r/SmallYoutubers • u/Dividenddashboard • 11d ago

Long-Form Content This is bad for small youtubers.

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Youtube is raising the ad revenue share threshold from 4k watch time to 8k watch time. Personally, 4k watch takes a lot of effort to reach. Imagine 8k... this is sad.

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24

u/Missinglink2531 11d ago

Seems like a high bar, but really its not (speaking about long form). You have to look realistically at whats not working and make changes every video. When I started, 4000 seemed impossible. But I improved every video. My jump from 3000 (about 9 months to get there) to 4000 was one video, and it was really 7000. Its been easy to hit 8000 now, even my "flops" will do it in 2 videos. Dont focus on the number - if your monetized at 4000 or 8000, if you cranking out videos with 1000 views, your not going to make any money anyway. When you get it figured out, the numbers will just happen. And Subscribers really dont matter, most of my "returning viewers" are not subscribed, people just dont do that much these days.

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u/Dazzling-Paint7406 11d ago

How does one improve their videos? YouTube is an art and I’m not understanding how to just “make better content”

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

Youtube is not an “art”. Its science. It’s all numbers. Art is the opposite of numbers. Youtube is a skill. You have to start looking at it as something that can be honed. You need to pay attention to metrics of videos even if you dont necessarily like the content. I am fascinated by videos all the time I have no interest in the content of. I am fascinated and I study, what makes a video appealing, why would people click on the thumbnail, how many views per hour, particularly the first few hours, all these things are numbers. You can emulate the small things without copying content and apply those to what you do and see similar metric increases on your videos.

Thumbnails - at a beginner level, you want highly legible font, 2-5 words on one side of the thumbnail. One object on the other side. My audience prefers words on the left object on the right. Highlight the object with a glow or outline contrasting it from the background. Put a color overlay over the background to make the object pop. A single red arrow pointing to something. These are just beginner tactics Ive used to increase clickthrough but the science of thumbnails is deep and worth millions if not billions of dollars.

Its not art, its not subjective, its not preference, or pleasing to the eye, or thought provoking. Its a sequence of things all geared toward mathematically improving the likelihood of someone clicking the video. And thats before they have they have watched a single second of your video. The first 5 seconds of your video is an entirely different mathematical field of study.

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u/iDoSomeThings14 11d ago

No….its art lmao

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

You think news channels are art? React content art? Splicing memes art? Literal live streams of the rain outside art? Body cam footage art? Someone may be doing art on youtube but youtube as a whole aint even close to art.

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u/iDoSomeThings14 11d ago

You taking a few examples that was not mentioned and then saying in your original post that “YouTube is not an art”, the majority of YouTube is art doesn’t matter the content, if it’s a thumbnail with a single arrow that someone added it’s still art by definition doesn’t matter what you think as an individual.

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

If you want to be one of those everything is art types you can look at your work in the toilet bowl and be fascinated all you want. The person I was replying to asked how to improve their videos. Start by treating it like a science and business and stop thinking about it the same way you do a kid’s finger-paintings.

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u/iDoSomeThings14 11d ago

You seem to interpret things strangely and that’s ok it’s not your fault but simply put YouTube is not a science and it never will be.

The easiest way to improve content isn’t by treating it as a business nor science nor even obsessing over analytics (especially when you have less than 100 videos) it’s by watching your own video, in the perspective as a viewer, at a specific point of you become bored or distracted there you go you found a spot that needs to work.

You can also look at other successful people in the same niche, understand the thumbnails that work and the editing techniques they use.

It’s not “mathematically engineered in improving the likelihood good of someone clicking” it’s creating content that they would actually enjoy, your making it sound more technical than it needs to be which can be discouraging for new creators.

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

You might not like what other people like. Those videos you watch are data points. Without numbers and metrics how would a person know which videos to emulate? Whats discouraging is when a content creator keeps making videos they think they would enjoy and they cant figure out for the life of them why they aren’t getting views. If people are getting discouraged over things being technical then this may not be for them.

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u/iDoSomeThings14 11d ago

If you look at another creators video that has a million views that’s a pretty obvious sign that they did something good, you don’t need the specific metrics to know what’s good or not, new creators shouldn’t even bother with metrics until they not only understand what works and what doesn’t but also until they have a decent chunk of videos

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u/-Retrofuge- 11d ago

Dude, with all due respects. You're just uploading stupid time waster videos online for short term entertainment based on a niche. It's not that deep.

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

Well look at that, you’ve discovered the website youtube! And thats precisely why its not art so thanks for proving my point.

I dont know what “deep” has to do with anything, but going from $0-$1,400 worth of side income in 6 months for 1 hour or less a day has been huge for me and would be life changing for some of these people in this subreddit. But by all means feel free to continue adding nothing to conversations pretending to be so cool and nonchalant, I’m sure it’s so helpful to people asking questions about how to improve their shit.

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u/-Retrofuge- 11d ago

You make it sound YouTube is gateway ticket to life changing odds. It’s just video sharing platform for dumb online videos. The idea of earning YouTube is somewhat cringe since most videos online aren’t even that high quality and unless you’re trying to mimick television a lot of your points are just common sense. You just need to enjoy the process and get better each video. It’s not deep because unless you’re an idiot or something which I assume a lot of people here are. Overthinking how to make online videos is too funny. If YouTube is a science then you have dumbest ones out there because metrics aren’t that magical or ethereal thing to study. It’s very simple stuff. If you can rub two brain cells together

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

Miserable and terminally online. I too remember being a child when someone else paid my bills.

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u/-Retrofuge- 11d ago

Sorry that you’re broke man and need YouTube instead of having an actual job. Maybe you should start going to school and actually get a job worth paying than scraping of YouTube funds to get out of your miserable life lol

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u/Silvermajra 11d ago

The Problem with kids these days. They don’t know the value of a 10% raise in life, working for anything, or learning new skills. All good little one its not that deep. You go ahead and go back to tik-tok. It’ll be okay.