4 ms·

I’m amazed at how much production goes into each of his videos. His YouTube play button is well deserved.

by 1-6 2y ago

doe_eyes 2y ago
It's also what bums me out about YouTube. There is an insane amount of effort that goes into producing high-quality videos - orders of magnitude more than would go into putting together a well-illustrated blog post. As with blogs, a lot of this effort is wasted unless you get lucky. But with blogs, at least you have multiple good shots at visibility. Maybe you'll make it to the top of HN, maybe on X, maybe somewhere else. Even within a single platform, you usually have multiple tries. If you don't get noticed right away, there's still hope that someone else shares your content down the line. In contrast, on YouTube, an algorithm essentially decides once. If you don't already have a zillion subscribers, it shows your video to a couple of people, more or less at random. If they don't engage, that's the end of the road.
- sbarre 2y ago
  A YouTube video has a URL though. So just like a blog post, you can share it on all the same sites you mentioned with blog posts. Plus you have the built-in audience of YouTube and the algorithm that can help with discovery.. "Build it and they will come" has never been true, for videos or blogs...
  - doe_eyes 2y ago
    There are surprisingly few venues for video content outside YT, at least not on a scale that would matter on YT! For example, if you want to get to the top of HN, non-video content has much better odds. Many tech- or science-centric subreddits discourage or ban videos too. YT is a fairly closed ecosystem that's both insanely resource-intensive to participate in, and that doesn't give creators too many second chances. My specific claim is that it's more of a crapshoot than running a blog. There are so many great science visualizations with 50 views.
    - NavinF 2y ago
      HN is relatively tiny and HN's allergy to video is not representative of the internet. Just create clips from your video and post them on insta, tiktok, twitter, FB, etc. That's the internet at large. If people are interested, they'll watch the full video.
      - doe_eyes 2y ago
        HN is small as a discussion community, but it is huge in terms of the traffic it generates to top-ranked URLs. There are fairly mainstream publications that optimize for HN, and I have spoken to marketers and PR people who described HN as by far the most significant source of traffic to their sites. It doesn't necessarily translate to sales or lasting attention, but if you're after brand recognition or SEO, it's great. Spend some time on /newest to see how many organizations are desperate to get a piece of this.
      - DoreenMichele 2y ago
        It's not really that small and I don't know why people say that. Last time I saw stats, it was five million monthly visitors. It's small as a platform. It's smaller than Reddit or Facebook, but those aren't discussion communities. There aren't huge numbers of subreddits larger than five million people and last I looked the largest tended to be about trivial BS. Last I checked, HN is the largest serious tech discussion board on the planet.
        NavinF 2y ago
        - Individual subs like /r/programming are larger. - HN is ~100x smaller than twitter which is itself not even in the top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
        DoreenMichele 2y ago
        Funny I just looked and Reddit says r/programming is 4.1m which last I checked is less than the 5 million unique visitors HN was getting a few years ago when I last saw stats by the moderator and I don't know what it's at now. Twitter works completely differently from most platforms and isn't a unified community.
- quux 2y ago
  From what YouTube creators are saying lately subscriber counts don’t matter anymore. So even if you have a zillion subscribers you’re still almost completely at the mercy of the algorithm.
  - djeastm 2y ago
    I saw this, too. I know a Youtuber who has 2 million subscribers and their latest videos get about 5k views when they used to get 500k without a change in quality.
- falcor84 2y ago
  > If they don't engage, that's the end of the road. As some counterexample anecdata, the YouTube algorithm is being quite generous to me lately, often giving me relatively low-view videos from years ago, some of which have been quite good. Maybe I'm just in a small a/b test, but it seems that videos do get multiple chances.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  for better or worse, that's because video's infinitely easier to monetize in ways we've been conditioned with for decades. so the payouts for monetized videos are huge compared to a written blog where an ad can clutter and mess up the entire design (which loses you users, losing you better ad rates, and spirals down). It's also a chicken and egg issue too. People simply watch more than they read most of the time. So videos target more people who gets more ad money who gets better ad rates etc.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    > People simply watch more than they read most of the time. This sounded like a wild statement, until I remembered how many people still watched TV for hours every day.
- majewsky 2y ago
  > There is an insane amount of effort that goes into producing high-quality videos Agreed. I once heard an estimate of 1 hour of editing for 1 minute of video, and I find that to be an extremely low-end estimate in my experience. And then, editing is only one part of the process. I spend possibly more time on writing (from outline to prose to revisions) than on editing, even when including basic motion graphics. > In contrast, on YouTube, an algorithm essentially decides once. This contradicts the experience that I have with YouTube as a creator. For reference, this is my channel: https://www.youtube.com/@XyrillPlays/videos https://www.youtube.com/@XyrillPlays/videos - Just a silly little gaming channel. Ignore the bulk of the videos that are just VODs; if you sort by "Popular", you can see that practically all the views are on a handful of edited videos. There is one edited video there early on, which currently has 7.6k views, even though it was posted in a phase of the channel where videos got single-digit views. If it were true that "an algorithm decides essentially once", this would needed to have happened right then and there, except that it didn't. This video got 42 views "on its own", without any promotion of any kind. But here's the thing, as you said yourself: > But with blogs, at least you have multiple good shots at visibility. Maybe you'll make it to the top of HN, maybe on X, maybe somewhere else. The same applies to YouTube videos. When I posted another edited video later, I put that previous video as an end card. And just that miniscule click-through traffic alone was enough to have the older video get picked up by the algorithm. And why did the newer video get picked up? Because I posted it to the subreddit and the Discord for the game. Video analytics on YouTube give a breakdown of where people are coming from, and it was very obvious how the first 100 or so views came from those places. Then after that, something clicked in the algorithm, as though it had become attuned to who might be interested in the videos, and it started recommending the video to people. From one moment to another, 85% of views are coming from algorithmic recommendations, which was 0% before. With the most-watched video on the channel, which is nearing 200k views as of right now, it actually gained traction with the algorithm right away because I had for the first time a pre-existing subscriber base to get the video off the ground on its own, but it has not really stopped accumulating views. It has certainly flattened off a bit, but I've definitely benefited from the game in question having its 1.0 release recently. I'm also seeing people share my video on the subreddit every once in a while in the same way how people repost old blog posts to HN every now and then.

I’m amazed at how much production goes into each of his videos. His YouTube play button is well deserved.

by 1-6 2y ago

I’m amazed at how much production goes into each of his videos. His YouTube play button is well deserved.

It's also what bums me out about YouTube. There is an insane amount of effort that goes into producing high-quality videos - orders of magnitude more than would go into putting together a well-illustrated blog post. As with blogs, a lot of this effort is wasted unless you get lucky. But with blogs, at least you have multiple good shots at visibility. Maybe you'll make it to the top of HN, maybe on X, maybe somewhere else. Even within a single platform, you usually have multiple tries. If you don't get noticed right away, there's still hope that someone else shares your content down the line. In contrast, on YouTube, an algorithm essentially decides once. If you don't already have a zillion subscribers, it shows your video to a couple of people, more or less at random. If they don't engage, that's the end of the road.

sbarre 2y ago
A YouTube video has a URL though. So just like a blog post, you can share it on all the same sites you mentioned with blog posts. Plus you have the built-in audience of YouTube and the algorithm that can help with discovery.. "Build it and they will come" has never been true, for videos or blogs...
- doe_eyes 2y ago
  There are surprisingly few venues for video content outside YT, at least not on a scale that would matter on YT! For example, if you want to get to the top of HN, non-video content has much better odds. Many tech- or science-centric subreddits discourage or ban videos too. YT is a fairly closed ecosystem that's both insanely resource-intensive to participate in, and that doesn't give creators too many second chances. My specific claim is that it's more of a crapshoot than running a blog. There are so many great science visualizations with 50 views.
  - NavinF 2y ago
    HN is relatively tiny and HN's allergy to video is not representative of the internet. Just create clips from your video and post them on insta, tiktok, twitter, FB, etc. That's the internet at large. If people are interested, they'll watch the full video.
    - doe_eyes 2y ago
      HN is small as a discussion community, but it is huge in terms of the traffic it generates to top-ranked URLs. There are fairly mainstream publications that optimize for HN, and I have spoken to marketers and PR people who described HN as by far the most significant source of traffic to their sites. It doesn't necessarily translate to sales or lasting attention, but if you're after brand recognition or SEO, it's great. Spend some time on /newest to see how many organizations are desperate to get a piece of this.
    - DoreenMichele 2y ago
      It's not really that small and I don't know why people say that. Last time I saw stats, it was five million monthly visitors. It's small as a platform. It's smaller than Reddit or Facebook, but those aren't discussion communities. There aren't huge numbers of subreddits larger than five million people and last I looked the largest tended to be about trivial BS. Last I checked, HN is the largest serious tech discussion board on the planet.
      - NavinF 2y ago
        - Individual subs like /r/programming are larger. - HN is ~100x smaller than twitter which is itself not even in the top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
        DoreenMichele 2y ago
        Funny I just looked and Reddit says r/programming is 4.1m which last I checked is less than the 5 million unique visitors HN was getting a few years ago when I last saw stats by the moderator and I don't know what it's at now. Twitter works completely differently from most platforms and isn't a unified community.
quux 2y ago
From what YouTube creators are saying lately subscriber counts don’t matter anymore. So even if you have a zillion subscribers you’re still almost completely at the mercy of the algorithm.
- djeastm 2y ago
  I saw this, too. I know a Youtuber who has 2 million subscribers and their latest videos get about 5k views when they used to get 500k without a change in quality.
falcor84 2y ago
> If they don't engage, that's the end of the road. As some counterexample anecdata, the YouTube algorithm is being quite generous to me lately, often giving me relatively low-view videos from years ago, some of which have been quite good. Maybe I'm just in a small a/b test, but it seems that videos do get multiple chances.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
for better or worse, that's because video's infinitely easier to monetize in ways we've been conditioned with for decades. so the payouts for monetized videos are huge compared to a written blog where an ad can clutter and mess up the entire design (which loses you users, losing you better ad rates, and spirals down). It's also a chicken and egg issue too. People simply watch more than they read most of the time. So videos target more people who gets more ad money who gets better ad rates etc.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  > People simply watch more than they read most of the time. This sounded like a wild statement, until I remembered how many people still watched TV for hours every day.
majewsky 2y ago
> There is an insane amount of effort that goes into producing high-quality videos Agreed. I once heard an estimate of 1 hour of editing for 1 minute of video, and I find that to be an extremely low-end estimate in my experience. And then, editing is only one part of the process. I spend possibly more time on writing (from outline to prose to revisions) than on editing, even when including basic motion graphics. > In contrast, on YouTube, an algorithm essentially decides once. This contradicts the experience that I have with YouTube as a creator. For reference, this is my channel: https://www.youtube.com/@XyrillPlays/videos https://www.youtube.com/@XyrillPlays/videos - Just a silly little gaming channel. Ignore the bulk of the videos that are just VODs; if you sort by "Popular", you can see that practically all the views are on a handful of edited videos. There is one edited video there early on, which currently has 7.6k views, even though it was posted in a phase of the channel where videos got single-digit views. If it were true that "an algorithm decides essentially once", this would needed to have happened right then and there, except that it didn't. This video got 42 views "on its own", without any promotion of any kind. But here's the thing, as you said yourself: > But with blogs, at least you have multiple good shots at visibility. Maybe you'll make it to the top of HN, maybe on X, maybe somewhere else. The same applies to YouTube videos. When I posted another edited video later, I put that previous video as an end card. And just that miniscule click-through traffic alone was enough to have the older video get picked up by the algorithm. And why did the newer video get picked up? Because I posted it to the subreddit and the Discord for the game. Video analytics on YouTube give a breakdown of where people are coming from, and it was very obvious how the first 100 or so views came from those places. Then after that, something clicked in the algorithm, as though it had become attuned to who might be interested in the videos, and it started recommending the video to people. From one moment to another, 85% of views are coming from algorithmic recommendations, which was 0% before. With the most-watched video on the channel, which is nearing 200k views as of right now, it actually gained traction with the algorithm right away because I had for the first time a pre-existing subscriber base to get the video off the ground on its own, but it has not really stopped accumulating views. It has certainly flattened off a bit, but I've definitely benefited from the game in question having its 1.0 release recently. I'm also seeing people share my video on the subreddit every once in a while in the same way how people repost old blog posts to HN every now and then.