Advice from Proficient Youtubers?

Hey Bomb Community!

I recently started up a channel on Youtube as a fun little side project, although I'm trying to take it as 'professionally' as possible. By that I mean that I have amassed about 12 hours of recorded material that I'm gradually releasing on a 'tentatively once-every-two-day' schedule, while still creating new content to pad out the backlog, and having drummed up a few graphics and 'branding', including thumbnail templates.

And yet! Despite all this preparation, I still admittedly do not have much of an idea what I am doing from a marketing/social aspect. I'm sure there are some unwritten rules about YouTube that maybe some of the proficient among you probably know, or perhaps certain tactics and strategies to cultivate and maintain a fanbase. I'm also not doing this to chase after the 'monetization' dream either, this is more of something I have wanted to try an pick up again and see how far I could go with it, so naturally I'm not interested in 'extreme' measures, such as purchasing views (if that even is such a thing nowadays).

The channel can be found at this link here.

Thanks for any and all advice you duders can provide!

I'm not proficient myself, but I follow this kind of material a lot so I'll give you some advice from a viewer perspective. I'll also repeat what I've heard from one of the more popular streamers I watch often.

As a viewer, if you want to get my attention, make sure you are playing something relevant. Most of the people I watch I have found through looking up the latest and greatest competitive games or single player games. It's cool if you have a backlog or a favorite game that you want to playthrough and make a feature, but make sure you have something popular and recent being uploaded to draw people's attention. They'll view these videos first most likely, and if they like what they see they'll make their way over to videos of more obscure or older games to see more of you. You'll notice a lot of popular internet personalities got started by being a part of the latest "it" game. Whether that be Starcraft 2, minecraft, league of legends, hearthstone, heroes of the storm, etc. you'll notice that they made a name for themselves with these kinds of games. I'd recommend allotting some time daily/weekly for one specific game like this that you know you can play for a long time and still enjoy. It will give viewers consistency and you can gather up a crowd from that games community. For example, right now getting good at rocket league and uploading a lot of content for it would be a good way to put yourself out there. That's only if you enjoy rocket league and is just an example though. Don't play a game you don't like or aren't good at just to get viewers.

A lot of the streamers who just bounce from old single player game to old single player game don't gather quite as much viewership because viewers have no likely way of finding them. It's also very inconsistent from a content perspective because they may only ever play one game that I, as a viewer, want to watch. And then when you're done with that game I have no reason to come back. Think of single player game videos as being a lot like giant bomb quick looks. If it gets to be so far after its release and you still don't have content for it, you might as well move onto preparing for something else that's about to release soon. Most of the searches for these types of games will happen right away and then not much at all afterwards.

As for "marketing" yourself, if you can I'd recommend live streaming in addition to doing videos. You're recording anyway, so if your rig and internet can handle it you might as well make yourself available during the recording sessions. I've stumbled across a lot of twitch streams while I was bored just because they were playing a game I liked, and then after went to their youtube channel to watch previous content because I enjoyed what they had to offer. It's been years since I actually started out by finding someone on youtube without stumbling across them on twitch first. Times have changed and whatnot.

And now the little tidbit that I often hear Day9 repeat often whenever he's asked about getting started with this kind of thing. Just make a schedule and stick with it. If people know when you are going to be uploading something (or streaming if you do any live content) then they will eventually start to show up. Even if it's a couple people at a time at first. Give them something consistent to follow. If you start skipping out on days then you will lose people fast and they'll go elsewhere for entertainment.

Best of luck duder!

Wow! That's really helpful advice! Thank you for taking the time to really get in-depth like that. I'll try and work something out with the folks I run the channel with, so we are more 'awake' when the next big thing comes to pass.

With streaming I've always been more wary...I never really understood streaming culture to be honest! A lot of people in my office do stream, so I've picked up a few things here and there but, never really known how exactly the technicality of alerting others that you are streaming. Most of them get the views by more popular streamers offloading their viewers onto them. Then again, they also mainly play ARMA and it's derivatives, so that's almost it's own niche thing. I suppose with streaming it also ties in with the consistency thing...which wooould be a problem for us in any case. With videos we can film in bulk and upload in piecemeal, but streaming is like, a full on injection into your eyeballs of content.

I'll be sure to pass this information out to my group! I'm sure it will be a great help, thanks again!

@jazzylament: Another little tip I just thought of, I remember a content uploader I was watching on youtube mentioning that people will actually unsubscribe if you upload too much at once. In this case, his channel was league of legend's based, and most of his viewership came from people who want to watch league of legends stuff. He also played other games on the side, and he noticed when he uploaded too many videos of a 3ds game he was playing he lost subscribers. People who enjoyed both were happy, but those who only cared about league got annoyed by the burst of notifications that were irrelevant to them. People who only care about specific things on your channel may just turn off your notifications altogether if it starts to feel like spam. So be mindful of how much you upload at once especially since you're pre-recording your content.

@mentaldisruption Mhmmn. That makes sense. Like I said before, I was generally planning on doing a once every two day upload schedule. What is generally considered to be "too much"?

Okay so I have a vaguely successful Youtube channel at this point (300,000 views, most of them since late March), I think a lot of that had to do with just random ass luck but also playing a new game (Bloodborne to start with). I have zero production values other than trimming videos and pretty much just straight upload stuff from the PS4 with no commentary, I do have "ambitions" of becoming a dedicated LPer on Something Awful or what have you but simply don't have the setup for it at present, nor is there much evidence that doing so would cause the channel to grow. I think talking on a mic and having a facecam would, but not necessarily having high quality videos.

The esteemed Supergreatfriend, the best LPer in the universe, only has like 13,500 subscribers; and a random douchebag like Kailvin has roughly the same amount. I suppose there's another lesson to be learned here and that is to buddy up with someone else who has a youtube channel, for example Northernlion's wife is a twitch partner and has 43,000 subscribers on youtube. I haven't done this as of yet but it could feasibly happen in the future when I'm actually in LP mode and not just upload a bunch of stuff mode.

So what sets me apart aside from playing new games? I happen to be good at games, like almost every game. Okay, maybe not Rocket League. I think that + luck + relevancy/immediacy is what causes a channel to grow. You might want to start out with a smaller game with a devoted Reddit community, this is sort of what I wound up doing with Helldivers and it's possible simply having a couple dozen videos with a few hundred views was enough to propel all the Bloodborne videos to whatever "heights." As far as retaining the audience, well my current Bloodborne videos get like a dozen views in a couple weeks time (whereas some of the ones closer to release have over 10,000); I mean it's just a vicious decline due to the average attention span of the modern video game player. I do however get 1-3 subscribers a day and theoretically that will eventually help to outweigh the desolation of interest in anything older than one month/one week/one day/one hour.

A large question is "how important is charisma?" Well, it certainly is important but maybe not on the absolute bottom, I think charisma is more of a thing that matters later on, that's what keeps viewers watching Kripparrian throughout his entire adult life; early on what's more important is playing new stuff, playing it reasonably well, and uploading something every single day, possibly a lot of things. If we look at the Men Drinkin' Coffee, perhaps the most charming bunch of gentleman on the face of the earth, they've been at it for at least 2 years and they only have 4,000 subscribers; I could feasibly reach that number (assuming a natural growth) in the same time period without ever saying a single word in any video I do.

As far as what games to play, well play something that you can distinguish yourself with; if you play an adventure game that plays out almost exactly the same as everyone else's run then there's not really any reason to watch yours over someone else's that the viewer is presumably already familiar with. This is why Bloodborne is such a great game to start with, there's very disparate approaches to the game and there just weren't a ton of people doing Logarius' Wheel stuff at the moment when I started, which led to at least like 40-50 thousand views on that concept alone.

So if I wanted to start afresh I would begin with Dark Souls 3 when that comes out and try to play with weirdass weapons and play with them well.

Edit: So for more evidence of the recency issue: when it was released I did a Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition run through the weirdest mode with the new characters Lady and Trish and it has done pretty well aside from copyright issues (apparently every song and almost every cutscene in the original is content ID matched); one of the videos is over 1000 views now and I'm sure several others will be there at some point. The game is like 7 years old or something, but not this edition.

I've also done Arkham Knight videos 3 or so weeks after it came out and almost every video is still in the single digit view count as far as I know. Now granted while Batman has a huge skill ceiling it is difficult to actually show that off and people just aren't that interested in it on that level. DMC has an even higher skill ceiling but whereas absolute perfection is what you go for in Arkham in DMC you can still play well and occasionally take a few hits; which leads to a much different viewing experience from player to player. So DMC is a more specialized game and I played it right when it came out and this is the reason why the videos do well but the Arkham videos do terribly.

@fredchuckdave: I've been editing and producing videos for a year and I'm not even close to that amount of viewership or subscription. I guess playing Souls games around release time is a huge draw. Follow the people I guess.

So OP I guess what I've learned is that production values and personality are not what brings people in. My most successful video has terrible audio and no editing, but it was about FFVIII so it still brought people in. I have plenty of videos that I'm more proud of, but no one has watched them since the games are more obscure. I also would say that you are like 90% at the mercy of youtube's search algorithm. If your videos are named well and the algorithm plops them on the top of a relevant search, then its almost impossible to not get views. And once you start getting views, the system perpetuates itself and more people get funneled your way. But if you don't happen to be at the top of a search, you're kinda shit out of luck unless you already have a ton of subscribers. That's what makes new games so fruitful. You both have a lot of attention being paid and there are no entrenched videos that box you out.

I would say, based on my experience, that being critical or informative is a harder way to go. The number of people who want people to explain older games or systems is a lot smaller than the people who want to watch someone beat a game or who want tips on how to get past a difficult thing. If you want eyeballs, then find the new hotness and spew forth videos and hope one catches. That one will act like a lightning rod and draw viewers into your channel.

@jazzylament: I don't really watch gaming lets plays, most of the ones i do are mostly used as background noise on my second screen at work.

That being said I clicked your link and the first thing I saw was Amnesia, a game that has been played on probably every gaming channel out there, so i skipped that and watched your other video the pink one.

Soooo that was not really enjoyable to watch. I watched it for about 7 minutes, and the big problem at least for me is that it was a lot of laughing and yelling and not much else. I think i understand why you guys were laughing so much, you're friends playing a game and just messing around. You're playing and keep dying and it's funny to your friend probably laughing at your frustration so it's also funny to you as well. However, to a viewer like me, i don't know you guys, i'm sitting in my office at work watching a guy fall between platforms yell for a second then laugh until it happens again. It's fine to laugh a lot in your videos, however you have to think of the viewer, if they aren't laughing with you it's kind of alienating it's like i'm missing the joke. There were no jokes or any real dialogue in the 7 minutes i watched, everything you guys were laughing at reminded me of "you had to be there" humor. It was probably funny at the time in the room while recording but at my desk it's not fun to watch. Somethings can be fun to just laugh at visually like the crazy random deaths in GTA5. However, deaths caused by bad play aren't funny, unless you're laughing at the frustration it's causing the other player, but again you're not coming off frustrated, you're more amused by it.

The biggest problem to me is that your video i watched has no personality, you guys aren't saying much other than commenting on what is going on on screen which isn't a lot by the way. I'ts a boring game visually and your commentary is boring too. Play something more visually appealing, also just remember that you are creating content for people who don't know you, so inside jokes or hanging out with your friend humor isn't going to be funny to us.

For more silly comparisons, this video has almost 8,000 views and is just a pretty simple Mergo's fight, it was the first time I ever fought the boss but I guess because I put 90 insight and Logarius' Wheel in the title it did ridiculously well (though I did tell some people in the comments that I had decided to use the wheel on the last few bosses because it seemed to be in demand so that might have accounted for like 30 views or something):

Comparitively this video from yesterday has 5 views (which is actually kind of a lot for a Bloodborne video put up at this point in time) and will eventually grow to like 80-100 or something; but the quality of the two fights is just a huge rift. The wheel fight was alright and fun and the Shadows fight is the most epic fucking thing ever but hardly anyone is ever actually going to see it:

I also started a few months ago and I feel you man. I started a lets play of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, which is a damn good and generally overlooked game in my opinion, but not something that is relevant or interesting in 2015.

It's still pretty hard to get over the "stage fright" in front of the camera, which is less noticeable the more I record (I hope).
I think I'm gonna ditch the facecam thing so I can insert maybe prerecorded mini stories/monologues in the quiet parts of videos.

Also, I edited more and more in later videos to shorten the downtime as much as possible, but it's a serious, roaming, open world game, what more can I do?

I also plan to join some ARMA 3 clan and do more mission videos like the one I have on the channel, that's super immersive and fun to watch I think. I also try and compact it as much as possible with editing.

As far as advices go- try and keep the effort, time and energy spent proportional to the channel success. Don't work your ass off all the spare time you have aside a normal job and family just to have 40 views in a month. Build things slowly but steadily and keep to a schedule (unfortunately, I'm all talk in this department :( ).

Best of luck to you duder!

My channel link

@zombie2011: Thanks for the feedback! We will be sure to take it to heart in future videos. The series you are watching, "Dual Boot" is conceptually where we split the controls for two games between two people. Initially there is a lot of struggle grappling with the controls, but later we step into a nicer groove and talk more about electronic music and such. But I see what you mean!

@fredchuckdave: Yeah, it seems that it's very timing and content based. I was considering even buying the kombat pass so I can do a duel boot with Tremor and trying to get hits that way, but even on youtube when browsing, it seemed like general interest was petering off a bit too on Tremor. 5,000 views is still better than 50, but back in 2009 I made a Jackie Chan Stuntmaster video that got 25,000 views. Guess it's just a different market nowadays.

@choi: Always liked STALKER! I never really understood this 'face cam' phenomena though. A co-worker of mine who streams on twitch said his viewership got a 20% bump when he started using a face cam. That just seems weird, at least for me where I absolutely refuse to watch game videos with them. Especially on twitch where they take up so much space and there's all the headers, and tickers, and subscription fan fare..Man, that kinda makes me feel old. Good luck to you too!

In a more specific question, does anyone have advice on tags? How should tags be used effectively? And how about video titles? Currently I always preface my titles with [SGS] and end them with "- show title" where show title is something like "Dual Boot" depending on the specific kind of video it is. Should I be making it more general though so more people stumble onto it? Or does having this setup add more process and decorum that can be woefully missing on YouTube?

@jazzylament:I agree it doesn't make sense for most video games (Stalker and ARMA especially), that's why I plan to remove mine. I can see it having a place in horror gameplay- for instance, seeing some of Patricks reactions in his Spookin with Scoops was priceless.

I mind the headers, tickers and fan fare a lot more that I do facecams on Twitch. I would wager it is a different thing with live broadcasts, maybe plays on peoples voyeuristic tendencies or something.

@jazzylament: I would triple up on that timing thing. If you want to make it big you need to really sell yourself at first. When stuff like Happy Wheels blows up you need to be on that as fast as possible regardless of how much you actually want to play that game. The moment you've gotten yourself an actual audience that knows and follows your content then you'll be able to steer the boat a bit more rather than hoping to get swept up by the current.

I've been putting up videos on my YouTube channel with various levels of editing involved over the past several years as a pure hobby. I barely get any views on any of it, much less the numbers that @fredchuckdave has shown. This is mostly because I did it as a "side thing" instead of as a "business thing" which would entail a ton of promoting and coverage of pertinent material as well as a bit of SEM work (using buzz words in the titles etc.)

At the end of the day I think luck factors heavily into as much as good production values. The one sure bet of success is as mentioned above partnering up with an already very popular YouTuber. I remember way back in the day when Call of Duty commentary videos were raking it on from the Respawn channel there was this young new kid on the scene. He got chummy with Seananners who was one of the most prominent CoD commentators out there and was able to ride his coattails to a nice little audience of his own. Seananners literally defined that kids career by telling him to change his username, which was ProsDontTalkSh*t to something that could be more friendly to market in case he makes it big. That guy is now CaptainSparkles and has a gigantic Minecraft channel with millions of views weekly - but only because he bit the bullet and changed his channel name at the height of his fandom with Seananners. Left to his own devices he would have been just another guy in a sea of other CoD commentators with slightly above average production values.