- I'm gonna tell you what to do if you're not getting
the results that you want on YouTube,
and we're starting right now.
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So a lot of people will start a YouTube channel
and when they upload a video they expect
to get a certain amount of views,
and that expectation is typically something
that happens up here because they see a bunch
of videos on YouTube that get published
that get a lot of views on 'em.
For example, the comment that I'm answering today
is from Trinidragon, and Trinidragon says,
"Hey, Nick, I've had a gaming channel
"for a little more than a month now
"and post at least three videos weekly.
"I spend hours editing,
"but I don't get the results that I wanted.
"What do I do?"
Trinidragon, you are not alone,
and if you're watching this video right now
there's a really good chance that you feel exactly
what Trinidragon is feeling like right now.
You know, hey, I'm putting in all of this work,
I'm putting in all of this effort
into making these awesome videos,
and when I publish 'em to YouTube
I don't get hardly any views at all, if any views at all.
What is going on?
What do I have to do to get this stuff to work?
The first thing that I'm gonna tell you is,
as a content creator, this is one of the biggest challenges
that we face, one of the hardest battles that we fight,
and the reason for that is because in our minds
we have this expectation of what we think should happen
when we upload a video, and how our content is
in terms of quality and all of that,
and why we think people should watch it,
and why we think it's good, but you know,
we get attached to our own content
because it's our own content,
it's something that we've made that we care about,
and because of that, you know,
you want other people to see it.
We're publishing this to YouTube
because we want other people to participate
in the content that we made, and it doesn't always happen.
We don't always get the response that we're after,
and it sucks.
You know, it sucks when you publish a video
and you put in all this time and all this work
or research or whatever it happens to be
and you don't get the views that you're after,
you don't get anybody, you don't get anybody coming in,
you know, that's watching, and the people
that do watch maybe, they don't leave a comment
so you're not getting any interaction,
and it sucks because you start to feel
like all of this effort that you're putting out there,
you're kinda putting it out there for nothing,
and because of that it can be frustrating,
it can be depressing, it can suck the wind out of your sail,
so-to-speak, because you're just not getting
that response that you were hoping to get initially.
So if you are feeling this way,
if you're feeling like you're putting in all this work,
you're putting in all of this effort,
you're just, you know, you're putting your all
into making this content but you're not getting
the response that you had hoped, here's what you need to do.
The very first thing that you need to do
is you need to take a step back for a second
and you need to take a very hard objective look
at what it is that you're actually doing.
Look at your channel page, look at your titles,
look at your thumbnails, look at the video content itself
and look at it objectively.
Pretend that you didn't make the content,
pretend that you had nothing to do with the content,
any way, shape, or form, and look at it
and think to yourself is it clear
what my video's about in my thumbnails,
is it clear what is happening in my content with my title,
when I actually click in the video is it good content,
like is this something that I would actually watch,
is the quality competitive in terms of the other people
that are making content like mine?
The reason this is really important to do
and it's like a critical thing really that you need to do
in the situation if you're not getting results
is because I'll get tons of comments on my YouTube channel
where people will say things like, hey, Nick,
I'm doing all of the things that you recommend
but I'm not getting any results in my YouTube channel,
I'm not getting views, my channel's not growing,
things like that, and every single time,
every time that I look at a channel,
when I, you know, I open it up, I'm like, okay,
they're applying all the stuff,
let me look at the channel and see what's actually going on
so maybe I can give 'em a tip that'll help them out,
but I'll look at the channel and 99.9% of the time
they're not doing the things that I recommend here
on the YouTube channel, that YouTube recommends,
that other people who make content like me recommend,
but they think they are
and this is where the problem comes in.
Here's the thing, if you're uploading content to YouTube
and you're not getting any results at all,
people are not coming in, they're not watching,
you're not getting three views on a video,
you know, you're not making any progress at all,
then in that situation you need to really look
at what it is that you're doing
because every single time that I go and I look
at one of those channels, what I see is I'll see
to where people, they don't have their content optimized
for mobile, they don't have their channel page optimized
for mobile, their titles will be things
like, "My Trip to the Store"
or "You Wouldn't Believe this Happened",
and the downside of that is that you are doing that
because you see a lot of big channels on YouTube doing
that type of thing and you're using them as inspiration,
which is great because, you know,
like successfully used clues, so-to-speak,
but what you don't wanna do is you don't
wanna replicate exactly what it is that they're doing
because they already have an audience.
Larger channels, larger active channels I should say,
already have a built-in audience
to where when they publish something
they're going to get a percentage of clicks no matter what.
It might not be a lot, but they are going
to have some people come in and watch that video,
and because of that, that's gonna give YouTube
the information that it needs to identify
the right people for that particular video
based on how those people click
and respond to that content that has been presented to them,
but as somebody that's just getting started
you don't have that.
If you apply the tactics that the larger channels apply,
in that situation you are actually working against yourself
because you don't have that built-in audience yet,
you don't have a content library that's big enough
or strong enough that has you being put in front
of a bunch of people that would actually click
on a video that says my trip to the store.
So the solution to this is for you to take an objective look
at what it is that you're doing
and look at your titles, right?
Let's get into some actionable stuff here.
Look at your titles and your thumbnail
and how they work together as a package,
and think to yourself if this were to be presented to me
on YouTube, would I click on this, yes or no, and why?
Don't just say, yeah, I would,
but be very specific on why you would click on this.
Look for things like would this be something
that I actually care about, would the imagery that's in here
be something that might actually grab my attention?
You also wanna think about the imagery
or the words that I'm using in my thumbnail.
Are they clear and easy to read,
are the objects that I'm focusing on,
can you actually see what they are in the thumbnail,
even if it's scaled down to a small size?
When you're applying this idea to your titles,
you also wanna look at those and you wanna think
why would somebody care about this particular title,
why would this trigger somebody to click on this video?
Would it be because it evokes emotion?
Would it be that I'm creating curiosity of some kind?
Would it be that I'm helping them solve a problem
and it's just crystal clear that
I'm helping them solve the problem with this?
Is it that I'm challenging them in some way?
Like what is it exactly, and define it.
Define what it is that would make somebody click
on the thumbnail and title
that you're putting out on YouTube,
because if you can't define it,
if you can't be objective and step out
and just get away from thinking like,
hey, this a good video so of course I would click on it,
you have to assume that the people
that are seeing your thumbnail and title have never seen
a video of yours before and you also have to assume
that they don't know the video
that's behind the thumbnail and title because they don't.
When you see a bunch of videos load up
on your YouTube homepage, you have no idea
when you click on one of those videos,
you have no idea whatsoever what is
behind that title and thumbnail.
As soon as you click on it at that point,
then your expectations start kicking in.
As soon as the video start playing
you start making all of your judgements in your brain
on if you're gonna stick around or not,
but from the outside you click on videos for a reason,
you click on them because the topic of the thumbnail
or the topic of the title, the topic of the video
as a whole, but the thumbnail and the title
have pulled you in in some way,
and because of that you, if you're not getting the results
that you're after, then if you want to get results
on your YouTube channel you need to start looking
at things in that way and start defining everything
that's happening on your channel.
Why would somebody click on this?
Why would someone care about this particular video topic?
If I'm doing a vlog,
why would somebody care to watch this vlog, right?
You might think it's entertaining
because you put it together, but from the outside,
when somebody hasn't even, well, seen the video yet,
they haven't even clicked on it,
why would they care enough in order to click on that video,
why would that be important for someone else
to make them want to click?
But being able to define your thumbnail and your title
and why somebody should click on that
and in the video content why somebody should care about
and why they should watch that particular video
for a long period of time, being able to define those things
can really help you start getting results on YouTube,
because once you can identify the reasons that people
should click on your content and the reasons
that they should watch it and enjoy it,
then in that situation you can actually start leaning into
those things and then you can start focusing on those things
and then, by doing that, you'll,
since you're identifying them,
then you can make it easier for other people to identify 'em
because you're actually highlighting those things
that are important to other people.
Now, there's other things that
could be a play as well on YouTube.
So let's say that you are able to get people to click,
but they're not just, they're not,
they're just not staying and hanging out on your video.
Bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh.
Now, there could be other things at play as well.
So let's say that you can define
why somebody should care about the video.
You can define that, yeah, you know what,
I would click on this because of this,
and, yeah, it's crystal clear what's going on in this video
and why somebody should care
and why they should click on this but they're just not,
then in that situation other things could be at play.
For example, let's say that you just haven't developed
your skillset yet of just being good on camera.
Because of that, first, you need to watch
some of my videos on how to be better on camera,
but, two, if you're not good on camera
and you haven't developed that skill yet
of being able to communicate well with the camera,
then in that situation, you know,
you might not be connecting with people
when they come into your videos
and you need to identify that.
This is why it's so important
to look at all this stuff objectively.
You need to be able to identify that
so you can see it as what it is and say, okay,
maybe I'm just not good on camera yet
or I'm not projecting my best self on camera.
So because of that, I need to spend some time
just trying to learn how to be better on camera
and practicing the skill of being better on camera.
And the big trick to that, by the way,
is just simply being comfortable
that you are making videos enough,
that you're on camera enough,
and that you've had enough experience
to just simply be comfortable on camera
or you just work through in your brain however you can
to be more comfortable on camera,
and by doing that it's going
to help you be better on camera.
But let's say that you are good on camera
and you're comfortable, and you're like, you know what,
that's not the problem, I'm fine there.
I'm comfortable on camera and I think that I'm,
you know, communicating well and that sort of thing.
Then in that situation you have to start looking
at other things, and again, we're doing all this objectively
pretending it's not your content.
So you wanna look at your audio quality
and you wanna look at how your audio quality is
compared to other people that make videos
on similar topics that you do.
You wanna listen to your audio
and you wanna compare it against other videos on YouTube,
and you wanna say, okay,
is my audio similar to other videos on YouTube,
is my audio loud compared to other videos on YouTube,
is my audio really soft compared to other videos on YouTube?
And how does it actually sound?
Do I sound like I'm actually, you know,
like right there sitting with the person
or do I sound like I'm really far away from the camera
because the microphone is way over there
and I'm way over here?
These things are super important
because these are the things that create the experience
that viewers have when they interact with your content.
And look, I understand if you're just getting started,
because I was just getting started at one point as well,
if you are just getting started
and you don't know how to process audio yet
or you don't know how to make your audio sound good.
Start looking at videos, start watching,
I mean, you're on YouTube, right?
I have videos about this and a bunch
of other people have videos about this too.
Start looking for tutorials
on how to make your audio sound better.
Stat looking for set up tutorials for microphones
on how to make microphones get better or sound better.
And the idea, I'll tell ya right now,
the idea is that you get your microphone
as close to you as you possible can
where the people in the frame can't see it
but it's close to you.
So as an example, this microphone is,
I have my elbow on my knee
and I can reach down and I can touch the microphone.
That's how close this microphone is to me right now.
So you wanna make sure that the microphone
is as close to you as possible if you
are doing talking head stuff like I do.
Now, if you're doing animation videos or anything like that,
same exact thing applies.
Even if you're on your phone or your phone
is the only thing you have to record audio with,
in that situation just get your microphone
in your phone close to your mouth as well.
I mean, you don't have to get it like this,
but you know, just get it close enough
to where it's not sitting on a table
or it's not far away from you.
Just get it close enough to where you can focus
the sound of your voice as close as possible
to the microphone to make it sound better.
Another thing that can help your videos
not do well on YouTube to where you wouldn't
get the results that you wanted is if you're editing is bad,
and what I mean by that is you're
making corny editing decisions that might not be a good fit
for the people that are watching your videos
compared to good editing decisions that would be a great fit
for the people that are watching your videos.
That can come down to the graphics that you're using,
how you're editing your videos,
how fast you're actually cutting the videos,
how slow you're cutting the videos, your music choices,
you know, all of it, basically all the stuff
within your video content that is going to also dictate
how people are going to respond to that content.
So because of that, any views that you do get,
it's important to look in your audience retention,
even if it's a low number of views,
just so that you can see for those people
that are coming in how are they responding
to what it is that you are doing,
and you can find that audience retention
in your YouTube analytics.
Even if you're a mobile content creator
and you only have your phone
and you're just making videos on your phone,
doing all of it on your phone,
you still have access to one of the most important things
which is the audience retention report
right inside of your YouTube analytics
in the YouTube Creator Studio app.
This is free.
You can get it through the Google Play Store
and you can get it through iTunes as well,
or the Apple Store, whatever it's called.
Another thing that's also important to make sure
that you're keeping in mind when it comes to
the results that you're getting on YouTube
is what's happening up here in terms of your expectations,
because when you're first starting out on YouTube
a lot of people are comparing themselves
to people that have a content library of 100 videos,
500 videos, 1000 videos, things like that,
and when you're first getting started
and you only have 10 videos on your channel
you can't expect a lot of activity to be happening
because you don't have a lot of videos out there yet
that people are coming in and just watching,
you know, casually over time.
So for example, if you have 500 videos on your channel
and out of all of those 500 videos you have,
you know, 20 people a day or 50 people a day
or 100 people, whatever it happens to be,
you have a lot of views coming in every day.
However, if you have 10 videos on your channel,
then in that situation you might not have
a lot of views coming in every single day
based on only having 10 videos on your channel.
So it's really important to not compare yourself
to the people that have huge content libraries
when you are just getting started on YouTube.
In fact, I have a video that you can watch right here
that will tell you about how many videos
that you need to make in order
to get certain subscriber milestones,
10,000, 100,000 subscribes, even a million, on YouTube.
So you can click into that and you can watch it right now,
and if you haven't yet make sure you subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you next time.