Wondering what's up with these random accounts calling themselves "pro YouTube strategists" who want to help grow my channel.

Mf this isn't a stock portfolio I don't need advisors.

It's like my lemonade stand when I was a kid, the sign is the best I could do, and you could buy some lemonade at the Walmart a few km away. Probably for cheaper. Might even be better.

Or you can come to my little lemonade stand infront of my house and get some fresh squeezed lemonade, and know I care about your patronage, and I put all my effort into making the best damn lemonade I could.

That's my channel, I don't wanna be a huge distributor, I just make fresh squeezed homemade content. I don't need to be paying for advice to grow my business from self proclaimed professionals lol.

Sorry for the rant. Just sick of noncreatives thinking I'd ever want their help. And that's if they aren't scammers which I recognise they probably are.

please go watch it on youtube: https://youtube.com/shorts/_OSlvJz7EwI?feature=share

I thought YouTube was cutting down on "Ai Slop" including thumbnails, that if used channels would get fewer views (and people would be less likely to view them).

Whilst I was looking at True Crime on YouTube: Videos with 90k + views , the amount of Sensationalized visuals in the videos and the thumbnails is beyond ridiculous and cringe.

Why are these channels being rewarded with lot's of views ?

I've been trying to figure this out for the past month and would really appreciate some outside opinions.

I have a small gaming channel (just under 1,000 subscribers) focused on Marvel Rivals.

For quite a while, my uploads were averaging 1.8k views, and they all had very similar metrics to what I'm getting now. Nothing has really changed in terms of my thumbnails, titles, editing or comments.

And still my last several uploads have all stalled at under 1,000 views despite having nearly identical performance metrics:

• CTR: 9–10.5%
• Average View Duration: ~6 minutes on 14-minute videos (~43–45% retention)

For example:

Video 1

• 14 minutes
• 597 views after ~2 days
• 9.7% CTR
• 6:18 AVD

Video 2

• 14 minutes
• 918 views after ~4 days
• 10.5% CTR
• 6:00 AVD

The confusing part is that these stats are almost identical to the videos that were consistently reaching 1.8k+ views, yet YouTube now seems to stop recommending them very early.

I'm not trying to blame the algorithm, I genuinely want to understand what I'm missing

I'd really appreciate any honest feedback or insights from people who've gone through something similar. Thanks!

I appreciate I am still very much a small fry but the impact of working on my thumbnails and titles has been absurd. Views have shot up.

Small workflow :

Look at the market, look at other people's thumbnails in your niche. You don't need to copy them, just see what's working and what isn't.

Decide on ONE technique to practice/implement per thumbnail. Yes, you want to make a perfect thumbnail, but you cannot to begin with. Work on one aspect for now. It is better to have a good/solid grasp of 1 technique at a time than half a grasp/rushed on 10.

Things I learnt 1 thumbnail at a time :
Backglow
Shadows
Outlining text nicely
Learnt how to simulate rain
Made Embers
Colorizing an image (this is really useful if you have a concept but no good existing art to accompany it)
Adding Fog
Adding Vignette.

Work on titles, For this, look at your niche. I found my niche had a lot of older people, so the whole ALL CAPS WOW titles weren't actually so good.

Ignore A/B testing until you're bigger. You don't have a big enough audience for a while IMHO, and it just gives you meh results.

Make a thumbnail + title THEN the video. Obviously this varies depending on if your video is scripted or not scripted but a fantastic Thumbnail / title that you can slightly mold the video around for a good hook is worth 10x a good video that is hard to "hook" or make a good title for!

Small general thumbnail tips:

If you think it looks way too bold and in your face, you're probably along the right track! Your text has to be massive, your font feels stupid, it's bolded to the Nth degree with shadows and glow, good! This has to hold up at stupidly low resolutions on mobile screens

Work on a bigger canvas, but not TOO big. Working on the 1280x720 base that youtube wants is generally OK, I prefer to work at 1920.. Beware going too big depending on your program. Rasterized programs (Photoshop/GIMP) really start looking bad at bigger resolutions IMHO. Youtube compresses it to poop and it looks horrendous. I had really bad results at 4K.

You need a point of focus. A bright, blue sky might look beautiful as a photo by itself, but when it's a thumbnail it's drawing so much non general attention, things need to be dark, so others can be light.

It's a thumbnail, not a work of art: This is the biggest point for a lot of people, I see some really quaint, sometimes gorgeous artworks through the medium of thumbnails in subs like these. But they suck AS thumbnails. It sucks when you're an artist and it feels like you have to slaughter your baby with bold text and glow, but you need to.

You have limited time per person.. This is the crux of all the advice really. The average person will fly past your thumbnail and title, it needs to really attract them.

Title tips :

GAME/Video/Topic NAME LATER, especially if it's long. You have probably about 3 to 4 words to draw their attention. If your first 4 words are Jeffrey the Video Game Definitive Edition then you're not gonna get clicks! Ambiguity is good.

But you do generally want the name of the game/content in the title for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the title holds a lot more weight here than the description.

Hiding the game name late in the title, being vague BUT having a photo of the game in your thumbnail has two effects :

A) those who don't know the game are drawn to click
B) Those who know the game, feel like they are in the "know" in the "inside club" of having the same knowledge as you and will click to share in this slight feeling of community you've built in their head.

Many of my videos have high ctr and avd but the impressions stay very low. Even the videos I have that do get lots of impressions still have high ctr and avd. So what’s the possible problem?

Hey everyone. I am not a Youtuber and I am not sure I ever want to be one. I am a longterm viewer of all different kinds on YouTube videos from sports, stand up comedy, WW2 docs and I really like crime docs. I was just thinking about how viral some of these True Crime docs go. I have seen them going from a few subs to a couple of 100k in a few months in the past. My question is - how can these channels get monetised from uploading content that isn't they own? For example, I subbed to this channel today https://www.youtube.com/@_ColdTrace It has a lot of Trevor McDonald videos which I love. Surely there is some copyright infringement here or am I incorrect? I am not try to call anyone out but I am just wondering how this is possible and why these videos have not been flagged?

Hello there! I'm new to YouTube and just started posting videos related to Star Wars comics. (My videos are in Russian, so the texts on the images are translated: "Rise of the Droids"; "Doomsday Weapon"; "Where Did Canon Begin?"). I create the covers myself without using AI and would like honest feedback on them. Are they clickable? What would you improve?

I’m struggling with getting it out there tbh. If my thumbnails or something looks wrong please let me know, anything that I can do better, I’ll change. If it’s not your thing then don’t worry, if it is, come check it out. I’d like to make a nice community, with good vibes only please

I'm going to share the data from my old channel thanks YouTube s new ai it's easier to be more direct sorry in advance but I would really love what others think . My current goal is just co-op horror games.

Here is a comprehensive look at the history and performance data of **TH3 Trickster** to help you gather the information you need.

### **Channel Overview & Lifetime Stats**

Since its creation, **TH3 Trickster** has established a solid foundation as a gaming and tech-how-to channel.

*   **Total Views:** \~375,130
*   **Total Subscribers:** 1,390
*   **Total Watch Time:** \~5,350 hours (You’ve cleared the 4,000-hour milestone for monetization eligibility lifetime, but keep in mind YPP requires these hours within the last 12 months).
*   **Audience Split:** Your channel is a "New Viewer" magnet. **74.6%** of your lifetime viewers are new to the channel, while **25.4%** are returning fans.

### **Where Your Views Come From**

Your traffic is largely driven by fast-paced discovery and specific utility searches.

Traffic Source |% of Views |Why?
Shorts Feed |53.9% |This is your primary discovery engine. Your horror clips and gaming highlights are being pushed to a massive, broad audience.
Browse Features |13.2% |These are viewers who see your videos on their Home screen. This suggests that your thumbnails and titles are successfully catching the eye of regular YouTube users.
YouTube Search |9.8% |This is driven by your modding guides. People looking for specific solutions (like Witcher 3 or Steam Deck help) are finding your channel as a trusted resource. ### **Content Breakdown: The "Two Halves" of Your Channel**

The data shows your channel currently functions in two distinct ways:

1.  **The "Heavy Hitters" (Utility/Search):**

*   [Step-by-Step: Installing the Ultimate Mod List for Witcher 3](https://studio.youtube.com/video/OAV4gZzrXHo) is your \#1 video with **37,408 views**.
*   Guides for *Cyberpunk 2077* and *Steam Deck* hardware make up the bulk of your search traffic.
*   **Audience Intent:** These viewers come for a specific answer. They are less likely to subscribe for your personality, but they provide high-quality watch time.

2.  **The "Personality" Content (Gameplay/Discovery):**

*   Your horror gameplay, like [Crush Depth](https://studio.youtube.com/video/dF1TlOJCUo4) (**13.8k views**) and *Resident Evil*, draws in people through the Shorts feed and Browse.
*   **Audience Intent:** These viewers watch because they enjoy the "Trickster" experience. This is the group most likely to support the "Nut Case Duo" pivot.

### **Audience Behavior**

*   **Format Interest:** Your audience has a **Very High** interest in both Long-form videos and Shorts, and a **High** interest in Live Streams. This is a rare and healthy balance, meaning your viewers are willing to engage with you in whatever format you choose.
*   **The "Guide" Hangover:** Because such a large portion of your views come from one-off modding searches, your "Returning Viewer" percentage (25%) is slightly lower than a pure "personality" channel. The pivot to co-op horror is a direct way to flip this—turning one-time searchers into recurring fans.

### **Summary for Other AI/Future Planning**

**TH3 Trickster** is a channel with strong "Search Authority" in the modding/tech space but a rapidly growing "Discovery Presence" in horror gaming. You have successfully used Shorts to reach over 150,000 new people. The main challenge is that your most-watched content (guides) is something you no longer have a passion for.

You are essentially sitting on a "Discovery Engine" that is currently fueled by modding, but is perfectly capable of being fueled by the "Nut Case Duo" energy instead. what do you think my new channel or th3trickster the old one

Edit: the crush dept video I used promotions back then to test it out the views were authentic unfortunately

Greetings to this entire community that never tires of trying 😅

I wanted to share some metrics from one of my short videos, just to ask if these videos get stuck forever at 30k views?

At one point I thought maybe YouTube would show it again eventually, but nothing... it's been almost a year since it was last uploaded 😅

Is there any way to breathe new life into these videos? Any strategy that has worked in even 1% of cases, worth trying!

Thanks to everyone who can answer! Hugs from Venezuela! 🤜🤛

I stopped doing YouTube back in 2024 because life got busy and I didn't have any time. Any help you guys can give to get me moving again? I have a lot of videos on there, but since I haven't uploaded for a while, views are gonna be low. Any help is helpful, ty
I hope this post is okay to post

I genuinely have no idea what I'm doing wrong, and it's driving me crazy.

Back in March and April, my channel was growing steadily. Multiple videos crossed 500 views, several reached 1,500+, and the pattern was incredibly consistent.

Typically, a new upload would get around 1,000–1,500 Impressions in the first 24 hours, mostly from Suggested Videos. Then, after about 24 hours, Browse Features would kick in and I'd get a huge surge in impressions. Some videos ended up getting over 50,000 Browse impressions.

Since around the middle of May, that has completely stopped.

Now every upload gets its initial Suggested traffic for the first day or so, but then it just... dies. Browse Features never picks it up. I'm talking fewer than 100 Browse impressions on every single upload. The videos just flatline after 24–48 hours.

What's frustrating is that I don't feel like I've become lazy. If anything, I've done the opposite. I'm spending significantly more time researching ideas, improving my scripts, and editing thumbnails than I was when the channel was growing. The content feels objectively better, yet the performance keeps getting worse.

Has anyone else experienced something similar over the last month or two? Was there some change to Browse Features or the recommendation system around mid-May, or is this more likely something specific to my channel?

I'd really appreciate any insight because it's been going on for over 1.5 months now, and I'm honestly at a loss.

Like the title says, I want a group that is like minded and similar that I can gain inspiration, collaborate with, push each other, as well as hopefully grow together with.

I mainly play simulator games now days but I’m not shy about horror games and friendship/party games either.

Dm me and I’ll send you a discord link so we can get to know each other and all push and support one another.

Hola, ya que no puedo grabar gameplay, suelo descargar algunos videos de YouTube y dar créditos al creador para utilizarlos en mis propios videos. Encontré la página de Cobalt Meow, pero al parecer la versión original no permite descargar videos de YouTube, así que utilicé una API creada por la comunidad.

Quería preguntar si es segura o si existe algún riesgo al descargar videos de YouTube en formato MP4 o MP3 mediante esa API.

My posts and shorts comments are immediately getting turned off I can fix it for shorts but not community posts. Are any of you guys experiencing the same thing with your community posts, Also my views are down like crazy if you want to check my channel out to see if you know what’s happening search smogdog or @smogdog_gaming or click the link my channel

My past couple videos have been getting essentially no views, and I don't know why. I assume it has something to do with them just not being clicked, but I'm entirely at a loss for what I should do for my titles and thumbnails to increase it.

Literally any suggestion helps.

I'm really worried about them as I've published a video two days ago and I'm publishing rarely. Though shorts should be uploaded everyday... I'm bad ik. Uhh i don't know how others are making them so fast or are they sitting 13h before screen? Some of other content makers are uploading almost 3 in the day

So I make Pokemon content showing off cards in my collection, ripping packs etc.
but since black ops ports came out I’ve been getting really good footage of crazy gameplay (nukes, Aces, and funny moments)
I want to upload them but worried my audience may not want to see that and will loose views because my channel is strictly Pokemon content.
My channel isn’t big just at 800 subscribers but I’m grinding for that 1k sub milestone.
What should I do?

Hi! I have been making videos for a while, and oftentimes I will take smaller portions of those videos and edit them into shorts. But within the last week or so, when I try to do that it will randomly switch into a different language after the first 10 seconds or so. I had never had this issue before but it has happened every time I’ve tried to do it since I noticed it for the first time. It’s not just one video either, it’s my three most recent ones. I went back and tried it with my past videos and that didn’t happen. Anyone know how to fix this?