r/youtubers

How many of you have had to give up on your creative designs and structures to appease the algo gods? Did it work? Do you regret changing your style?

I'm a new channel and meeting some positive feedback and some creative hurdles as well.

I'm a marketing video producer for years now in my professional life, so I have things I think have more artistic integrity, more beauty, more simplicity.

Unfortunately, it seems like the algorithm finds the rigid consistency of my thumbnails too similar and flags them as spam. I have a bunch it is also doing this for my regular videos because my show is episodic and follows a similar formula that looks very much the same each week.

I'll do what I need to do in order to make a better product for my viewers and so youtube serves me impressions again, but I have emotional friction with making something formulaic when I believe there are engaging and entertaining ways to innovate.

Anyone else feel this?

if there arent any what are worth it the most? the only free ones i know are capcut and those mobile video editing apps. all the free ones ive tried have massive watermarks, i have also considered Filmora and Movavi. yeah idk what to say anymore how much is 300 characters omg ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anyone here have experience creating horror content for YouTube? I just started a daily horror series and could use some advice. It’s doing well on Reddit and TikTok, but I’m struggling on YouTube and Instagram 😩. I shoot and edit my own content so any tips or suggestions would be appreciated! Thank you.

Hey! I'm a video editor that edits mainly gaming/Minecraft videos. So far, editing my own videos and some other's video has been quite well and good. Some more difficult than others

Though i think I've stumbled upon a video request, that i don't think I can follow through.

I've always been able to spin up a type of video with what I have, but this request doesn't have much I can work with.

I've been able to create an intro and a sort of style to it, but going through more and more of the video, I can't find any other usable footage as it's all just them hanging out and talking.

Should I try looking for a better way to tackle this or should I just tell them that I can't edit the video for them?

Previously had my channel monetized, didn't upload for six months so they removed monetization. I noticed recently that one of my old videos had picked up and all I needed to do to reapply is to upload three videos.

So over the past week I've uploaded 3 videos and reapplied to YPP. Of course the most recent of those three videos has taken off and yielded over 30k views in the last 12 hours. Now of course it says I need to wait 30 days for the approval as I watch this video go parabolic.

Anyone that has recently been approved, what kind of timelines have you seen for approval/rejection? Last time when I was approved ~2 years ago it was 24 hours. Now I havent heard anything in that time frame and I wonder if they're delaying so they can squeeze this video more before paying me ad dollars

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I had a true crime documentaries channel that reached 5000 subs and 500k views, it got banned and eventually removed. the reason was spam/misleading content. I started the channel in Sept 2024 and was removed November 2025

I did my research on every single thing I uploaded I never spammed; I never did any clickbait or ragebait. I uploaded shorts regularly never posted the same short twice. YouTube never explained to me what's exactly was wrong. I've never had any strike my watch retention was pretty good!

I did use VidIQ and found it useful at times, I sat down and analyzed everything I did and was wondering if this might be the reason?

if not, does anyone have a clue why would this happen? I spent hundreds of hours creating my content, viewers loved it as they commented on how much effort I made. I have my content still but so afraid of doing that much effort all over again and it still goes to waste!

Hello! How can I download clips to include them in my videos? I would like to make a movie review, but I’m unsure how to get the clips in a way where I won’t get a computer virus or something like that. What apps or sites do you use? I currently editing on Adobe premiere. Any advice would help. Thank you!

Alright, so, I've been doing YouTube for around four years, about three years rather seriously. And, after looking at my reach on my latest video, which was an unbelievable flop even though retention was great, CTR was more than solid etc .. And looking back through, I see a trend, when one of my video dies early, when I see where it's being suggested, it's on videos sometimes out of my niche, and seems to be targeted more around my channel name. I chose my name because, it's just kind of a nickname, it was my gamer tag, people knew me by that name when I started, but "Tattooed Biker" doesn't have anything to do with my genre. For instance my genre is unexplained phenomena, cryptid sightings, UFO, ghosts, etc.. but my latest video shows under "content suggesting this video" videos on Sturgis, Bike Week, etc .. thinking about changing my channel name. With 4500 subscribers, how badly would this impact my channel, vs any positive results? Does anyone have some insight on this?

On VidIQ's community post, they suggest writing the intro after you're done the video. But, what is your personal preference? Is it doing like what they said, or do you begin writing with the intro in mind? Or does your writing habit change each video?

Also, filling in the post body with a minimum of 300 characters is such a chore, lol. This last sentence cleared the threshold 😆

I’m a very small channel that does gaming content, I don’t make any money yet and money is tight however I can spend $20-$50 a week on a possible editor. I’ve done all the editing myself but have realized while I love editing it’s the reason I’m so inconsistent. I take too long and cause myself too much stress. My question is will it be worth it to pay for an editor even though I’m so small? What if I pay for an editor and the videos are still not getting a good reach?
EDIT: $20-50 per video (I have found editors who will edit for this price range)

not full editing just enough to help make my editing go faster, example:
I send a 30-45 min unedited video and ask them to cut the boring/slow parts that dont add anything to the video, then i do the fancy stuff after that

Reading a lot of complaints about the new YPP requirement policies and now even starting my own thread with my pointless 2 cents.

While the new rules make it harder to join YPP, what’s actually the real consequences here? People start threatening to leave YouTube, because „it’s too hard to be successful“ now?

Congratulations, you just experienced what countless other people have experienced over the last 10 decades in other creative venues before: How many people are out there, wanting to become actors? How many of them made it to the big screen while the majority of them gave up that dream because the most they were able to were plays in college classes or maybe even local community theatres? How many bands were started in garages, with the dream of becoming a rockstar? How many ended up getting a record deal while the majority never made it past maybe playing at some local events? The list goes on and on…

Point is: You (and me) are not the only ones secretly wishing to become „rich and famous“. Out of the millions of people like us, only a few actually make it. Thats the hard truth. But if you give up, because you think „someone else made it slightly harder for me to be successful“, then you never had what it takes to begin with.

Thats it. Thats my rant. Now downvote away.

Howdy all. I've given my YouTube channel a fair amount of attention over the last year. I definitely could have put in more effort but since life often gets in the way sometimes it just wasn't possible. Here are my current stats -

953 subscribers

56.5k views

3615 watch hours

16 videos

I run an automotive YouTube channel that mostly centers around one specific car, although sometimes I sprinkle in content about other cars/projects. I seem to get decent views on **most** videos (normally at least 1000) but my viewer retention absolutely sucks. My long form content averages between 15-25 minutes and my average view duration is only four and a half minutes.

Are my videos just boring? Too long? I've been trying to figure out how to fix this as it's a pretty big metric for YouTube. My editing is not plain but I also stay far away from the stereotypical editing that is on YouTube as I find it extremely corny.

Going forward I'd really love to increase my retention so I'll take any tips you guys have.

My channel name is Grayshirt.

I want to make a video that is like a video essay style. However I’m not sure how comfortable I am using my real voice and was wondering if anyone knows of or recommends any voice filters or some text to speech tools? I don’t want any that use AI and one that preferably sounds natural and is still appealing to listen too. Thanks!!!

I'm a bit frustrated at this. Call this a rant if you will.

I posted a video yesterday, initial response looked great. 1 of 10 video in first few hours, lots of comments from subscribers came through. It got to 140 views.

Then I notice the message:

"this video is reaching a wider audience on YouTube, leading to a lower click-through rate (CTR) than usual. Wider audiences are often less likely to choose to watch a video, but the lower CTR is not hurting this video’s view count."

and 12hrs later my video has 156 views. Wtf?

Everything I read online says give it time, dont be impatient and go changing things with the title and how youtube is testing this with a larger audience so you just have to be patient. But again, wtf?

It's just annoying when you put all this time and effort into filming and editing a video and you don't see it grow.

It literally feels like they just dump the video into some kind of shadow realm.

Has anyone else had this happen to them, and did the video do well?

Will a channel trailer make any difference?

My channel is mainly womens Indy pro wrestling matches from the past 20 years or so.

It earns enough for a payout every 3 months and it is hard to keep going with it.

Some of the advice to try and keep people longer or to encourage them to sub is a trailer.

Also, what would an editor charge to make one?

For context:

During my semesters at college one of my recent hobbies has been starting up a channel, in 14 videos this year I grew to 4.9k subscribers, averaging anywhere from 5-40k views per video. (Not crazy but starting with 0 YouTube or editing knowledge, it definitely meant a lot)

However due to the stress of being home for summer (ironic I know) I haven’t had the time to fully commit to working on, and releasing projects which led to me having a 4 month lapse in uploads.

Going into the next semester I plan on coming back, keeping the same niche while also experimenting with composition and stakes to try and reach a broader audience breaking the sub-100k view trap. (my content is Minecraft related so passing that isn’t like some crazy feat, I’ve just learned a lot recently and throughout my time posted this year as I started with 0 knowledge)

What do you think?? It’s just a hobby of mine, but definitely kept me busy and don’t want to give up on it.

When I say gaming YouTube channels I like to specify the golden era of YouTube, if people loved that era of YouTube so much wouldn’t making let’s play videos like say markiplier, jacksepticeye or pewdiepie during those 2013-2016 peak era be a good thing? I say this because there’s so much slop online and so many people are on there phones but mostly just scrolling, and that made me wonder aren’t there people who are fed up with the way modern content is consumed and just want to watch a nice 20 min video instead of scrolling through 100 pointless videos?

I upload daily YouTube shorts/tik toks/ instagram with clips of my gaming moments as well as something I do which is weekly memes on Monday just for fun and realistically something that people are more likely to give a chance to watch to discover my channel. For long form videos I upload 3-4 times a week and I do a let’s play of a game and do some side uploads of one off games or mini series inbetween series.

I’d be rambling on but this is the tip of the iceberg about content creation for me, if you want me to carry on I’d be glad to, didn’t want to bore people with too much reading.

I’m not going to name dump my channel here but if you want to see it to understand the type of content I make and maybe give me your thoughts and options you can DM me.

How do they keep from getting hit with a strike? I want to make a spoof of those, but I don't want to put in the time only to have YouTube block it over copyright.

Is there a setting I have to choose to mark it as "reaction" or "review?" Do I just put it up and hope for the best? What is the secret? Is there a secret?

I just spent 11 hours of editing and getting material on a single video, that is 3.5 minutes long. Well, it has no reach, after 2 days it has 12 views and 1 like, lol, and I have 900+ subs. I know, maybe I made a mistake and video is not interesting, but it is the same topic as any other my video. I tried and I failed. Somehow my shorts are also having no reach, it is like a curse, from one day I have 10% of what I usually have and I even tried to improve everything :( each video takes me 3-4 hours to make, the one that took me 11 was even more special. Did it happen to you?