17⁄7 - Update: Thank you to everyone for their assistance. Here is a re-worked version of Father. It is unlisted, for testing purposes. If one happens to comes across this post, please consider giving feedback regarding how long it captures your attention.
In the interests of privacy, please excuse the specialised account and lack of identifying personal information.
A bit of background: recently created a YouTube channel for the dual purposes of creating an online repository of works that can easily be hyperlinked, and establishing an alternative source of income. The channel is intended to be humorous, though neither speciously nor vituperatively so. One aim of posting this here is to see whether the humour is agreeable to elements of the LW community.
Another is to ask for advice. After a few days utilising Google’s AdWords to generate views on one of the videos, of the 600 views received, not a single one engaged with the video beyond merely watching it. All the low-hanging fruit—enticing the viewer to engage by liking, subscribing, etc. has been plucked. One question is whether these requests for engagement are too subtle; perhaps erring on the side of not trying to annoy viewers has led to missed opportunities? The prospect for channel growth seems bleak in light of the above statistic.
Social media marketing, in the form of reddit, Twitter, and Pinterest have not yielded any subscribers. Word of mouth has yielded positive feedback, but no engagement outside of personal acquaintances. If the advice received here does not help, the next step is to create an account on a YouTube specific forum asking for assistance.
Are there obvious avenues for marketing being overlooked, here? Is there an obvious demographic or audience that would most enjoy these videos? Outside perspective is needed, and the dearth of feedback from strangers—both positive and negative—does not offer much indication of how to do things differently. Thank you for your time.
You’re giving me no relatable subject I could be interested in, nothing pretty to look at and no music. Literally the only hint that lets me expect anything good from this channel is the word “Comedy” in the title. And when you fail to give me a good joke in the first 5 seconds, my expectation for funniness from the rest of the video goes way down. This means no expectation to be entertained is left, so I leave.
Your voice is good though, and the sound quality is fine.
Minor points: You talk too slowly, except in your first video. Your channel banner is repulsive. The visualizations you use are both ugly and getting worse; the newest one is downright painful to look at. (Seriously, an unmoving image would do less harm.)
If you show your face and drop a quick one-liner right at the beginning and talk a bit faster, this might be going places, otherwise I don’t think you have a chance to be talked about for this, let alone make money.
EDIT: Here’s an example video incorporating a few of the ideas you suggested.
Pretty things: A fairly static visualisation, basically a four pointed blue star that very slowly rotates, could be used as a standard replacement for every video. Would you suggest that, a similar option, or one of the following: an image of nature that may not fit the theme of the video, crudely drawn images of one thing that do not change, crudely drawn images of characters that change infrequently if at all?
Music: Do you suggest inserting background music into the audio files? If so, should the music be opposite the tone of the file (e.g. happy-go-lucky music to the Documentary), or match the tone?
Thank you.
What video do you mean by, ‘first’? Father, or Donerly?
Banner: Is this better? Or is the font the main issue? If the latter, what attribute would you recommend in a better font—more rounded letters, blockier letters, more Gothic letters, more elongated letters?
One-liner: This sounds a very good idea. Will it work without showing a face?
Relatable subjects: See the comment to Christian for descriptions of the audio files. Would including those descriptions in the in static image, and/or the description box below, keep you listening?
Apologies for the onslaught of questions; you are in no way obligated to answer any of them, and thank you for the above feedback.
This new example video is much better. If I wasn’t invested in watching it in order to assist you, I would have clicked away from it after about 45 seconds rather than 5, and then mostly because of your pausing speech. (Many YouTube creators cut out every single inbreath, and I suggest you try that.) The music made a surprising amount of positive difference, and I actually like the picture a bit—I hope you have rights to use both?
Of the visualization options you name, I figure a nature image, possibly with a textual description, is the least bad option. But really, not showing your face cuts down your appeal by at least 90%. As long as you don’t do that, your problem isn’t in the marketing, it’s in the product.
I’m not suggesting background music, although it evidently helps. I’m saying that when I watch videos, expecting to hear enjoyable music is frequently my main motivation. And since almost all of the most-viewed videos are music videos, that’s obviously a common motivation. Your video is not adressing that motivation, and background music is unlikely to change that. Nor is it adressing the common motivations for personal connection, interesting or actionable information, or something pretty to look at. You could get at the personal connection bit if you made jokes about (what you claim to be) true stories from your personal life and—did I say that already? - show your face.
To me, your banner looks simply cheap. It signals you’re not committed to making me have a good time. Yes the clouds help a bit, but I’m sure you could do much better.
A one-liner (or better yet, three good jokes in the first 20 seconds to build up expected entertainment value for the rest of the video, and keep me watching) will help even without a face. A face would help more. Compare this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHczVzGfyqQ . The guy isn’t conventionally pretty, and the video is clearly not about visuals, but still, he wouldn’t have gotten over 300K views with a goddamn static visualisation.
And yes, people will make stupid hurtful comments about your face, even if you’re the sexiest person on the planet. Growing to tolerate that is one of the best reasons to make videos.
Descriptions will occasionally make me invest a couple more seconds in a video, i.e. make me give it a couple more opportunities to get me hooked.
Edit: Here’s Father with an animated face and a one-liner in the beginning. Thoughts?
Can’t find rights information for the image, and the music is royalty-free. Will endeavour to minimise the pauses in the future. How much of the difference was due to content, would you say?
If that is the least bad option, then barring showing a face, what would you say is an actually good option?
Face: Attractiveness and confidence are non-issues, but still can’t show a face. The true objection is for reasons of privacy; one of those reasons is a negative impact upon professional life. On the plus side, upon achieving a sizeable audience, that reason no longer applies. At that point, a face may be able to be shown.
Here’s the only other channel with similar content that does not show a face. They keep viewers engaged with animated subtitles that take a month to produce. If you watch Father with subtitles on, is your interest held better?
Will make a new banner. Was going for a homey, casual vibe; still want that vibe, but will make it look more produced.
Something you could do, alternatively, is use software like facerig, assuming you have a webcam. It would work fairly effectively, I think, and is comedic enough in its own right to go along with your show.
That is excellent, thank you. Do you think a mobile PC with an Intel® Core™ 2 Duo @ 2.8GHz and an ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 can handle the minimum specs of Intel® Core™ i3-3220 or equivalent and NVIDIA GeForce GT220 or equivalent?
I’ve no clue myself. My minimal expertise in computer specs is 5 years old; the last time I payed attention to them was when I built my current computer (and even then with parts recommended by a friend). However, I’ve long since delegated figuring out if my computer can run something to Can You Run It. It functions fairly effectively in checking that sort of thing.
I listened to about three minutes of the one about the narrator’s father. The humor wasn’t to my taste—a sort of silliness that just didn’t work.
I see you were trying not to be annoying, but I wasn’t crazy about the unclear context (was this a video game, a dream, or what?), the weird voices, and the narrator’s fear of his father.. My tentative suggestion is that you go for being as annoying as you feel like being, and see whether you can attract an audience who isn’t me.
Thank you for listening. There wasn’t really any context beyond ‘son returns to Father’s mansion’, and the matrimonial surprise revealed during his speech.
Would perhaps a static image in the background with text stating the above have helped?
My 5 second judgement, which is about as much attention as a totally unknown channel can expect to get, is that these videos are stand-up comedy by somebody without the confidence to perform live in front of an audience. This immediately signals that it’s not worth my time.
Eh, it’s not my kind of humor. I found all those videos totally unfunny, so I just clicked on them, listened for 5 seconds, and closed the page. So the first question is whether my reaction is typical or not. Can you measure how many of those people who clicked on video watched it till the end? Because only those are your audience. And if they are your personal acquaintances, there is still a risk they wouldn’t watch the whole video otherwise.
I believe there is a niche for any kind of product, but the question is how to find it. Perhaps you could find similar videos and see how they do it.
Your reaction is typical. There is an 18% view rate for 75% of the ‘Documentary’; only 8% watch the whole thing. Even those that watched the whole video did not engage with the channel, or watch other videos. Thank you for the feedback!
The only similar channel is OwnagePranks, which has images of characters, and animated subtitles. The latter is infeasible, while the former is a promising indication of a needed change.
The two longer videos somewhat rely on the unexpected for their laughs; working around that, here are descriptions of each video. Do you think the descriptions would help engage viewers?
Father: A son, apart from his father for many years, returns home to his father’s mansion to restore the intimacy of their relationship. As context, imagine you told your father to listen to this for Father’s Day, for this was their present.
Documentary: A satire of serious public radio news stations: the modern expectations parents have of their children is taken to a logical and absurd extreme.
Donerly: A parody of the character and substance of reality television programming. Donerly is a vulgar figure, prone to foul language—be advised.
Silly Things: Mini-parodies of the common types of voice overs. These are, in order: sales; promotions; quickly relating terms of service; avant-garde marketing; IVR; two normal people like you having a conversation; and a jingle that isn’t selling what you were expecting.
Making money would be amazing, but is not the primary goal. These files will be made regardless of whether there is a YouTube channel hosting them, and YouTube seems the ideal platform with which to achieve the secondary goal of monetising the files.
The bare minimum purpose is to have work that can be hyperlinked. That bare minimum has already been met. However, seeing a video with very few views, or many views and few likes, does not signal positive things. It would be wonderful to be able to hyperlink these files in contexts where sending a positive signal is a necessity.
Spare time is being spent to market and try to monetise the files; ideally, this effort will result in a moderately sized audience that likes the files. These are the goals of the project. If you have more promising ideas, please share them.
17⁄7 - Update: Thank you to everyone for their assistance. Here is a re-worked version of Father. It is unlisted, for testing purposes. If one happens to comes across this post, please consider giving feedback regarding how long it captures your attention.
In the interests of privacy, please excuse the specialised account and lack of identifying personal information.
A bit of background: recently created a YouTube channel for the dual purposes of creating an online repository of works that can easily be hyperlinked, and establishing an alternative source of income. The channel is intended to be humorous, though neither speciously nor vituperatively so. One aim of posting this here is to see whether the humour is agreeable to elements of the LW community.
Another is to ask for advice. After a few days utilising Google’s AdWords to generate views on one of the videos, of the 600 views received, not a single one engaged with the video beyond merely watching it. All the low-hanging fruit—enticing the viewer to engage by liking, subscribing, etc. has been plucked. One question is whether these requests for engagement are too subtle; perhaps erring on the side of not trying to annoy viewers has led to missed opportunities? The prospect for channel growth seems bleak in light of the above statistic.
Social media marketing, in the form of reddit, Twitter, and Pinterest have not yielded any subscribers. Word of mouth has yielded positive feedback, but no engagement outside of personal acquaintances. If the advice received here does not help, the next step is to create an account on a YouTube specific forum asking for assistance.
Are there obvious avenues for marketing being overlooked, here? Is there an obvious demographic or audience that would most enjoy these videos? Outside perspective is needed, and the dearth of feedback from strangers—both positive and negative—does not offer much indication of how to do things differently. Thank you for your time.
You’re giving me no relatable subject I could be interested in, nothing pretty to look at and no music. Literally the only hint that lets me expect anything good from this channel is the word “Comedy” in the title. And when you fail to give me a good joke in the first 5 seconds, my expectation for funniness from the rest of the video goes way down. This means no expectation to be entertained is left, so I leave.
Your voice is good though, and the sound quality is fine.
Minor points: You talk too slowly, except in your first video. Your channel banner is repulsive. The visualizations you use are both ugly and getting worse; the newest one is downright painful to look at. (Seriously, an unmoving image would do less harm.)
If you show your face and drop a quick one-liner right at the beginning and talk a bit faster, this might be going places, otherwise I don’t think you have a chance to be talked about for this, let alone make money.
EDIT: Here’s an example video incorporating a few of the ideas you suggested.
Pretty things: A fairly static visualisation, basically a four pointed blue star that very slowly rotates, could be used as a standard replacement for every video. Would you suggest that, a similar option, or one of the following: an image of nature that may not fit the theme of the video, crudely drawn images of one thing that do not change, crudely drawn images of characters that change infrequently if at all?
Music: Do you suggest inserting background music into the audio files? If so, should the music be opposite the tone of the file (e.g. happy-go-lucky music to the Documentary), or match the tone?
Thank you.
What video do you mean by, ‘first’? Father, or Donerly?
Banner: Is this better? Or is the font the main issue? If the latter, what attribute would you recommend in a better font—more rounded letters, blockier letters, more Gothic letters, more elongated letters?
One-liner: This sounds a very good idea. Will it work without showing a face?
Relatable subjects: See the comment to Christian for descriptions of the audio files. Would including those descriptions in the in static image, and/or the description box below, keep you listening?
Apologies for the onslaught of questions; you are in no way obligated to answer any of them, and thank you for the above feedback.
This new example video is much better. If I wasn’t invested in watching it in order to assist you, I would have clicked away from it after about 45 seconds rather than 5, and then mostly because of your pausing speech. (Many YouTube creators cut out every single inbreath, and I suggest you try that.) The music made a surprising amount of positive difference, and I actually like the picture a bit—I hope you have rights to use both?
Of the visualization options you name, I figure a nature image, possibly with a textual description, is the least bad option. But really, not showing your face cuts down your appeal by at least 90%. As long as you don’t do that, your problem isn’t in the marketing, it’s in the product.
I’m not suggesting background music, although it evidently helps. I’m saying that when I watch videos, expecting to hear enjoyable music is frequently my main motivation. And since almost all of the most-viewed videos are music videos, that’s obviously a common motivation. Your video is not adressing that motivation, and background music is unlikely to change that. Nor is it adressing the common motivations for personal connection, interesting or actionable information, or something pretty to look at. You could get at the personal connection bit if you made jokes about (what you claim to be) true stories from your personal life and—did I say that already? - show your face.
To me, your banner looks simply cheap. It signals you’re not committed to making me have a good time. Yes the clouds help a bit, but I’m sure you could do much better.
A one-liner (or better yet, three good jokes in the first 20 seconds to build up expected entertainment value for the rest of the video, and keep me watching) will help even without a face. A face would help more. Compare this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHczVzGfyqQ . The guy isn’t conventionally pretty, and the video is clearly not about visuals, but still, he wouldn’t have gotten over 300K views with a goddamn static visualisation.
And yes, people will make stupid hurtful comments about your face, even if you’re the sexiest person on the planet. Growing to tolerate that is one of the best reasons to make videos.
Descriptions will occasionally make me invest a couple more seconds in a video, i.e. make me give it a couple more opportunities to get me hooked.
Edit: Here’s Father with an animated face and a one-liner in the beginning. Thoughts?
Can’t find rights information for the image, and the music is royalty-free. Will endeavour to minimise the pauses in the future. How much of the difference was due to content, would you say?
If that is the least bad option, then barring showing a face, what would you say is an actually good option?
Face: Attractiveness and confidence are non-issues, but still can’t show a face. The true objection is for reasons of privacy; one of those reasons is a negative impact upon professional life. On the plus side, upon achieving a sizeable audience, that reason no longer applies. At that point, a face may be able to be shown.
Here’s the only other channel with similar content that does not show a face. They keep viewers engaged with animated subtitles that take a month to produce. If you watch Father with subtitles on, is your interest held better?
Will make a new banner. Was going for a homey, casual vibe; still want that vibe, but will make it look more produced.
How about this as a slate / one-liner example?
Something you could do, alternatively, is use software like facerig, assuming you have a webcam. It would work fairly effectively, I think, and is comedic enough in its own right to go along with your show.
Here’s a test using Facerig. What do you think?
That is excellent, thank you. Do you think a mobile PC with an Intel® Core™ 2 Duo @ 2.8GHz and an ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 can handle the minimum specs of Intel® Core™ i3-3220 or equivalent and NVIDIA GeForce GT220 or equivalent?
I’ve no clue myself. My minimal expertise in computer specs is 5 years old; the last time I payed attention to them was when I built my current computer (and even then with parts recommended by a friend). However, I’ve long since delegated figuring out if my computer can run something to Can You Run It. It functions fairly effectively in checking that sort of thing.
Ah, many thanks. Breaks down the relevant performance components of the graphics card; worth the attempt, at the very least.
I listened to about three minutes of the one about the narrator’s father. The humor wasn’t to my taste—a sort of silliness that just didn’t work.
I see you were trying not to be annoying, but I wasn’t crazy about the unclear context (was this a video game, a dream, or what?), the weird voices, and the narrator’s fear of his father.. My tentative suggestion is that you go for being as annoying as you feel like being, and see whether you can attract an audience who isn’t me.
Thank you for listening. There wasn’t really any context beyond ‘son returns to Father’s mansion’, and the matrimonial surprise revealed during his speech.
Would perhaps a static image in the background with text stating the above have helped?
You’re welcome.
An image wouldn’t have helped—my problem was with the monologue.
My 5 second judgement, which is about as much attention as a totally unknown channel can expect to get, is that these videos are stand-up comedy by somebody without the confidence to perform live in front of an audience. This immediately signals that it’s not worth my time.
Which video did you watch? And do you know how could that impression be averted, at least from a personal perspective? Thank you for the feedback.
Eh, it’s not my kind of humor. I found all those videos totally unfunny, so I just clicked on them, listened for 5 seconds, and closed the page. So the first question is whether my reaction is typical or not. Can you measure how many of those people who clicked on video watched it till the end? Because only those are your audience. And if they are your personal acquaintances, there is still a risk they wouldn’t watch the whole video otherwise.
I believe there is a niche for any kind of product, but the question is how to find it. Perhaps you could find similar videos and see how they do it.
Your reaction is typical. There is an 18% view rate for 75% of the ‘Documentary’; only 8% watch the whole thing. Even those that watched the whole video did not engage with the channel, or watch other videos. Thank you for the feedback!
The only similar channel is OwnagePranks, which has images of characters, and animated subtitles. The latter is infeasible, while the former is a promising indication of a needed change.
You fail to say what the videos are about. That’s bad for any venue that you want to market.
The two longer videos somewhat rely on the unexpected for their laughs; working around that, here are descriptions of each video. Do you think the descriptions would help engage viewers?
Father: A son, apart from his father for many years, returns home to his father’s mansion to restore the intimacy of their relationship. As context, imagine you told your father to listen to this for Father’s Day, for this was their present.
Documentary: A satire of serious public radio news stations: the modern expectations parents have of their children is taken to a logical and absurd extreme.
Donerly: A parody of the character and substance of reality television programming. Donerly is a vulgar figure, prone to foul language—be advised.
Silly Things: Mini-parodies of the common types of voice overs. These are, in order: sales; promotions; quickly relating terms of service; avant-garde marketing; IVR; two normal people like you having a conversation; and a jingle that isn’t selling what you were expecting.
You don’t articulate a purpose.
If your goal is to make money, starting a comedy youtube channel doesn’t seem to be the obvious choice. There’s lot’s of competition and little money.
After giving more thought to this: Have you other suggestions that immediately come to mind aside from professional voice acting?
There are many job in this world. I don’t know enough about you to know which one would be the best to earn money.
Making money would be amazing, but is not the primary goal. These files will be made regardless of whether there is a YouTube channel hosting them, and YouTube seems the ideal platform with which to achieve the secondary goal of monetising the files.
The bare minimum purpose is to have work that can be hyperlinked. That bare minimum has already been met. However, seeing a video with very few views, or many views and few likes, does not signal positive things. It would be wonderful to be able to hyperlink these files in contexts where sending a positive signal is a necessity.
Spare time is being spent to market and try to monetise the files; ideally, this effort will result in a moderately sized audience that likes the files. These are the goals of the project. If you have more promising ideas, please share them.
Why? What your purpose for creating them?
Fun.