What's up with Youtube?

[Clovishound]

Let me preface this with a statement. I am not looking to be "successful" on Youtube. I started posting mainly as a method of making it easy for friends and family to see what I am doing with photography. I was rather surprised and a little pleased when one of my videos took off in a small way this spring. I realize the format I am using is not conducive to garnering a lot of attention on Youtube. I won't say I don't care at all about how many views I get, but it really isn't a priority for me.

Having said all that, I am really puzzled by what I see going on recently with my channel. All but one of my vids were getting very few views. we are talking a couple hundred or less, one was single digits. My swan vid was getting between 20 and 60 views a day and had surpassed 2K. All of a sudden it stopped dead. For several weeks, not a single view. I hadn't posted a new video for about a month, so I decided to post one yesterday. Within hours my swan video was getting views again. In less than 24 hours it has gotten over 30 views.

I know, for Youtube this is very small potatoes. I just think it's funny that it seems obvious to me that something in the algorithms must pull back suggesting vids from channels that haven't posted new content for a few weeks.

If anyone cares here is the video in question.

Just for giggle and grins I may have to think about visiting the cat cafe downtown and see if I can get enough pictures for a video of cat pictures and post it.

 

[Needa]

So I played the video the count didn't seem to change but I didn't log in. I read something some were that said titles are important, so maybe you need something like "Killer insects" then show them eating each other. Have fun.

 

[Clovishound]

Well, I did have a "big" bump between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning. When you get over 1,000 views, it starts listing it as 1.0K, so it would have to go over 100 views to change with this video. The only way I know of getting exact numbers is for me to go into the analytic section of my channel. It gives exact number of views, and information about views in the last 48 hours, last 28 days, duration of view, etc.

Ironically, the video I posted yesterday was titled "Backyard Monsters". A slideshow of macro shots from my wildflower plot. I haven't included images of critters eating other critters. I didn't want to scare the kids.

I may have enough pics of bugs being eaten to make a slideshow.

My buddy says I should say something about global warming in the title or description. I laughed, but he's probably right.

Not sure I really want to go down the rabbit hole of chasing views. I have no plans of monetizing the channel.

 

[BF Hammer]

Algorithms. Your 1 video must have been landing in the "recommended" subject for a demographic. But that kind of thing is only temporary if you don't upload new content daily or weekly. And the thumbnail image really will drive views too.

 

[Clovishound]

That's another sore point. When uploading a video, it gives me a choice of three autogenerated thumbnails from, apparently random, sections of the video, or I can upload my own. I would like to be able to choose which image was used for a thumbnail. Unfortunately, to upload my own image, which in my case would be one of the images from the slideshow in the video, I have to give Google my phone number. That's a dealbreaker for me. I know, Google already has my phone number, as I have an android based phone. Still, I refuse to give them my number on principal.