(02-06-2019 08:03 PM)Vladimir Poontang Wrote: So, I'm now inclined to think that although the "rules" are valuable and do make a difference, it is possible to be successful without bothering with those rules too much.
They say that you should upload often or at least regularly, but I've seen channels that have very few videos and many, many views, subscribers, likes and comments.
Does anyone here have a Youtube channel that is doing well? What advice do you have? What is it that really makes a Youtube channel succeed?
I have several channels that are doing well. My biggest videos have over a million views (on a variety of subjects). The "rules" matter, but it depends what you are trying to do. Here are some tips:
Get Subscribers. Once you have lots of subscribers, every time you release a video it gets promoted to your subscribers and you'll immediately get lots of views. If you have 100,000 subscribers you could get 2000 views the first day your video is out. Then it will move up in the internal YouTube search and you will continue to get views. So getting subscribers should be one of your biggest objectives.
Do well in search. This is probably the rules you are talking about. But there are two aspects to YouTube search. One is the classic search and the other is the results that appear in the sidebar next to your video. The basic rules are keywords (in title too not just tags) and engagement. Engagement means everything You Tube can measure (sharing, comments, likes, watch time, etc). The sidebar results are more like "you might also like". YT chooses those videos based so your objective is to get people to click on your video when it shows up. So for both of these searches, the thumbnail is hugely important. Can I say that again? The thumbnail is huge! As guys have pointed out if guys think they will see tits they will click. But if the thumbnail isn't actually from your video, or it is too provocative two things can happen. Haters will report it and then your video can get deleted, or it can get banned from running ads.
Promote your own videos. That means use the channel customizing tools to get attention for the videos you want people to watch, use the end tags/annotations and so on.
Get a Strong Start. None of the above stuff will work very well if you are starting from zero. You need to have at least have one video that gets lots of views to get people onto your channel, subscribing and watching other videos. If you have a website you can embed videos on there (especially your high traffic pages). That gets you engagement points and traffic. Also post them on social media. You'll notice that any video that you promoted up until it gets a few thousand views will remain one of your best videos compared to any none promoted videos.
The way YouTube is set up, as long as your channel as a whole provides some kind of value, any video on the channel can get big if you follow the tips above. Quality is important, but less important than getting people to watch it for awhile. So if you have good info and bad production you can succeed. Of course it's better if the video is really good.
Once you have a video that gets thousands of views per day, anything you promote on there will get some clicks. But you have to be careful because a lot of people out there get jealous when you are successful and they will report you for link spam, spam your channel, bot you, you name it. So don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you want to do YouTube you need a backup channel that you promote at least a little and maybe has different videos. That way if your first channel runs into trouble, you won't have to start over from zero. Also you can cross promote between these channels (remember engagement?)
If one day you get to the point where you think you are making a living off of YouTube, that's the day when you should find a new revenue stream, because google can and will delete your video or your channel, ban you from running ads or do all kinds of other stuff whenever they feel like it.