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I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

alexhyett.com

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Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#51
post #48

Thanks for writing about your experience! I think too many educated / computer science focused creators get demotivated when they see the kind of low brow "viral" content that's plaguing youtube currently (yes, I mean Mr. Beast). Mr. Beast type content is to me more mind numbing than TikTok - it makes creators like Logan Paul and low brow comedy podcasts look like academics in comparison. I recently started dipping m…

Nice I have subscribed. I think any content about AI would probably do well with all the hype around GPT-3 at the moment. Yes speaking in front of a camera is really difficult. There is literally hours of recordings of me trying to say the same thing over and over again that gets cut.

Thanks for the subscribe!

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily take issue with your point overall, but I have to take issue with your calling out of Mr. Beast. Have you seen how much money Mr. Beast gives out to people? There are people just buying cars with their YT money, but he puts most of it back into his channel & directly in the hands of everyday people. I really don't understand how you could say he makes Logan Paul look like an academic. Also, he's p…

Yes, but the reason he's giving away money is for views . It's why charity for views is in my opinion kind of degenerate - arguably using poor people to make money but saving face because giving away money .

It worked for Oprah I guess

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#53

By way of thanking you for this informative little summary of issues involved in creating YouTube content, I went ahead and subscribed. I'd be interested to hear from you in a few days what impact this HN post had on your subscriber numbers.

Yes, I don’t think I have ever had so many people on my website at once. Good job it is hosted with Cloudfront and S3!

I am sure it will die of quite quickly but I have had 33 people subscribe since posting this an hour ago.

So thank you for everyone that has.

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#54
post #11

I started posting videos regularly from March this year (probably had 10-20 subscribers before, now have 150+) > If you watch some of my earlier videos there are a lot of “um’s” and “ers”...started with writing full scripts I trained myself to go silent instead of ums/aahs/ers. I then changed how I recorded videos a bit so that I can simply use https://github.com/noisetorch/NoiseTorch to remove all the silent portion…

> I trained myself to go silent instead of ums/aahs/ers.

As someone struggling with the same affliction, might I ask how you trained for that?

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#55
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this as childish as to not read a book because it doesn’t have a flashy cover.

It's more like not reading a book because it has a flashy cover. Sex sells but I won't buy a book about physics that has a woman in a bikini on the cover. It's about the signals you send as an author.

It’s just as childish because you’re making assumptions about the content based off a cover.

It’s no different.

Something something MLK quote something something.

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#56
I would be cautious about going down this road. For context, I have YT channel with >12k subscribers that is also for technical content. When I was similarly early on, I found myself in a similar place, thinking a lot about growth and metrics. I came to realize that I was playing the game that YT wanted me to play, to their benefit.

Since chasing "more" never ends, and every surpassed hurdle results in yet another one in the distance, it can quickly lead to burnout and asking yourself questions like, "why am I even doing this?". Worse, focusing too much on the metrics can cause you to do things that are ultimately counter-productive. For example, making a ton of videos optimized for clicking so that I could get 1M subscribers and monetize with ads is clearly a thing YT would like me to do. But to do that, you lean a little more into click-baity things, and start choosing topics based on their likelihood of being successful from a metrics perspective. And since frequency matters, you maybe cut corners on videos because it often makes more sense to put out more of lower quality than less of high quality if the objective is maximizing metrics. But then what are you left with, and are you proud of it?

If I could do it again, I would spent more time on answering the "what's it for?" question, and then ignore the metrics unless your answer ends up being, "To become the Mr. Beast of X". In my experience, the best benefits have been 1/ the serendipitous view that impresses someone and leads to a real-world opportunity and 2/ pride and reputational benefits in having the best video on a particular topic that then becomes the standard, and adds lots of value to lots of people. Those benefits are realized by taking care and making the best videos you possibly can, not by optimizing the metrics.

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#57
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the reason he's giving away money is for views . It's why charity for views is in my opinion kind of degenerate - arguably using poor people to make money but saving face because giving away money .

It worked for Oprah I guess

To be honest, Oprah's content in my opinion was miles better than Mr. Beast's. She was at least conducting interviews, having conversations etc.

At least her videos weren't, "look at minecraft funny game - my friend made a poop sound hehe" or "omg look at kiddy pool filled with ORBEEZ FUN TIME"

Candidly, with a hilariously not successful youtube but a solid career - I find it funny to imagine Mr. Beast "spending hours" coming up with "next level content" which in reality you'd be better off just paying a 7 year old with jolly ranchers to do.

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily take issue with your point overall, but I have to take issue with your calling out of Mr. Beast. Have you seen how much money Mr. Beast gives out to people? There are people just buying cars with their YT money, but he puts most of it back into his channel & directly in the hands of everyday people. I really don't understand how you could say he makes Logan Paul look like an academic. Also, he's p…

Yes, but the reason he's giving away money is for views . It's why charity for views is in my opinion kind of degenerate - arguably using poor people to make money but saving face because giving away money .

I've watched and judged for myself - I disagree.

How is he using "poor people"? Everyday people are "poor people"? I think that says more about you than him.

Yes, the views fund what he gives away. But until you or I start dedicating our lives to making money to give away, I don't think either of us has a leg to stand on and criticize him [for this specifically].

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#59

YouTube does not care about the audio or video quality itself. It only cares about the numbers of views, likes, etc.

Quality is pretty subjective. They try to quantify what people like (or rather what people will watch).

Re: I Posted on YouTube Consistently for 1 Month. This Is What Happened

#60

Thanks for writing about your experience! I think too many educated / computer science focused creators get demotivated when they see the kind of low brow "viral" content that's plaguing youtube currently (yes, I mean Mr. Beast). Mr. Beast type content is to me more mind numbing than TikTok - it makes creators like Logan Paul and low brow comedy podcasts look like academics in comparison. I recently started dipping m…

>I think too many educated / computer science focused creators get demotivated when they see the kind of low brow "viral" content that's plaguing youtube currently new content creators should try to not be discourage by this. at youtube's scale there will always be viral lowbrow content because that's what the majority of general public wants to consume. if your content is good and consistent the relevant people who…

I certainly agree - I still think most creators underestimate the necessity of putting in some leg-work to understand your audience and attaching your channel to a niche that has an existing audience at all.

Something that I ended up doing by accident was identifying a niche that a) was low risk (nothing political etc), b) had decent reach, and c) ended up with most of my traffic coming from "browse" and not "search".

Initially, I had no idea traffic coming from "browse" was indicative of content that would likely drive more long-term value outside of "news" videos.

Ironically, videos that feature community drama unfortunately still are my best performing videos.

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