My friends and family always have trouble finding my latest videos. So for the past year I’ve had a secret direct-entry for them. If you enter my name as a URL (http://www.kevinnalty.com), you’ll see my YouTube videos sorted by most recent.
Just thought I’d share that with you WillVideoForFood readers.
What’s the primary difference between an amateur on YouTube and a professional creator? Not the production quality or style, silly. It’s the viewership.
As you see below, the most-viewed partners are almost entirely professional. Yet the most-subscribed people are almost all amateurs.
It’s a simple point, but important one: Don’t think subscriptions will necessarily lead to views or views will automatically lead to subscriptions. Unless you’re TheStation.
Time to follow the lead of YouTube’s hottest women. They may be pretty and popular, but they’re not stupid.
If you have enabled playlists on your YouTube channel, turn them off immediately. Many popular YouTube creators (especially the hot women) have discovered this already — or never bothered creating and offering playlists. Disabling the playlists is the only way to make it easy for a viewer to sort your videos on their own.
Go immediately to your account page, select “edit” under the banner… then uncheck playlists.
Only if you disable playlists will the user have the ability to instantly sort videos by various attributes like “dated added,” “most viewed” or “top rated” (per image below).
But if you show off your playlists, it takes a rocket scientist to figure out how to sort your videos by any criteria. So they may see that “best of” collection you assembled, but they’ll never find your recent videos. Or they may see your recent videos but not find your best videos. And they may not even find the search field.
Until YouTube solves this (and some of the other major UI flaws) in channel pages, you’re going to have to trust the user to sort by “most viewed” or “top rated” if they are trying to find out if you’re any good (“most recent” is top by default), because the playlist functionality is hostile.
Also- if “most recent” videos aren’t first, your subscribers won’t want to return to your channel page to catch up, because the new ones are too hard to find.
I hope this helps. I’m puzzled why this isn’t solved by the technical folks, or communicated to people via YouTube. I went back to the original channel-page design for this very reason, and was really frustrated by the design.
For the record, I was working on a client project that required me to grab sample videos from prominent and attractive YouTube partners (iJustine, HappySlip, VenetianPrincess, HotForWords, CommunityChannel) and I saw that they’d all disabled playlists. What? You don’t believe it was a client project? You think I’m just cruising the list of the most-popular and prettiest girls on YouTube? You pig!
P.S. Like the new theme on this WordPress blog? I learned about it from Chris Brogan, and bought it immediately. It’s all SEO optimized, and was so easy to set up I did it without Jan’s help! It’s called THESIS and you can buy it here.
In news that shocked regular YouTube viewers, creator “Shaycarl” is not on today’s “most-popular” page.
Shaycarl, a radio disk jockey turned full-time YouTube star, has been on a rapid rise in subscribers and views (evidenced by Google trends data below), propelled exponentially an assload in recent months due to his affiliation with “TheStation,” a popular collaboration channel of YouTube’s largest stars.
But Shay has not posted in 19 hours. His “Baby Can Slam Dunk” video was posted more than 19 hours ago, and his “Giant Dog” was dated 9/31 and posted more than a day ago.
Shay was not available via phone or e-mail, and has largely secluded himself into a Danny “James Arthur Day” Diamond sweat lodge tent in recent months.
Shaycarl’s last Twitter post was 11 hours ago, and his fans have become alarmed that his biggest hater gentle hater has abducted him. The hater (known as MisterDoodyHead) is presumably based in Venice Beach, California… based on his referring to “out here” as Shay’s current location. Reports of Shay being beaten by a car-seat have not been verified by local authority.
Fortunately ShayCarl’s YouTube account shows activity as of four hours ago, and he will presumably return to most-popular by midnight… unless Sxephil and CharlesTrippy upload more than 100 videos today.
My last post about TheStation made me revisit the most-subscribed YouTube “stars” and channels to see what’s changed.
Who are the most-viewed, most-subscribed and most popular people on YouTube? Here are some trends, stats and sources for additional information.
First some trends:
Some resources for tracking trends and stats:
Anyone have any other sites I should add? Frankly I’m surprised there aren’t easier-to-find websites that collect and share data (WillofDC uses a website to report winners and losers, but I don’t know what it is.
It’s the hottest thing on YouTube since Susan Boyle did the “Evolution of Dance.” But you won’t find it covered on television, there’s no press release, and virtually no online or print articles written about it.
A collection of YouTube “stars” have joined forces on a single channel (thestation), and it was almost instantly propelled it to one of YouTube’s most-subscribed channels… even before it had a single video posted. TheStation, now one of the 25 most-subscribed channels, was parked in June, 2006. But the activity began in mid July 2009 (see TheStation’s Twitter account), when the individual stars began to promote the TheStation on their own channels.
TheStation’s debut video was posted July 21, 2009 (a zombie teaser). Here’s the Zombie debut (see on YouTube), and above (see video box) is a cleaner version with synched audio). Zombie’s sell, of course….
That tells us TheStation isn’t just a creative consortium but a potential online-video marketing machine. In fact, TheStation is shaping up to be an online-video version of the “brat pack.”
“Stars” include Shane Dawson (ShaneDawsonTV), PhillyD (sxephil), and DaveDays — three of the most-subscribed YouTubers. ShayCarl, one of the fastest-rising YouTube creators, moved his family to Venice Beach, California earlier in 2009… living just blocks from Donovan.
LisaNova (Lisa Donovan) and “Danny Diamond” (thediamondfactory, aka “Dan Zappin”) are the hubs at the center of the spokes (see “Zappin Productions“). The long-time duo are romantic partners or business colleagues depending on your source (although LisaNova is to DaveDays as Demi Moore to Ashton Kutcher).
Girls2Watch reports that the business behind TheStation is “Maker Studios,” with a goal to make “create quality consistent programming with their core talent which will attract both a huge online audience as well as advertisers who want to get into the Youtube space.” (via BuckNews). No sign of a Maker Studios, LLC., but Donovan’s listed as the agent for Zappin (California Secretary of State).
Donovan and Diamond have loaned their apartments to various online-video weblerities, assembling what I like to call a “YouTube YouTopia” in Venice Beach. Davedays moved from Pennsylvania to California (despite my parental-like caution), and has been offering his musical talent to the motley crew. DaveDays is best known for his Barbie video, and collection of Miley Cyrus homages). Sxephil, also known as Philip DeFranco, moved from Atlanta this summer to join the gang in Venice Beach (with help from friend ShayCarl).
The channel has been getting positive reactions to its first 9 videos, and maintains a better view-per-subscriber ratio than the stars themselves. This ratio (recent view-counts divided by total subscribers to the channel) is a YouTube sign of health. Of course there’s a recency bias, where new channels have healthier rankings because its subscribers are active or new… as opposed to those subscribers from abandoned accounts. TubeMogul reports that the group surpassed Michael Jackson’s collection. Initial videos were designed to appeal to existing fans of the individuals (see NewTeeVee article), packed with inside jokes. iJustine’s death is a rofler… click this link to watch her get eaten by Zombies.
Where’s this going? Now we’re in speculation mode. For starters, it’s clearly a smart creative and professional move for the individuals… especially the lesser known stars who now win by association. The “combo-pack” performance model has proven to work in comedy, music and film (Oceans 11)… so why not web?
I asked Diamond/Zappin his vision for TheStation while visiting Venice Beach this summer, and he was somewhat vague or abstract. Initially, it’s about pooling creative talent and gaing efficiencies from production… a web studio approach (ala Next New Network or Revision3) but with already popular stars and shows. We’ll see TheStation lure brands (hungry for its eyeballs) to finance the operations (Diamond has helped LisaNova and others secure marketing sponsorships), which means it’s more than a creative collaboration.
The station, however, will face four non-trivial challenges:
Cautions aside, the people involved with TheStation have rare knowledge on how to grow and keep an online audience. They’ll benefit by sharing each other’s audiences, and from the creative chemistry that may develop in their YouTube YouTopia. And it’s a guilty pleasure, but I’ll admit I really like some of the writing and acting in this debut video. And check out this funny DaveDays music-video with a cameo by CharlesTrippy. Good stuff. Even better: the out takes and behind the scenes… available on TheStation2.
Even with some inevitable creative and financial feuding ahead, The Station ensemble is proving that the whole is indeed bigger than the sum of (most of) its parts.
No seriously. Click here to watch iJustine get killed again. How can you not crack up at that. Hey- no bashing from iJustine fans. I’m among you.
I made a spoof video last week called “Why You Should Rate” that was designed to point out a little YouTube myth. People think that a highly rated video with lots of comments means that they’ll get views. To further illustrate the point, the video itself is one of YouTube’s “top 20” highest rated videos of the week, and has about 7,000 views. Contrast that with my recent “Snake in a Pool,” which has no “honors” and 100,000 plus views.
While I’m too lazy to disprove this “ratings = views” myth via statistical analysis, I would invite a high school student to take this on as an independent project. Further, they could analyze the correlation between total duration and total views to identify the theoretically ideal video length. The time that optimizes views (I’m betting on 75-90 seconds). There’s plenty of public data to help here, and I’d love to publish the findings.
While it’s true that a video resulting in lots of comments also often gets lots of views, the comments and views are not directly related. It’s likely the video topic’s high impact and/or controversial nature that causes other things: views, comments and ratings (although it’s possible that videos ranking high on these ratings are rewarded with preferred placement on the YouTube’s “promoted videos” homepage section to balance the paid videos that sneak there… and that would result in a second wave of views).
Very few people surf YouTube’s ranked videos on a regular basis. So while the “highest rated” or “most viewed” of all time is almost impossible to dethrone, the daily and weekly honors are little more than ego feeders. The sustainability of a YouTuber is a function of good content, fresh material, a balance of consistency with variety, creator adaptability (I’ll call the Madonna reinvention factor), and a loyal audience that is satisfied enough to watch and share the content with friends.
In theory, a highly rated video would be highly viewed. But in fact the highly viewed videos are often one-hit wonders that pop outside YouTube and therefore have lots of views by innactive YouTube viewers- those that don’t tend to comment or rate. It’s also true that what we watch isn’t necessarily what we like. Would you rate a highway accident 5 stars? Nope. Would you look?
So where am I going with this post? The same place I went with this video, which is artificially ranked in the league of HappySlip, Smosh, KevJumba, The Onion, College Humor, and even the Retarded Policeman. Heck I even topped the inexplicably popular “Fred” and one of the”very funny cats” videos.
In the end, I like the creative experience of YouTube, the people with whom I interact in various ways, the videos that don’t suck, and the revenue subsidy (aka debt-relief fund). But assessing yourself based on subscribers, honors and other proxies to faux fame is fools gold, friend. Shiny and perty, but it will just sink you when you try to swim from the shipwreck. And that’s a mixed metaphor you can take to the bank on your horse that you lead to water in a stitch in time.
Thank you, dear readers, for your help finalizing this version 1.5 of “How to Become Popular on YouTube Without Any Talent.” Honestly, if I look at this document another moment I’m going to boot. If you’re looking for my real book, “Beyond Viral,” published by Wiley & Sons in 2010, please click here.
(Warning- clicking the image to the right will cause you to download the book, which is annoying but probably what most people expect).
This post marks the official release of the book. You can download it (for free) by clicking this link, which will open the 30-page PDF: “How to Become Popular on YouTube (Without Any Talent), version 1.5” by Kevin Nalts, WillVideoForFood.com. If you post the PDF on your own blog or website, please keep that title, and my name and URL. You might want to list this post’s permalink, since it will point to future downloadable versions.
While you’re waiting for Adobe to open (insert “car rusting” joke here), I hope you’ll RSS this blog so we can keep each other current. If you’re a YouTuber and haven’t subscribed to my videos, visit YouTube.com/Nalts, then select the orange button labled “subscribe.” Okay- enough self promotion for one day. I’m going to take a nap.
Here’s the book on Skribd for easy access.
Here’s a free 2-page synopsis of my book, “The Prophet of Online Video.” If you want to use this outline and write your own book, go ahead. I’m so not writing for a while.
To create buzz as it nears submission deadlines, The Webby Awards announced recently the “Top 12 Most Influential Online Videos of All Times.” Our guess is that they were shooting for 12, but got into a heated debate and decided to toss two more in there.