I have a channel with well over 600 subscribers called PopCatAnimations. I only get views from the youtube shorts I post and not my main content.
Sounds good. I’d sign up for lessons. I’ve got 20 subscribers. I’m vain enough about my content to think some folks would appreciate it, but never figured out the promo stuff, the convincing of people that they should give your content a shot, you know?
Spam subreddits, Facebook, x, Instagram, and dying forums like SMBD, etc… with posts about it. Make sure to couch the thread title as a simple request for advice to avoid anti spam rules.
When you upload a short, you can configure it to have a ‘related video’ - so you could publish, say, a long-form video and also publish a short that is a teaser/preview/clip for it, or that just contains one of several highlights from the longer video (for example one gag from a longer skit).
You can also pick your timing with the publication of the two videos and it’s probably worth experimenting with this, for example:
- Publish the long-form video first, then later publish a short that links to it (this might give the long video a ‘second wind’ of engagement)
- Publish the short video first, as a preview or trailer for the longer video which is still to come.
I don’t personally like the begging for subs and likes that is common on YouTube, but I also don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to let your audience know that you would love them to subscribe.
Apart from that, keep making content; try to have some sort of regularity to your uploads; you don’t have to publish immediately upon uploading you can schedule them to publish at a regular time every week or month or whatever schedule you settle on - take a look at the stats for your past videos and figure out if there is a pattern for some of the more successful ones - for example do they perform better if they go live on a Friday afternoon (people watching them to unwind after school/work) or a Monday morning (people watching them in their lunch breaks in the week) - consistency and reliability of content is one tiny factor in getting the recommendations algorithm to notice you.
Experiment with other content sharing platforms too - even if it’s only with the trailer/teaser stuff - cast your net wide to try to find your audience.
Find creators whose work you admire and learn from them (you don’t have to copy their content, but you can learn without copying and ideas are never completely original anyway, so there is nothing wrong with creating your own somewhat original take on an existing idea, theme, topic, meme, genre etc).
And try to put something of yourself into your videos. Your voice, your sense of humour, your mannerisms or quirks or personal thoughts, are the things that are most likely to make your content different from all the rest.
This does probably mean trying to move away from text-to-speech for your videos, but it’s worth it. If you’re uncomfortable using your own voice, start small - could you, for example, think of a story for a cartoon where the dialogue is just one word, maybe repeated with the right timing for comic effect? Personally, I would always prefer to hear a real voice than a computer generated one, even if the real voice is a long way short of perfect.
Cool! What’s your channel name!
I’m Atomic Shrimp
Oh wow 953K subs
Wanna know something embarrassing? It wasn’t until I connected the user to the channel that I figured out his monicker wasn’t “Man get out”.
PS - also great channel btw
I’m “ahunter3” there too.
Yeah, that pretty much only happened after I had given up trying to make it happen and decided to focus on making videos, which I happen to love doing anyway.
The moral of that story, and perhaps really the only useful and applicable piece of experience I have in this context is: There is no guaranteed recipe for success, but success may happen if you keep going; there is, however, a guaranteed recipe for failure, which is to stop. So keep going.