streaming/YouTube without overpaying. Sadly some videos did get a lot of views and lately my views are not really going up. Could you please tell me what I am doing wrong? I will await your answer.
~ Official Krale
Hey Ruben,
Thanks for the comment and great quality videos. 🙂
I would suggest going longer tail considering the competition in this niche. I.e. “5 Huge Tips For Growing Your Twitch Stream” should have a “in 2021” at the end of it at the very least.
Then include your exact match keywords in your tags at the beginning. And built out your descriptions more about the actual video content rather than your various links.
Goodluck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hey there, I seem to be stuck. At the beginning my channel hit proportionately high volume of views and subscribers. My last few videos however, is not doing that well. I implemented exactly (I think) what you’re talking here yet, I am not getting any traction. I would very much appreciate your pro tips on how I can improve content creation. Thank you so much in advance. Jen
Hi Jenna,
Thanks for the comment.
Your channel doesn’t seem to have much content on it, but you have a good amount of views and subscribers so far. There is one video with 10k views and that seems to have been well-targeted and timely for that particular product. Well done.
Your latest videos seem to have a good number of views.
Some suggestions:
– target longtail keywords (more than 3-4 words is fine)
– Link to relevant videos in descriptions.
– Start time stamps with 00:00, otherwise they don’t show up in the progress bar and time stamp section on mobile.
– Build out your channel page using playlists.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for the article! Super helpful tips / suggestions, and I’ll definitely be implementing some of them for my future videos!
Growth for my Youtube channel has been a bit frustrating, since I started back in October 2020, and I feel as though I’ve barely gotten any growth. I’ve been using Tubebuddy, trying to have good keywords / tags / thumbnails, and I’ve been uploading videos the same day/time every week.
Do you have any suggestions for me, to help myself grow more on Youtube?
Thanks,
Emiline
Hi Emiline,
Thanks for the comment.
I’ve taken a look at your channel, and here are my thoughts/suggestion ?
– Include your keyword phrases in your meta tags, i.e. “How to make XYZ”.
– Use all 500 characters of your meta description
– Include links to similar videos of yours in the description
– Now I’m not in the cosplay scene, so I’m not sure what is popular and what is obscure, but from what I can tell, you seem to have obscure content for your niche. I.e. When I type in “General Amaya Cosplay” on YouTube, your two first are the first two. Considering in the 3 and 6 months they’ve been live they have only gathered a couple of hundred views. This means people aren’t looking for this.
For growth, I would suggest looking at more popular and trending cosplay characters to go after. In order to grow a channel, you need to find a mix between a genre that interests you (to stay motivated) and interests a large audience. People love cosplay, but they don’t seem to be that interested in the characters that you’ve selected. Good news is that you seem to be heading in the right direction and you should do well if you focus in the next 3-6 months on popular and trending characters.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hello David,
First off I really appreciate this information and I’ve tried to implement all of your tips. I started my channel two months ago and I’ve already switched to a better camera. I have noticed that similar channels started around the same time have way more views and subscribers than me, and the quality of their videos isn’t that much different than mine. What am I doing wrong?
I put time into keywords, writing accurate descriptions, doing custom thumbnails which I try to mimic the style of popular channels in my specific content, and I upload once a week without fail.
I’m starting to fear that I am the problem, my personality, voice, and looks? I really don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
If you have the time, could you please check?
My content is between booktube and Authortube and many other channels do this combo.
I hope you have a wonderful day.
Best regards
Sofia.
Hi Sofia,
Thanks for the comment.
I’ve had a look at your channel and here are my thoughts/suggestions:
– You’re channel seems very new still, with only 11 uploads currently. You need to give your channel time to gain authority in your niche and help YouTube understand who should be watching your content.
– You main problem from what I can tell is not you, but rather your choice of content. I don’t really hang around the booktube and authortube parts of YouTube, but the functionality of the platform is all the same, so I would say your main problem is that the topics of your videos are just too vague. I searched for two of your books/videos, and you were ranking first, even though the videos only had 30 or so views in 2 months. What this tells me is that the books you’ve reviewed there are very obscure. Which is fine, when you have a larger channel and an audience that you can introduce the books to (this works for all niches). However, as you haven’t grown an audience on YouTube yet, and people aren’t really searching for these books, and reviews of them, no-one is finding your content.
– I’d recommend you do some reviews of more popular and trending books currently, preferably in the same genre, and then you can mix in these more obscure books as the interesting “hidden gem” reason to subscribe to your channel.
Some additional notes for your optimization:
– You shouldn’t include hashtags at the beginning of each of your meta tags, hashtags should be used 1-2 in the description (although you can leave them out completely.. they don’t do much on YouTube these days anyway).
– Link to similar videos in your description
– Share slightly longer information pieces in your description about the book/video, and your review.
– You can remove the intro from your future videos, it doesn’t add any value to your readers and can cause them to actually leave your videos sooner.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
I opened my YouTube channel back in September. I had a decent start and decided to support myself with google ads for few of my videos and from there my new videos are not getting even 100 views. Regarding optimization I always spent good few hours on getting the highest score on tube buddy and the most relevant tags. My description is always detailed and for the quality of my videos I would argue are absolute top. For the few subscribers I got 221 most of the people think I am underrated as most of my videos give them million subscribers channel vibe. I had invested a lot into my gear. I have a brilliant mic, my camera is top in the game as well, lighting, music. Please I would really appreciate if you could have a look my channel and tell what am I doing wrong. I have probably spent over £10000 and I really if not much at least to return some of my investments. Don’t get me wrong I do love making the videos and I am not solidly for the money but I don’t know how much more I am able to spend for 50 views on a video.
Many thanks
Hi Yuliyan,
Thanks for the comment. ?
So first off, I wouldn’t recommend using YT ads for growing your channel, especially not when starting out. You need to build up an archive of content to help show people what your channel is about. This means 20+ videos at least. I see you’ve just passed that mark now. Keep on uploading.
Now I’ve had a quick look at your channel and a video or two, here are my thoughts/suggestions:
– Your introduction video does not get to the point quickly enough. While it is nice that you’re wishing me a nice day, all that is does as a viewer is make you look for the pause button if they haven’t already left yet. You need to get to the point quickly, you can say who you are and what you do later, but people want to know why they should care about watching, subscribing, etc. first. Remember, people are quite selfish and if a video doesn’t persuade them to watch in the first few seconds, they’ll skip to the next one.
– Similar to your intro video, your story telling could do with some optimization. Basically, as you’re in the shock/horror/amazing story niche, your first sentence should be the “She spent 7 years locked underground with no food and water, this is how she survived!” type statement. And then you can briefly introduce yourself.
– Ask for a subscription or like (I prefer likes as subscribers can always do that, but viewers can only sub once.) after you’ve delivered the promise of your video. So from the previous example, I would recommend you tell the story, and just after you’ve said how it was possible and then go into more detail, you can cut to “but before we continue, I’d really appreciate if you liked this video so I can continue making these videos. Now back to the story” or something like that.
– Some thumbnails are good (thoughty2 style, I’d recommend looking at his thumbnails if it was just a coincidence) but some are poor and difficult to read the text in the image because the font is too narrow or there is too much text. Or the image just doesn’t convey the message well enough to make it understandable.
– TubeBuddy is a tool, so while it may say 100 as a score, that just means you’ve matched your titles, descriptions and meta tags well. So that is the positive and is good. Unfortunately, if you pick poor tags, then you’re not going to get great results. For example, your latest video is targeting a keyword that doesn’t get searched often and doesn’t even autofill when typing the entire phrase into youtubes search bar. “Alien abduction story”, “travis walton ufo incident”, “alien abduction interview”, “ufo abduction stories”, etc.
Hope that this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hey David! Thank you so much for sparing time and having a look at my channel. I am so happy to know that I am doing right by not doing Follow-4-Follow thing. It was like someone just say it for me. Your inputs are great! Yes, you are right my thumbnail images are pretty bad and I realized that they were not appearing good when I used Adobe Spark. It somehow made them dull. I recently changed the thumbnail using the same images in Canva and there was a great improvement in it. Gradually, I would change all of them. Really appreciate your time and suggestions. Thank you again!
Glad to help Deepti ?
Is it normal that in my first day I uploaded a video and it got 37 views but at the next day I only got 0-3 views. I’m not in a rush but I just want to know if is it normal or something is wrong.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCqZ9Bly4e_X7Qoi4veoYQpw
That is my YouTube channel☝️
Hi Yssabela, very normal. People can share videos and you’ll get a surge of views, and your video may gain some SEO traction, or good CTR for a time period and then it can take off.
Best,
David
I am very familiar with these tips and yet I still am not seeing results, I have improved my thumbnails making the font easier to read and making videos that are supposed to perform well in my niche but still not much…
I have been making videos now for over 7 months, I have 41 videos public and still under 200 subs. I know it’s not all about the number but it would be nice to have grown a sizeable community by now. I am niched, I research video topics frequently, use tags etc.
Some help would be much appreciated 🙂
my channel is: https://www.youtube.com/c/TumiEdun/videos
Hi Tumi, thanks for coming back after a few months. I can see you’ve put in some work, well done.
Now let me get straight to it regarding what I can see on your channel.
– You are not as niched down as you think you are, lifestyle, health & fitness are extremely diverse topics. You can see for yourself that you haven’t got enough content for each sub category yet as your home page has some playlists with only 2 or 3 videos in them. You need more content if you’re going to start so broad.
– You’re not using all of your meta tags and then including your keywords throughout in your descriptions, titles & tags.
– Some thumbnails are hard to read and lack a clear message (I.e. “stop using IG workouts” and your title seem to have different messages, they may correlate. but you need to then read both to understand. Make things as simple as possible for people).
– Link to relevant videos & playlists in your descriptions, and include the subscribe option in the description earlier.
Good luck with your channel, you’re heading in the right direction. ?
Best,
David
Hi David,
I have, over the past few months, read this article multiple times when searching for SOMETHING helpful for my growth on YouTube. I am an automotive YouTuber, and have been uploading since January of ’17.
All of the people I have started out with have millions of subs (TJ Hunt, Adam LZ, Evan Shanks, etc), but I was left in the dust. After a few breaks over the years, I started my own company in 2019 and decided it was time to take YouTube seriously again. I want to finally take over this industry, but everything I do makes my growth worse!
I am an artist and designer, so I view this as filmmaking, inspired by Casey Neistat’s approach. My audience retention is usually between 40%-50%, with an AVD of 4:00 – 7:00, but recently has fallen.
I only have 1 single video to go “viral” with under 200k views, but I can’t build an entire car every week (it took 4 years for that video to be made).
What can I do to start climbing the hill faster? Massive thanks in advance.
YouTube.com/cyberunn
Hi Josiah,
Thanks for the comment and sounds like a very interesting development you’ve made.
I’ve had a look at your channel and here are my thoughts/suggestions:
– Upon first glance, It’s a little confusing what your channel is about. The channel banner says aero, fabrication & design, but looking at your video list I see mostly “car build” related things. and then looking further, there’s a lot of Miata related videos. Your channel banner makes it seem like you design custom parts, whereas the videos section doesn’t showcase that, at least, not up front. Some things to consider.
– Video quality is great. ?
– I’ll mention the usual issues I see with most channels (and you’ll see in many of the comments here): Use all 500 characters of the meta description, use longtail keywords people are searching for, include the full keywords in the meta description, link to relevant videos and playlists in your description.
– As building a car seemed to have done so well, maybe you should consider building a car every week ?
– Ok, so that’s not feasible, but breaking down and creating “how to” videos on different build stages should be right? This would be the next best thing, show people how they can do what you do. So either how to videos of parts of the build that people are interested in, or general motoring how-to. Depending on what you do in your company, you could even share that, and as you’re using the channel to promote your company, this can act as a quality showcase. I see a lot of people that then say things like, but then the customers can do it themselves, but we both know that the actual customers can be shown the video a million times and they wont get around to doing it. The videos are for those bootstrappers that are going to follow the instructions to a T and then share how incredible your video was to their friends IRL and on social. ?
I think your channel is going in the right direction, it just seems to be lacking a content direction (the miata stuff might be getting stale). If the how-to stuff seems interesting, it can be a great way to build an engaged audience. Ofcourse the time you spent away from YouTube may have disrupted your growth, but you can get that back on track.
Goodluck and all the best,
David
This is my channel, trying hard to follow the rules, but no one listens, even my friends also don’t give a damn. this hurts, I only have 70 sub now.
may be I FAILED
Hi Tasfia,
Thanks for the comment.
Have you read through the article? Try implementing the steps outlined in the post.
Cheers,
David
Hi David!
I’m pretty new on youtube, as I started this year on March 31st. My niche is video games, and from which I understand, its a popular niche. I’ve been watching videos on how to grow my channel and such, I try to use keywords/tags, edit my videos (not the best but I’m still trying to improve), thumbnails, and I’m now trying to learn about youtube SEO. I only have 5 videos out right now, but is it normal to not experience any growth as a newbie? On my latest video I made sure to include what my video was about in the description, and I used TB to help me as well. Is there a period when I would start seeing growth, and do you know how many months of consistent uploading that would roughly take? I currently only have 3 subs, which is family :(. Do you have any tips for me please?
Thank you so much!
Hey Kailey, thanks for the comment and great job getting started, the first step is the one that most don’t even reach!
With gaming channels is can be difficult, the best thing to do is follow the trends within your specific gaming genre and keyword your videos to fit those trends appropriately. It can take anywhere from 3 months to a year to see substantial growth, especially as you won’t be implementing everything perfectly from the get-go and YouTube needs content to classify your channel properly, as well as more content means more means for people to find your videos. As you slowly build up an audience, YT’s algorithm will be able to see what they have in common and then recommend your channel to similar people who would be interested in your content. This is why it pays off to be consistent with the type of content you’re uploading as it helps your channel be found by the right people who would be interested and makes exponential growth happen faster.
I’ve noticed some quick things you can implement on your channel right away:
– Use all 500 characters of your meta tags and use long-tail keywords, like instead of just “getting over it”, use “getting over it walkthrough 2021”, “getting over it playthrough 2021”, “Getting over it rage quit”, etc.
– Use more specific Channel Keywords (Long-tail) and keep them around only 7-10.
– Make your descriptions more detailed and link to other similar videos and playlists and include a CTA to subscribe.
And then engage, engage, engage! There are tons of similar content, get active and comment with thoughtful comments on others’ videos, visit FB groups based on these games or these game genres and be active there, by replying to posts, etc. and then share your video there when appropriate.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hello David ,
Thanks for these tips, I run a faceless youtube channel but I get no subs increasing not even views. >> https://youtube.com/c/WeirdTop5s Above is my channel link please can you tell me what I am doing wrongly.
Hi Chris,
– Use Long-tail keywords
– Link to similar videos
– Only use 7-10 of the most relevant channel tags
– Your channel name doesn’t seem to have much relevance to your channel.
– Build out your channel home page to showcase the type of content on your channel.
– Group your content with Playlists.
– Add a more descriptive “about” section including your relevant channel keywords in a natural way.
Hope this helps.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi. I love the article! I recently started a YouTube channel about a month ago. So far I’ve posted covers of songs I can play on piano to increase value. At the moment I have 28 views across both videos, mostly from the first post. I’m not a social media wiz, but I’ve done a good amount of research and included all the relative keywords and tags I could find. I edited the videos to the best of my current ability. the descriptions are informative and personal. Yet I’ve gained one subscriber so far.
I started a tiktok account as a way to funnel viewers from that social media account back to my YouTube account. I would post snippets of the youtube video on tiktok and provide a link for the full video in the caption. As far as the intended purpose, I had little luck relative to a significant increase in views. However, the teaser videos themselves had surprising success. So I continued to post covers and song snippets there while figuring out which songs to learn on piano for youtube.
Right now, I have a good, tight following on tiktok, considering I just started a few weeks ago. I think I have a pretty good idea what works but I’ve broadened my niche a bit too much. It now includes music(covers, tiktok duets and snippets), short skits, and reaction videos. I want to prune that down to only music and skits, then use that same niche for my youtube channel.
So, now that you know a bit about my journey, I have a few questions for you:
Question 1-
Can a niche include two genres as different as music and comedy skits? Am I breaking the consistency rule by posting music then comedy videos, or can that be a part of my unique niche?
Question 2-
What is your recommendation for increasing engagement on both platforms? I have had one person comment on my YouTube videos; and I made sure to respond as quickly as possible. I do the same for my tiktok comments. Is there anything more I could be doing?
Question 3-
My thumbnail(and banner for that matter) is just a screengrab from the posted video. Not inline with your rule, I know. I don’t have design skills or anything like that, so what could I do to improve the quality of these thumbnails? Is there a site you go to for creating attention grabbing thumbnails and banners?
Question 4-
I’d like to get you your assessment of the videos I’ve posted so far. What do you think is missing? What could be taken away?
Thank you so much for reading all of this. I appreciate all the help and info you’ve given to your readers so far. Keep up the good work and I hope to hear from you!
Hi John,
Thank you for the very structured comment, and great voice!
So to the questions:
1. Deciding on your niche is 100% based on your audience. If the majority of the content you’re creating is relevant and will be consumed by the majority of your audience, then it doesn’t matter what the labeling of your niche is, as you’re catering to your niche audience. That might sound quite unspecific, but this is the basic structure of how a channel goes viral or grows rapidly (exponentially), by having similar content on the channel that is of interest to people who have watched one video. YouTube would often suggest another video from your channel in their home feed (even if they haven’t subscribed yet), if they don’t engage, sometimes multiple times, then you’ve basically lost them as the content either didn’t catch their attention or wasn’t relevant.
So to answer the question, if a complete stranger interested in one of your covers lands on your channel, would they also be interested in a comedy skit? This is for you to decide, but having watched one of your YouTube videos, I can’t find a connection between the covers and a comedy skit.
2. The best method of engagement with a new channel is to engage within your community. It won’t generate millions of views from the get-go, but it will get people that are potentially more “invested” in you to watch more of your video & engage by liking, commenting, subscribing (or even sharing your video). I say they’re more invested in you, because you’ve already then taken the first step by engaging in a thoughtful and genuine way. This just means leaving your honest opinion and thoughts on videos within your community (covers for YouTube, and music/skits on TikTok), people that click through to your account or channel will then already have formulated a (hopefully) positive image of you when they consume your content which can go a long way when you haven’t established an audience yet.
3. Canva is incredible and free. I published an article here recently on all you need to know about channel banners, it’s worth a read.
4. Your YouTube covers are good, keep it up. Recommendations of what you could be doing would be the usuals that everyone seems to skip: Long-tail keywords, add at least a short description, include longer tail tags, better attention-grabbing thumbnail (as you’ve noticed yourself), link to your other videos in your description, add 7-10 relevant channel tags, channel banner, group content in playlists and build out your home page (when you have more content) and I would strongly recommend including a professional-looking headshot, and possibly not being shirtless in all of your YouTube videos as some may be then less inclined to continue watching/sharing.
Keep it up Johny and best of luck!
Cheers,
David
Hello, is a interesting article but many of these suggestions are not fitting to my channel that is about music. I researched about keywords and optimized the title, description and tags, i posted link on many socials and i got some interactions and i published 1 video/day from when i stared (2 weeks ago). I compared my vides to other competitor channels, we have very similar titles/keywords but i got only 7 views in 2 weeks..
What do you think?
Hi Francesca,
Thanks for the comment.
These are relevant for all types of YouTube Channels.
I’ve had a look at your channel, here are my thoughts/suggestions:
– All of your videos start with “relaxing music”. Use your main keyword first and make it a more specific long-tail keyword. I.e. “rain sounds for studying with music”. (This was found in 2 seconds in the YouTube search bar, you can find thousands more terms by doing keyword research on YouTube and with TubeBuddy).
– Your descriptions are quite empty.
– Meta tags are filled with head keywords, you need to use long-tail keywords
– Your channel is still quite new with only 14 videos. Your channel needs some time to build authority around your field so YouTube knows who to suggest this too.
That’s enough to get you started, and as you can see, basically all of the points are relevant to your channel.
Hopefully this helps.
Best,
David
If you have the time, could you please give me some tips on how I can up my channel. I recently just started it and so far I’m not doing so well but I’m still putting out content but I know that it needs work. Thank you!
Hi Kimberly,
Thanks for the comment and congrats on getting started on YouTube.
I’ve taken a look at your channel, here are my suggestions:
– Use longtail keywords, I.e. “Dollar tree beauty haul 2021” or something along those lines, use YouTubes search bar or TubeBuddy to find longer tail keywords.
– Include your full long tail keywords in the meta tags and similar terms people would use to find your content.
– Use all 500 characters of your meta tags.
– Include some category style tags as well, like “beauty haul”, “haul video”, “dollar tree hauls”, etc.
– Add links to similar videos in your description.
– Include a CTA in your comments to like, sub or watch a similar video and then pin it to the top.
– Your thumbnails are Ok, but the text is not very clear, try increasing the font size or using a thicker font.
– Keep on going!
I hope this helps, and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Hope you are doing well
I have a youtube channel, where I am putting a lot of effort into growth and it’s been a year I am working on youtube for my channel, but not sure as to why I do not have more than 10-20 views. I am not feeling frustrated but concerned as to why this has not been able to grow within a year.
Even I promoted my channel through Google Ads to build awareness on my channel and not just merely for views and managed to get only 500+ subs in a year with 289 hours of watch time. I am not sure what is terribly wrong here
I need your help and support to evaluate my channel, if you can share some tips and provide some feedback that would be much appreciated. I need advice so that I put my efforts in the right direction without wasting further time.
I have a travel vlog channel, where I post travel vlogs, guides, tips, and travel updates. I am trying to seek help from many others but no one really takes any interest or care. I see you are actively engaged with your audience on this blog so hoping to hear from you soon 🙂
Thanks,
Aseem
India
Hi Aseem,
Thanks for the comment. ?
I’ve had a look at your channel, here are my thoughts/suggestions:
– Looking at your latest video, it has taken 38 seconds (on a video that is less than 4 minutes in duration) for you to actually start the video. Get straight to the point, and leave asking for likes/subs to after you’ve delivered on what the people are expecting. Also, your intro can be a simple, “hi, it’s Aseem”, people just don’t care about the rest.
– Include your keywords in natural sentences and build out longer descriptions. 150-300 words.
– Include a CTA to like, sub or watch a similar video in your comments and then pin that comment to the top.
– Your thumbnails are not very clear, some are too busy, some have text that is not contrasting enough to the background, some text is too small to read. All of these are things to change. Focus on one thing in your thumbnail, the main reason why someone would want to watch your video, and then make it the hero of your thumbnail image.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David, your article is so great, I already doing some of your tips but now I just found that was the right thing to do. I agree with you with the thumbnail, I spend almost 30mins crafting my thumbnail using at least 5 application to produce 3 thumbnails for every video I made, I change my thumbnail when I notice that my video doesn’t earn some views, some of my videos are now getting views every day at least 3 of them out of 13 videos. I also implement the optimization and that is true, just have to be consistent in your title going to your description and the tags, after 2 months of starting the channel the video that I said before is getting continuous views.My question is about consistency, I had a DIY channel, my content is a random DIY for motorcycle, car, homemade tools, unboxing,testing, reviewing to power tools that I used in my project, metal works and plan to combine with wood project.Do you think O break the rule of consisitency there?
This is my channel I hope you will visit it and make some comment about my question.thank you David.
Hi, Pete is it?
Your channel niche is fine, DIY, tools, and motor vehicles all would speak to the same audience and your videos all seem to revolve around those. I would say that you’re trying to do too much in your thumbnails, less can be more, currently, they’re very busy and you can’t make out everything on a small screen. If viewers cant read it, then you might as well just remove it.
Your channel is still gaining momentum, so keep uploading and be consistent with similarly styled videos.
Your intro video can either be removed or move it further into your video. Show people immediately what the video is about, having an intro screen at the beginning just increases the bounce rate of your videos. People will subscribe and remember you because of the content of your video, not your intro screen.
In your description, write your keywords naturally, you don’t need to include hashtags in the sentences, you can add 1-2 at the end of the description.
Add a CTA to your comments to sub, like, or watch a similar video, and then pin it to the top.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hellow,
I want to keep it short
Basically i make songs out of google translate so can you give me some ideas like in which type of group i should have to post it like what is my category?
Hope you reply and ur article is awesome 🙂
Hi,
Your niche would be google translate songs then. There are plenty of others on YouTube that does similar things, are you focused on humor or a more refined cover?
Best,
David
Hi John,
Thanks for the comment.
Honestly speaking, your videos are lacking any real value. It’s basically just a slide show that’s difficult to read. If you’re going to do tutorial content, then actually show people how to do things, what you have right now is more fitting for a blog post (but then please add more information).
Additionally, you’re not optimizing your videos at all (which means you haven’t done anything set out in this article) and you have them set for kids which they should not be.
Good luck.
Cheers,
David
Hi David! this is my youtube channel. ive recently started posting new videos on it again. can i know why exacatly im not getting any views apart from my regular views like only 100-200 are watching when a new video is posted. my channel is on cover songs.
Hi Udani,
As you’ve been inactive for a while, you need to post consistently to try and “reactivate” your audience. You haven’t uploaded that many videos, only 15 videos are currently shown on the channel, so you need to build up your channel relevance by uploading more and consistently.
Best,
David
HELLO , just wanted to say love the article, My Channel is about day trading and swing trading and investing, I have been working on my youtube channel for 5 months know, get about 30 to 40 views on each video , subscribe have about 113, my question is what the heck can I do to improve my views , I do all the SEO stuff , I do all the custom nails and have long detailed descriptions.. please help open to any feedback Channel is 12MHUSTLE
Hi Gerson,
Thanks, you seem to be going in the right direction. I would say that your thumbnails can be improved to make it more clear what your video is about and to just make it stand out vs the competition… check what the search results look like and then make a thumbnail that is contrasting to the other results. I see you’re doing SEO, you should reduce the channel tags on your channel to 7-10 of the most relevant.
A note regarding your channel name, I understand the hustle mentality, but not sure how that ties into day trading. You might as well just go with your name if you don’t want to tie yourself to a specific niche (work on the personal brand). Otherwise, I would recommend a more focused name, something along the lines of “Newbie Traders”, “Traders Guidebook” etc.
Regarding descriptions, formulate the keywords in a natural way. Also, link to similar relevant videos and playlists.
You don’t need to add hashtags to your titles, including 1 or 2 at the end of your description is fine. It’s just wasted space in the title.
I would also recommend adding a CTA in the first comment to watch another (similar) video or subscribe and then pin it to the top.
Hope that helps.
Best,
David
Hey, I have read your tips above, They were great and seem to be perfect in order to grow our channel.
I make videos on video editings like amv and all.
I have a request to you, Can you please check on my channel to see what mistake I have been doing, which is leading to the downfall of my channel.
Here is the link to my channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQgWKoBlnuHuuH6Lq02wFog
Hi Ayush,
Thanks for the comment, you currently only have 8 videos on your channel. You need more content to help YouTube show it to the right people. The videos are also very short and the thumbnails don’t seem to represent what you’ve said your channel is about.
Create some more content following these tips and when you have at least 20 videos posted consistently, I’ll take another look.
Best,
David
Thank you! This blog is really helpful!!! I just uplaoded my first video in YouTube 2 days ago and it’s not getting views. I will use these tips to improve my channel!
May I ask if I can upload the same exact video in Facebook or do I need to edit it a little? Im not going to copy the link in YouTube. Is it possible sir? I really do appreciate your response. If you have time please consider checking my video. Thank you! Im now working on the thumbnail. 🙂
Hi Maurice,
Congratulations on starting your channel!
Unfortunately, the link supplied doesn’t seem to work.
To answer the question, you can upload the same video to Facebook, but it can perform better if you edit it for Facebook (shorter, potentially with captions, etc.)
Best
David
Hey,
What a wonderful article, I like the part where you advised about Youtube SEO.
This is how we can learn to grow YouTube channels.
Keep the good work, as this article helps many people and in fact, Translation is one of the best strategies for increasing YouTube growth and On average, two-thirds of a channel’s views come from outside the creator’s home country.
Vitraai can translate content to the language of your choice and accelerate content reach to 8 billion people with just one click.
Thanks for sharing this helpful content. I would like to look forward to more content.
Hi Priya,
Thanks for the comment.
I’m not sure about the accuracy of that statistic, but by translating your content to the languages of your audience, you can improve the reach of your content to more people in those countries and increase their engagement. Tools like Google, Deepl & TubeBuddy can also help in this regard.
Best,
David
Hi David,
I am following exactly what you have mentioned for nearly a year now. I still don’t get enough subscribers or views. Can you please let me know how can I can improve further. Here’s my channel link. https://youtube.com/c/TheHungryBong
Best Regards,
Dipankar
Hi Dipankar,
Having looked at your channel, I see you have quite a few videos that have over 20k views. How are you getting those views? (Look at your analytics for each video if you’re unsure).
Also “Epic Handheld B Roll” at the beginning of many of your new videos does not provide much value to your audience. Are you trying to speak to filmmakers or people looking for tasty recipes?
Best,
David
Hi David,
I do all the things that you mentioned in your tips. Over the last few months, in particular, I have spent many hours per day working on my channel trying to get my videos even better many times re-doing thumbnails because I think they could be better, re-analyzing SEOs. And yet I only have 12 subscribers and 7 of those are me, friends and family me . So I’ve only gotten about 5 subscribers in the last few months and I do consistently put up new videos. I also have a Podcast of the same name (shortened somewhat because I read you should keep channel names short) and I do always put the SEO of my Podcast in the tagging so I can have cross-referencing. I spend alot of time posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (none of which I actually like btw) and have 0 subscribers on Twitter. I went in to this knowing it was a climb but I feel I’m going nowhere. I do have all my links in my podcast and put links in the description. Every time though that I’ve tried to gently steer that audience to this … nothing. Here is the link to my YT channel if you’d be kind enough to take a look.
Thank you.
Hi There Megan,
Thanks for the comment.
I’ve had a look at your channel, here are my thoughts/suggestions:
– Include a short description of the book in your video description, possibly also the target audience as well… “ideal bedtime story for kids to fall asleep”, etc. Currently, you’re not adding a description and this is a vital part of your video optimization that helps add context.
– You have a ton of external links with no internal links, get rid of links that are irrelevant, or use a linktree to house multiple links under one (i.e. the newest stories can be reduced to 3 or collected under 1 link and the podcast links can all be gathered under one link).
– By internal links, I mean link to similar videos and to playlists, YouTube wants people to remain on the platform, and by having people watch more of your content, or save them for the future, you’re increasing the likelihood that people subscribe and engage.
– Your channel keywords are all over the place. Be specific to your niche and don’t be afraid of long-tail keywords. After a quick look at your channel. “Bedtime stories for toddlers” seems like a much more relevant keyword than “nap”. Don’t overdo it here, only include 7-10 keyword phrases.
– Build out your channel home page to showcase the different types of stories that you have based on your playlists.
– Your actual niche looking at your channel is kids books/bedtime stories for children, yet you have things like toy reviews & children’s videos (what even is that?). It’s ok to branch out a bit, but I’d suggest that if you want to branch out, then stay within your niche, I.e. toys related to bedtime, or toys related to children’s books.
– Your channel is only two months old, it takes some time for YouTube to help build context about what is on your channel and who should be shown it, this is why you should stay focused on one topic at the beginning to help build channel authority on that topic.
– Regarding Facebook, Instagram & Twitter, you should not be on there just to share your video, then no one will see it or care. It’s the equivalent of going to a shopping center parking lot and shouting “I just uploaded a new video”. No one knows you yet, so why should they care? You haven’t provided any value, so no one is “invested” in you. You should be engaged in the community, if you already have a following, this is a good thing to leverage, but if you don’t, then you should find out where your tribe hangs out (judging by the niche and age demographics, probably Facebook & Instagram) and then be helpful, kind and engaging in the comments and groups and then you can share your content when relevant. I would ditch twitter in your case and then look at either IG or FB (&/or TikTok) and get involved. Particularly Facebook groups.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hello i have created a youtube channel for gaming i posted non copyright videos more than 100 but i am not getting even 1 view it has some 10 15 views and 5 subscribers but those views are not real it was counted when i watched on my own and the 5 subs are my own i just subscribed from other account my self . The content are very gooe and i also made some good thumbails tags but the result is same i am getting views in the channel in about section but not in videos please see my channel and tell me what am i doing wrong
Hi There,
So I’m not sure what your channel is about. As far as I can tell you’re just uploading generic video from the game. No value is being provided to viewers. I’m not sure if this actually is non-copyright videos, and even if it is, the value you’re providing isn’t clear. And that’s without even looking at the optimization of videos. Create your own content or use it in a way that provides value (if it truly is video you’re allowed to use) and then actually read the article (It doesn’t seem like you’ve implemented any of the things mentioned).
Cheers,
David
Hello
I’m from India
I’ve started a YouTube channel one year back. But I started posting videos regularly in 2021.
I have very small amount of subscribers 635 people.
I used to get 100views within 24 hours but no more the later days….
Now a days my analytics shows views subscribers and watch hours declining
Plz help me I want to know why a sudden change occurred..
I do videos on home making cleaning family and engaging kids helping study etc
Hi Shamna,
Unfortunately, I cannot see your channel as you added a broken link. But judging by the last sentence, it seems like you haven’t focused on a specific niche and your audience engagement has therefore suffered. Add your channel link and I can take a better look.
Best,
David
hello
I followed all steps like keywords, tags, thumbnails, SEOS and …,but I still don’t get enough subscribers or views. I worked on my channel so much but still no chances. please take look at my channel ?
and also thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
Hi Ali,
Thanks for the comment.
I’ve had a look at your channel, and unfortunately, I can’t quite understand the language, so I can’t really look at how you’ve done the optimization, but here are my thoughts anyway:
– You were inactive for almost a year, so that inactivity means your channel will have to build up the momentum again as users haven’t been engaged with your content for quite a while.
– I’m not sure what your niche is, I see a lot of space stuff, but then also John Wick.
– Your Home page could do with some building out and having a more informative channel banner.
– Not sure what your channel name means, and your logo doesn’t give me a clue as to what your niche is, so consider adding clarity here.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Thank you! I have absolutely zero people to give me any input so I appreciate it. When you Google this stuff you get a lot of nothing.
For ages I was making all the keywords one word as that’s what I read and only about a week ago I saw (via Tubebuddy that I installed about two weeks prior – nice to see I was on the right track there) that other channels were using spaces between words (ie bedtime stories not bedtimestories.) It’s taken me months to understand the whole keyword thing. I would just pick words not phrases (phrases are better right? Ie, kids book reviews). Also I use all 500 characters for tags, especially since I’m new. Is that right?
The reason for the external links … I write some of the books I read. What stinks is I first joined YT last November, did 6 (honestly not so great videos I realize now) but made them all private when I found out – as of 2020! – you can no longer monetize kids stuff. I’m surprised I kept going. And yet in March I returned to YT (deleted those 6 initial videos) and started posting again. I decided to include book and toy reviews too as those don’t have to be listed *for kids*. Thoughts?
I feel like I’m just not getting found – though one video (kids song) has gotten a whopping (lol) 140 views (compared to the 15 or so my other videos have) but people are not going to my other videos. YT – as though it wasn’t hard enough – won’t allow *cards/end screens* on kids videos. Thanks YT!
– So forget about Twitter? Honestly I get zip there. It’s like I’m ?into the wind.
– I also didn’t know until a few weeks ago that you even need (or so I think?) keywords when you post on Facebook. It’s the bloody keywords/tags that take me forever. At first I would use popular terms (ie, Disney, Nickelodeon, etc) but now I think that I should use lesser known tags so I’m not buried under the pile? Is that what you would suggest for YouTube? For the first time the other day I searched the tag/keyword *kids stories* on YT and all the kids stuff with 8 billion views came up. I can’t imagine I’d ever be seen using that tag/keyword.
I’m sorry for the lengthy post but I’m really trying to make something of my channel.
Oh! One more thing/question … I just today had my newest book come out on Amazon and (how I’ll follow up on this I don’t know) but I said on IG that I’d give the first 10 buyers (who also reviewed) the book a personalized (kid) t-shirt. I did that after seeing one of your tips above.
If you have kids please let them watch my channel! ?
Any additional input is VERY MUCH appreciated!
Hi Megan,
I love lengthy comments ?
And I’m always happy to help.
You’ve got it, use all 500 characters, there is only an upside to using all 500 characters. And definitely try using keyword phrases rather than singular keywords. Long-tail keywords/phrases are much less competitive, but using TubeBuddy (or the YouTube search bar) you can find terms that are still searched quite often. You want to find phrases that have low competition + high search volume.
Regarding the external links, I figured that, by having a singular link though, you’re showing youtube only 1 “exit” from the platform as opposed to 6. YouTube wants people to stay on the platform, which is why you should try to include more internal links to your other videos as well. Aim for a 1:1 ratio, for each link that takes you away from YouTube, try having a relevant internal link.
P.s. I see you’ve already made some changes, you have the internal links now hidden under bitly link shortening. This is not necessary and “hides” the links, YouTube automatically shortens links so when viewers visit your description they see a cut-off link. You can just leave the “raw” link in the description. ?
Where was I… Ah, Reviews. So, this is a completely different niche (and a very lucrative one at that) and would be best IMO to be held separately or as the main show of the channel, where then the bedtime stories would be a nice little bonus that can be linked to via playlists. Your call, but someone interested in toy reviews may not be that interested in bedtime stories unless there is some type of niche overlap, i.e. toys related to bedtime.
It will take some time for your channel to build up some momentum, but the great thing about YouTube growth is that it’s exponential, the first few is always the hardest and then if everything on niche and optimized, it snowballs… YouTube however decides if the snowball happens in 6 months or 16 months (optimization and being consistent help bring it closer to the shorter time period).
Kick Twitter.
Yea, Facebook videos also need keywords, thumbnails (not as relevant as on YT though), hashtags, correct posting times, etc.
Yea those popular keywords are what we call “head” keywords, these terms as a small channel you have basically no chance of ranking for, which is why you should target the long-tail lesser known keywords. I.e. instead of “bedtime stories” try “bedtime stories for kids” or “bedtime stories for kids read aloud” (ideally include as many variants as you can).
We don’t have any kids yet, but we have one on the way! ?
Hope this has been helpful for you.
Best regards,
David
Hi David, Thanks for these Advices,
Its been nearly 2 months of my channel and i have been following these steps for a month but still cannot see any growth. Its confusing me why my videos are not doing well enough. I request you to please look into my channel problems. Thanks
Hi Farhan,
2 months is not a lot of time, YT needs time to see what your content is and who is interested in it. You also need to create more content to help YT understand this better. The sped-up drawing works well for shorts, as you probably have noticed, and the tutorial-based stuff needs time for people to find it and rank. It doesn’t happen overnight. Also, even though you’re speed drawing, try including some keywords that are more searchable and tell people what you’re doing, like “How to draw Shinomiya Kaguya” for example.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
I have done these 10 steps or most for a year now and still struggle a lot. If I don’t beg my fsmily nd friends to view my page whixh is embarrassing and look at the video myself I will get no views literally on a lot of my videos. What would you recommend I have a music page and cater to a certain audience and I’ll see a new page with poor quality and get 1000 views at least.
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the comment.
With music pages it can be difficult to get a headstart with SEO, what I recommend is to be active in the community of music you’re creating and contact creators that already have a following and let them use your stuff in their videos for free to help bring in publicity if you’re using your channel to grow as an artist. If you want to be a “YouTuber” as opposed to a musician, then share your process and show people how to achieve things (and then you can mix your tracks in between those videos)
Also, look at how successful videos in your niche are being used. I.e. not just “Trap x Hip hop”. I for example know that Lofi music is used a lot in the background studying niche, if there is a genre like this that fits your music style, then go after it with SEO, but the above points I would recommend regardless.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi! It’s almost 2 weeks and my channel is still not growing, it’s so discouraging… I tried to promote on social media too, even personal message, all of them just read and no action to take a look on my videos… It’s so sad.. Can u give some advice? Thank u so much ?
Hi there,
2 weeks is very new, you need to give YouTube time to categorize your videos and learn what they’re about.
That being said, some things for you to change:
– Define what your channel is about clearly.
– Optimize your videos with tags and descriptions, interlinking, etc. (I.e. everything I’ve mentioned in the article and in the comments… at least try reading the article before commenting ?)
Good luck with your channel.
Cheers,
David
Hello there,
Your article is very helpful. However, I started my Cooking Channel back in October 2020 and I have made major changes since then. I still don’t have enough subscribers and not enough viewers/visitors!.
Keywords are driving me insane. I don’t know whether to type single words or lengthy ones. I type in both language Arabic and English keywords so I run out of 500 fast!. Also, I have added subtitles to MOST of my videos and I have a very detailed description box!! I type the subtitles myself so they take me hours to do so since most companies either Charge tons of money to do so or the free ones type funny translations such as (Put the bowl on a boat! Mix it like Ali baba!!) I am NOT KIDDING ?… like what???!
Please help me figure out what else I can do to increase my subscribers without paying tons of money on promotions. I LOVE LOVE to cook and my videos are International Cuisine. That’s my niche.
Based on my family’s background, some were chefs some were cooks and I am both with a big passion for food.
I don’t like to follow trends either because I DON’T LIKE CHOCOLATE BOMBS..they give you diabetes lol.. and I don’t follow tiktok trends…because to me it is like a child playing with food trying to me up a dish that I would never ever eat. Hence pasta with feta cheese trend?.. so besides following trends….what else can I do?
How do some of these cooking channels reach a million vidoes in less than a week with 200,000 subs sometimes? How did their videos last year reached only 20,000 and this year when everyone Channel is struggling, yet they ( all of a sudden) reached ONE MILLION views? Is it promotion? Is it buying a searchenhine(I heard that I don’t know how accurate it is!) Or is it me not uploading a video every day like they do? I upload a video a week. Can’t do more because I have a life outside of YouTube and I do this because I love to cook but I do want appreciation from increased viewers and subs since I work VERU HARD on the content.
Sorry too long msg!!
And you are not a therapist ??.
Please check out my Channel and let me know what you think.
Thank you for giving us the time to give feed back. That is rare now adays.. you are wondering for doing so.
Hi there (I’d love to address you by name, but I can’t seem to find one ?)
Thanks for your comment and you have an interesting channel.
I would suggest sticking to one language, to be honest. The Arabic can deter people actually from the video (and the English may deter Arabic people). You can also present your videos better. Ideally, if you can speak English well, I’d recommend making a second channel in English and adding english narration (otherwise no speech, but with instructions).
Regarding other channels getting more views than subscribers, once you reach the multiple 10’s of thousands of subscribers, if subscribers/viewers engage well with your video, it can be recommended fairly easily to other channels. This is because YouTube has A LOT of information about what their video and channel is about, who watches it, and which users have shown similar interests and they will most likely also watch it.
Buying views and subscribers is a waste of money and even though some may do it, the type of reach you described is actually quite normal for some videos to do that, it’s also the benefit of creating consistent content (on topic) for a long period of time.
Anyway, judging by your writing, you have an engaging personality and if you can create videos in English on a separate channel I think you will do very well.
Good luck and I hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hello Alena,
Firstly, I have not removed your comment (I removed the comment complaining though, because my readers don’t need to see that).
And unfortunately, I cannot immediately reply to every single person’s comment, and I do this for free. It’s been 1 day since you left that comment. I try and get to these as soon as I can.
Now to your channel, it’s in Russian (I presume) so the content of your titles and tags I can’t really analyze very easily. What I can tell you is that you need to improve on your descriptions. Write at least 150 words to describe what your video is about and provide context to the YouTube algorithm. Also link to relevant similar videos/playlists.
Your intro is unnecessary (I’m guessing the Russian text is a disclaimer, that can stay, the rest can go), people are impatient and your intro is just providing a hindrance to what people actually clicked for.
Actually looking at your tags again, even though I cannot understand them, it’s clear you’re not using all 500 characters and you’re not targeting long-tail keywords.
Your channel keywords are all over the show, in English and Russian, and you should only include the 7-10 most relevant terms.
Hope this helps.
Goodluck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi Lhen, you need to add your channel to the website section in the comments for me to have a look. I’m afraid I’m not psychic ?
I do all of that and my channel views are not there. I talk about my life as a flight attendant and model, while encouraging others to pursue their dream.
Hi Daisy,
Thanks for the comment.
You seem to have a mix of lifestyle (content is about you) and then some info content (for the viewer). Think more about the viewer, when you don’t have an audience, no one cares about the lifestyle vlogging content. People tend to be selfish and want to know what’s in it for them. Your “day in the life” video is a good info based video because people interested in becoming a flight attendant can see what is in store for them and if it’s really something they want to do. You getting published is not very interesting for anyone that doesn’t know you.
I would recommend tweaking your title to something slightly more searchable “A day in the life of a flight attendant in training” or your airline, location, etc. and then include these long-tail keywords in your tags and in the description of the video.
Good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Just started an arts, poetry (mine own and others) and literature channel. Producing some nice quality material, also talks on spirituality. Been at it for about one month. I’m an English actor and writer, my channel is called “Capital H healing : Noel”. I feel it may be too intellectual and arty to succeed on “You Tube”. A friend suggested I start the channel and share my knowledge of the arts and literature. Although I’m now beginning to question doing so. Will give it a few more weeks. The irony, I really enjoy doing it, but getting next to no response is rather galling. Noel Troy…….. “Capital H healing :Noel”
Hi Noel,
There’s definitely an audience on YouTube for it, unfortunately you do need to play by the YouTube rules in order to reach them though. ?
With this niche, it can take quite a lot of content and time to gain momentum. That said, with literature, I think aligning your content to the known ideologies of authors and intellectuals can be the fastest way to reach said audience. This just means talking more about those people and their ideas (which you are doing). With YouTube though, you are going to need 4 more things…
1. Audio quality – Some videos are hard to hear what you’re saying (the Ouspensky video for example). This causes people to leave quite quickly.
2. Thumbnails – People need to be able to see what the video is about immediately and a thumbnail does that great. Throwing the person onto the Thumbnail can be a good way of letting people know what it’s about fairly easily.
3. Tags & Descriptions – Include long-tail keywords in your tags and descriptions to let YT know what your video is about. Write more detailed descriptions about what your videos are about and then add links to videos that are similar or could be of interest to viewers as well.
4. Patience – YouTube can be a long haul, but if you enjoy making the content, then it shouldn’t feel that long.
Good luck with your channel and I hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi.
I have one question, you pointed it out earlier about the “waiting 4 weeks or so before making changes”, this was intersting to me, so my question is about this. – For example, Im new to youtube. (sound designer) so I understand my channel will never grow to hundreds of thousands. – but I’d be happy with 5k views (yes im smalll time) – however, I did a few videos and none of them are being attractive, Ive changed the keywords several times. to see if this will help, – So DO you need to wait a certain amount of time for them to re-circulate in youtube system? if so, how long is it best to wait untill I can figure out if the keywords/tags are working?
Hi Andy,
The unfortunate answer here is “it depends”. I’ve seen many videos take off after two weeks, but then I’ve seen just as many take off 3 months in, and even many that take off after a year! (with no changes)
The big factor would be how often YouTube can “re-analyze”, and just YouTube checking out the video’s new tags, description or title, won’t have much of an effect on the immediate performance. The biggest factors are how people engage with the post. So for example, if your video appears 6th or 7th in the search results and people click on it, then YouTube may push it higher up the page and if people continue clicking, then it may continue increasing, or drop out if the engagement isn’t there. This has a lot to do with the search volume, if no-ones searching, it’s difficult to judge engagement, which can be a tricky thing considering your niche.
Another factor would be channel engagement in general, so if people are engaging with your video, other videos from your channel will appear in their home feed, if they get good engagement, it can then boost the videos performance and get them onto the search results, or recommended to people who are interested in sound design (YouTube is like Liam Neeson, it will find them).
What I would recommend for your videos that are not performing is to use TubeBuddy to find a good long-tail keyword that makes sense for the video, include it in your title, description, tags, etc. Create a thumbnail that pops compared to the search results where you want to appear and then just sit. Continue creating value-packed content for sound designers and people interested in the topic, link to that video in your description when appropriate and keep on creating. Sometimes the amount of time you put into “over-optimizing” can become a means of procrastination and means you’re not creating enough content.
Basically, take a content-first strategy by creating things that you know (at least some) people are looking for.
Hope this helps and good luck with your channel.
Best,
David
Hi David,
I am following what you have mentioned for more than six months now. I still don’t get enough subscribers or views (specially). Can you please let me know how can I can improve further. Here’s my channel link.
Best Regards,
Varun
Hi Varun,
What language of viewer are you trying to target with your videos? I see you’ve mixed the languages quite a bit. It’s fine to create the videos in your native language, but then you should also optimize your videos in that native language.
I would say that this would be the main thing for you to do if you have in fact been following what is mentioned in the article. You shouldn’t also add a more descriptive description right at the beginning.
Good luck with your channel,
Best,
David
Hi! Can you help me with my Youtube. I have been doing it for more than a year but everything seem stuck. I do music and covers. I don’t really feel anything good from my Youtube. Only videos with my friends are getting more views. And I think most of the viewers are from Facebook (I share my vids on Facebook). I don’t really connect to everyone outside. Can you help me?
Hi Phinn,
You don’t have that much content on YouTube, so it’s difficult for you to be found. Create more content and then optimize them and you’ll see more channel growth.
Think not only about the cover you’re doing, but also about the genre you’re performing the cover in, you could even try a different angle and go with a “Vietnamese cover of XYZ” for example, this is something different but still relevant. Include keywords in your description and tags aswell and link to other similar covers you’ve made in your description.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
A very interesting and useful blog you have written.
I have recently started making videos on youtube, but my channel is not getting any views. I put alot of time and effort into it. I have been working on tags, title and thumbnails but nothing seems to be working.
So, please have a look at my channel and suggest me how to improve my channel. Thanks in advance
Hi Gowtham,
Thanks for the comment.
Firstly, you seem to be optimizing for English speakers yet the videos aren’t in English (this is a massive engagement killer). You also should target long-tail keywords, “brain games” is very competitive. What type of brain games, who are they for, how many are there, why should someone watch. Use these questions to help you come up with Long-tail keywords.
And then your channel, I don’t know what your niche is, are you sharing riddles and brain games, or are you sharing facts and info?
You need to decide on a niche and then create more content, the 20 odd videos is not enough.
Hope this helps and good luck.
Best,
David
Hi David!
Thank you so much for your help. Do you think channel trailer may help to gain subscribers??
Also, I read that the content organising platforms will help to increase views, as many people suggest using AdSense , SidesMedia and so on… Are they helpful, which ones are trusted?
Thank you very much!
Hi Alena,
I find that having different playlists with the main topics of your channel is better. Channel trailers can be useful for purely entertainment channels as a highlight reel, but for other channels, I prefer the playlist showcase methods.
As for your question regarding content organization platforms, I am not sure what you mean. AdSense is a way to monetize your website & YT channel with ads, but that other place you mentioned seems to sell engagement, which is almost always a bad idea (the only exception is potentially running YouTube ads, but that is an easy way to spend a lot without getting much in return if you don’t have a plan and know what you’re doing). These fake follower and fake view platforms, even if they say they use “real” people, the views are only going to inflate the numbers, people won’t be interested in your content and it will actually have a negative effect on your channel because when you upload new videos, YouTube will suggest your videos to these people, but they won’t engage with it because they were only paid a couple of cents to watch your video and YouTube will stop suggesting your content to them, but also to the people that are actually interested. Slowly killing your engagement completely.
The best method for you to grow your channel is to look at the videos that are doing well (ORGANICALLY) and then create similar content around that, and then keep creating content.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Back again! Lol. You really are great with your replies and being so thorough. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. It’s absolutely not as simple as you think. You believe you’re doing things right and you find out you’re doing most of them wrong. When you commented about my having no internal links to my other YouTube videos, that never cross my mind. It also never crossed my mind to make a description of the videos. I figured “The 3 Little Pigs” spoke for itself but I realize you have to put in the detail and show people that you’re there for the long haul. So I get that now. Still have more questions.
My first question is about my channel name. If you recall I started out as a Podcast. And when I went to make my YouTube channel I just named it Wise Owl so I could stick with having the words Wise Owl (branding?) in there. And obviously the podcast name seemed too long. I read it’s best to keep channel names short. But of course the minute I search Wise Owl 8 million other things come up. Thoughts?
You said ? to Twitter. Ironically I felt the same way before I even signed up and didn’t for a long time and now I wish I hadn’t. It seemed everywhere I looked it was “get on all social media platforms” but being a one-woman show there’s a ton of time is going into this. I just figured I should grab the Wise Owl Twitter handle while it was available but I feel like my tweets are going into a void. And honestly I don’t even know how well things are going on Instagram. I put things out there and feel like it’s in a void as well. I frequently tell myself to just do YouTube and the Podcast and forget about Instagram, Twitter – and even Facebook. NO one is engaging. Thoughts?
Also, a few of my videos have gotten a little momentum and I haven’t a clue why. Yes, kids like cute songs (me too lol) but it seems with no help from me (or doing anything differently with tagging) a few of them are doing well but (most) of the others are getting ignored. I don’t even know how to frame the question I’m trying to ask you. I work very hard on the thumbnails. I’m no graphic artist by any means but I probably spend more time on the thumbnails than anything. Since my first not-so-great video I have learned a lot and they have gotten much better since then. So I feel they’re all good but only these few are getting any views and a significant difference (ie, two have nearly 600 views while others have maybe 20 views. ) Can you give me any insight as to what you might think is the reason for that?
And lastly, as I mentioned above I have at least one (maybe two) total noob amateur videos on my channel but as soon as I found out that if you delete a video you delete the views as well I haven’t wanted to take them off even though it’s ridiculous because each has about 25 views but I just don’t want to take them down because I don’t even want to lose those few meager views. What are your thoughts on that? (I suspect you’re going to say it’s better to have quality videos posted than not well put together videos?)
Thanks so much, David. I truly appreciate it! Please look me up on Instagram (link on my YouTube page). I would love to keep in touch and perhaps follow what you’re doing and you can see if I’ve improved at all haha.
Oh and CONGRATULATIONS on the baby on the way!
Hi again Megan,
Regarding your channel name, I wouldn’t put much more thought into it, it’s on brand and once you build up more authority on YouTube your name will appear higher. How many people do you really think are looking for you specifically by typing in “Wise Owl” as opposed to potentially a book name or something similar? I don’t think very much to have it as a primary concern.
Second point, I would build brand on one or two platforms and then leverage it to the others (if you ever want to actually use the others – It’s OK to NOT be on every platform). Depending on your business goals, I would plan on what platforms you would be on next for either brand development (probably tiktok right now, but in a year or two it will probably be something else) or business development (potentially LinkedIn for reaching publishers and sponsors – but different content focused more on the business side of things). I still think FB Groups would be the biggest bang for your buck, and an easy way to reach parents almost directly. Facebook is heavily pushing group posts, so you can get in front of a large audience fairly quickly. TL;DR: Don’t bother with the other platforms right now (or be active in FB groups) and then in the future you can branch off to help with your business goals.
3rd point is the power of creating more content and YouTube suggest ?
Basically you had some videos that had a good CTR &/ retention, and so YouTube promoted it to people that showed interest in similar things. Also your channel may now be gaining a little bit of authority so YouTube can better place your videos (by authority I just mean that YT can understand better what you’re making). I’d also say that your thumbnails in the past month and a bit look a lot better and seem more children relevant.
Last point, I wouldn’t recommend getting rid of the videos unless they are off-topic or you’ve covered the video topic again in a better way. So if I look at your channel, the only videos I would recommend getting rid of are the toy reviews. Relevance is the most important thing, whenever a video is suggested to someone and they don’t click it, that’s a negative signal. If someone subscribes or watches mainly the nursery rhymes, when they see a toy review (even though it may seem relevant because kids love toys) it may not be something they are interested in at the time and they will ignore it (or click through and not find a story and then bounce). You will find that the more content you create and the more on topic it is, you will start seeing hockey stick growth. So I would recommend sacrificing that 60 odd views for the good of the cause ?
Thank you very much. ?
Hi David
First, let me thank you for the great content – clear, brief, and to the point. Second, the amount of care you’ve shown in the comments responding to people’s questions even when they’re coming from the weakness of frustration, etc. All those millions of views that new YouTubers are missing I wish I could convert to thanks and send them your way!
I hope you can take a look at my channel and let me know your thoughts. It grows but extremely slowly, in my opinion, and I know a few of the shortcomings like inconsistent posting, thumbnails that are not there where I want them to be, and perhaps the lack of entertainment in the videos to name a few. Would love to hear your perspective and thanks a lot for your time.
Hi there Karine,
Thanks for the comment, appreciate it. ?
Onto your channel… Your recent thumbnails look great.
The first thing I notice though is your titles are not relevant to what people would be searching for. Instead of “My version of classic Tabbouleh” a more to-the-point and searchable title would be “How to make tabbouleh with bulgur wheat”. Your existing title is made for a channel that already has an audience (which is probably the biggest mistake I see small channels making). If you don’t have an audience, then no one cares about “your version” and they won’t click through. Instead, just reveal your version and look for a long-tail keyword and let them know exactly what they should expect to know from your video. You can see the short title I write tells you this is a recipe, what you will make, and the special ingredient in the recipe (I don’t know if bulgar is a common ingredient, but you get my point hopefully).
Next, you should include this full long-tail keyword in your tags and in your video itself (spoken) and interlink your videos. Incorporate the main keyword in your description more as well.
You have some playlists that are more branded than they need to be, instead of “Fab Eats Breakfasts” try “Quick Lebanon Breakfast Recipes” or something similar, look again for a long-tail keyword that could then come up in search results and these are again more specific than they currently are.
I think your video quality/entertainment factor is perfectly fine. I would suggest going more into either the specific cuisine you focus on (Lebanese, greek, etc.) or throw in some “suggestion intent” content like “10 delicious recipes you can make in under 10 minutes”, “5 amazing spices to make delicious rice”, etc.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hey david
Just wondering if you can help. I’ve had my YouTube channel a long time (2011 or 2012 I think I started). I used to post regularly until YouTube decided to demonetise all the small followers. Whilst I was posting every week I could never get over 20 hours watch time. Up to recently I’ve been posting every month or so and the videos just flopped. I’m planning on posting more and posted several recently together but the views just suck. I’m using keywords etc. I know you say I’m not being consistent atm but back in 2018 I was and I still didn’t grow much. Any ideas ? Thanks
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for the comment.
So when I say consistent, I’m not referring only to your upload schedule. I mean your content as well, the type of videos you’re creating.
This is because if people subscribe to you for a certain type of content, they will engage with that content, which improves the video distribution, and they won’t engage with other forms of content which reduces video distribution.
You have an account now with a good amount of videos, but when someone subscribes for one type of video, they will get recommended a different type on their home feed and then YT will stop promoting your videos to them.
Also, because you’ve been inactive for so long, the subscribers you did gain have basically gone to sleep and it will take a bit of a climb to “wake them up” again. Read: You need to create relevant content that will get distributed.
If we look at your most popular videos, those are makeup reviews and tutorials, and by a long way. That tells you what people are interested in on your channel so you should double down on that first. Creating these other off-topic videos may be fun and interesting to make, but throw them on a different channel (maybe make a lifestyle/vlog second channel) then you can focus on growing your main channel. It’s about what interests your viewers, you need to first build an audience before your personality can become the reason people watch.
Also, go after long-tail keywords and interlink your articles. You’re using only the very tip of the iceberg ITO keywords.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
I’ve been on youtube doing my speedpaint videos for 6 years now and I only have 306 subscribers. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, so please, if you can, could I have some advice?
Hey Wybie.
Thanks for the comment and great that you’ve been so active!
I’ve had a look at your channel and while your channel looks nice, there are a lot of things you can improve on.
Here’s my advice:
1. You’ve got way too much branding. A logo as your profile picture is enough, people don’t need “Wybie Loon” on 35% of the thumbnail. It provides no value to people and doesn’t provide any more context to the thumbnail. If you had the words “speedpaint” it would be much more effective. But I still wouldn’t recommend that exactly.
2. What I would recommend is making your thumbnails in a before and after style. So take a still of the outline as a before (or the image you’re turning into a cartoon) and then use your final as the after image. People can see immediately what the video is about without any confusion.
3. Your intro is around 10 seconds. You don’t need an intro, people want to see the speed painting. Ditch the intro and get straight to the content.
4. Provide more context in your titles and descriptions and try going after long-tail keywords and different search terms.
5. Fill up your video meta tags.
6. Pin a comment and link to your latest drawing, or ask viewers to subscribe.
These are a few tips, I’ve covered some in this actual article, and you’ll find a lot more on my site, so feel free to look around.
Good luck with your channel, and hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
Just by an accident I visited your blog and honestly this is my first ever comment to a blog, this shows how authentic your blog for me is. Well done.
Now to my YT channel, I started my channel back in December 2020. It is about travel and I have an ideal for travel channel, may be you already know his channel, Bald and Bankrupt, as well as Harald Baldr. These two Youtubers create simple videos and they are extremely successful. So I chose them as my ideal and started making videos about my travels, like they do.
As someone has mentioned in their comments to this blog, I could afford marketing my YTC in the early stage, which gave me subscribers as well as watch time. Since last 2 months I have stopped promoting my YT with paid promotions and focus on organic growth.
I think I use all the 10 tips you have mentioned in this blog but I am not seeing any success. I do proper keyword research, have one of the best keyword plug in, vidIQ and keywordsanywhere, use proper tags which I find through vidIQ, use keywords from other successful videos of other youtubers with similar content like mine and they have million of view, try to make thumbnails attractive. I reply to all the comments, I post new videos on Facebook, reddit with certain communities as well as on IG with hastags BUT all this is not helping me out. I post 2-3 videos weekly and these videos just dont get momentum. The audience retention is also very low and CTR is not improving. Recently I travelled to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and in fact many people are searching for content about these places but my videos are just not performing. I have seen one channel showing videos about central Asia, there is no verbal contact, just music and nothing else, and these videso got million of views whereas my videos for the similar content with me in the video and talking to my audience is not working. What might a possible reason for that? could you pls check my youtube channel ‘adventurous archie’ and let me know your thoughts and tips to improve?
Many Thanks and BR
Arshad
Hi Arshad,
Thanks for the comment and detail. And yes, I know and love the Bald and Bankrupt channel! (It’s very difficult to replicate his penchant for getting into situations that no sane person would, and his charisma to strike up conversations with random people on the street, which would have contributed to his virality, but I see what you’re doing similar).
So firstly regarding the paid promotion, unless you really know what you’re doing with the promotion and channel strategy, it’s probably always a bad idea, so good that you’ve stopped that.
I’ve had a look at your channel and this is my advice:
– Like the B&B channel, your video titles should go after what I call “suggestion intent”. These are videos that people can’t resist clicking on in the suggestion and recommended sections. You’re already creating the content, but it’s not optimized for suggestions and recommendations. If you look at some of the B&B videos, you can get some inspiration, “Would you ride Africa’s worst train? 18 Hours in a freight train” “The Cuba they don’t want you to see”, etc. This creates curiosity and gets the click. The same can be said for the Thumbnails.
Just off the top of my head looking at your videos, titles for some videos I’d recommend would be “70 cents for a haircut in the middle of NOWHERE in Uzbekistan”, “I explored a beautiful village before the Taliban ruined it”, “Do NOT do this on a Soviet train in Uzbekistan”.
These are just quick suggestions, but you should consider what would be interesting for the viewer and take into consideration that the majority of your viewers are not actually going to ever visit these places, so they wouldn’t be interested in the “what to do in” type content as opposed to content more like “is it really that bad?!” if you understand what I mean. The “do not” title suggestion is a good example of this, only people that are speaking English, traveling on a train, that happens to go to Bukhara will want to watch a video on “What you must do” whereas, anyone interested in other countries and cultures will be interested in what you shouldn’t do, comparing it to their local rail network.
I’d also try making your thumbnails clearer with some form of action in them. Like the haircut could be a more zoomed-in pic and with the barber holding a scissor or something to that degree. The train ride could be you sweating excessively like you’ve made a mistake, etc.
Also depending on what type of promotion you have done in the past, those subscribers you’ve gained could be hampering your growth now. As they may not be active and aren’t watching your videos because they aren’t incentivized to. Unfortunately, all you can do is keep making great content and optimize the videos you already have.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
Hi David,
A bit of a long shot, but I’m trying to grow my travel vlog channel and although I know I had a long period of not uploading (got married during the pandemic haha), I have started to upload regularly again (weekly) but I’m hardly seeing any engagement with my videos or growth in subscriptions (if anything, it goes up one and then goes back down 1). I’ve also now got a banner for my channel and tried to improve existing thumbnails – but my last video for example still literally has 30 views and growth seems unlikely at this point. My channel is called ‘Shimon Meets World’ – Any tips you could provide?
Hi Shimon,
I dropped you an email with some tips.
Cheers,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for this blog, it’s really useful.
I know that my YouTube channel – The Country Traveller – is guilty of not being focussed enough. I upload videos relating to a range of things which I have tried to ‘pull together’ as ‘Out and About Outdoors’.
My most successful videos are all relating to boating holidays on The Norfolk Broads – not my ideal main focus for the channel. eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFfc10Hin-o
The video which has the most subscribers is a walk in the forest in autumn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oyEuCWxziA
I also post a bimonthly video diary of what’s happened in The New Forest during the past 2 months (which fits in with the ‘walks’ videos’)
Ideally, I suppose I should have 2 separate channels but that’s not really feasible. Do you have any suggestions on how I could pull together my videos in a more coherent way?
Thanks very much and best wishes,
Rob
Hi Rob,
Definitely a lack of focus on the channel.
You’re currently just sharing things of interest to you, but you should consider what will be of value to your viewers. Who is it that’s watching your content?
You have recognized the issue yourself. Why wouldn’t two channels be feasible? You’re currently posting a mix of content on one channel, causing a lack of engagement. Even if you upload less on two channels, the focus will mean viewers will be more inclined to watch more of your content and therefore convert to subscribers.
You can’t be everything to everyone.
Sorry it’s not what you wanted to hear, but I hope it helps anyway. 🙂
Best,
David
Hi David,
My channel was slowly building momentum up to a point where I was getting just under 15,000 views over a 48 hour period and then just as it looked like it was about to take off it instead appeared to be switched off! 3-4 months later and I’m getting 40 views over a 48 hour period. I contacted YouTube and they just gave me a generic reply, what do you make of this?
Hey Paul,
It sounds like you had a mini-viral spike. This is fairly normal, and you need to keep plugging away.
Having looked at your channel, there are many optimizations you can include, like adding links to other videos in your description for example.
Thumbnails I would remove your logo from, you don’t need it there. And test a side-by-side before and after thumbnail to see if it increases engagement.
The video itself, get straight to the content, you can overlay what the ants are eating at the top, no need for a black background and 2-3 second title cover.
Hope that helps.
Best,
David
Thank you for the tips in this article. We started our channel a little over a year ago, with travel based content. We had slow increases in views and subscribers until our more recent videos which did pretty well in comparison with a few thousand views, and subscribers jumped up from 100 to 375. Now all of a sudden neither our videos or shorts are getting hardly any views and subscribers say that our videos aren’t showing up on their feed which I assume means the algorithm isn’t promoting them. Is there anything we can do or change to overcome this? It finally felt like we were getting traction, and now we’re getting less views than we were months ago.
Our channel is Let’s Get Wanderlost. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Hey Nicole,
Thanks for the comment. Without looking into your short and long-form schedule, it could be a case of a particular video just taking off, but the complimentary content not aligned as well (or presented as well).
Your thumbnails do seem very cluttered and it’s difficult to understand the context of your video without reading the titles. There is a lot you’re trying to cram into a thumbnail. I recommend focusing on one key aspect with your thumbs and then one or two additions can compliment that for clarity.
Hope this helps.
Best,
David
hi,
Lack of growth over my youtube channel and frustration has lead me over to your blog,
it’s very good and focused however after reading your blog i’ve seen that almost all the precautions and steps i’ve been taking since the creation of my youtube channel, but it’s been 50 days since the upload of my first video and am not been able to get views over my videos can you suggest me anything that i might be doing wrong?
This is my channel link:
https://www.youtube.com/@EconomazingFacts
Thanks
Quick look and I see you gave no defined niche, latest videos are very far off the channels name.
Hi! I think I am doing all those things. I started to run my international version of the channel and blog. The original versions in my native language became successful. Now, I am struggling to have one view per day with over 20 videos. I publish regularly. I use descriptions, keywords. I use custom thumbnails, subtitles, etc. I think my content brings attention. I have started a half year ago – so I am being patient and still a flop. Any advice?
youtube.com/@fromwaitertomillionaire
fromwaitertomillionaire.net
Hi Marcin, you don’t seem to have a defined niche, your thumbnails all seem to be quite repetitive (and often the exact same ones used on different videos).
Hey there, Hope you are doing well.
This is my channel link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPHfPTa8ePu0pX3eNAvgXPg
Can you help me by telling why my channel can’t perform well. I have good content on it but still can’t getting much views.
You’re just uploading other peoples videos.