YouTube views down on your channel - Top 10 FIXES!

YouTube views down on your channel - Top 10 FIXES! play video
Written by: Dexxter Clark
In this episode I’m going to take a look at the top 10 reasons why views go down on your whole channel and how to fix it.
In the next episode I’ll do a step-by-step breakdown in YouTube Analytics to find the problem if you still have no idea why you are losing views on your channel.
[Title: A playlist with all the episodes you can find in the description.]


[bumper]
[intro host]
3.
If you are new, My name is Dexxter Clark from the Netherlands and I’ve been on youtube since 2010.
On this channel I teach long term sustainable YouTube strategies

4.
It wouldn’t be a proper top 10 if we didn’t start at number 14.

4a
It wouldn’t be a proper top 10 if we didn’t start at number 14.
Start with what it’s probably not.

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#13 Temporary dips in views
Just to clear up: dips in views for a couple of days can can always happen and will fix itself automatically.
But in this video I’m talking about dips weeks or months.

6.
#12 Right after upload
If you are new to YouTube, you might not know this, if you’re NOW new skip to number 11.

YouTube gives you an unnatural boost when you upload a video so they can gather data on your Average View Duration, Average Percentage Viewed and Click Through Rate.
Based on this they adjust their promotion.

7.
[screen recording: typical graph]

This boost happens for a couple of hours and totally stops after 1 or 2 days or so.
Then the video is on its own and the daily views go down.
Then after 2,3,4 months videos generally start to gain traction again.
This is very natural process and happens with every video,

8.
but that is not what I want to talk about today.

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#11 Yearly cleanup
On number 11 because it only happens once in a while, and does not extplain a consistent loss of views.

Once every few months YouTube does a cleanup of robo views and robo subscribers.
And all of a sudden your views and subscribers dip.
If you have organic views and subscribers, this won’t hurt you as much and might not even be noticeable.
But it can happen and is nothing to worry about.
The only problem is, is that you don’t know when YouTube does this.

[broll: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2991785?hl=en]

10
#10 Didn’t upload for a while?
Views on a channel gradually go down over time without new uploads.
The upside: it is super easy to fix :)


11.
meat and potatoes

12/
#9 Algorithm changes
Since most creators try to trick the algorithm to get more views, you are the first to get hit by an algorithm update.
You tried to trick the smartest engineers in the world and YouTube caught up on your shenanigans.
YouTube tweaks their algorithm all the time, so it is a rat race with YouTube engineers that you simply can’t win.

13
If you stick to the core principles of YouTube, 95% of algorithm updates won’t impact you.
The core principle of YouTube is: give viewers a good viewing experience and try to make them watch as much as possible,
Over the years I haven’t had many impacts seen on my channels because I always think: “what does youtube want”.

14
If you got hit by an update, try to figure out what the update is and what you can do to counter it in your next videos, please choose a long term strategy.
Try YouTubes blogs or watch the latest videos on the Creator Insider channel ran by YouTube employees.


15.
#8 Change of interest
There could be a change of interest or gradual lack relevancy.
• seasonality (Christmas, Halloween).
• Declining trends: the popularity of an artist declines, other video games are popular.
• in the beginning of the year, videos with last years year in the title will go down.
• Your target audience changed, because you changed. For example: you are making videos about High-school and now you are off to college.
You get older or moving on to the next phase in your life, maybe your audience is not.

16
The fix for these declining views is generally quite easy.
Try to think 2 steps ahead, for example:
• I don’t make seasonal videos
• I don’t make videos depending on trends that can decline
• I always change years in titles or remove them next year


17.
[vlees aardappelen]

18.
Lets get to the meat and the potatoes.

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#7 flow problem
The basic problem with views going down is a flow problem.
Your views are decreasing because your new videos are not compensating for the videos that fall off the wagon at the end.

20.
The best way to counter this, is by making evergreen content.
Evergreen content is content that is relevant for a longer amount of time.
A phone review is only relevant for a year, explaining how a mobile phone works: 10 years.

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In other words: Videos that you produced 5 years ago are still relevant and get views.
Don’t mention things that make a video old quickly, like recent events or dates or years.
The beauty of my retro video game channel is is that videos were relevant 5 years ago and still relevant in 5 years.

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The videos are about old shizzle which is still old in the future but as relevant as it is now.

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[whiteboard: 2 channels: 1 evergreen, 1 news channel. Both have 20 videos with 100 views a day. Cross of the videos that are old next month. New videos releases. This would be in balance even on a news channel. But if both channels loose 1 video and another video. The news channel would be hit harder.
You have simply a larger library that is current and can get views and subscribers.

Evergreen videos build up over time.
With every new video you increase the daily amount of views you get on your channel.
If you do that for a longer amount of time, you create a huge library of videos that are getting daily views.
]

If you keep making short-term-relevancy videos you need to keep making videos into perpetuity to stay relevant, it’s a hamster wheel.
YouTube is the ONLY social media platform that allows evergreen content, otherwise you might as well create videos for instagram, facebook or twitter.

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[white board: Or what about if your new video doesn’t perform?]

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#6 Do you have a broad topic channel?
If you have a broad topic channel, than I’m 90% sure that that is the problem.
Broad topic channels are hard to grow and easy to lose views and subscribers.

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The problem is that viewers subscribe because of 1 type of content or 1 topic and when viewers subscribe: they get something else, in which they are not interested and not reacting to your new videos.
Because your biggest fans (your subscribers) are not interested YouTube won’t promote the videos as much.

27.
For example:
my dj channel does dj and music production tutorials.
But that is exactly the problem: it has 2 target audiences: dj’s and music producers.
Dj’s don’t watch music production tutorials because they don’t understand the stuff, and the music producers don’t watch dj tutorials because they want to see music production tutorials.

28.
Luckily, this one is pretty easy to spot and easy to fix, but it can take a while before the effects become visible: 6 months, a year maybe when you release content on a regular basis.

29.
#5 One tide floats all boats
There is a phenomenon that I don’t hear a lot of YouTube educators talk about,is:
The performance of one video influences the performance of other videos on the channel.
And influences therefore the whole channel in a positive and negative way.

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This influence is bigger when a video is performing well compared to others.
Well performing videos get viewers into your channel en start clicking on other videos.
But when views decrease, so do the amount of clicks (and therefore views) on other videos.

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Most channels have 1,2,3 super performing videos compared to the rest, which is kind of dangerous.
These videos pull the weight of the channel and are responsible for the majority of views and subscribers.

100 + 101
[whiteboard: ]

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I hope you can see that the performance of 1 video can pull a whole short relevancy channel down.
That is quite a burden for every upload, knowing that your ad revenue depends heavily on that video and you have to pay your staff and rent and electricity.


33.
Try to have more well-performing videos on your channel so you can spread the risk.
For example: by making more videos on the same topic as the well-performing video.
This triggers the suggested and home algorithm which is also beneficial for your growth.

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If one of those videos get hit by a downfall in views, the others might pick up the slack a little bit and a decrease in views won’t hit you as hard.

35
Sub+save
If you like the content so far, consider subscribing because I do in depth YouTube strategies on this channel.
Maybe it is useful to save this video in a private playlist with important videos, or bookmark it in your browser, because you are going to need this video somehwere in the future. It is not a question IF it will happen but WHEN it will happen to you.

36.
#4 Less expected watch time than competition
Like I explained in the first episode in this series in which I looked at declining views on 1 video, viewers could take a different viewing path.
This can also happen for multiple videos.

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YouTube suggests videos in home, suggested and search based on the viewing path of videos that leads to the most expected watch time, so YouTube can sell more ads.

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But if new videos are released by competitors that gets YouTube more watch time, your videos are recommended less, and your views go down.
Remember, also Newness of a video is a ranking factor.

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The trick is to find out which videos of the competition take away your views and try to make a new video that:
1) delivers more value to get your average percentage viewed up
2) is longer than the competition to get your watch time up
3) has a title + thumbnail that attracts more clicks than the competition to increase CTR

40
Ow and by the way, changing the title and thumbnail on the existing video that goes down is the only thing you can do after a video is released.
And since making a thumbnail is much less work than creating a whole new video, it is worth a shot to try that first.

41
You could try and focus on less competitive keywords in the future.
Because competitive keywords generally attract competitors who try to outperform you.

42.
If I would try to rank for “how to get more views on youtube” which is the most competitive search term in this niche, even I would rank number one, I wouldn’t be number one for long.
I have a target on my back, my competitors will go above and beyond to dethrone me from my number one position.

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#3 Your audience gets bored
You make the same type of content, presented in a certain way, edited in a certain pace and a certain style.
But herein hides also the danger that your audience calls “Boring”.

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Let’s say you blow stuff up on your channel.
How many things can you blow up, before it gets repetitive and boring for the audience?

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And this is problematic because we can’t see how we can get out of this, because we don’t know anything else, this is what we’ve always done.
This is where my coaching sessions can help, because I can see things from an outside perspective.
If you are interested, a link to request a session is in the description below.

46
Experiment with new styles, type of content, different topics on your channel.
For example on a dj channel:
I can do dj tutorials in a certain style, but I could also do interviews with djs about their career, or about their work or tricks, I could do motivational videos for djs, do a documentary on a life of a dj or go on tour with a dj.
Those are all variations on the channel topic djing.

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#2 You get bored
You get bored and it shines though on camera.
This is what happened with my dj channel.
I lost my passion for djing and music production and slowly I started to avoid certain topics unconsciously … and the views on my videos slowly started to decline.

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If that happens to you, then try different things to get out of the rut, like I said earlier: try to find different topics or different styles that your audience might like.
Don’t make an 180 degree turn, because it will alienate your audience even further.

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Personally, I haven’t found my jam yet on my DJ channel and to take my mind of things I started a very vague YouTube channel called Social Video Plaza, you might have heard of it…

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#1 Your new videos get less views than before.
What did you change?
It could be that you did do something different in your videos than you did before.
This can be a change that happened 2,3,6 months ago, that is now slowly starting to affect viewership.

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This can be happening for a plethora of reasons.
You have to ask yourself the big question: what you did change over the last 3 months/6 months that might repel my current audience

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for example:
• Did you switch topics?
• do you edit in another way,?
• do you have a different style of thumbnails?
• Do you say stuff in videos lately, that viewers might not like?
• Do you do stuff differently lately, that viewers might not like?

53.
The algorithm works with something called “expected watch time”.
In other words it estimates that viewers won’t be interested, it won’t promote your videos as much.
If your last 5- 10 videos are not resonating with your core audience, youtube expects less interest on your next video.

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Youtube adjusts its promotion based on Average View Duration, Average Percentage Viewed or Click Through Rate.
If one of those goes down compared to what you did before, it might hurt your promotion.

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photo author dexxter clark
Dexxter Clark
Music Producer / YouTuber

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