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I actually make an effort not to blow my own trumpet.
I donāt have a perfect track record in this regard but trust when me I say I put effort into holding my tongue often when I feel like explicitly pointing out something good about myself or what I do.
The reason I do that is become I donāt want to be seen as arrogant. Again, im not perfect and even arrogance slips through from time to time, but I still think itās important to give yourself credit where it is due.
So on this occasion Iām going to point out that I started doing this in April of 2016, so coming up to 2 years now.
That was when many other crypto podcasts and crypto YouTube channels were just a twinkle in their creators eye.
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/
When I started The Cryptoverse there was only really Letās Talk Bitcoin and maybe a couple of other shows.
Suffice to say Iām an OG relatively speaking.
That proves that I did not get into this for the money, because back then there was no money in it. I sunk money into this for more than a year before it generated any revenue.
https://www.youtube.com/
Now you have channels starting and becoming profitable within months.
https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/
Thatās what happened in 2017. There was an explosion in the cryptocurrency market and a similar sized explosion in the number of podcasts and YouTube channels creating content.
Remember by that time Iād already been busting my arse for a year creating content and losing thousands of pounds in the process to keep it going, and I did that because I had a mission and a purpose.
So when I saw brand new channels appearing featuring hosts with little to no experience in any discipline like computer science, economics or philosophy, and those channels quickly overtaking mine in terms of views and subscribers, thatās when my ego kicked in.
Long story short, this is when I decided to go from the podcasting show format, where I just talk over my screen, and which I used to get rave reviews for, to using a camera and showing my face.
I did this because I thought this was why my channel was lagging behind all these newcomers.
That is when I made a critical mistake, I turned my attention away from what made my channel great, the content, and turned it towards the channel metrics.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCryptoverse
Whatās dumb about that is I canāt affect the numbers by focusing on them.
The number of subscribers and the number of views is a side effect of putting out good content.
So by forgetting to make the content the number 1 priority, that actually stifled the numbers and manifested the exact opposite of what I intended.
Meanwhile these other channels just put out good content and saw the grow of their channels skyrocket.
Iām thinking particularly about the Crypto Investor channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTKyJALgd09WxZBuWVbZzXQ/
Which you can see here was created on 28th August 2017, 4 months ago and has 110,000 subscribers.
Or Boxmining, created the channel on 23rd February 2017 and has 131,000 subscribers.
With respect, itās easy for you to sit there and give me some kind of glib response like āthe numbers donāt matterā because by the time Boxmining came along, Iād already been been busting my arse creating content for a year.
Donāt get me wrong here, Iām not taking anything away from these guys. Iām actually saying itās the quality of their content that has been the source of their success.
And those two guys in particular did have some pre-existing expertise before they started their channel, Boxmining in terms of computer game production and Crypto Investor in terms of stock trading.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCryptoverse
But what Iām really trying to communicate here is the emotional state I got into and how that lead my behaviour in a somewhat dysfunctional direction.
And yes the numbers do matter in the sense that they tell me how many people I am reaching, and that matters when you have a mission and a purpose.
Anyway, what was ironic is that going to all the trouble and expense of setting up a video studio with the green screen, the camera and the lights, it made little the no difference to the numbers and just ended up burning up time I could have otherwise spent making better content.
When I realised that over the xmas break I thought, thatās it, Iām going back to what I know works for me.
Iām going back to what made my content great in the first place.
80% of the value that I provide comes from my voice, not my face.
Itās critically important as a content creator to know what kind of content creator you are.
Iām not as tall and handsome as Ivon on Tech.
Iām not as charming as Amanda B. Jonson.
And Iām not as cool as Omar Bham.
So I should not try to be, because that just distracts me from doing what no one can beat me at, which is being Chris Coney.
ā¶ļø DTube ā¶ļø IPFS
I'm going to leave you a detailed response with serious information that I used to grow my YouTube channel because I can tell you have followed a similar process as I have in terms of observing others. I left some of this information for CryptoDaily in a previous video because he was experiencing a similar event (falling behind every other YouTuber). I've adapted it for you specifically. If I'm talking out of turn, I apologize - I am guessing based off your nature that this type of information is worth something to you though.
I spent some time analyzing a bunch of different YouTube channels to find what works vs. what doesn't work in terms of attracting eyes. From what I have discovered so far, this is the order of the most important elements for growing organically and internally to YouTube (note these two words):
- The most important part is the title by far, which many content producers seem to undervalue substantially.
- Second most important part is the content itself for longevity of views (you generate a longer tail of views the more "evergreen" your content is - unfortunately, news has the shortest tail).
- Third most important is a clickable thumbnail.
- Last is optimizing content for SEO purposes (writing smart descriptions, appropriate meta tags, etc).
You have one of the best voices in the space and I can tell you care greatly about production quality. There is no reason you shouldn't be bigger - people love listening to you. You are right that you don't need a webcam (although obviously I am biased since I don't use one either). Forgive me if I am stepping out of place here, but some thoughts on what could improve your visibility:
1) Implement more forward looking & succinct titles (news-based and historical oriented titles have been my worst performers consistently). Your titles are very busy - reminds me of Coin Mastery, who has also recently seen his growth become stunted despite initially being one of the fastest growers. This might mean reining in the content itself a little too and not always covering everything, so I'll leave that up to you but generally think limiting amount of info in one video is a good idea for organic growth.
2) Create thumbnails that are more instantaneously digestible. Your color contrast is often too low which makes them feel busy and difficult to immediately know what the video is about. Note you have about 3 seconds to leave an impression on someone when they scroll through suggested videos and their home page. High color contrast and text that really stands out (but doesn't conflict with the picture) goes a long way. The thumbnail you used for this video is perfect - simple and to the point, easy to grasp quickly but still visually appealing enough to click.
3) For your content with a long shelf-life (think content which is relevant for longer than a month), simplify the title (max of 60 characters - good rule of thumb in general) and put a lot of effort into thumbnail because you never know when YouTube will randomly decide to promote a video.
Believe it or not, the title and thumbnail is how I found this video - thumbnail looked really nice and the title grabbed my attention (partially because I can relate).
Obviously there is some content that tends to perform better regardless of optimization of above factors:
- Price action analysis
- Market Predictions
- Detailed looks into "hyped" cryptocurrencies
Nothing you can do about that - just some types of content that is hot. I've seen a huge boost from covering these topics, even when I don't think the quality of the content is always the best. An even better example is Altcoin Buzz. He does limited to no editing and limited preparation for his videos plus the thumbnails are often hard to read (because his text doesn't blend well with picture), but his titles grab your attention and its content that is hot and timely. Note that this is just natural when the market is like this.
I've found the way I've achieved the bulk of my growth is from one video ("How the Bitcoin Bubble Will Pop"), which has likely contributed 25% of my subscribers or more. I don't know EXACTLY why the video blew up (note that I had 150 subscribers when I released it), but I suspect it is because I had an external funnel that drove roughly 15k views or so from Seeking Alpha & Medium. I also advertised on Reddit a lot, which is how my channel originally got any views at all. I had to rely on external media to get any views, but I think YouTube rewards you for bringing new viewers on the platform. Obviously not 100%, but I do think they like it. The video itself was much better than 99% of the stuff on my channel as it took over 20 hours to make and I plan on going back to this form of content soon because I think it has a much higher value-add to the field and much better growth potential.
The point is, most YouTubers explode due to one or two videos. That's all it takes. That's why I say it's so important that for the videos you think are great, put an hour+ into the title, thumbnail, smart descriptions (keywords loaded upfront), metatags, etc. I put at least an hour in for these things on all my videos, even my derpy market analysis videos, because you just never know when YouTube says "I like this one." Louis Thomas recently had this experience (see below). Notice how the base floor of views for his videos changed ever since? Same thing happened to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hji-EA3aJPU
Derral Eves summed it up well... Channel Growth = One video. You don't know exactly when it'll be, but best you can do is set yourself up for success by increasing the probability of success. I got very lucky, but there was some planning (okay admittedly a lot) to get here. I obviously can't talk for others, but I can tell from this video you probably keep tabs on other YouTubers same way I do so thought I'd share my insights. Best of luck, you deserve all the best!