You guys asked, so I am delivering a bunch of, you have wanted me to do an analytics
report where I break down my YouTube analytics. So I decided now was a perfect time to do
that. So this is my October 2020 YouTube analytics report. Hello guys. My name is Morgan Stradling,
and I am a YouTube strategist that teaches people how to grow and scale a business on
YouTube. And along the way, I have been sharing my journey from zero subscribers to now over
11,000 subscribers. So I'm really excited to share with you and to dive into the analytics
so we can see what changed, what worked, what didn't work. So we're going to talk numbers,
we're going to talk subscribers, we're going to talk revenue. So if you're interested in
seeing all of those things, then keep on watching. All right. So here I am at my computer.
So let's dive into my YouTube analytics. So before we dive into October specifically,
I wanted to give you an overview of how the year has gone for me, because seeing the big
picture really does let you see the reality of having a YouTube channel. It's not constant
growth all the time. I have this showing 2020 as a whole, and you can see that at the beginning
of 2020, these are my views that I wasn't really having that many views. It was less
than 500 views a day. And then around the end of March/April things really started taking
off. So you can see it may, it just started climbing, climbing, climbing through June
and then really my views, more or less peaked in June. So going back, why did I have this
crazy spike in March, April, May? Well, there was this little thing called the worldwide
pandemic of 2020, and that actually resulted in a ton of growth for YouTube channels, just
in general, because a lot more people were on YouTube and we're doing a lot of research
on YouTube, whether it's to start YouTube channels or looking up various things.
So there were a lot of people in the YouTube education niche that also saw incredible growth
some way, way more than me, but this is kind of one of the main reasons for my channel
growth. And actually had a video that was performing so, so well during this time, and
really, really took off in the algorithm. And so that also contributed to it. So you
can see that, yes, I did have this incredible growth right here, but for the most part,
it kind of has been stagnant. So this is kind of the daily views. Every single day, I'm
getting anywhere from maybe 2,500 to 3,500 views a day. And really for the most part,
it has stayed pretty steady. So that can be a little bit frustrating because you want
your growth to continue growing. Let's look at some of the other metrics, watch time more
or less as the same.
You see that same pattern. Subscribers more or less will also follow the trends that you
see in your views, but it will definitely have a lot more variables to see a lot more
spikes and whatnot. And then revenue, now, this was the one thing that didn't follow
that trend. While my views really stagnated and kind of just plateaued in the summer and
in the fall, my revenue has continued to go up, which I will take that every single day
of the week. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to click "total". So instead
of looking at the individual videos and which ones were performing, I just want to see the
total and I'm going to have it show by month. All right. So first we're going to look at
views per month, this consolidates it. So you can see per month what's happening.
June I had 83,000 views, July 96,000 views, August 101,000. That was my highest month.
So far September. It was down just a couple thousand views. 97,000 views in October was
97,500 views. So you can see definitely since July-ish, my views have more or less just
stayed the same and I'm not complaining because that is fantastic. Especially looking at where
I was at the beginning of the year were a good month for me, it was 10,000 views. So
that is definitely a lesson for any small YouTubers that you may have a period of rapid
growth, and it's not going to continue forever. And that is okay, but you just have to kind
of take a step back and look at where you were and where you are now. And so I am incredibly
grateful for where my channel is now, you know, looking at subscribers gained per month.
And my biggest month for subscribers was in July. I got nearly 2000 subscribers that joined
my channel. So if you're one of those, thank you and welcome aboard. And then in October,
it went down a little bit, 1700; September, 1500; in October, it went back up to 1700.
So it's really kind of hit or miss on whether someone is going to subscribe to your channel
or not. And then I think the last thing, obviously, that everybody wants to look at is your revenue
per videos. I finally got monetized in April. So that's why we saw my very first month,
which I have a whole video all about that, which you can check out my first month monetize
on YouTube. And then it really has climbed ever since then, every single month, I have
been making more and more money in July $635, August $858, September $880.
And last month was my biggest month ever, $1,019. So I hit and I crossed that $1000
per month mark, which is really, really exciting. And I'm just so grateful for that. And so
you can see it, you break down the monetization, which videos are performing. This definitely
follows Pareto's rule, which is the 80/20 rule, where 80% of something is going to come
from just 20% of your inventory. Right? So 80% of my revenue is coming from 20% of my
videos. And we definitely see that here. So if I unclick this, you can see the videos
that are bringing in the majority of the revenue are only a small percentage of the videos.
The video for me, that's bringing the most money is my how to get monetized on YouTube.
That is the video that I was talking about that really just exploded over the past few
months and really has done a ton for my channel, both for views and subscribers, as well as
bringing in a revenue.
So some of these other ones are bringing in over a hundred dollars per month, which is
great to see, but this one is bringing in over $300 per month, which I am very happy
about. So speaking of that video, let's dive into that video and see what was happening
here. So if you click on this video specifically, this is the revenue, but I don't want to show
you the views on this video. So you can see, I released this video in April. It got just
a handful of views, 395 views in the first month. And then it started to really grow,
grow, grow, and has continued to just be a behemoth on my channel where it's bringing
in tens of thousands of views every single month. So in may I got 4,000 views from this,
but then it really started to climb in June when it got 15,000 views and then 22,000.
And then my biggest month was 25,000 views. Now, even in last month, it was bringing in
21,000 views. So it's less than the peak where it was, but that is totally fine for me. It's
still getting seen by a ton of people and introducing my channel to a lot of new people.
So I am definitely not mad about that at all. And so if you want to dive into this video
more and you look at traffic source, this is where we can see where exactly it is performing
best. This video in particular is doing really, really well in YouTube search. And that is
something that I am a big proponent of. I believe that if you do your SEO right on your
videos, then your videos really stand a chance of getting found. Now, as if you're a small
YouTuber, I highly recommend that you spend a lot of time focusing on SEO, because it's
unlikely that you'll get suggested in the suggested video section or in the browse features
with this.
You can see that over time, I have been promoted more on suggested videos and channel pages
and whatnot, but that comes next. This doesn't always apply to everyone, but I feel like
anyone who's starting out really, really focused on that SEO. And then you might see over time
where the SEO is going down, but the browse features and the suggested are going up, which
those really are the crème de la crème. That's where you want to be. But if you're
not there yet, then SEO is a good place to start. And this is a great video to showcase
that because you can see, yes, it has been going down the past few months, but these
other traffic sources are making up the difference, which is perfectly fine and great for me.
All right. So now let's jump into October specifically. So you've seen how my channel
has done as a whole for 2020, but let's dive into October.
So right here, I'm going to click and I'm going to focus just on October 2020. So here
I had nearly 100,000 views, 97,000 views. And you can see from day to day, it more or
less was raging anywhere between 3000 and 3500 views. You know, there were some, some
days where it was lower was around 2,500 and those typically are on the weekends for me
and my viewers on my channel, my videos do not perform well on weekends. My videos, my
topic are not a weekend crowd thing. I think weekends are usually when people are taking
time off, they want things for entertainment, less educational. And so I'm not surprised
in the least that my videos don't perform as well on Saturday and Sunday, you know,
mid-week are definitely the best for me. And for the most part, October was pretty stagnant
and I've kind of been alluding to this and talking about this, that October was not necessarily
the best month for me, but there's still a lot to learn here.
So watch time. I really don't focus a lot on watch time. I feel like once you hit your
watch time hours to get monetized: watch time views...It's like, okay, they're kind of the
same. You can see that they, they really kind of are mirror images of each other, between
the views and the watch time. So subscribers, this is where subscribers really did take
a dip for me this month. I was seeing anywhere between 50 to 75 subscribers a day. Now it
seems like my average per day is around 40. Anything below 40 is kind of a bad day for
me, but anything in the forties is kind of the new normal right now. And then anything
above that is really great. Now you can see right here on Wednesday, October 7th, I had
the biggest number of subscribers to my channel ever. I had 117 subscribers and you can see
these, this little button right here that has this play icon that indicates a video
that you had released on that day, just so you can kind of correlate, okay.
I had videos released this day. So if you see spikes in views or other things, you know
why. And it's because I released this video and it was a collaboration with Trena Little,
which you can check out or right here. It was a really, really great video. And Trena
was amazing in this collaboration and I love Trena so much. And that was a really, really
great collaboration. I think just the way that we did that collaboration, where we basically
were featured on each other's channels was really the way to go. And so that was another
huge takeaway is that collaborations really do work. And if they are done the right way,
they can grow your channel significantly. This was one of the best collaborations that
I've ever done. I know talking with Trena, she felt the same way. She was seeing a great
result on her channel as well.
I'm definitely gonna be doing more collaborations in the future. Obviously I've been focusing
on my new course, the VidBoss Academy™, which is coming soon; like really, really,
really soon in the next few weeks, sort of soon. So be sure to go to idBoss Academy™.
So you can be sure to sign up for the wait list for when those doors open. But once my
course is out into the wild, I will definitely be doing more collaborations because they
were just so fun. And I loved the community aspect of meeting new people and really collaborating
with those in my industries. If you're interested in collaborations, I have a video all about
that. It's a, how to step-by-step guide that breaks down the individual pieces that you
need to do to have a successful collaboration. It's not just, "Hey, collaborations are great.
Do them." I go nitty gritty with the steps that you need to do to plan out your collaboration
and to ensure that is a successful collaboration.
So that is subscribers. And then last but not least, we had talked about this my biggest
month ever. I hit over $1,000 on my YouTube channel, which is great. It is a little interesting
because the views really kind of plateaued, but the money kept going up. And I will take
that every single day of the week. And I think a lot of this really had to do with political
advertising that was just very heavy in October. I saw those ads on every single channel. It
didn't matter what niche you were in. You were getting those ads. I feel that in November,
it's probably going to go down a little bit because those ads are no longer there, but
also my best day of revenue for my channel ever was this day made $47 and 77 cents. That
was the day that I released that video with Trena.
But the, the daily average was anywhere between, you know, 20 to $40 made per day on the channel,
which is just really, really great. So if you dive into the YouTube analytics and you
go to revenue source, and then you click a secondary metric and click more metrics, I
want to look at the CPM. Now, CPM is the total amount of money that advertisers were paying
for your channel. So that includes both your cut and a YouTube's cut. Just this isn't the
take-home amount that you are getting. So you can see that my CPM for video was anywhere
from 10 to on the highest $16. That's how much an advertiser is willing to pay, to place
an ad to a 1000 people. And that's how much more or less the average is. Pretty interesting,
obviously I would love to see that get higher in the 20 or 30 range would be amazing, but
this is a great start because at the very beginning, when I was monetized, you know,
advertisers really didn't have a lot of experience in my channel.
It was very newly monetized. And so the CPM was in like the $5, $6, $7 range. So the fact
that this has doubled is great, great, great. So just going back to views, you can see overall
there wasn't really any major growth or spikes in my channel. Things were pretty constant
for the most part videos where they were up, they were down, but there wasn't any upward
growth, which is a little disappointing, but at the same time, I have to again, take a
step back and see where I was and where I am now and be very, very happy with that.
So one thing, another takeaway that I definitely have am going to be doing with this is I'm
going to be taking a look at the type of content that I'm creating and mixing it up. So I'm
really going to spend a day to deep dive into my analytics, the new content that I've been
producing.
Hasn't really just taken away and blown up if you will. And another thing I want to do
is I really want to take a look at the click-through rate on all of my videos. Some are performing
incredibly well and some are just terrible. So my thumbnails really need some work. So
I really want to dive into the click-through rates and I want to perform some AB tests.
That's something that you can do with TubeBuddy on the legend tier. So the way the AB testing
works is basically you are testing two different thumbnails, they'll mail a and thumbnail B
and to buddy has an amazing feature on the legend here that allows you to do this where
it will do the testing for you and whichever one performs better. It's going to replace
that for you. So I really want to do some AB testing on my thumbnails because that will
definitely help increase views and help people find my channel.
I do have great click-through rate, but it can always be better. So I think that'll be
a big thing. You're going to see a little bit of shifting content. You'll still be at
YouTube related, but I kind of want to go back to more how to tutorials. I think those
do really, really well on my channel and I've kind of shifted to less hard tutorial videos
and more like tip videos. Like here are five things you can do to be more productive or
five ways to speed up your YouTube process. And I don't think those are as searched as
some of the other topics. So I'm going to kind of going back to basics in the next little
bit. So if there's anything specifically like a nitty gritty, how-to, that you want to know,
let me know in the comments below, because I am going to be definitely changing and doing
a lot more of those in the future.
And then, like I said, I have been working on my course. And so for the most part, I
haven't really been stressing too much about the analytics. I don't really go into my analytics
maybe twice a month. I'll go in there and I'll really deep dive and dig into it. But
give this a, like, if you do this and let me know in the comments, if you do this as
well, but it's very common for new small YouTubers to check their analytics every single day,
first thing they do. And that is just such a time suck. And you can spend 30 minutes
just kind of looking and trying to analyze things. And I'm really glad that I've been
so busy that I just taking my own advice. And I have not done that. As another thing
that kind of wants you grow and you hit a certain level, you become less obsessed with
the numbers, even though it's still really important to dig into your numbers and to
understand where your channels at and where things are growing.
So that way you can make changes, but don't do that every single day. There you have it.
That is my October analytics report. If you liked what you saw and you would like to see
more of these monthly, not just every once in a while, then let me know in the comments
below that you liked this, what you would like to see more of. And like I mentioned,
I had been working on my YouTube program, the VidBoss Academy™. So be sure to go to
vidbossacademy.com. So you can be the first line when the doors open very, very soon.
Be sure to subscribe. And while you're waiting for my next video, be sure to check out this
cool video right here. That's all I have for today.
And I'll see you next time. So you can
See right here that it is, We dive into October specifically. I kind of wanted to just give
you a high-level review of how this, so before we dive into, so before we dive into October,
specifically...