- More watch time.
That's what you want, that's what you need,
in order for your channel to grow.
Today, I want to discuss the impact that adding captions
to your videos can have on your watch time
and the ROI, at what point does adding captionings
financially make sense for you?
(digital beeping)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer.
And welcome to Video Creators.
This channel's all about helping you
grow your YouTube audience, so that you can
spread a message that reaches people
and changes their lives.
But to grow your channel and reach people,
you need a lot of watch time,
which is basically the amount of time
someone spends watching one of your videos.
Now, your YouTube analytics shows that people
who use captions on your videos are worth more watch time.
They're worth a longer average viewing duration
than someone who doesn't use captions.
There's been some studies done
that show that adding captions to your videos
will actually get you more views, and grow your channel,
and how that actually impacts is debatable.
But I think one of the things that's happening there
according to other research,
is that there are a lot of ESL people.
People who speak English as a second language.
When you have captions on your videos,
they can follow along with your content better.
But captions also make a huge impact
if you're uploading your videos
to Facebook or to Instagram.
On those platforms, people watch the videos
primarily without sound enabled,
so having those captions there
can really hook their attention
and make it easier for people to watch your videos,
and give you the watch time you need
on other platforms, as well.
In fact, some creators are even getting
captions done on their videos,
and then burning those captions
directly right into their videos
so that they can't be turned off,
especially on Instagram where a lot of people
are just scrolling through without enabling sound.
So, mobile is a huge consideration
when it comes to captions, but so is Television
as smart TVs become more and more prominent
in the marketplace, we're going to see
more and more platforms like Amazon Prime, for example.
They actually require that you have captions.
You cannot add your videos to their platform
unless you have captions done for your videos.
A big question, though, is at what point
does the time and money you invest
into captioning your videos actually pay off?
The ROI on this actually fluctuates a lot
depending on how much money you earn
per thousand views on YouTube,
if you have a bigger business model
wrapped around your content, or not,
how much you pay for the captions to be created,
and even the type of audience
that you attract with your videos.
All those can make this number fluctuate.
But for some simple math,
let's just kind go though a basic equation.
Let's say you earn around $2 per thousand views on YouTube.
And let's say you upload a five-minute video,
and you get that five minutes captioned
at rev.com, where it's a simple pricing structure.
One minute of captioning costs you one US Dollar.
So, to earn back that $5, with $2 per thousand views,
that means you need to get approximately 2,500 views
on that video to break even on the captioning.
But, hypothetically, that ROI is even greater,
because as you add captions to your videos,
and you get more watch time, and more views,
that video grows, your channel grows,
and it produces more and more attraction
for your channel in the long term.
Especially if you have a bigger business model
wrapped around your channel than just AdSense,
which you totally should.
My advice is to test it.
Try it on your channel, see what the results are.
Here, on Video Creators, I have found
that captioning my more produced content
like this, is absolutely worth it.
Captioning my live streams
and some of my more behind-the-scenes types of videos
doesn't really have the payoff,
so I don't caption those.
Personally, I use rev.com.
They are not sponsoring this video,
they have no idea that I'm making it,
but I use them for a few reasons.
One, is that they have really good pricing.
The pricing I've seen is probably some of the best
that I've seen anywhere, at just $1 per minute.
Two, it integrates really well with my YouTube channel.
It can pull the videos straight from my channel,
into their platform, caption them,
and then automatically publish the captions
back to my video on YouTube automatically for me.
Number three, I love it 'cause it's a very fast turnaround.
It's typically within, like, a few hours.
Although if you have a video that's around an hour long,
it could take up to 24 hours.
But the most important thing is probably the quality.
It's pretty close to perfect.
Occasionally, they'll misspell one of my kids' names,
but now they have a feature that after you add your video,
you can actually type in the names
of the different speakers that are in that video,
so they don't screw it up anymore.
If you'd like to try them out,
there's a link in the description below this video,
where you can go get $10 off your first order,
just to see if it's right for you, or not.
Now, in terms of full disclosure,
it is an affiliate link, so if you decide to use it,
I get a small commission.
So, thank you very much for your support.
Now, there's other overlooked things
that can grow your YouTube channel as well,
besides captioning.
Click the video you see on your screen right now
to go learn what some of those other things are,
that can really grow your channel.
Subscribe here for more content
about growing your channel,
reaching people and changing their lives,
and I'll see you guys over in that next video.