- Folks, answer this one in the comments below.
Go to your YouTube Studio analytics.
Click on see more to show this huge graph of your channel.
Then click on the subscription source tab
and change the time period to lifetime,
and then tell me how many subscribers
you've lost on your channel.
350 thou!
(upbeat music)
You know what?
I've got a newfound love for people
who write first in the comments.
Those are the type of people who subscribe to channels
and get notifications.
God bless you.
Second of all,
you know what's even more depressing about the number?
It's the one to the left.
Give me a minute.
(keys clicking)
(printer grinding)
(upbeat music)
Actually works!
Yes, it's annoying.
It's frustrating.
It's demoralizing, but subscribers are a fickle bunch.
Here one day, gone the next,
then writing "F in the chat" by the end of a week.
I don't even know what this means,
but I have my suspicions.
First, all right,
the point I'm trying to get 'round to is this.
On YouTube, it feels like one of the hardest things to do
is to convince a viewer to click that red button.
But then subsequently,
so many of them seem to press that new gray button.
So, why is that?
Why do you lose subscribers?
Why do people unsubscribe to your channel
even though all of this is free?
Let's investigate and try and keep some positivity
during all of this,
because it can be a bit of a crushing blow
when you lose subscribers.
(upbeat music)
All right, then.
This first reason is an important one
and a very good one
because it keeps the YouTube platform honest,
and those are channel subscriber audits.
Unless you are practicing in sub for sub
or you're buying subscribers
or some other illicit activity on YouTube,
you want the platform to be getting rid of subscribers
that add absolutely nothing to your channel.
Essentially, what this means is that YouTube
is verifying subscribers,
both as an account itself
and its subscription to your channel.
And if YouTube find anything dodgy
going on with these subscriptions,
then they will remove them from your channel,
and they may even close the account
that's associated to that subscription.
In the past, YouTube would do these mass audits
maybe three or four times a year,
and they probably tell you of that fact.
I think the biggest one that was recently announced
was back all the way at the end of 2018,
when I think T-Series themselves
lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
But luckily for them,
they do have hundreds of millions
of subscribers to play with.
Since then,
YouTube have been a little more nuanced
about removing subscribers from accounts.
I think this marries up with abbreviated sub counts now,
in that you're never entirely sure
how many subscribers you have
because the public numbers don't match the channel numbers,
and once you get over a thousand subscribers,
no one in the public truly knows
how many subscribers you have.
So, it's more likely these days that YouTube
is auditing accounts on a realtime basis, almost,
or at least over the next 24 to 48 hours,
and removing those subscribers as and when
they join your channel,
and YouTube realizes they're not up to much good.
So, when it comes to closed counts
or YouTube removing subscriptions
that just aren't relevant to your channel
because they're fraudulent,
there's nothing to worry about,
and it's not your fault, either.
You can't help, sometimes,
these unscrupulous numbers being added to your channel.
As long as you're not actively engaged in the activity
and trying to gain those numbers,
there's nothing that you should be worried about.
Let me share with you a personal YouTube viewing story.
In 2015, I fell in love with Casey Neistat's work,
and who wouldn't?
He's a magnificent filmmaker and storyteller,
and he was doing daily vlogs at that time.
And I would religiously,
I think at about 7:00 p.m. every night after I'd had my tea
watch his 10-minute daily vlog.
I did that for about 18 months.
And then he decided that he wouldn't
make daily vlogs anymore,
and he took a break.
And when he returned,
he didn't make videos every single day.
I just fell out of watching his content.
I don't know if you would call that
subscriber fatigue per se,
but I just never got back into into his content,
and then I suddenly realized that his stuff
was still coming in through my feed.
And you won't believe this, I just unsubscribed.
I know it sounds ridiculous,
but I just wasn't watching his content anymore,
and I needed to remove that from my feed.
Even though he still makes amazing content,
I just didn't watch him anymore.
See what I mean?
Viewers sometimes are stupid.
Now, I guess you could argue
that the reason I stopped watching Casey
was because he stopped making daily vlogs,
but there does have to be a life-work balance, here.
He decided that daily vlogs
were not nourishing him as a creator,
and he went off on his own route,
and he still has tens of millions of subscribers.
But it just wasn't the right fit
for what I was wanting to watch.
Let me put this question to you.
Content that you've really enjoyed watching
and are subscribed to,
do you just fall out of love with it
for no particular reason that you can explain to anybody?
No?
Oh, maybe it's just me, then.
(upbeat music)
If you are currently subscribed to vidIQ
and you've been watching our videos on a regular basis,
you will know that our value proposition to you
is to educate your YouTube journey.
But does that mean we're gonna educate you
from zero subscribers and zero views
to 100 million subscribers and billions of views?
It's not feasible to reach that entire target audience,
so we do tend to gravitate towards a particular audience
here on vidIQ.
And over time,
we've learned that the majority of our audience
is channels of less than 1000 subscribers
and 4000 hours of watch time.
Basically, most of you are working towards monetization.
And on top of that, a lot of you are gamers,
so it's only natural that we are going to,
generally speaking,
gravitate towards that target audience.
Of course, we do throw in
some more advanced stuff occasionally,
but yeah, I would say the majority of our content
is going to target the person getting 100 subscribers
or 4000 hours of watch time,
and how to monetize their YouTube channel.
So, what does that mean when you do reach,
I don't know, 50,000 subscribers,
and you're already monetizing your channel
and you're getting brand deals and sponsorships?
Well, if we're honest,
maybe the vidIQ channel is no longer for you.
We've taken you as far as we can and continue your journey,
and we're gonna say hello to the next breed
of new creators on YouTube.
Your viewers are going on their own journey
of self discovery.
Those viewers are gonna have their own interests
and tastes and passions,
which also change over time.
That might mean they outgrow your channel.
This obviously impacts educational channels the most
because people get to a certain point
and potentially move on,
or they've learned everything they need to,
or they lose interest in what they were trying
to educate themselves on.
And spare a thought
for the younger demographic, children's channels.
The stuff you wanna watch as a 12 year old
is not the type of stuff you probably wanna watch
when you're 15 or 18.
Now, the good news is,
people outgrowing your channel
is never going to kill your channel
because there are over 2 billion monthly users on YouTube
discovering new things every single day,
and there are new people
signing up to YouTube and watching content
who are gonna fall in love with the stuff
that you've already made
and the stuff that you're going to make in the future.
And sometimes, channels grow up with their audience.
You just have to be aware that through this process,
you will get a lot of subscriber churn.
Another thing to be really conscious of as a creator
is the potential shelf life of the topics you are covering.
For example,
let's say you leapt onto YouTube
with all the enthusiasm in the world in 2016
and started a fidget spinner channel.
Where are you now?
They're still cool,
but nobody's watching any videos about them.
What about the cultural phenomenon
that was "Game of Thrones," the television series?
That had a shelf life of a decade on YouTube,
with reactions and lore
and predictions of what was going to happen next.
But unfortunately,
that television series has come to an end.
The books are still yet to come out, if they ever.
But the audience that's really interested
in "Game of Thrones" now,
especially according to YouTube and Google Search,
has contracted to a fraction of what it once was.
And you could be left in the lurch
suddenly realizing that your audience has abandoned you.
This is topic fatigue.
I think ASMR is a good topic to look at in this regard
in terms of its phenomenal growth in the last five years.
Many of us didn't even know what that term meant,
and now it seems to be an ever-expanding universe
with no end in sight.
But there has to be an inflection point
somewhere in the future
where the topic just cannot sustain its growth,
and it plateaus,
maybe it dips down a little bit in terms of popularity.
It's probably always going to be there.
In truth, you can boil this all down to,
timing is everything.
So, in summary,
if there is a trend you want to jump on on YouTube,
act fast,
but always think about where you want
to potentially take your audience and your content next.
Now, then, I'm gonna make a bit of a bold statement here,
but bear with me.
I think that if we'd have made
this YouTube growth education content
on YouTube a decade ago,
now we would have millions of subscribers
and hundreds of millions of views.
Phew, my head just went. (mimics explosion)
That's because a decade ago,
there were a fraction of the YouTube education creators
there are now.
Of course, this landscape has transformed
over the past decade,
and there are a lot of really, really good
YouTube growth channels, including ourselves,
that are all, I guess,
competing for those same viewers
who are interested in this topic.
So, the views and exposure is spread out
amongst a lot of creators.
And when creators see the value of a topic, they step in,
and ultimately, really talented people come along
and make exceptional content.
So, this is a word of warning to all of us as creators.
If we stand still,
something or someone better is going to come along
and take our audience.
The YouTube of a decade ago,
it was dominated by the individual creator
making content from their spare bedroom.
But these days,
YouTube is full of traditional media companies
who have taken the platform seriously,
or new groups creating these phenomenal channels
that are made by entire production teams.
The whole world now realizes the value
of this video media distribution platform,
and it's becoming increasingly difficult
for individual creators to stamp their mark on YouTube.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
It's still possible to make a mark on YouTube
as a individual creator
with those 2 billion monthly users on the platform.
But you have got to be investing a lot of time,
energy, and resources
into making yourself a better content creator
with every video that you make.
And now let's fall back onto that classic YouTube topic
that we always like to discuss here at vidIQ,
channel focus.
It is often the case that a viewer
will subscribe to your channel
under the assumption that the video they watch
reflects your entire channel.
But if you're somewhat self-indulgent
and make gaming videos one day
and then sports videos the next day
and then DIY crafting the next day,
it could be weeks, possibly months
before you get back to the topic
a viewer potentially subscribed for.
On the other hand,
maybe you're making lots of videos on the same topic,
but you decide to jump on a particular trend
even though it's not attached to your channel focus,
and it goes viral,
and then what do you do with your channel?
Suddenly you've labeled yourself
as an ASMR fidget spinner channel.
That's why once you've got some YouTube experience
under your belt,
you want to really think about
where you want to take your channel in the future
in terms of its target audience and the value proposition.
Who should be watching, and why?
I wanna end with this thought.
Losing subscribers is a natural part
of your YouTube journey.
I would estimate that every single channel
that's reached 1 million subscribers
has lost 100,000 subscribers along the way.
And I'm probably being generous with that number.
Ultimately, what you should find
is that your subscriber count, that's the important one,
not subscribers gained or subscribers lost.
Your net subscriber count should continue to go up,
and as you become a better content creator
and make better videos for your audience,
that subscriber number goes up at a faster trajectory.
There will be times when your subscriber counts surge,
and some times when they plateau.
But again, as long as it's green, that's good.
If you're losing subscribers overall,
especially when you're creating new content,
that might be a sign of something
fundamentally wrong with your channel.
That's the point at which you
should really start looking at your YouTube data
to find out what could be potentially wrong
with your channel.
Now, let's be honest.
We haven't quite got there yet.
So, I've got a job to do.
I don't wanna do it!
Oh, that hurt.
I think I got a paper cut.