- Hey folks.
I'm Rob, welcome back to vidIQ and I'm about to make one
of the boldest statements, I've ever made on this channel.
YouTube subscribers are dead.
(sign adhesive ripping)
Umph!
(upbeat music plays)
For all of you, return viewers.
You will remember that I recently introduced the,
controversial klaxon.
(klaxon alarm blaring)
And it's still as controversial as ever.
But today I need to up the stakes.
We're going for the blasphemy bombshell!
(Rob blows)
(bomb explodes loudly) POW!!!
Oh, my head hurts.
I need to sit down.
(upbeat music fades in)
All right, all right.
Let's give this person a fair trial first.
Yes, I will admit a certain number
of subscribers do enable you to unlock YouTube features such
as custom URLs and the community tab.
Subscribers are indeed a crucial element
of the monetization requirements
for the YouTube partner program.
(upbeat music continues)
And I will admit those play buttons do look damn cool,
even if a creator holding them does look damn stupid.
Yes, you are right.
That subscriber number attached
to your channel does provide a certain street cred'
in the real world.
It fulfills your vanity.
It may even help you open some new business doors
of opportunity.
Now, having said all of this,
let's get back to what you actually do on your channel,
which is make video content.
How does any of (touch screen beeps) this,
guarantee current or indeed future success,
when it comes to people actually clicking
on your videos and watching them?
(pillow slams on ground)
(Rob stomps on pillow)
We do indeed have 823,000 subscribers,
but we don't get 823,000 views,
every time we publish a video.
Far from it.
In fact, are they daily average?
We get around at 10% of this number.
And from these 80,000 views,
only a quarter of the watch time
can be attributed to actual subscribers.
(Rob stomps on pillow)
When you think about it,
subscribers, more often that,
(Rob stomps on pillow)
Stay down!
More often than not, bear, little or no resemblance
to the current health of a channel
or indeed its organic growth.
(Rob chokes on pillow)
Let me give you an example.
Our good friend, (graphic pings) 100 Percent Zelda.
His channel is currently at 42,000 subscribers.
(cash register kachings)
According to this number alone,
vidIQ is over 19 times the size of 100 Percent Zelda.
Fair enough.
(graphic pings)
Channel views are well in vidIQ's favor too.
(cash register kachings)
We're still nine times the size of 100 Percent Zelda
but both of these metrics could easily be explained away
by just how much longer we've been
on the YouTube platform, which is about seven years.
And then we come on to daily channel views
(80,000 zooms in)
approximately 80,000 for vidIQ,
(20,000 zooms in)
approximately 20,000 for 100 Percent Zelda.
(cash register kachings)
The channel size continues to shrink even more.
(numbers zoom in)
So much for our subscribers there.
They don't seem to be very valuable at all.
So, what am I trying to say with all of this?
Well, put simply,
if you want to learn how to sustainably grow your channel
over a long period of time, these don't really matter.
This doesn't matter.
What does, is you, the person watching this video right now.
Those who are experiencing vidIQ for the first time,
welcome!
And those who are returning viewers who are already familiar
with the controversial klaxon,
and have now been introduced to the scary subscriber pillow.
(pillow growls ferociously)
which brings us onto this new YouTube analytic.
If you are a return viewer here at vidIQ,
you might already know what it is.
If you're a new viewer here at vidIQ,
I highly recommend you watching this video you see
on screen now.
I described this new data
as the YouTube algorithm cheat code
because it shows you audience loyalty.
And if you can increase this purple line over time,
your audience will grow, which means your channel will grow.
You might as well call this your active subscriber counts.
Not because they've pressed the red button
and then never watched any more of your videos
but because you did enough to convince them
to return to your content.
And if you need an explanation
and proof of what I'm talking about
allow me to explain this delicious spike
and how you helped make it happen.
At the end of November last year
I made this video,
'How to Beat the YouTube Algorithm in 2021'.
It was actually about this new YouTube data
that I'm now using to analyze this video.
And, as you can see, it caused an upshift in views
from both new viewers, but even more so from return viewers.
Anytime you can trigger your existing audience to come back
to content is a good thing.
It was clear to me then, that at some point in the future,
I would revisit this topic
with a similar title and keyword strategy
to once again trigger that existing audience.
Now, quick side note, (video pops)
this video, 'How to Beat the YouTube Algorithm',
it's not really anything to do
with beating a YouTube algorithm.
It's more about how this (data pops) data was anticipated
at the time, and I was looking forward to using it
and it could help you build an audience.
So the question is,
is this Clickbait?
Well, the general viewing audience seemed
to overwhelmingly like it.
Individual comments suggest they loved it,
and the video continues to perform very well
over three months after publication date.
And yes, I'm purposely ignoring the subscribers gained.
They don't mean anything to me.
In my humble opinion,
and you're more than welcome to argue this
in the comments below,
a video is only considered Clickbait if it doesn't deliver
on its perceived promise for its intended audience.
So I like to think of this one (graphic pops)
more as click-worthy.
When it comes to a potential viewer
and that title and thumbnail, you've got one second at best.
Make it count.
Make it worthy.
And so when you create click-worthy content
and that performs well on your channel
especially for return viewers, making them even more sticky
and loyal, naturally one must make follow
up content whenever possible, right?
Yep!
That's pretty much exactly what I did
at the beginning of March.
When the return viewer data became available.
I made my video with this classic thumbnail
and a click-worthy title of
'Cheat Code Unlocked: How to Beat the YouTube Algorithm'.
And would you believe it?
Viewers came back to watch this video.
I couldn't have scripted this any better myself.
Look at what YouTube is telling me.
Views are three times higher than usual.
More regular viewers are choosing to watch it.
And they're watching it
for longer, helping to increase its reach
on YouTube recommendations, which takes us back here.
The day I published this video,
there was a huge surge in return viewers to the channel.
People who are familiar with vidIQ dig this content.
And now I have almost concrete proof,
and this spike represents the highest number
of return viewers to the vidIQ channel,
since YouTube started collecting this data six months ago.
(arrow dings)
The reason I say almost concrete proof is
because YouTube doesn't show return viewer data
at a video level yet, only at channel level.
They still have this weird (each emoji pops once)
average views per viewer metric
which has never made any sense to me.
I did suggest this as an idea to YouTube on Twitter.
And what I can say, is that we got an encouraging response
and now this next piece of data
it does contradict what I'm saying here about subscribers
because on the surface it looks like a lot
of views for this video have come from subscribers.
But what does that actually mean?
I would assume that to mean views
from notifications and the subs feed itself,
but the traffic sources paint a completely different picture
(buzzer sounds)
This suggests that hardly any views come directly
from subscription sources.
While, 3/4 of the views are coming
from YouTube recommendations.
I interpret that to mean irrespective
of whether the viewer is subscribed to vidIQ,
this video is appearing on home and browse pages
(arrow pings once)
because the viewer has previously watched some
of our content, and this video has caught their interest.
Let me put it this way.
These 823,000 people don't automatically see vidIQ videos
just because they've subscribed
to the channel, unless they tap that notification bell.
And even then, in fact,
most of these subscribers will never see our videos
because they're not interested in the channel anymore.
And YouTube knows this.
A person who watched a vidIQ video last week
and didn't subscribe is more likely to see one
of our future videos than, I don't know,
subscriber 312,771 who hasn't watched any
of our videos for two years.
This is (graphic thunders in) the algorithm at work.
It is designed for the viewer.
YouTube brings the right content to this person based
on their previous (graphic thunders out) watch history
and recommendations.
On the other hand,
it is not designed, to show a user videos just
because at some point in their YouTube life,
they press a red button on a channel.
Let me ask you this.
How many channels have you subscribed to?
How many of those channels do you actually watch?
How many of those channels have you forgotten about
because YouTube never shows you those videos
in your browse or recommendation feeds?
When it comes to managing our YouTube subscription lists
we're all just as guilty as each other.
They turn into dumping grounds.
That's where 15 years worth
of YouTube machine learning comes into play.
The algorithm is designed to serve the viewer.
You, the creator are also designed to serve the viewer.
I am designed to serve the viewer
and based off of this new YouTube data
this is exactly why I'm making this video.
Now, if you don't mind, I want to get my gold play button.
So please subscribe!
Please?
(graphics ping once)
(graphics ding once)
(graphic zooms off)
(subscribe sign thumps)
(subscribe sign rustles fabric)
How do people dop?
This ought to do it.
(graphic pings once)
(graphic dings once)
(signs slams onto floor)