This month I’ve been experimenting again to figure out some more improvements to the channel. If you remember last time I mentioned a book called Youtube Formula. I finished reading it and began to put some of what I learned into practise. I went back and re-did some of the thumbnails for my latest videos (with help from some people on twitter – Thank you @SpectrumTinted) I think they do look a lot more professional now.
Last month I said i’d decided to colour code my videos for the different playlists, but after re-working some of the thumbnails, I do think the new style looks a lot cleaner and less amateur, as well as easier to read on a small screen, which is not something I really thought about before… What do you think?
Old:
New:
The youtube formula book helped a lot here too with its detailed reasoning behind thumbnail choices, and example images.
Stats for May:
Im pretty happy with the stats, it’s good to see that watch time is still increasing as thats my main focus. Less subscribers and overall views this month, but I think thats because last month I had two big Wii videos and the Wii is quite popular at the moment.
Now onto this month’s videos!
10 More Wii Hidden Gems
This month began with the final Wii video, which hasn’t done as well as the other two, but I feel like it will continue to pick up over time as more people find the other related videos.
Video Game Pickups #63 – Wii Games, Game Boy Homebrew & More!
Nothing too exciting with this one, it was a simple pickups video, they are always easy to make and people really enjoy seeing what i got recently and hearing my thoughts on the games. I also had a few sponsor things to show off in this episode too. This was the last episode I made before I finished the Youtube Forumla book and began putting some of what I learned into practise, so it will be interesing to compare the stats and how I designed and edited this video compared to the next one.
Here’s the engagement for this video:
You can see that straight after the intro, only 56% of people are still watching. as well as it continually dropping off after that, and a sharp drop at the end. My goal with the next video was to tweak the beginning and end and try to retain peoples interest throughout the entire video.
The average view duration for this video was 10:01, and the video length was 27:09. Average percent viewed was 36.9%
So… did my plans work? Scroll down a bit to find out 🙂
Retro Gaming Holy Grails From Vintage Gamer! – Video Game Pickups #64
And for the next video here’s the retention for this one:
The average view duration this time was 6:51, although the entire video was only 15:15 rather than nearly 30 mins for the last video. This one could have been around the same length but i made sure to cut out all of the extra stuff that didn’t add anything to the video.
This made the Average Percent Viewed 45%, compared to last weeks percentage of 36.9% so I definitely did something right!
As you can see, the tweaked intro definitely worked, with a record 74% of people still watching! It still has a smooth drop off after that, so I need to try and work a bit more on keeping attention up and be less afraid to cut bits out of the video if they don’t add anything. i also tried some new editing techniques this time too which I was pretty happy with! Hopefully I can keep this production quality up in the future! (watch the two videos above back to back to see just how much of a difference the new editing techniques made!)
I also documented my process of making this video over on patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/51687973
Vintage Gamer Shop Tour! A Retro Game Collectors Dream!
The final video for May was a tour of Vintage gamer, not much I can do to try to improve retention with a tour video as they are slow by design, but I know people really enjoy doing some virtual shopping and hearing my commentary about the games on display, so instead I tried my best to make the video as clear as possible, by slowing the footage down and using an effect in final cut called optical flow, which makes the footage a lot smoother, which is great for slowly panning across the shelves here!
I really enjoyed making this kind of video after not being able to for so long! Hopefully if there’s not another lockdown I can start travelling a bit more and do more of these for other retro shops around the UK too!
I’m really happy with how the video has performed in a short time too!
Plans for next month:
Next month I plan to go back to one of my post popular (and favourite) topics, Game Boy Homebrew games! So I hope you look forward to those! I also have the video on the MiSTer to do, as well as a preview for Gaia’s Seed, and a retro indie game that i’ve been given a code to review!
These posts take a long time to put together so I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes look! I think i’ll continue doing these for a year while i’m trying to find my footing and grow on YouTube, hopefully these will be really interesting insights to look back on in the future!
Thanks for reading, If you enjoyed this and want to support me, you can do so on Patreon here – Any money I make on there is going straight back into the channel with better equipment, more storage and buying courses and books like the youtube formula one i’ve been learning from recently! Thanks for all your support so far on this journey!
Nick (RetroBreak)