Channel Update - December 2022 | The script is ready | channel problems

Hello there! Wishing you a merry Christmas and happy holidays! 🎅

December became a nightmare for me. I don't remember when was the last time I relaxed. I was either working or doing something for the channel. Yes, it sounds kinda exhausting, but I've achieved tons of progress lately:

1. Manhunt - Anti-piracy measures

I've finished the script for this video and I've sent it to a narrator. 

As you can see the video is going to be massive and it will take some time to brew it, but I am not afraid of it. The information I am going to cover is solid, because it was proven by looking at the game's code. Damn these anti-piracy measures are brutal. 

The script was also checked by at least one dude, who is the biggest Manhunt fan and knows its lore. A lot of stuff was corrected before I've even sent the script. Less headache in the future for me, he he.

One of my biggest concern was that the game is too gory for YouTube. Not a big deal anymore as my friend was very kind to make it less gory by reducing the blood level in the game. Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but no one wants to fight with YouTube and their stupid policies they don't explain. I've received +18 flag in the past just for showing Candy Suxxx's poster. Also had o blur gory head shot. Not a single anti-piracy measure involves blood, so not a big deal, I guess. Not sure what to do with the executions for now...

But anyways, can't wait to get VO and start working on this video! It should be fun and challenging.

2. Channel migration

But before working on the aforementioned video, I have to finish the channel migration. If you follow me on Twitter or via YouTube community tab, then you know that I decided to migrate all my Russian content to another channel. The reason is simple, YouTube doesn't appreciate multilingual channels and it was always a headache for me in the past. It always slowed down the growth and I should have done it a long time ago. 

People sometimes miss-clicked on a video and abandoned it. YouTube sees it as "uninteresting" or "click bait" content and promotes videos less. I always knew about it, but my partner program manager said, that it wasn't a big deal, because I've done a great job making two videos distinguishable. That was 5 years ago.

YouTube doesn't promote my videos right. I've created a new account on my Android TV and watched random English videos on random channels. Then I decided to see how my channel looks on a TV. YT offered me to watch Russian videos for no apparent reason. It was one year ago. Back then I thought that I can't fix it and I have to deal with it. I wonder how many people had missed my videos, because they were promoted having a different language...

Some time ago I also noticed that English community of my channel became bigger and more popular than Russian counterpart. You can perfectly see it by looking at the views and I can perfectly see it by looking at the metrics.

The metrics can also be viewed by my partner program and one day they became worried. You know, if the channel is doing fine and grows, they earn more money. When the channel is going downhill, they earn less money and want to improve the situation. So one day my partner program manager had contacted me and said that they noticed a downtrend in my channel metrics. They recommended me to split my channel into two separate channels. The reason for that was the new YouTube algorithms. They warned me if I don't do it, then I would face bigger problems in the future. 

Back then I didn't care much, because:

1. I thought that I won't do YouTube videos forever.

2. Metrics were kinda fine to me.

3. I was afraid of mass unsubs and mass migration.

Damn, I was a fool. Russian part of my channel became a tumor. As I was warned, recommendations became totally broken. I think, YouTube wanted to improve views on Russian videos and started to promote them to English audience and then gave up. As a result, all metrics went to sht. Every single time I visited analytics, I saw "you were doing better in the past". This is despite the fact that I recently released a new video. New videos didn't do well and according to the metrics, weren't really promoted. My motivation went to sht. I became depressed. I thought that my content doesn't impress people anymore and had thoughts of quitting YouTube. Then I was suddenly blessed to make that Manhunt video.

While working on the script, my partner program manager had contacted me again and asked me if I still don't want to do it. After that it all started to make sense for me. I realized that the channel is going downhill and there is no way of fixing it unless I do what I was told to.

YouTube is like a hobby to me. I have a full-time job (actually two) and I am doing videos during my free time. But it is kinda sad to see that videos recently became less recommended and less viewed. It was never so bad. So I thought what would I loose if I migrate one part of the community to another channel. Nothing, I guess. 

For three long weeks I've looking through my sources and re-rendering my older videos to upload them on another channel. The first phase of the migration is done. All Russian videos without VO are already up and running on a new channel and hidden on my main. 

I must say that one language channel looks so clean. It doesn't look like garbage when you don't know where to click to watch videos in a preferred language. Damn, I wanted to do it for so many years, but I always had a fear of doing that. What a damn fool I was...

But anyways, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season! Thank you for supporting me and I hope to see you soon.