How I Got More Views as a Small YouTuber!
This image is a screenshot of my 18 most viewed videos on my current YouTube channel. As of writing this, I just got 600 subscribers and I’ve been running this channel for a little over a year. One of the things that I constantly try to do is figure out what I can do in my niche (Nerd Culture) to increase the viewership on my channel without stifling my creativity or my morals.
So here we are — these are most viewed videos. These are also the answers to how you can get more views as a small YouTuber.
I’m gonna go through most of these videos and show you exactly why they have more views than everything I else I have and how you can implement similar strategies to your channel.
This is a classic example of “how-to” content and trending topics.
I knew that Dark Souls Remastered would be coming out soon, so I created a tutorial for beginner players and it ended up being my most viewed video at 4,700+ views.
Keep in mind that this channel had been around for 8 months, it had a little over 100 subscribers at the time, but it still performed better than everything else I had done.
When you utilize trending topics and how-to content, you’re able to give value at a time where a lot of people need help.
I also did my best at SEO and using VidIQ, I’m still ranking high for certain tags:
2. Scooby-Doo Movie Review (2002) | RECAP
Before I started my current content strategy (which you can read about here!) I had a show called “RECAP” where I would recap and review movies.
One of the first movies I decided to cover was the original live-action Scooby-Doo movie, because it was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Little did I know, it would garner over 4000+ views over the past year.
For a couple of months, this only had about 20 views or so and yet, it turns out, that certain videos grow over time.
This is why it’s important to also create videos that are evergreen. This is content that can be searched for 10 years from now and still have the same value.
Once again, using VidIQ, we have tags that are ranking super well, because not many people have talked about this movie:
If you can do videos about topics that you’re passionate about, there’s always a chance that you’ll cover that not a lot of other people have covered, which is why I never throw out a video idea.
Just because you think it won’t do well — doesn’t mean that’s the case.
3. The Future of the Internet: A World Without Net Neutrality
Bad thumbnail aside (because it’s honestly unreadable), this was a video that I did in November 2017, because Net Neutrality was a pressing issue and I wanted to try to do my part.
Obviously, none of us could save Net Neutrality, put I’m still proud of this video.
It did well for a number of reasons:
- I shared it with one of my favorite Twitch Streamers with a small donation. This got it over 100 views within the first hour of the upload. If you’re able to get a ton of views within the first hour, your video will do better in the long run.
- This was a trending topic at the time.
- This was an important topic at the time.
Unfortunately, this is a dead video now. Since the topic isn’t relevant, it won’t really gain many views in the future, but I’m okay with that, because I wanted to get the point across during the time that I uploaded it.
This means that trending topics are important to get a hold of, but keep in mind that after a while, those videos won’t get any more views.
4–7. Final Destination Movie Reviews
This is similar to my Scooby-Doo movie review, but there are some core differences.
Before these videos, I had never done a single movie review, but I decided to do something different.
What I didn’t realize was that these videos would end up doing as well as they have.
Again, there’s key takeaways here:
- These are movies that aren’t discussed much on YouTube, so I’m providing content in less saturated areas.
- I did an entire movie franchise. There’s technically 5 videos here (1 of them recently got taken down because of copyright), which has allowed people to watch them back-to-back.
- They’re evergreen. They’ve each reached almost 1000 views a piece over the span of a year. I have no doubt that they’ll continue to gain more views in the future, because they haven’t slowed down at all.
I wanted to make these videos simply because I wanted to. I had no intentions of them doing well, they just also happened to do so. Always push to make the videos that you want to make.
8. FBE vs H3H3 — Does Seinfeld Hold Up? | YOUR EVERYDAY NERD
This is the video that I’m the most excited about right now.
Around October 2018, I started a brand new show called “Your Everyday Nerd.” I wanted to create something that allowed me to make daily videos that I wouldn’t be burnt out on, but would still allow me to be as creative as I wanted to and cover as many nerd culture related things as I could. (Again, you can read about how I made this show here!)
This is the most successful video in this series, which currently has over 60+ episodes. It’s also the first video that will reach 1000 views.
Here’s why it’s so successful:
- It’s about a show that doesn’t have that many videos surrounding it. Seinfeld is something that’s not talked about everyday on YouTube.
- This one’s the most important. A big YouTube channel (FBE) made a controversial video about Seinfeld. Another big YouTube channel (H3H3) made a commentary video about that controversial video. I took this controversial debate and used it as a framework to watch Seinfeld for the first time and review it on my show.
In other words, this was a trending topic of a TV show that doesn’t have a lot of reviews about it.
This tells me that I should utilize the YouTube community as much as I can, as a framework of reviewing things within nerd culture.
It also tells me to continue doing what I’m doing — which is reviewing literally anything that I want to review. If it’s an old 90’s sitcom and I want to talk about it, there’s a chance that not many people have covered it, so it’ll probably do better than other videos.
Once again, I’ll never shy away from an idea, because you never know what kind of content will do better, just because not many people have covered it.
Once again, almost all of the tags are ranking well:
The funny thing is, I did this video a few weeks after the original FBE and H3H3 videos went out. This was also originally supposed to go out on a Thursday, but it ended up going out on a Saturday. I even got comments from some of my friends telling me that I put out the video on a wrong day:
This tells me that it’s okay to put out a video later than you intended, as long as the video is good and evergreen. Even after people stop talking about the FBE vs H3H3 thing, people are still gonna be looking for Seinfeld reviews.
9. How-To Get Through Your Gaming Backlog
This one is similar to the Dark Souls video. I wanted to try to get through my own gaming backlog and so, after I did a bunch of research, I put together a video with all of that research.
This is a how-to video. It’s as simple as that.
The tags have also ranked okay for certain terms:
10. Film Theory: THIS ISN’T THE REAL SZECHUAN SAUCE?!
Here we have a video that did well for a few months, then stopped performing and it’s pretty obvious why.
This was a trending topic 11 months ago. I knew that people would be talking about Rick and Morty and the Szechuan sauce, so I created a parody of Film Theory.
This did well, because:
- It was a trending topic.
- It was a parody of a big YouTuber.
What most people don’t know is that this is one video that I also promoted the hell out of.
I created a similar picture of the thumbnail and put it on Instagram. I then commented on a ton of pictures on Instagram and Twitter of people that had just gotten the Szechuan sauce and told them that “it wasn’t the real sauce.”
This got a lot of people confused, but it also got them to check out the video, a lot of which had mentioned in the comments that it was funny. Which was the entire point.
11. How to Mathematically (and Practically) Get 4000 Hours of Watch Time on YouTube As A Small Creator
This one does a lot of the same things that we talked about before.
- It was a trending topic. I made this right when YouTube changed their policy for watch time.
- It’s a how to video, so it’ll always keep getting views as long as YouTube doesn’t change their watch time policies again.
The last thing that really helped this one is that I cross-promoted it with an article that I wrote on the same topic.
In fact, this article is my best performing article with over 50,000 views:
12. These Special Features Weren’t On The Shrek 2 DVD | Best Buy Exclusives 2004
This video is so incredibly specific that I expected it to get 0 views or a few hundred.
When you get into video ideas that are very specific — it allows for a niche audience to find them.
The tags show that it ranks for certain things, so I know that if anybody is looking for this Shrek 2 CD-Rom (for whatever reason that may be), that they’ll most likely find this video.
13. What’s Wrong With The Big Bang Theory? | YOUR EVERYDAY NERD
Here we have a video that I think will probably do better in the future, but as for the 500+ views it has so far, those were actually from a shout-out.
I work as a freelance editor for a handful of bigger YouTubers and one of them shared this video with his audience in the community tab.
14. Final Destination Franchise Retrospective | RECAP
This is the same as the other Final Destination videos. The only difference is that it’s a 2.5 hour podcast. For the handful of people that listened to it all the way through, I’m sure that the watch time it has garnered has also promoted it more whenever anybody is looking for Final Destination.
15. Every Episode of The Flash Season 1 Reviewed in 15 Words or Less
Here we have a video series idea, that if I did more of them, they would definitely get more views in the long run.
The whole “Reviewed in 15 words or less” is a gimmick that definitely interested the people who watched this one.
I also shared this in a couple of subreddits (on Reddit) which boosted the viewership during the first 48 hours.
16. Nintendo the History: The Beginning
You’ll notice that a lot of these videos are all fairly different from each other and that’s because I experimented a lot in the first year of my current channel.
Nintendo the History was a show that I started almost 6 years ago, but after a long hiatus, I brought it back last year (for only a single episode…) and the first episode did pretty well.
This was also shared on subreddits and social media and it’s a unique enough concept that would definitely do well when/if I make it reoccuring.
17. Do your choices ACTUALLY matter in Telltale’s The Walking Dead
This video came out when Season 4 of Telltale’s The Walking Dead released. I also shared it on Social Media a lot and it ranked in tags for a while.
Here we have the classic case of — controversial content.
This is such a bizarre video and honestly one of my best. It’s comedic and out there and caused a lot of people that watched it, to share it with their friends.
I also knew that one of my close YouTube friends has a community that loves Pokemon, so it got more views within the first 24 hours than most of my videos.
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And that’s it! 18 videos, each a bit different, all with some core guidelines on why they did well.
Of course, these are still small numbers to a lot of bigger channels, but keeping in mind that all of these videos got significantly more views than the amount of subscribers on the channel — you should be able to use these principles to get more views on your YouTube channel.
A few takeaways are:
- Never throw away an idea. You never really know what will do well.
- How-To and Tutorial content will almost always do well. Provide value!
- Trending topics will do well in the short-term, but if you can find ways to make them evergreen — they’ll also do well in the long-term.
- A video’s performance can grow over time. Don’t be discouraged at a low view count.
- Find content that is easily shareable. If a video is really good — people will share it.
- If you’re still a young channel — experiment with your content.
Hopefully this will help you as you grow your channel! If you’re interested in the content that I do, feel free to check it out here. Leave any questions you may have in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
