Results of last week's experiment....
A quick update on last week’s experiment.
You may remember that I wanted to see if a shorter video (about an MP3 badge) combined with a formulaic thumbnail picture would generate more views than my previous video (about VHD) which took considerably more time and effort to assemble.
Well, you'll probably be glad to hear that the longer more elaborate VHD video won out. After the first 24hrs when views died off on the shorter badge video, the VHD video regained the number one position in hourly views and has continued to do so ever since.
So there you go, for me that was an experiment worth doing. A few people seemed worried about that I was planning on dumbing things down, but I’ve always liked to try things out for myself before making any kind of judgement.
A commonly held belief is that shorter videos combined with click-bait thumbnails are a sure-fire way to increase views. I had suspicions that going down this route wouldn’t have any effect on views for my type of videos, and these turned out to be well founded.
The topic of my videos appeal to a more mature audience, people around my age, who are old enough to have formulated their own strong opinions, likes, dislikes and preferences. People aren’t easily influenced.
70% of views on the channel come from the age range of 25-44. It sounds normal, but you have to think that that’s old for youtube. 30% is in the 35-44 age band. These people (like myself) are far more likely to view videos on a computer rather than a phone and this is borne out in the stats. That’s great with me. There’s little point in me putting out 4K videos for a 5” screen.
I was happy to see that the 9 minute video didn’t attract a greater percent of mobile users than the 30 minute one either so this means I don’t have to worry about the length of a video putting off audiences either.
So to sum up, I’m just going to keep doing what I do, although I do intend to try to keep videos below 20 minutes. If the subject exceeds that, and looks like it's going to go past half an hour... I’ll split it across two or more videos. This is mainly because I’m having trouble editing and uploading videos in 4K when they exceed a certain size/length. Sometimes I have to really pack information in to 30 minutes when it would be better paced over a 40 minute spread across two videos.
Anyway that’s what’s going on right now. It’s just business as usual over here.
Comments (18)
4K isn't really worth it yet, until 1Gbps becomes mainstream and bitrate on YouTube goes up. I don't really notice a difference on my 55" TV, and it hasn't even gotten the HDR update yet.
Huh, both my old TV and this one are terrible doing 3D, there's extreme crosstalk, so everything is doubled, making it pretty much impossible to watch anything on it. 3D should have stayed in the cinemas where it actually looks decent, in my opinion.
Time for some more kitchen gadgets :)
I'm always on the look out (I check for these - every single month )- but no one has made any new affordable interesting and silly kitchen gadgets for *years*. It seems like there's more chance of Sega releasing a new Dreamcast.
I'm interested to know why you think your videos should be more attractive to the younger people (10-25 years?) on Youtube. This is a fairly niche and geeked-out area of interest. It's something you have to want to actively try to find, out of all the other noise on Youtube. The refurbishing, lubricating, and complete painstaking disassembly and slime removal in old equipment to get it going again, is in my experience even more rare and uncommon in the throw-away tech world we live in now. Young kids are not going to even know about many of these A/V technology topics to find these videos in the first place, unless they do a search on old technology laying around their parents home. No, they are going to be looking for things more relevant to their age group, and the only really young people finding these videos will be the rare tech geek interested in electronics and A/V systems. The older age groups, well, I can only speculate about other people, but for me in my early 40's, it's nostalgia and actively searching youtube for related old-tech topics, wanting to learn more about the things that as a kid in the 1980's and 1990's, I could never have or thought was cool at the time.
I don't think my videos should be more attractive to the younger people. I'm really not sure why that idea came across, my apologies if this is what it seemed like...because it's certainly not what I was trying to covey. The viewship audience age demographic is exactly 100% perfectly reflective on the people that the content was expected to appeal to - people who like the things that I like. I don't tailor the videos for anyone other than myself and as a result it's people who fall into the same broad age-band as myself that like these videos. I would have been very surprised and a bit disappointed if I saw that all the views came from young teenagers .
I'm 29 and I like your long videos just fine.
Man I now feel old at 53. Cheers guys! On the subject of content I prefer the longer vids and am pretty much in to all the stuff you've covered over the last couple of years. One observation, I've recently bought a new motorcycle and have been looking for a small double camera single recorder setup (f&b) I can install on it but they are just not there at a reasonable price. For some reason Australia appear the only place to sell them at about £300 plus post. Have you come across any in your search for content?
I really like your long videos! Then again, I also like the shorter ones, too. I guess it really just depends on the subject matter as to how long or short you make them. Whichever you choose, you are doing a terrific job. Thanks!
awesome, glad sanity won the day
I dig your current style, with the more mature audience oriented way with a discrete humour aspect. It's perfect for us 40 year olds with one foot in the present and one in the past. And 12 to 20 minutes is perfect lengths. So keep up the good work. :)
Short videos with clickbait titles and usually futile/popular subjects are meant to try and "go viral" i.e. attract a massive number of one-time viewers, not build a long-term audience around a recurrent topic. Since you already have one and one that likes actually learning things through in-depth content the results are not surprising. Most of my subscriptions / Youtube viewing consists of channels with detailed and insightful content, which obviously means pretty long videos. I typically use them as a nice relaxing activity and watch them in bed on my 12" iPad Pro so my views will register as mobile even if they're everything but what's typically considered mobile viewing i.e. watching on a small phone screen in places like public transport. My sweet spot seems to be 20-40min, but I don't mind and regularly view 1h videos. Actually the issue is not that I'd skip an 1h video, it's that they're pretty rare. I've never ever been bored by a video of yours. Lastly, to be fair... your playbutton video isn't really of a differnt format than your usual videos so I wouldn't really consider it as a "short/clickbait" video, but... just a rushed version of your usual style. It does feel rushed and thus less enjoyable.
I love your longer videos. Especially those about "obsolete" audio equipment.
Sounds good. I never had the feeling that any of your videos is too long or too short. You compress the topic to the time it needs without leaving stuff out and without waffling around. All of them work fine for me.
I like the long videos, there much more informative.
Sounds good. Can't hurt to try new things. Maybe even have two different types, "quickies" and "in-depth". Keep up the good work.
I'm so glad you didn't have to go with that silly thing. I think it would be just ridiculous to mash it with your high quality, slow, but extremely detailed and entertaining video format.
Glad to hear it's business as usual, the tempo and content of your material always struck a chord with me, and subscribed right after I saw the cassettes better than you don't remember video... keep it real homie and if your as old as me, if you build it they will come.. applies to videos as well