Your subscribers are pointless.
So, I’ve been experimenting with YouTube shorts recently, on 2 channels for a few months.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
The Pros
You get subscribers, FAST
One of the best things about Shorts is that you can grow your channel quickly and easily.
I posted daily for 2 months and gained on average, 100 subscribers per week.
You Get Good Engagement
My audience retention was around 150-220%, which means most people watched videos more than once.
My view-to-like ratio was around 1:15.
Editing is relatively easy
I didn’t put anywhere near as much time into editing shorts as I did for long-form videos.
If you make a great hook in the first 3 seconds of your video, you’re onto a winner.
The rest of your video can just finish off the story.
I kept my video length to around 30 seconds max.
No SEO / Keywords Required
I did put a couple of hashtags in the title, but YouTube is smart enough to know what your short is about through the video content, and video category.
YouTube pushes every short into the shorts feed, provided they meet YT guidelines.
Most people don’t have a description and seldom add tags.
If it’s something watchable, it’ll gain some traction.
The Cons
Sometimes a video dies without reason
Occasionally, I found when I uploaded more than 1 short in a day, only 1 would be shown to viewers and the other would remain on zero views.
I’m not sure why YouTube does this, but it happens to everyone.
It kinda sucks, because it makes that video a waste of time. Even if you re-upload it, it won’t do well.
Content quality doesn’t mean more views
I spent over 2 hours on each video early on, trying to perfect my short video.
As I gained experience on the platform, my editing time dropped to 15 minutes, and I didn’t think they were great.
Turns out the shorts I thought were the worst, and took the least effort to make, performed best.
Other shorts that I created, included extensive research and editing, trying to perfect the hook, making the rest of the video super engaging. Most of them flopped.
I watched a video on YouTube that explains this well, and for the life of me I can’t find the guy who said it, but he mentioned that YouTube Shorts content should be for those who have short attention spans, but not because it’s short and to the point. More so because people who have short attention spans usually fill their brains with crap, so you need to feed them crap to see success.
I resonated with that because that’s exactly what I ended up doing on my channels. Not because that’s what he said, but because the data led to that naturally.
Shorts monetization is a tragedy
YouTube pays on average $0.04 per 1,000 views.
Compare that to long form where you can make up to $21 per 1,000 views and you see how much Shorts, fall ‘Short’.
That means, to make just $40 from a short, it needs to get 1 Million views. Yep.
That amount of views on a long-form could net you $21,000.
You can’t even add links on your shorts, meaning affiliate income is out of the question unless you change your main bio link every time, and guide people there.
But Why Will Shorts Kill Your Channel?
YouTube shorts help you get subscribers, super quickly.
Most people can expect 100 subscribers every 7 to 14 days. Others in even less time.
So what’s the issue?
The thing is, those subscribers are a certain type of people.
Their attention spans are short, and they want to watch mindless content, for the most part.
I accumulated 1,000 subscribers on 1 of the channels.
I thought I could now add some long-form videos to the mix, as I have potentially 1,000 views in the bag, right?
WRONG.
Couldn’t be further from the bloody truth.
My long-form video got 1 view.
My next one got 0 views.
The one after that 0 views.
And, the final one after that 2 views.
What the F*ck happened?
It turns out, I’m not the only one getting shafted by my own subscribers.
Other content creators have been sharing similar stories of how their subscribers from Shorts videos, are completely disinterested in their long-form videos, even if the topics are the same.
They just want to scroll, and scroll.
But the f*ckery doesn’t stop there.
They, and I, have found that because those subscribers aren’t interacting with the content on our channels, YouTube is penalizing us and assumes our content is rubbish and nobody wants to see it.
I get it. If my own subscribers don’t want to watch it, why would 6 billion strangers?
Going Forward
If you’re going to start a channel based on YouTube shorts, know that the only thing you will be able to publish successfully for the future of that channel, is short-form content.
My recommendation would be to start with a long-form channel, and then create a separate Shorts channel using the same branding.
I wouldn’t even recommend doing a mix of both, because any subs you get from Shorts, won’t watch your long form, harming your viewer statistics.