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Welcome to psych IRL. My name is Donna.
So when I first started on YouTube, I was in a small group of small youtubers
I think it was on Facebook or either Google+ one of those two
and there's always two groups of people one who felt like
quantity was the best way to grow your channel and the other who felt like
Quality was the best way to grow your channel
and today, you know what?
I felt like settling that debate and not just through personal experience like most people have
but through data.
I looked at over 100 channels entered, their data on an excel sheet
just to see if quantity or quality is the best way to grow your channel
First, we need to define quantity versus quality
Quantity is the frequency at which someone uploads
the quantity strategy is simply, if you upload more you are more likely to grow
Quantity is best seen in daily vloggers and corporations that upload multiple videos per day
I examined over 100 different channels and categorize them based on how much they upload per week
0.5 for anything less than once per week, 1 for once a week, 3 for 2 to 5 videos per week,
7 for daily, 8 for the occasional twice a day upload, and 9 for more than 2 uploads per day
The data is pretty clear. Upon looking at the average monthly views channels have,
there is a positive correlation between upload frequency and views
the more a channel uploads, the more views they get
okay, so for the most part it is so difficult for an individual to upload multiple times per day let alone daily
So what I found in the data is that most of the people who upload multiple times a day are corporations
I'd actually ignored this 8 right here because this is one channel
It's Philip defranco's channel, and he occasionally uploads 2 videos per day
and I classified him as an 8 because it's nowhere near someone like BuzzFeed would upload
who uploads at least almost 3 times a day or even 4
When we remove corporations from the equation, we still see the same trend
quantity still seems to be correlated with monthly views
moving on to quality
quality is a little more complex to define since in general quality is subjective
In a broad sense, the quality strategy is best described as
if you only upload your best content, you are more likely to grow
there's an obvious flaw to that definition
since your best content has different meanings to different people
To standardize the definition, for the purposes of this video
I've broken quality down into three different criteria:
storyline, production value, and amount of time spent on the video
Storyline is the general plot of the video
How can one efficiently deliver his or her ideas and how interesting the topic is to their niche
Production value is the technical qualities in the video: camera equipment, editing, lighting, etc
Amount of time spent on the video is exactly how it sounds
Now, this doesn't mean spending two hours figuring out how your camera works will add quality to the video
It's more of spending one hour of research on a video versus two hours
The Creator can score a possible of three points for each criterion
so a channel can get 0-9 points on their quality score and
quality has nothing to do with whether or not I like the actual content of that creator
Let's look at Emma Chamberlain for instance
Storyline: Is she delivering her ideas efficiently in the eyes of her audience?
Is it interesting to her audience?
Is it being delivered in a way only unique to her?
With that for storyline, Emma gets 2/3 points
For production value: She shoots and edits pretty raw and standard
She uses a DSLR and sometimes shoots on location,
but there isn't anything too complex such as color grading or b-roll
so 2/3 points
for time spent:
her videos don't require any research and many can be produced fast
because they're based on personal experience
So 1/3 points for a total quality score of 5/9
Just to get the facts straight, this doesn't mean I hate Emma Chamberlain's content,
but with that you can really see how hard it was to operationally define what quality means
and for the purposes of this video, like I said
we have to do that
So I guess I kind of just took the things that in general people think what quality means
So, you know, that's obviously the storyline, production value, time spent on a video
and it's not a perfect definition
But again to figure out if quantity versus quality is better for growing your YouTube channel,
we had to define what quality means
In the last 30 days the channels with the highest quality score
seem to dominate the lower scoring creators by a mile
Interestingly enough though, the second most viewed creators are those who scored the lowest on quality
No pattern seems to emerge from then forward
when we remove corporations from the equation, those scoring the lowest
are actually in the lead when it comes to monthly viewership
So when excluding corporations, quality doesn't seem to affect how many views one gets
it is not looking good for the quality camp
and this is coming from someone who does not have a consistent upload schedule
if you know my upload schedule. it is so bad
It is like sometimes I go three weeks without uploading a video and I'm really on that quality grind
So am I saying that we should including myself,
highlight quantity over quality?
No
according to the data, if you want a higher viewership you should prioritize quantity over quality
unless you are a corporation that can pump out quality videos often
It may not be worth it to take your time on a video if your goal is growth.
Sure. There are successful one-hit wonders that blast someone's career to the moon,
but that's rare. Additionally it's impossible for an individual or even a small team
to produce videos as fast and as high of a quality these big companies can accomplish
Algorithmically, this is just the reality of how YouTube works
However, don't throw quality out the window just yet
In a poll I conducted on my community post, I asked "in general how often does your favorite youtuber upload?"
Over 3.4 thousand of you answered: 58% of you stated 1-2 times per week
The lowest-scoring was daily or multiple times per day
So this shows that viewers actually appreciate when creators take their time on a video
while this doesn't mean that creators who upload 1-2 times per week produce quality content,
it exemplifies audience dedication isn't dependent of the frequency on how much someone uploads
in other words, views aren't everything. You have to take into consideration audience dedication
Take for example the Instagram model who couldn't sell 36 shirts
she had over 2.6 million followers and her likes ranged from 30K-100K
she has a good amount of views, but very low audience dedication
Pewds video quality. Okay, here we go again
Marzia's video quality
This meme is never gonna die is it?
Here I have the perfect quality and people still complain
Shaking my head.
The genre of channels that seem to find a perfect balance between quantity and quality
are news/commentary channels
by far they seem to be the fastest growing channels on the platform with an average quality score of 6.6
now it isn't a coincidence that the lowest quality score these youtubers have is a 5
the data suggests that there's still a minimum threshold of quality
creators must meet in order for viewers to like them
You can't just upload low-quality videos frequently hoping you'll hit the jackpot.
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Now there are obvious limitations to the study one being that my data set was not big enough
Wish I had the manpower coffee break had with his video
But it was just me doing this and also with the quality score
It was just me rating these channels
If you were to do this study for reals, it would take multiple judges to do the quality score
Although I did find positive correlations for the numbers. I did not perform a t-test.
So whether those numbers are statistically significant or not, I don't know
stats majors or psych majors who are into research methods, do your job
so the conclusion of this video is basically quantity and quality are very important
quantity is important for the algorithm's sake.
that's just the harsh reality of YouTube
Don't wait for perfection of a video. It's never going to be
Perfect in terms of the way that you want it. There's always gonna be something you're gonna notice
I'm bad at it so I gotta take this advice too, but I'm gonna try to upload twice a week
I said that last time and then I stopped and you can actually see in my statistics
how bad my views went down and how bad my subscriptions went down
But I can't ignore quality either because when I did upload twice a week successfully, yes
My numbers did go up
but also a lot of you did not like the very basic videos just like this one
And it sucked because my numbers and stuff were going up and I don't know
I'm still figuring out things too, trying my best as Jarvis Johnson always says
this balance is just gonna continue to be a struggle to find for me, and I know for you, too
That's the end of the video. I will see you guys next time. Stay Psyched!