liola wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 12:38 pm
What do you count as "dying" youtubers? Because let's be real, their peak on youtube has long and gone just like for the majority of people. And that is normal. They're not the exception, I don't even think it would be fair to hold them to that kind of expectation.
If they wanted to play the algorithm game, they could. They have decided that they don't want to, which is something that has been pretty clear for a while now. And I don't know how many times I will have to say that the majority of the money from Youtube don't come off views alone but rather engagememnt. And they're STILL winning the engagement game, they truly are.
I've heard so many times the "DnP are dying / DnP aren't relevant anymore" that I decided to take an hour off my work and do an analysis of their engagement compared to some of the thriving youtubers at the time.
Let's look at some of the channels that are thriving on youtube right now.
Markiplier is one of the youtubers on the front, was listed as one of the 10 richest youtubers from 2018, and has indeed a very enngaged community. Currently has 23M subs. I'm going to pull out the numbers from Youtube itself, because Social Blade only focus on views and subs which doesn't give information on the engagement.
It seems like, exceptions on the side, his videos get an average of 1.5-2M views.
I took a random video from a week ago, "THE 'OL TYRANT SWITCHEROO | Resident Evil 2 - Part 4" currently sitting at 1.134700 views. It's a series, you'd think the majority of those views come from people that have already watched the other parts, so it's recurrent views - typically people that have a higher level of interest on the creator and the content than the random casual viewer.
5% circa of his total subs have watched the video. It has 28.4K likes, so the 2.5% of the viewers liked the video. Out of this 1.1M viewers, there's 4.623 comments, so around the 0.4% of the viewers, that again we're assuming are mostly made out of returning viewers with a higher interest, have left a comment - which is what we count as engagement.
Let's take a video with a higher viewcount and NOT part of a video just to compare:
"Try Not To Laugh Challenge #18" - 6.345.373 views, 3 weeks ago. 28% of his total viewers.
It has around 300K likes, less than 5% of the viewers that watched. 26.345 comments = again around 0.4% of engagement. And this is for a thriving youtuber.
Let's look at
Safiya's - who is in between casual vlog content and beauty guru videos (which are on top of the most watched type of videos)
She currently has 7.205.511 subscribers. Her most recent video - after a brief hiatus - has 3.419.536 views. Almost 50% of her total subscribers, although she's often on the trending page so those number can be pretty skewed, so let's just focus on the engagement.
Out of the 3.4M of views, there's around 150K likes, more or less the 4%. There's 24.263 comments, around the 0.8% of engagement (i'm rounding up)
The video before that has a whopping 12.406.878 views (and was posted on Christmas' eve). Considering the like ratio of 500K, we have again a 4% ratio which is starting to look like the normal ratio.
The video has 63860 comments, which is slightly more than the 0.5% of enagement - again, seems like the norm.
For shit and jiggles I ended up looking at
Jake paul's numbers which is something I never thought I would do. I took the highest views video of last week, "LAST TO FALL IN TOXIC POOL WINS $50,000!! (GAME)" with 6.776.815 (40% of his total sub count). It has a likes ratio of 160k, around 2.5% of the views.
It has 18688 comments, slighly above 0.25% of the engagement.
Now let's look at
Phil's channel. Let's look at the last video, since this one is too recent and went through a late posting + a change of title and thumbnail so we gotta settle down.
"Time For A Change" first video in months, attractive title and thumbnail.
It has 861.235 views, which is around the 20% of his total sub count of 4.2M. Out of this 20% of views, we have 124K likes, so between the 14 amd 15% of the views.
It has 13.296 comments, so around the 1.5% of the views. Hm. Looks like an above than average engagement!
Let's look at one of his most popular uploads from before tour, solo (yes, I know, time factor is important to consider compared to Safiya and Markiplier but we gotta work with what we got)
"My viewers choose my outfit", 2.585.918 views. More than 50% of the total sub count. Out of this, we have 216.376 likes, slightly less than the 9% of the views.
We have 27.215 comments, so an engagement of 1.1%.
Let's watch at PINOF 10 now, a recent video and the most recent joint content on Phil's channel. We know its views are basically all engaged viewers. We also know videos with Dan in general give Phil more views.
PINOF10 has 1.744.564 views. Slightly more than 40% of the subs. It has around 215K likes, so between 12-13% of the video views.
It also has 23671 comments, so again an engagement of around 1.4% - as expected, higher than a solo video.
If we look at these numbers, they might be dying in terms of totals views, but the % they're pulling will always be higher than what we consider higher youtubers. And the community is what other "more successful" youtubers envy them for, not the amount of times their videos end up in the trending page.