Live data from Hacker News

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

alexhyett.com

111–120 of 156 posts

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

#111

I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. This is because there’s a nonlinear relationship between views & quality. For example a video that is twice as good might be capable of getting 10 times as many views. If that’s true it implies that (within reason) spending more time to make a better video is the best strategy. Intuitively this makes sense: would it be better to make 1 m…

As someone who spends a bunch of time paying attention to the YouTube meta, "consistency" is a virtue that's been professed for a long time, but YouTube has been pretty clear that it's not a factor in how recommendations work.

I still think it's decent advice for new YouTubers, because you only get better at a thing by doing it a lot, and over time. The value of consistency isn't in the algorithmic properties, but instead in developing the skills that lead to quality.

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

#112
post #109

I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. This is because there’s a nonlinear relationship between views & quality. For example a video that is twice as good might be capable of getting 10 times as many views. If that’s true it implies that (within reason) spending more time to make a better video is the best strategy. Intuitively this makes sense: would it be better to make 1 m…

It’s good to see you here! I totally agree with quality there (although not from personal experience) but taking as an example your videos, Idk how you first came up with the idea of the “wife mode” but now your video have gone from something I totally nerd on to something I call my wife to watch with me, which she does with minimal eye rolls and actually enjoyment from her part! Haven’t found that many other maker c…

Not a maker channel, but Technology Connections fills a similar niche in our household. Simultaneously in-depth enough for me and accessible and interesting for my wife.

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

#113
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Mr. Beast is a billion-dollar brand now, I'm surprised his name hasn't crossed ways with you before.

I've been on YouTube for as long as YouTube has existed, but mostly use it to watch music videos, movie trailers, the video versions of podcasts I listen to, and sometimes a tutorial for DIY stuff I'm trying to do around the house. The only place I have ever even seen the name "Mr. Beast" is on Hacker News, and since I have never read those threads, I have no idea who he is or what he makes videos about.

He is currently the 7th most subscribed to YouTube channel, and the second most subscribed to if you're caring more about individual, personality driven channels than broader ones.

That you've never run into him on YouTube speaks to how the recommendation system works; given what you've watched, there's not a lot of reason to recommend him to you, so even though he's extremely popular, he's not clogging up your feed.

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

#114
post #64

I'm recording a series where I'm creating a new programming language. Shameless link here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqirAnnqaCZ8lT8w7p2P... I haven't posted it here yet as a "Show HN", because I don't think that I'm far enough along. But I have averaged more than one video a day since I started. Disclaimer: This is 100% live coding in Vim. You are my rubber duck. I make mistakes. The most recent video…

> This is 100% live coding in Vim I don't understand why anyone would watch this at normal speed. I see that live coding is a thing, but .. why?

Same reason people watch video game players play games. Seeing exactly how experts do things, in real situations, can be valuable if you're trying to attain your own mastery. And entertaining if not.

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

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. I know "The Algorithm" gets a lot of hate, but surfacing quality-over-quantity content is one place where recommendation algorithms excel over pure chronological feeds. When I switched Twitter to chronological mode, I had to unfollow several people because they posted all day long. The most valuable Tweets I wanted to see were buried i…

> If you click through to the post history of people who get content to the front page, it's basically a firehose of posts using recycled content and slightly altered headlines to as many subreddits as they can get away with. I’ve seen this too. It seems like a lot of work and I’m unclear what the reward is. It isn’t like most of that content is pimping some brand of burger or something…

It makes your karma go up which is appealing, probably half the reason I keep coming here tbh.

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

#117

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 .

I think a more positive way to think about MrBeast's behavior of giving away money isn't that he's doing it for views, but that he's doing it for fun. There is a documentary about how actor Bill Murray will occasionally spend a bunch of money on a random stranger that he meets in public. I see this trend of rich YTers giving away free money as evidence that the creator economy has lowered the barrier to entry to phil…

Mr Beast, like Willy Wonka, may well be doing things for the pure childlike whimsy. Was Willy Wonka the good guy?

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

#118

I've been contemplating creating YouTube videos like the Khan Academy ones, but for a niche area. The aim is to help students understand the subject, so I don't need a camera. But I do need some form of a touch device where I can write, draw graphs, show text, etc. and just record that. And there will be no monetization. Anyone have any recommendations for such a setup?

This is what I use - An inswan document camera is $99. itube studio is $20. Connect the inswan to your laptop. Now you can use regular paper pencil to write, draw graphs, show text, pictures etc. Use PhotoBooth to make a video, which is an mov. Then use itube studio to convert it to "Youtube" mp4, which has the right codec etc, & then upload to youtube.

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

#119

I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. This is because there’s a nonlinear relationship between views & quality. For example a video that is twice as good might be capable of getting 10 times as many views. If that’s true it implies that (within reason) spending more time to make a better video is the best strategy. Intuitively this makes sense: would it be better to make 1 m…

> I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. I know "The Algorithm" gets a lot of hate, but surfacing quality-over-quantity content is one place where recommendation algorithms excel over pure chronological feeds. When I switched Twitter to chronological mode, I had to unfollow several people because they posted all day long. The most valuable Tweets I wanted to see were buried i…

It's nice that Twitter allows you to switch modes. Normally I'm in chronological mode, but I can go to the mobile.twitter.com site on desktop too, and that is in the "Algorithm" mode. So it's pretty easy to just swap and see if I'm feeling in the mood to let the algorithm discover new things for me / catch some interesting replies or likes of people I follow / etc. It'd be interesting to go full power user with more customization and easy swapping, but such features don't tend to last if they ever get implemented in the first place...

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

#120
≥ To begin with, your video is only going to be shown to your subscribers.

Not the case for me. I have two channels. One where I post stuff and another where I watch stuff. The channel that watches stuff subscribes to the channel that post stuff. It almost never show my videos. I have 303 subscribers and 7 views on my last video.

YouTube is broken as heck. At least 10% of my subscribers should be shown my videos.

Post reply on HN