YouTube views down? No problem, Try THIS!

It happens to all YouTubers, you are not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last.
[screenrecording: video read script camera]
I recently had a video that was going super well and all of a sudden it starts going down. Within 10 days I dropped from 213 views to 76 views per day.
Let’s take a look at what happens WHEN this happens and I show you the hack that I used to battle this.

[bumper]
[intro host]

2
Hi my name is Dexxter Clark from the Netherlands and this channel is all about expoding your YouTube growth.
I’m glad that I started a new channel instead of switch my dj channel with 30K subs, because this is just the kind of video topic that I bump into myself and can make videos about it, because I’m a small youtuber again.

3
what happens
Ok, Let’s first look at what happens when your views on a video go down

If you remember my algorithm 101 video, youtube promotes your video to a bigger group of viewers when your CTR is good and your watch time is good.
But the same happens backwards.

4
[screen recording: ]
This is my no-teleprompter video that went down.
In the case of my no-teleprompter video I could see the views go down.
I can explain this by looking at the CTR, I see less and less people clicking on the video.
If you are still in doubt about the relation between views and CTR, look at this graph.

YouTube adjusted its promotion based on the CTR.
But the video didn’t change, the thumbnail didn’t change, the title didn’t change.
As I explained in my ctr video, you cant compare ctrs between videos.
The youtube gurus say you can, I say you can’t.
Here the ctr was 2%, here it is 15% and nothing has changed.
The CTR video is in the description.

5.
There are basically 2 causes for this downfall depending on different traffic sources

1. when your main traffic source is search, you are probably bumped off your current position in the ranking by another creator.
This happens for a couple of reasons
A) their video is newer, youtube prefers newer content
B) their CTR is higher than yours
c) their Watch time is higher than yours
d) all of the above

Remember my algorithm 101 video?
YouTube wants to sell ads, it chooses the videos that keeps viewers longer on the platform so they can sell the most ads.

6.
[screen recording: DAW video]
This happened to this video.
I was ranking #1 for 2 years for the search term: best daw.
Then someone took my place, and even then someone else took 2nd place.
These videos are newer and might have higher CTRs, but looking at the thumbnails and the length of these videos, especially the thumbnail of no2, I was purely dethroned based on watch time.

7.
2. when your main traffic source is suggested, something else is probably going on:

8.
[DRAW: points/dots that are videos, draw a line from point to point (the path that viewers follow). One of those dots is your video. Draw another path from dot naar dot and leave out your video]

youtube found another path of videos that leads to more watch time.
That path doesn’t include your video.

Part of this path you can see in your YouTube Analytics:
• suggested-videos per video basis:
(YouTube Studio -> Content -> [your video] -> Analytics -> tab: reach -> sec-tion: “Traffic source: Suggested videos”)
• top suggested-videos over the whole channel:
(YouTube Studio -> Analytics -> tab: reach -> section: “Traffic source: Sug-gested videos”)
• viewers-watched-also
(YouTube Studio -> Analytics -> tab: Audience -> section: “Other videos that your audience watched”)

9
Algo vid.
I highly recommend you check out my playlist about the youtube algorithm, if you haven’t already.
It paints a much clearer picture of what is going inside that magical black box called the algorithms.
The link is in the description.

10
Eggs basket
ON most YouTube channels, there are 1 or 2 video that are performing very well.
Those videos provide the most growth.
This is dangerous, you put all your eggs in one basket, because if that video goes down, you will loose most of your views and your growth.
So try to make multiple videos that perform well, so you’ll spread the risk.
Maybe videos around the same topic of the well performing video, this also might trigger suggested.

11
solution
What can we do about it?
Make another video similar in topic that can serve as a replacement or follow up.

12
DAW video
[screen recording]
That is exactly what I would do if I want to take my spot back.
I’ll make a replacement video with the same title, that is at least 15 minutes long (longer than the competition).
First: I have some reputation in the algorithm around these search keywords.
Second: I know that I can rank for these search terms, because I’ve done it in the past

13
Teleprompter video
[screen recording]
With my camera performance video I took a slightly different approach.
I looked at the search keywords.
Again, I know that I can rank for this.
But this time, I made an extension of the popular video.
I’m trying to trigger the suggested so get the CTR back up, after all viewers who are interested in the no- teleprompter video might be interested in how to read a script naturally on camera.

Video ideas you can find by looking at the keywords of the video that the views are going down.
You can also look at the suggested-videos and audience-watched-also in Youtube analytics.

And I had the be quick … very quick, once this trend starts, it is hard to stop, I want to stop this downfall before it hits zero.

What I did:
• The videos have almost identical titles.
• I put both videos in a playlist,
• I put the link to the first video in the description and
• as a pinned comment
• as cards
• I refer in the end screen back to the video that has gone down.
Hopefully a lot of viewers will follow the path of the breadcrumbs that I’ve laid out, so the suggested algorithm or the home algorithm picks it up.
The first signs are pretty hopeful.

If it holds up? Only time will tell.
Especially on a small channel it can take days or weeks for youtube to figure out the most optimal path for viewers, because there are so little views on a small channel like this.
You can even see it reconfiguring itself in the 48h graph, with high spikes and low dips.
You can almost hear its little digital brain thinking, but … but .. but … what the F just happened. If it was a baby, it would cry right now
[screenshot: reconfigure itself]

In all honesty that the fact that you release a video at all might give other videos on the channel, a slight bump inluding the video that went down, this is even more so when you release 2 videos in rapid succession, like I did here.
But you when you release a related video, you increase the chance that the suggested algorithms picks it up and turns things around are much higher.

Also, this trick works better on a bigger channel than a small channel.
Simply because the algorithm has more data to learn from.
If you have 100 views a day, and 3 viewers are clicking over, the algorithm might not recognize a pattern because it might be lost in the noise.
Is it a pattern or a coincidence?
But when you have 100.000 views a day and 3000 viewers click over, that is a clear pattern that the algorithm can’t ignore.

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Dexxter Clark
Music Producer / YouTuber

YouTube views down? No problem, Try THIS!

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