A Bit of Help with My YouTube Channel plz?

[BagelRabbit]

I'll start with a disclaimer, so as to not make people irritated: This is not a thread to promote my channel. Rather, it's a thread asking for advice to make my channel better. I'll explain all of the situations I've gotten into, so you don't have to watch a second of my videos if you don't want to. Just making this clear! Thanks.

~~~

Hi everybody! It's UpsilonAerospace.

So recently, my main computer, Logan, died after a long battle with hard drive errors. This means that I haven't been able to produce videos on my YouTube channel, called Bagel Rabbit (see my signature if you really want to, but again, it's not necessary). I want to make sure that when I return, I'm producing enough quality content to attract a larger audience than I have right now. Unfortunately, there are some aspects of my channel that are distinctly "meh." Can you help me buff up my channel a bit?

Okay, so here are the problems I'm having.

1) "Bagel Drawings!"

A while back, I started a drawing series called (appropriately enough) Bagel Drawings. This series attracted a lot of people to my channel, and many of the videos in it are among the most-watched things that I've ever done. The only problem? The "Bagel Drawings" videos probably rank as among the worst videos I've ever made. Worse yet, I made an abysmal video called something like "How to Hack a Plasma Globe." This video is the most popular one on my channel, in spite of its weak monologue and general dragging-on. Though I would love to delete it, it accounts for some fifty percent of my viewing traffic, and it may be directing people to my KSP videos... or maybe not.

This leads me to my first question: Should I delete some of my very popular but very bad videos? Is it worth the reduced exposure to have a greater proportion of reasonably good content on my channel?

2) Outros!

Back when Andrew Hansen was at the height of his popularity, I asked him how I could gain subscribers as fast as he could (he was picking them up at a crazy rate). He said that one thing that would improve my videos would be an outro screen prompting people to subscribe and watch my other videos.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of outro screens and generally click off of videos immediately before they happen. They certainly seem to be popular amongst the more prominent YouTubers though.

So, this leads to my second question: Would an outro be a good idea for my channel? Would this cause my view and/or subscriber counts to increase?

3) Channel Content!

Finally, I would like to ask whether my channel's content is good as-is, or whether it needs to be punched up a little. Right now, the majority of my videos are craft showcase videos with commentary. I feel as if this form has gotten a little old though, and I'm wondering about a change of pace.

I'm thinking that the best way to do this for me is to have heavily-edited short videos in which I show the building and the testing of whatever craft I feel like making (perhaps including subscriber-suggested craft). This would be nice because it would show a bit of behind-the-scenes and occasional humorous failures. I could also spread craft construction over two or more videos, creating "cliffhangers:" Will I actually get this craft to work? Stay tuned!

Finally, I currently abandon more than half of my designs. This type of video series would cause me to try to troubleshoot and actually fix the problems I've made instead of abandoning the craft outright. I think that this would make me a better KSP builder as a whole.

My third question is: Would such videos work well, or are there any other video ideas that you think would be cool?

~~~

Oh, and if you can think of any other way to improve my channel, that would be nice too. Any help is greatly appreciated

Thank you very much for stopping by this thread!

-Upsilon

[Endersmens]

Some of the most popular youtubers that play KSP, (Jacksepticeye and the like) the video is literally 80% them messing around in the editor trying to find the right parts, 10% actually flying and testing, and 10% loading screen.

And yet people beg for more.

I hate them cause they're boring, but people love them because of the sometimes hilarious creations and commentary.

So, if you're wanting to heavily edit KSP craft creations, by all means go for it. From my perspective, *I think anyone who plays KSP hates watching someone else build for long periods of time, but anyone who just watches someone play KSP doesn't mind.

*Purely my opinion of course

Maybe you could do a bit of a midway, where it is cut and edited, but you keep the more interesting parts of the build, like after you get a frame and start adding features to the craft, tweaks and utilities and such, and then fly and crash and do it again.

As for outros, I like them. It gives the channel a signature. Like danny2462, his outro is well known amongst most people here, and when Ronin Pawn made a danny parody, the outro was the coolest part cause he had it copied to a tee. Maybe your outro could just be an animated bagel rabit flying through space like nyan cat or something.

Wow, I really like to answer things backwards don't I? Bagel drawins: Haven't seen them, going to watch them now.

However, I would say keep them, they're a cool little quirk that is most of the time entertaining.

[InterCity]

First of all, I have no experience with youtubing myself and I watched your videos just as I stumbled upon this thread, but here's what I think:

1) Bagel drawings are good. They attract people, and I watched two of them (Homer Simpson and halo ship) right now and I think that they're good. As you said, with better monologue, they'd be outstanding, so leave the existing ones and try to spice up the following ones.

2) Outros can't harm you. In your place, I'd put them into the videos, but the decision is up to you.

3) Fixing bad designs in KSP is a lenghty, highly technical job in my opinion. You can make them if you have time, but they probably won't be the most watched videos of your channel. I have a slight variation: You can make series "What could possibly go wrong?" showcasing the failed craft and making them explode, then shortly say what's wrong. Or you can prompt people to send you their bad designs and you can try to make them work with least changes possible. Also, try vlogs. I heard they help.

[Xacktar]

*pulls up in his Youtube-mobile with screeching tires and smoke*

Beep, Boop. This is Xacktar, internet advice mode!

1) Are these old videos still generating views? You can see this in the youtube analytics page. If not, then they aren't really contributing to your channel anymore. If you feel strongly enough about disliking them, you can hide them from public view, but still retain them on the channel if you ever feel like relisting them. The view counts may be misleading because they are older videos, it may be they just accumulate more over time. Given enough time, your other videos may earn just as much

2) This is a personal choice. I don't do outros, but I'm not really out to gain subs, more to share stuff that makes me laugh. That being said, outras aren't bad if done correctly. If you decide to make one, please keep it short enough not to annoy but long enough for people to actually click the link... and NO suddenly loud or jarring music. Keep it simple, keep it short and people won't mind.

3) This one is a bit harder to answer. Everyone creates content that appeals to a different audience. Knowing your audience can help you guide what you create. I will say that if you want to keep making videos you should go for something that you personally enjoy making. If YOU have fun, then the people watching will pick up on that and smile along. If you force yourself, the whole video will fall flat.

[Endersmens]

Alright. Watched some vids (yes in ten minutes XD)

Drawings: keep em. It's really cool that you can draw that good and teach others.

Outro: see above

Plasma globe hack: 250k views??? HOLY CRAP. My advice on this one, if you really hate the video, remake it! on youtube you can reupload an updated version of a video, so why not do that? Re-record the video from start to finish with better commentary and better quality (and more safety notes ) and then upload it in place of the old one. It will retain it's rating and view number, which will attract new viewers, but it will be better quality, which will attract them to your channel. Win win!

[Xacktar]

Plasma globe hack: 250k views??? HOLY CRAP. My advice on this one, if you really hate the video, remake it! on youtube you can reupload an updated version of a video, so why not do that? Re-record the video from start to finish with better commentary and better quality (and more safety notes ) and then upload it in place of the old one. It will retain it's rating and view number, which will attract new viewers, but it will be better quality, which will attract them to your channel. Win win!

This is a good idea.

[BagelRabbit]

Some of the most popular youtubers that play KSP, (Jacksepticeye and the like) the video is literally 80% them messing around in the editor trying to find the right parts, 10% actually flying and testing, and 10% loading screen.

And yet people beg for more.

I hate them cause they're boring, but people love them because of the sometimes hilarious creations and commentary.

I agree with your sentiments here I'm not a big fan of having the majority of a video taking place in the VAB/SPH, unless you're showcasing a particular hitherto-unseen building technique or something.

So, if you're wanting to heavily edit KSP craft creations, by all means go for it. From my perspective, *I think anyone who plays KSP hates watching someone else build for long periods of time, but anyone who just watches someone play KSP doesn't mind.

*Purely my opinion of course

Maybe you could do a bit of a midway, where it is cut and edited, but you keep the more interesting parts of the build, like after you get a frame and start adding features to the craft, tweaks and utilities and such, and then fly and crash and do it again.

Yes. If I was doing something like this, I would probably dramatically speed up and cut through large chunks of build time (unless something really cool happened as I was doing so) and concentrate more on the test flights and such.

As for outros, I like them. It gives the channel a signature. Like danny2462, his outro is well known amongst most people here, and when Ronin Pawn made a danny parody, the outro was the coolest part cause he had it copied to a tee. Maybe your outro could just be an animated bagel rabit flying through space like nyan cat or something.

After reading the advice of you and others, I think I will create an outro. It'll probably just be an image and some light music with a 'Subscribe!' button at the bottom and 'Previous/Next' buttons on the top left and right. I don't think I could do anything animated (it takes a lot of time) and Nyan Cat has gotten old enough for me to change my profile image soon. I'm actually commisioning someone to do a new profile pic and new channel art, but don't tell anyone! I want it to be a surprise.

First of all, I have no experience with youtubing myself and I watched your videos just as I stumbled upon this thread, but here's what I think:

1) Bagel drawings are good. They attract people, and I watched two of them (Homer Simpson and halo ship) right now and I think that they're good. As you said, with better monologue, they'd be outstanding, so leave the existing ones and try to spice up the following ones.

That's not a bad idea. I haven't had a camera capable of recording a Bagel Drawings (or, for that matter, a 'How to hack your Plasma Globe!) in months, but if I ever do get such a camera, I'll probably keep at the drawing videos.

2) Outros can't harm you. In your place, I'd put them into the videos, but the decision is up to you.

Sure thing.

3) Fixing bad designs in KSP is a lenghty, highly technical job in my opinion. You can make them if you have time, but they probably won't be the most watched videos of your channel.

My designs generally work the second or third time around, so it won't take too much time to get them done!

Also, I should mention: I'm a very slow builder and a very fast video editor. It can take me three hours to build something and twenty minutes to edit the resulting footage. Thus, if I made videos of my build progress, I could actually make a video in less time than it would take to polish a craft and then make a video of it!

I have a slight variation: You can make series "What could possibly go wrong?" showcasing the failed craft and making them explode, then shortly say what's wrong. Or you can prompt people to send you their bad designs and you can try to make them work with least changes possible. Also, try vlogs. I heard they help.

All of these ideas are pretty good! I think that showcase videos of various failures would go over well. It would also be nice to improve others' failed designs. Finally, while I'm not sure about the vlogs, I should probably get into streaming. I think I may do pretty well with that

*pulls up in his Youtube-mobile with screeching tires and smoke*

Beep, Boop. This is Xacktar, internet advice mode!

Great to have you here, Xacktar.

1) Are these old videos still generating views? You can see this in the youtube analytics page. If not, then they aren't really contributing to your channel anymore. If you feel strongly enough about disliking them, you can hide them from public view, but still retain them on the channel if you ever feel like relisting them. The view counts may be misleading because they are older videos, it may be they just accumulate more over time. Given enough time, your other videos may earn just as much

Depressingly enough, many of my most popular videos today are Bagel Drawings-es published in mid-2013. A quick pie chart shows the top three most-viewed videos right now as 'How to Hack a Plasma Globe' with 44% of the view count, 'How to Draw a Creeper' at 18%, and 'How to Draw the Moon' at 4.1%; all of these were uploaded in mid-2013 and have not aged well...

I do agree though that my videos seem to pick up more views over time.

2) This is a personal choice. I don't do outros, but I'm not really out to gain subs, more to share stuff that makes me laugh. That being said, outras aren't bad if done correctly. If you decide to make one, please keep it short enough not to annoy but long enough for people to actually click the link... and NO suddenly loud or jarring music. Keep it simple, keep it short and people won't mind.

Understood

3) This one is a bit harder to answer. Everyone creates content that appeals to a different audience. Knowing your audience can help you guide what you create. I will say that if you want to keep making videos you should go for something that you personally enjoy making. If YOU have fun, then the people watching will pick up on that and smile along. If you force yourself, the whole video will fall flat.

Amen.

I think the most important thing for me to do is to have fun. If I stop having fun making videos... well, I may still continue, but they won't be very good. I have no wishes to force myself to go in any direction. Your feedback, though, does definitely help me seek out other fun options for my channel.

Alright. Watched some vids (yes in ten minutes XD)

Welcome back!

Drawings: keep em. It's really cool that you can draw that good and teach others.

Thanks!

Outro: see above

Got it

Plasma globe hack: 250k views??? HOLY CRAP. My advice on this one, if you really hate the video, remake it! on youtube you can reupload an updated version of a video, so why not do that? Re-record the video from start to finish with better commentary and better quality (and more safety notes ) and then upload it in place of the old one. It will retain it's rating and view number, which will attract new viewers, but it will be better quality, which will attract them to your channel. Win win!

This is a good idea.

This is a great idea. I didn't even know this was possible... guess what I'm going to do the minute I have a reasonably good camera!

Thanks for all of the replies guys. I really appreciate it!

-Upsilon

[Endersmens]

Ok hold on. I was sure you could update videos. I'm searching through video editor now and can't seem to find it.

I sure hope I was right. I remember seeing it somewhere. And I know a channel that has a 5 second blurb in the front of every video that changes when they have new news. Like all the videos' first 5 seconds change when they release something new.

hmmm.

EDIT: Aha! Found it! You go to Video manager, click edit on the video you want to edit, then click the enhancements tab, and at the bottom it says "Combine multiple clips and publish new videos. Try the YouTube Video Editor" and you click that button and you can totally delete the video and substitute a new one in it's place! Or you can just edit the existing video. It's really awesome. I'm so glad I wasn't giving false hope!

Edited July 17, 2015 by Endersmens

[Xacktar]

EDIT: Aha! Found it! You go to Video manager, click edit on the video you want to edit, then click the enhancements tab, and at the bottom it says "Combine multiple clips and publish new videos. Try the YouTube Video Editor" and you click that button and you can totally delete the video and substitute a new one in it's place! Or you can just edit the existing video. It's really awesome. I'm so glad I wasn't giving false hope!

This is something I didn't know! Thanks for sharing the how-to on this.

[WinkAllKerb'']

use this wisely: (a tutorial of some sort slighty "remasterised")

notice that you can apply thoose kind of things and process in many way. GL ; )

Edited July 18, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''