Today, I finished my 25th Let's Play video and have it chambered and ready to upload in a few days. (I record about an hour and a half at a time, break that into 15-20 minute episodes and upload a new one every day).
I appear to have finally started to 'break through' this week. I'm getting an average of thirty views per video in the first few hours after an upload, and I appear to be gaining subscribers at one or two a day. (Yeah, I know, that's nothing by youtube standards...but it's encouraging to start getting noticed considering I've been doing this for less than three weeks).
Unfortunately, this puts me in a really annoying position.
You see, at this point I've gained an audience significant enough for other youtubers to want me to plug and/or link to their videos, but not so significant that they feel they're wasting their time in asking me.
To me, that's just not cool...and makes absolutely zero sense. If I had a dedicated audience of thousands, I'd be happy to throw a beginner a bone and give them a link if I liked their videos....but as a beginner myself with a tiny audience, if think your videos are good, the last thing I want to do is redirect my small audience to you...and if I think your videos are crap, I'm obviously not going to endorse them.
Basically, get a similar number of subscribers to me and we'll talk. At this point, the best case scenario is I just give you the audience that I've worked my ass off for.
But now for a spot of advice.
As well as the handful of people asking for a direct plug, I've gotten more messages than I can count from people who have seen that I'm making minecraft videos, so they ask me to watch their videos (and, of course, subscribe)... not through a comment, mind you, but by sending me a direct, private message asking me to check out their video.
Not only is this completely unwanted spam...99.9% of these all have one thing in common. The channel was created within the last week, and there's a single, solitary five minute video up.
I've mentioned this before about blogging, but it also applies here, if not more so:
If you want to build up an audience, the first thing you do is create good content. Worry about the marketing later. There's no point getting people into your store if you have nothing to sell them.
To me, it just appears that the majority of the internet has things backwards. They want the big audience, the praise and the adulation before they put the work in...and if you need a huge crowd of people to cheer you on before you write a blog post or upload a video, you're not going to keep at it anyway.
Put simply, if I land on someone's youtube video and enjoy it...and they have ten other current videos that show they update consistently...I'm going to bookmark their channel, watch their back catalogue and keep checking back. If I land on someone's channel and they have one or two videos that were uploaded two months apart...I'm not going to waste my time.
Basically, if you want to create something, do it for the sheer joy of making something. The more you do it, the better you'll get and the more likely people with actually want to see it. Once you've got some quality work online, you'll grow an audience.
It doesn't matter how many eyes you get to your website if they visit once and never return, and until you have some worthwhile content, that's exactly what's going to happen.
I appear to have finally started to 'break through' this week. I'm getting an average of thirty views per video in the first few hours after an upload, and I appear to be gaining subscribers at one or two a day. (Yeah, I know, that's nothing by youtube standards...but it's encouraging to start getting noticed considering I've been doing this for less than three weeks).
Unfortunately, this puts me in a really annoying position.
You see, at this point I've gained an audience significant enough for other youtubers to want me to plug and/or link to their videos, but not so significant that they feel they're wasting their time in asking me.
To me, that's just not cool...and makes absolutely zero sense. If I had a dedicated audience of thousands, I'd be happy to throw a beginner a bone and give them a link if I liked their videos....but as a beginner myself with a tiny audience, if think your videos are good, the last thing I want to do is redirect my small audience to you...and if I think your videos are crap, I'm obviously not going to endorse them.
Basically, get a similar number of subscribers to me and we'll talk. At this point, the best case scenario is I just give you the audience that I've worked my ass off for.
But now for a spot of advice.
As well as the handful of people asking for a direct plug, I've gotten more messages than I can count from people who have seen that I'm making minecraft videos, so they ask me to watch their videos (and, of course, subscribe)... not through a comment, mind you, but by sending me a direct, private message asking me to check out their video.
Not only is this completely unwanted spam...99.9% of these all have one thing in common. The channel was created within the last week, and there's a single, solitary five minute video up.
I've mentioned this before about blogging, but it also applies here, if not more so:
If you want to build up an audience, the first thing you do is create good content. Worry about the marketing later. There's no point getting people into your store if you have nothing to sell them.
To me, it just appears that the majority of the internet has things backwards. They want the big audience, the praise and the adulation before they put the work in...and if you need a huge crowd of people to cheer you on before you write a blog post or upload a video, you're not going to keep at it anyway.
Put simply, if I land on someone's youtube video and enjoy it...and they have ten other current videos that show they update consistently...I'm going to bookmark their channel, watch their back catalogue and keep checking back. If I land on someone's channel and they have one or two videos that were uploaded two months apart...I'm not going to waste my time.
Basically, if you want to create something, do it for the sheer joy of making something. The more you do it, the better you'll get and the more likely people with actually want to see it. Once you've got some quality work online, you'll grow an audience.
It doesn't matter how many eyes you get to your website if they visit once and never return, and until you have some worthwhile content, that's exactly what's going to happen.
1 comment:
I thought about being a smart-@$$ and saying something like "Great video, check THIS out (where THIS is a link to a crappy video.) But I can't do that.
This is an area where you agree on motivation, but have differing goals. I blog, create videos, or whatever, strictly for my own enjoyment, or to communicate with a pre-existing audience of friends I've built up over the years.
You, on the other hand, see the potential for utilizing your talent to make some money. But most importantly, you want to build the content and let the customers come.
I, like you, am totally irritated when I write something from the heart, and some little script kiddie comes along and says "Oh yeah, that's great! Now, check THIS out!" Bastages!
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