YT Insights #4 – Busting 10 YouTube Myths

There is an endless stream of terrible advice about YouTube floating around the internet, especially in places where you would think you’d find the right answers, like the ‘PartneredYoutube’ and ‘NewTubers’ subreddits.

Today I will bust the most common myths and misconceptions about YouTube.

*I’ll be using several channels as examples in this post. It is NOT my intention to call out anyone’s mistakes. In fact, I would recommend you go and watch their channels, precisely because they make fantastic content.

1. One Bad Video Will Hurt Your Channel

This is one of the biggest fears that stops people from uploading. But ‘Channel Performance’ is NOT a real metric.

The Algorithm doesn’t look at how your Channel, or even how your Last Video performed. This is a myth that is often perpetuated by small YouTubers who are struggling to get views. Here is the most important piece of information I can give you:

Every. Video. Is. Judged. Individually.

It is true. The algorithm will gauge the performance of each video individually, and decide if it pushes it or not based on how your video fares against similar videos in the same niche.

I could actually make my next video about Splatoon gameplay, in my 'Art' channel. And if the idea for the video, and the package to convey that idea (title and thumbnail) is fantastic, the video WILL do well. Regardless of if my channel “is about art”.

Don’t believe me?
Here’s JP Art’s channel.

They make just as much Clip Studio & Art content as they make Splatoon videos. 

Look at the views they are getting. 

The problem with this?

Those audiences don’t mix. Which is why they have a low number of subscribers in my opinion for the number of views they get on their videos.

So the algorithm doesn’t look at your past videos. But you know who does? Your audience.

If your next video is not something the core audience you’re building would watch, it’ll have trouble taking off. My recommendation is:

Same audience = Same Channel. 

Different Audience = Different Channel.

So if you want to explore multiple topics that feel too broad from one another, it might be better to start a second channel (I would still encourage you to focus on only 1 channel until it takes off).

2. Big Youtubers always get millions of views on every upload, regardless of what it is.

If every video is judged individually, why do big Youtubers always get millions of views regardless of what the video is about?

First, this is simply not true. Let me prove it.

Here’s DodfordYT’s channel.

In their latest uploads they went from 1.9 million views > 1.7 million > 1.1 million > 665k > 4.6 million and their next video failed to reach 80k views. Same niche, same audience, same format. 

Why did it failed? 

Because every video is judged individually by the algorithm. It probably didn’t picked his audience’s interest as much as the others, or people didn’t watch as long as the others.

There ARE channel that feel guaranteed to get millions of views regardless of what they upload, and here’s why:

They managed to convince their audience that every video they make will deliver high-value content to them.

If you build an habit with your community where they just know your value proposition and that you will deliver, then your core audience will always watch your videos. As long as you don’t break this ‘contract’ with them.

It is the reason why Mr. Beast would never get a video with less than 100k views. Because he has convinced millions of people that his videos are worth their time, and he keeps delivering on it.

Its also the reason why channels like MoistCr1tikal (penguinz0) can basically do whatever they want and still get views. His audience knows his value proposition and he delivers on it on every video.

Is there a world where I (me, Manu) will struggle to get to 10k views on one of my videos? Absolutely (especially since I want to experiment with future topics). I still haven’t built enough of that trust with my audience. But I hope to reinforce it with every video I upload, which is why I always aim for Quality over Quantity.

Be persistent with your Quality and Patient with your videos.

3. Comments do not matter.

This is 100% true. Asking your viewers to ‘comment on the video’ for engagement is a waste of time. 

Remember when PewDiePie went through the Fiverr controversy? He turned all comments off in his videos for several months, way longer than the news uptick would’ve lasted.
He saw absolutely no punishment in his videos’ performance. Comments do not matter to the algorithm.

Then why does Youtube keep comments around? Why would you ask your viewers to ‘comment on the video’?

Comments are the only tools we have to create a bond with our viewers, and to foster a sense of Community between them. It can also give you feedback on what to improve, or give you new ideas for videos.

4. ‘Subscribers’ and ‘Likes’ are Worthless (Vanity Metrics).

This is not entirely true, but very close to being true.

Let’s start with Likes and Dislikes:

What the algorithm looks for are signs of engagement from the viewer. Both a Dislike and a Like mean the same for the algorithm. Engagement is what matters. However, while engagement is important, Likes do still matter to some extent, as it shows Viewer Satisfaction. YouTube uses likes to measure the popularity of a video, and this can affect how it is promoted.

Subscribers, on the other hand:

It IS a vanity metric.

There are channels with millions of subscribers whose content is stuck in 2010s formats and barely get views on their uploads. If your content doesn’t evolve as the platform changes, then subscribers become worthless.

Having someone subscribe doesn’t even guarantee they are going to see your video. It is just another form of showing engagement to the algorithm, albeit stronger than Likes and Dislikes. Think of Subscribing as a ‘Like’ for the entire channel, rather than a single video.

If a video does make a lot of people subscribe, I notice they tend to do better in the algorithm.

BUT, even while knowing this I personally don’t make any calls to subscribe during my videos, as people tend to immediately skip through the video when you do, hurting the AVD. That’s why you’ll never hear me say ‘subscribe’ in any of my videos.

I do show a small graphic / animation to ‘subscribe’ to the channel. Usually after a big moment in the video, giving them a lot of value, or talking about future videos I’m planning on making. This way it feels more natural, people don’t fast forward, and I don’t really have to ‘say it’.

5. Video Tags are Important

Video Tags are Absolutely Worthless. Youtube even tells you themselves. Tags’ importance is a big myth people keep perpetuating.

First of all, tags are hidden in your upload, unless you actually deploy an extra menu. They would never do this if they mattered.

And people have run several tests proving that tags are not even searchable (meaning if you use a very specific strand of numbers i.e 10239418 in your tags, and then search for ‘10239418’ in youtube search, your video will not show up). Use them if you feel the title of your video can be misspelled, as its how youtube suggests them be used.

6. Time of the day for uploads is important

Time of the day for uploads does not matter. The reason is as we have shown before, most views come in the upcoming months after your upload.

You can still check at what time your viewers are likely to be in the platform, on your Analytics.

This might be important for channels who target kids as you don’t want to upload while they are in school. Or for channels who keep a daily or weekly schedule, where your viewers are waiting religiously for your upload at a certain time. 

But aside from cases like that you can upload whenever and it won’t impact your video.

7. You should let YouTube make Automatic Captions

Captions matter a lot! NEVER leave your videos with 'just' the automatic captions!

It is part of the info the algorithm uses to understand your video. Yet the automatic captioning is very prone to mistakes, it can even get your video demonetized if it mis-transcribes what you’re saying.
I recommend you make captioning yourself. Both Adobe Premiere and Davinci Resolve have A.I based captioning that you can check in software and then upload as a SRT when you are uploading your video.

8. If I stop posting, youtube will punish my channel.

Simply not true. Again, Channel performance is not a metric.

And there are several examples of channels who post once a month, all the way to once a year, and still do insanely well.

What might hurt is your audience moving on to other channels, so you’ll have to build a new one. This is natural on Youtube, as interests are ever-changing in viewers.

The key is not assuming people have watched your other videos when making them. Always think of this being the first video someone will watch, which is what happens when it pops off in the algorithm.

Just worry about making the best videos possible and uploading them when they are ready.

9. Having mid-roll Ads hurts your video’s Retention (AVD).

This gets into the kind of ads you can run in a youtube video, which I’ll explain on another post.

All you need to know is midroll ads run in the middle of your video, interrupting it, and some people think this may cause people to close the video and leave.

First of all, you don’t even need to decide where you place them. A lot of people worry about placing them manually, but YT is super smart about this and has trained it’s AI to find the perfect places in the video to place them. They even tell you its better to let them do their thing than trying to manually do it, and performance data backs them up.

The second thing that worries people is you may see several ad placements in the video. And may think this means Youtube will show an ad to your viewers in that spot. Having a midroll or preroll enabled doesn’t mean YT is guaranteed to show a viewer an ad.

This is due to Viewer Satisfaction. Youtube has a system that prevents viewers from being spammed by ads, so if they have recently seen one, they need to watch a certain amount of content before they can even get a new one shown to them. Which is why it doesn’t matter how many ads are placed in your timeline. They will only be shown an ad when youtube is sure it won’t harm this viewer’s experience.

So the bottomline is: Ads don’t affect a video’s performance.

When you see an ad you think ‘this is youtube showing me an ad’, you don’t go ‘this *sshole Manu is showing me an ad, what a b*stard’. No need to worry.

I have looked at my retention and its impossible to pin point where the midroll is suppose to run, it literally has no discernable impact on retention.

It has also been confirmed that the algorithm has no data entry point to know if a video is monetized or not. So videos which are Not monetized will also not be punished by the algorithm.

Videos do get punished by the algorithm when they ‘not suitable for ads’ which means they deal with content that needs an user to be logged in to watch, and to confirm their age.

10. Clickbait is a bad thing

It is not.

We all “use” clickbait in our titles and thumbnails.

The key is to actually deliver on what you promise. Even if it sounds crazy, then its not really 'clickbait' is it?

I hope you're enjoying these Youtube Insights as much as I'm enjoying writing them!

Talk soon!