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

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

#121

Post by jerf »

fiat_fandango wrote: post #26
dufmo wrote: post #2

1 Month and already incapable of writing a normal title.

As an educated person, it's actually insane how hard it is to create click-bait / engaging thumbnails and titles.

You may be doing it wrong, no sarcasm nor insult intended. You shouldn't be sitting down and racking your brain to generate one from scratch. You build up a set of functional templates, then poke over the templates for which one happens to fit this video best. It's one step up from the classic Mad Libs game [1], except you can tweak the stock phrases a little bit, too. I fully expect that all the biggest YouTubers either have, or have had, a literal list of title templates to use. You can of course build your list up in about 15 minutes of doomscrolling YouTube. (Possibly without being logged in.)

The clickbait is the result of an evolutionary process. You can't beat it de novo, you can only harness it.

It's one of the reasons it's so infuriating to some of us. "I Clicked This Link And You Won't Believe What Happened Next!" + Shocked Face is so easy it's almost insulting.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs if you don't know this cultural reference.

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

#122

Post by jerf »

bradlys wrote: post #55
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Don't judge a book by its cover" is a lie-to-children; there's some truth to it, but if I were making a list of sayings we tell to children and how truthful it is, this one would actually be rather far down my list. Judging things by their cover is generally effective. The horde of exceptions stampeding into your mind and encouraging you to hit "Reply" and start to list them are exactly that: Exceptions.

There are, admittedly, rather a lot of them. I look over at my bookshelf and I could show you some myself. Nevertheless, it really is a better heuristic than a lot of people would care to admit.

Part of this is because covers have a lot of intentionality in them. People deliberately imbue them with information. I don't ignore them. Mind you, I might not come to the intended conclusions... to take one clear example, the intentional message being sent by romance book covers and the one I receive are fairly different. Nevertheless, in the end, both I and the publisher are generally satisfied by the transaction, even if they might prefer I buy it anyhow, I'm not in the target audience and they know that.

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

#123

Post by didgetmaster »

I post a new video about once a month that demonstrates a particular feature of my new data management system. I think short (5 to 10 minutes) videos are the best and focus on how to do one thing well. My latest one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va5ZqfwQXWI) compares a few simple SQL queries on a moderately large DB table (22 columns, 7.6M rows) on SQLite (with and without indexes) and the same queries run on my system which doesn't need separate indexes (spoiler alert: my system is much faster).

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

#124

Post by meheleventyone »

steveklabnik wrote: post #111
swighton wrote: post #66

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 in…

It’s also worth noting that the algorithm is not the only meta and posting consistently might be more or less expected depending on your audience, topic and so on.

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

#125

Post by munificent »

truculent wrote: post #117
waltbosz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would argue that he is strictly the better guy than a chocolate factory owner who is otherwise indistinguishable from Willy Wonka but who just pockets all the cash instead.

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

#126

Post by dxbydt »

swighton wrote: post #66

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…

This is absolutely crazy. OP is like asking for acting advice from internet randos. Suddenly, Al Pacino drops in!

stuffmadehere is famous shit. Middle schoolers watch it in the classroom because the science teacher plays this. He has millions of subscribers & each show ( I refuse to call it video. Its a proper show. ) is very professionally done. It's so popular, if you were in India & you were speaking in Hindi, you would legit be on TV. Over there people are glued to content because some guy is explaining centrifugal force in hindi with some string & tincan. Meanwhile, look at your production values! Huge respect. Thanks for everything you do.

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

#127

Post by steveklabnik »

meheleventyone wrote: post #124
steveklabnik wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

It’s also worth noting that the algorithm is not the only meta and posting consistently might be more or less expected depending on your audience, topic and so on.

Absolutely, each audience has different expectations for what "quality" even means. Though I'm not really sure where "the algorithm" (I kinda hate how anthropomorphized it is) doesn't play into even in your scenario. Browse and Search are the two largest ways to grow traffic, and both are algorithmic to different degrees... unless you just mean like, growth is not a goal on YouTube for you, in which case, yeah you can just ignore all of this for sure.

But the language used around this topic is often implying that "the algorithm" will "punish you" if you like, post too often, post too little, post at different times... and I personally believe that that is empirically demonstrated to be not the case, and is also something YouTube (at least lately, I've only been paying close attention for a year or two) has never implied is important. And they've said things that imply that it's totally irrelevant, recommendation wise.

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

#128

Post by acchow »

swighton wrote: post #66

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 wonder if Youtubers are mistaking consistency with quality? They don't realize that their consistent production is causing an increase in their quality (via practice/learning)

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

#129

Post by alexb_ »

fiat_fandango wrote: post #57
Pent wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hour…

>I find it funny to imagine Mr. Beast "spending hours" coming up with "next level content"

As silly as it is for me to be the guy "defending Mr. Beast" of all people, I don't think you have any idea what he does.

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

#130

Post by ebbflowgo »

swighton wrote: post #66

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…

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