u/TempGanache

looking for the above listed items for shipping to canada!

In January I released my first 3D animation (previously was all live-action, everything is comedic short films). A 30-second clip got 10 million views combined on Instagram and TikTok, while the full video on YouTube is at 37.7K.

The thing is, only 1.5–2K of those YouTube views came through browse features... (which is where I'd want all of them to come from).

All the other views are from people searching the video title, the channel name, or clicking the link in bio. Essentially funneling in from the viral Reels.

CTR is around 11% — though most of those clicks are people coming from the Reels (searching for the video directly). Retention sits above 50% to the end.

So why is it not getting pushed on YouTube??

I have ~20 other videos on the channel sitting at 500 views, and a new 3D animation parodying Stranger Things at 900 views (8% CTR, 50% retention).

Theories I'm turning over — would love honest takes:

1. External traffic is poisoning my signal. Maybe YouTube can't tell who organically wants this content because most clicks are funneled in from Reels viewers who would have clicked anything I linked. CTR is real but polluted.
2. Channel audience/category mismatch. Channel was created 10 years ago by my friend who posted his high school films on it. Could YouTube have categorized the channel for an audience that doesn't care about the niche I've honed in on the last 3 years?
3. Lingering effects of an old community strike. There was one on an old home movie video he made as a child (violence between kids playing) that had been unlisted. It got resolved, but I wonder if there's residual punishment.
4. The boring answer. I just need to make better videos and keep going until one breaks through and the channel gets picked up. That's what happened for Joel Haver(Succesful filmmaker YouTuber in very similar niche), and it's the path I'm trying to walk.

I poured my sweat and tears into this film. I sincerely hope it's something the community will enjoy.

If you were disappointed with the series finale, maybe this offers a glimpse of where the series could have gone hehe

Still trying to migrate from Arc and I'm missing these features:

Auto-unloading: resets / closes bookmarked tabs to their normal state. (also would like it to auto-put the tabs to sleep to save on memory and computer performance)

Auto-archiving: closes tabs after X time period

To my knowledge these features are not yet in Zen right?

People have recommended firefox extensions but they have all felt hacky to me, required setup, and some ended up auto closing my persistent tabs (above the line).

Maybe I try to make it myself with claude code and do a PR? But I'm not a coder so it might be messy...