Introduction
I have been a VERY active user of YouTube since 2007 two years after its creation. Ever since, I have consumed almost all of my information through their videos. Some of the stuff I watched and still watch to this day are:
- Movie trailers&scenes
- Fan made movies
- Comedy sketches
- Documentaries
- Music videos, lyrics and remix
- Math&science tutorials
- Software and coding tutorials
- Interviews of atheltes, businessmen or any public figures
- Podcasts
- Anime scenes
- Martial art fights&tutorials (BJJ and MMA especially)
- Success and self-help tips
- University&job experiences
- Day in the life
- Wildlife footage
- Job preparation
- University lectures
- Finance and money
Hypothesis
My definition of success for any Youtuber is when they can get enough views to generate enough income to support themselves and their families through it only. Having witnessed the platform’s evolution as well as the types of successful Youtubers, I thought I had a good enough intuition of what makes videos popular. Sometimes, I would notice some become popular without much attention given to their editing or whatsoever even for very ordinary content like gardening or studying (i.e. >50 000 views). A few examples of those also include:
- Natural disasters caught on tape
- Animal fights
- Funny random real life events
- Any kind of scary footage
On the flipside, I would notice high-quality videos with top notch editing, sound, lighting, script, image, etc. get very minimal views (i.e. <900). Bear in mind that I am referring to the kinds of videos that would require a lot of time and expertise almost to the level of a blockbuster movie studio. Weirdly enough ,sometimes they would be uploaded by channels with thousands of subscribers with some previous viral hits. Therefore, that made me question what exactly is it that keeps viewership consistent for every video of any given channel? Even some obvious characteristics such as the number of subscribers, the video quality or previous video successes do not guarantee consistent success. A few days after launching my YouTube channel, I dug into my folders to see if I could upload some interesting footage and that gave me what I thought was a brilliant idea of uploading dog related videos. I have seen some popular ones on YouTube and I thought to myself that since I have been around dogs, this should come natural to me. Therefore, I uploaded a few short formats of those along with some random footage of nature. I hoped to get at least 1000 views and even up to 30 000 views similar to other dog videos.
Results & Observations
After uploading my dog videos, none of them blew up or at least got as much views as I initially thought. Even the funny dog behaviours did not get any views at all. On the flipside, the video that I thought would get 0 views ended up getting the most views! That was the video introduction to my blog featured on its home page which really surprised me, because it has exactly 0 traffic and visitors so it could not have come from there.
Conclusion
Despite not being different from any other dog videos, mines did not succeed equally as well even if they were of similar caliber as other popular ones. The whole experiment basically taught me how much more counter-intuitive success on YouTube actually is. I should never underestimate nor overestimate any video content and the only true test is the public upload. Although it is still possible to generate some views from the content category I tried (dog-related videos), it is not to be taken for granted. You can read more about some case studies in this post. I should also never rely on my assumptions, because I can be falsely led by them. For example, the most surprising result was when I got the most views on the video I least expected to get any. At the same time, I was SOOO glad it got some attention and I can’t even comprehend how 14 strangers organically discovered it!! It was a deeply mind-blowing experience at that moment 🤯. I then decided to create two creator pages on Facebook and Instagram to increase my blog’s outreach. After some thought, I decided to let go of the Facebook page, because I would rather put in the time to work with Instagram, a much more intuitive platform to me. I do not need to be on every platform out there, but only ones that I genuinely enjoy using. So overall, I will have my blog, a YouTube channel and an Instagram page to spread my content. Let’s see what happens.
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