The Power of Consistency – 180 Days Of Testing Youtube
What’s up guys Tim Ruswick here. I just wanted to share something really cool with you. So over the past several months last 180 days I’ve started my youtube channel right. This YouTube channel existed for about exactly six months. I started posting videos about 180 days ago by the time you get to see this would be a little more than 180 days. But I decided to do a test because I have a lot of experience in marketing that’s one of the things that I did for a lot of years so I look at everything as a test.
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And I’ve shared that on this channel a couple times. But I always like to experiment and figure things out. And I had worked with a lot of clients doing YouTube marketing but I had never actually done it myself. I did a long time ago like way before YouTube was even owned by Google so that I don’t really think that counts. But essentially I wanted to test out how this content marketing works how it works.
And you know figure out a way that I could help build an audience to kind of for Game Dev Underground to help you guys out with all the different tools and software that I was doing kind of like you know. Build something that I thought was cool that I felt like I really would get behind with game developers. So I thought I would show you guys an intimate look into some of the things that I tested how it worked because if you plan on doing any kind of YouTube marketing I think it would help you out.
So essentially what I did is I broke this 180 day test into two sections and it’s we’re on the third stage now but in order not to skew my data I got to I got to keep that under wraps for now. But for the first 180 days first 90 days what I did is I did a video a week. One video week. And I promoted the hell out of each video every week. And I want to show you what those analytics look like. So for 180 days or for 90 days I’m sorry. So 223 to 523 I think it was. This this is what we’re looking at.
So initially there was a there was a spike from the first video I posted. There was a huge spike from one of my Facebook videos. It was the it was the Facebook video or was like Five Things You Need to Know for Your Marketing. That got to that was like one of the top posts in an indie game development group and it got posted on Reddit and that’s what this huge spike is. But as you can see each week it kind of bumps up when I do my little marketing for my video but it just kind of goes back down to where it was.
And we can go and to watch time and we can see in more detail what that looks like. So initially this was this was to Finish the Damn Game video maybe I should go back slightly slightly more so you can see that. Because this 180-day thing may be slightly off. Yeah so okay so this was the Finish a Damn Game video this is the first video I ever posted on YouTube.
This got this little spike it got six hours and 25 minutes which I think is actually pretty good. For the first video that usually doesn’t happen. But it went back down look at all these if they went to like 4 minutes 0 minutes 0 minutes a day 42 seconds in a day. And then my second video this was the second or third video maybe was the third video I got a huge spike awesome got front page. But then it went right back down to where it was. And every week when I would promote I would get a couple hours of watch time and I would ready to go right back down. I really don’t see any progress there slight a tiny bit of progress in the watch time is starting to build up over here but it’s not really getting anywhere.
So kick in phase 2. Phase 2 we’re gonna look at the last 90 days and then we’re gonna compare that to the first 90 days or the previous period before that and I want to show you guys what this looks like. So as you can see this big ass spike doesn’t look big anymore. And this is the difference between daily videos on YouTube and weekly videos on YouTube. This is a massive massive difference.
And I showed this to a couple people I showed it in the in the discord chat which by the way if you’re not a part of that you should definitely join links in the description. But I was talking to a couple people I was explaining them like how it all works and and if you see this like this is insane. So last 90 days has like what is this ten times the amount that the first 90 days had.
The the numbers are massive differences. Like it’s insane to me. And I just I’ve done this a couple times I’ve done this with clients. I’ve I’ve done out with you know starting a company or anything like that takes a lot of consistency. And one of the things that that I see all the time is like if we look at the lifetime of the channel let’s look at this year you people start right they start and they they get excited and they get some progress and then maybe something good happens and then they don’t really see that they’re making any progress and they they quit here.
They quit in this section right here. Some of them even quit here. Right they quit they quit before they ever get anywhere. And they quit because they’re not getting anywhere. But what they don’t realize is like you know this is what starts to happen after a long time of consistency. This is what you start to see right. And this this happens with life not just YouTube. I mean YouTube there’s an algorithm that obviously they they like daily videos better but this has a compounding effect in so many different ways in life that I can’t even explain. Like there’s something about dedicating six months a year two years to something that gives you this crazy kind of momentum that you can’t get anywhere else.
And this is what bothers me so much especially about indie games because these are these are works of art these are these are beautiful games that might not never get created because somebody quits here. And and some people don’t even get this spike they don’t get the they don’t get the you know validation that they’re on the right track. A lot of people spend a lot of time here. Like look at this this this is this is me promoting the shit out of every video that I put out.
It’s pushed putting it on Facebook putting it on reddit putting it on Twitter being called a spammer you know. Like this is me promoting this. This is me trying my hardest as a marketer to put every video out. And this is this little spikes are like that. This is a result of consistency. There is no marketing of any— this little spike was a little bit of marketing because that’s when I did the Shaddy interview. So he promoted that I put that on reddit too so that kind of messed up the data.
But outside of that spike right here all of this there’s no marketing at any of these videos none this is all organic this is all organic shares this is all organic how it all reaches. And people are starting to share that’s what this last spike is here people are starting to share people are starting to see it. We’re starting to get you know exposure. And now granted I’m I’m working with other developers right like that’s my audience for this channel. So if you’re marketing a game it may be a little bit different.
But I guarantee you it’s gonna be similar this. You’re gonna have a hell of a long time in the slog getting started it’s gonna seem like it’s not working it’s not gonna seem like nobody cares and you got to push the shit out of everything that you produce just to give any visibility. But that starts to change over time. This this looks similar for a blog. This looks similar for for anything that you can imagine it’s there. And just like if look at this comparison man.
This says it all this is this is the power of consistency right here. Like it’s you really can’t get better than this. Like it’s it’s so clear this is it. And one of the things I will say and I guess I give you guys a couple YouTube tips that I’ve kind of learned in the last six months that I didn’t know. YouTube heavily promotes watch time. Watch time is its main metric. That’s the metric that it gives you it gives you views as well. But watch time seems to be its main metric.
Which means if you can get someone to watch for a longer period of time that works better. As you can see that my top video here is this video is an hour and something long on the Shaddy interview video. That’s why it has the most watch time. Even though the percentage view is 20% way lower than all these other videos the the 20% of an hour and 20 minute long video how in 30 minutes is 14 minutes. Whereas the average view duration oh you guys came to see that I gotta put it out.
So 20% is is the average view duration but deep or is the percentage viewed but the average view duration is so much higher than all these other numbers. So longer videos tend to seem to work better on YouTube for whatever reason. I aim for about 10 minutes per video some are longer some are shorter. But that’s about my my aim for this specific reason.
A lot of my earlier videos were shorter. Another thing that does like if you go on the overview page another thing that does is it increases your view duration. Which you know higher view duration per video means more watch time which means YouTube promotes you out more. Another thing that I’ve learned over the years is I used to think that okay YouTube wants likes they hate dislikes and that’s how it was.
But YouTube actually they reward likes dislikes in comments they treat all of these the same way. These are treated as engagement. And all engagement is good in YouTube’s eyes. So if you’ve got a very controversial video I’m not saying you do this as a strategy. But if you have a controversial video like it’s a bunch of likes and dislikes that’s good you should treat that as a good thing you shouldn’t get discouraged if a bunch of people dislike the video.
YouTube sees that as engagement. And it rewards you for it and pushes you around. I want a last thing I want to show you guys is my traffic sources. And I want to show you this because I wanna I want you get you understand like how how long this takes. So let’s go let’s go back to what is it two twenty one two three four twenty-one this was the period I think I don’t remember the numbers I’m bad with numbers whatevs.
Okay so we got basic period. So if you see this this is my these are my sources where all the traffic came from. As you can see external is number one by far. Thirty-seven versus fifteen okay. If we click on external this is going to give you the actual traffic sources. Now most of my traffic came from Facebook promoting on Facebook in facebook groups. Second biggest was reddit than YouTube then action my website promoted it my twitter promoted it google search a little tiny bit 1.9 percent I really don’t think that’s statistically significant.
But then you can see a couple of these discord Bing who uses Bing eleven people use Bing apparently. But I want to point this out because I want you to see like I was promoting the shit out of these. The majority of my traffic is traffic that I sent to these videos in this time period. This is all me. If you post something and you don’t promote it this is what its gonna look like right here. No one is gonna see it in the beginning nobody.
And it takes so much work and you have to be dedicated to push the shit out of your shit early on. Like cuz no one is gonna see it. The majority of my traffic seventy seven percent sixty nine percent of my views came from Facebook. The other eight point seven percent came from reddit. This is all me pushing. Now if we look at the past 90 days YouTube promotes is that that can’t be accurate internet watch time last 90 days what happened to the something’s up with the analytics guys okay here we go there we go reset it. Alright so let’s look at the last 90 days.
Alright so this is this is the watch time now. Look at this external is number four now. Suggested videos is by far suggested videos and browse features which are both YouTube sending me traffic YouTube is actually going out finding people that would be interested in the videos and showing them the videos. And then third the channel pages which are actual people’s Channel that my little channel icon will show up on on their channel.
It also can be my channel too because people watch videos on my channel. Now you see the external 5.6% now granted I haven’t been promoting this at all but I want to point out that this 5.6% was bigger than a hundred percent of my effort ninety days ago. If we look at this I don’t know if we can do a comparison with this detail of data but we can try previous period. Okay so look at this so external in the previous period six thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight watch time minutes okay.
That is the result the sum total result of all of my hard work in ninety days in ninety days. And I want to point out that in the last 90 days I’ve gotten almost triple from zero amount of promotion maybe well maybe five percent promotion because I did the one video. You to like look at look at the difference from this suggested videos three thousand minutes versus a hundred and fifteen thousand minutes. This is it just takes time guys that’s all I wanted that’s like my message that’s been my bet message from day one. Like consistency over everything.
I used to dream about the day where I were going to real time analytics and see all of these people in real time watching my stuff it’s awesome to see this it’s awesome that I’m helping people. I’m I I cannot like convey the emotion to how awesome it is to watch this growth every day. To watch how you know help people and and like explain this stuff to you guys and it’s it’s so cool to me because there’s so much stuff that I have done for so long like I was writing blog post for three months before I started YouTube that wasn’t getting any traction.
I tried all kinds of other stuff and knowing marketing I knew something was going to work. I knew something was gonna work. I knew that Game Dev Underground had to work I just had to figure out how. And no matter what you are doing no matter what you’re building no matter who you’re trying to get in front of right like you can build an audience it’s not hard to do it’s really simple. It just takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of consistency.
And yeah you’re gonna have times you’re gonna have stuff where you can’t figure shit out. You’re gonna have setbacks and roadblocks. There are plenty of times where I wasn’t sure what I was gonna post and they were plenty of times I didn’t feel like doing a daily video. But all all marketing is like this I want to point that out. No matter who you’re targeting whether it’s players whether it’s game developers whether it’s you know anybody that you can think of all marketing is like this. It takes a lot of work upfront and all of the results come later on down the road.
Now this is early on too this is this is really early I want to point that out. In another 90 days of daily this graph is gonna look insane. And I’m I have a goal man. My goal my lifetime goal with this and I’ll share it with you guys I shared this on the Chris Deleon podcast. But I don’t know if you can see but that little poster right there it says 29 years of watch time. I’m 29 years old 29 years of watch time in minutes is million two hundred forty two thousand and four hundred minutes.
I want to have more watched on my channel then the minutes that I’ve been alive because that’s how I see me making an impact in the world. That’s how I see okay my existence in life has transformed not even transformed but like helped other people more than the minutes that I’ve been alive. I feel like that validates me somehow. Like that that can help me help people more. And I’ve always wanted to help people but I’ve never like figured out how I could. And I feel like if I’m coming across excited it’s because for the first time in you know a long time I really feel like I’m getting through.
Like I’m making a difference. And I want to share this with you guys I want to be completely transparent and share you with you the journey of what it looks like and and how all this works. But there’s a lot of there’s a lot of darkness in in any long journey and this this graph looks the same for anything that you start. Any business and he game any piece of software any startup.
There’s a lot of a lot of work in the beginning with very little result and then it starts to pick up and you get momentum. And you just got to stick on long enough to get the momentum. And that’s my message for today really. Like I just wanted to share that with you guys. I want to share you with you the results of not only like the actual tactics and stuff that I learned from YouTube. But also I want to share you know my journey as doing this for so long.
Six months is a long time. 90 days doing daily videos man. It was hard it was not easy. It’s definitely gotten a lot easier and so it does get easier. I feel like I’m dedicated to this now. I don’t feel like it’s a choice of whether or not I’m gonna post video it’s like I’m gonna it’s just a matter of how or when.
But I just I want to share that with you guys and I hope you found it useful. If you did please leave me a comment I would love to hear what you guys thoughts. I am happy to answer any questions you guys have about YouTube marketing. I’ve learned a lot over the last six six six months or so and I think I can help out. If you guys have any questions about YouTube I like I’m an open book I’m happy to share anything at all let me know.
Leave a comment below and until next time see you guys then.
