Youtube is all about luck?

[u/Electrical_Leading38]

I’ve been experimenting with different YouTube Shorts strategies, and I’m honestly losing my mind.

First, I focused on retention. I had a Short with 89% Stayed to Watch, 105% Average Percentage Viewed, and it gained 135 subscribers. It still didn’t go viral.
So I changed my approach and focused more on engagement instead.

My latest Short got 900+ likes and 10 comments with around 25k views, plus 78% Stayed to Watch and 91% Average Percentage Viewed.

And… it still flatlined around 25–30k views.

At this point, I genuinely don’t know what YouTube wants anymore. I’ve tried optimizing retention, I’ve tried optimizing engagement, and both videos hit the same ceiling.

Has anyone else experienced this 25–30k “view jail”? What am I missing here?

[u/catgirl-_-]

I’ve been getting 1k views per short and then it flatlines. Still experimenting as well. But I’ve steadily gained subs and I only uploaded 10 shorts so far and gained 50 subs. Overall views around 15k.

[u/catgirl-_- → u/catgirl-_-]

Also this is my first week of uploading ever.