April 2014 Earnings from my best Youtube Videos

Not a great month as earnings were a little down to $742.48 from $788.77

April 2014 Youtube earnings

The biggest reason for this drop is the decline of one of my best youtube videos. In March the video had 180,000 views and grossed $124, but by April this had dropped to 113,000 views and grossed just $54, that's sad :( 

Funny Cat Youtube Earnings

I don't know why this is, but it's been on a gradual decline since last year, maybe they all just run out of steam eventually.

The strange thing is that although the views were down around 30%, earnings were down a whole lot more than that.

 

What happened in April?

• Over Lay Videos - Last month I explained that I had chosen a video to overlay over all 200 of my videos in the last 10 seconds of play.

I chose one of my best youtube videos, donkey, as it has a good CPC (cost per click) strange that donkey birthday is worth more than simply happy birthday! 

 I overlayed donkey video in mid March, views didn't shoot up straight away, but it's been more of a snow ball effect as you can see from the statistics to the left. I'm going to let it run for another month and then replace it with something else and see what happened to the statistics, will they drop to previous levels, or will they stay elevated?

What worked in April?

• Grumpy Cat worked well for me in April. Despite only being uploaded in March, it was my top paying video for April, making $97.

• April was free content month. By looking back in my archives to find how I could make free content with what I already had, I managed to upload 12 new videos without spending a penny on voice overs or animations. Here's the best performing upload from April, Funny Monkey Card!

  What's Happening Next Month?

• I'm going to run a little test, taking quite a popular video, I've added closed cations to it and will monitor what effect that has on the viewings and income.

• I have discovered through analytics that around 50,000 monthly views come from a site called 123greetings. They have taken a couple of my videos and added them to their own site, which has generated a fair bit for me. I can not add YouTube videos to the site my self, but I can start a studio profile with my best youtube videos to help promote my channel, more about that next time.

If you have any suggestions, views or comments, please leave them below, it's lovely to hear from you...
  

How I get more views on Youtube

I get many questions about how I get youtube views, so here is my guide based on my experience so far

Increasing your youtube video views is a bit of a 'dark art', there is no one thing that will guarantee your video gets shed loads of views but there are some rules I always try and stick too to to maximize the view potential

Cash in on Key words - the search engines need to find your videos and therefore you need to put some thought into how they will find you on Youtube. You need to choose keywords and phrases (known as tags) that people search for, but also be careful not to use something too generic. In the following video I chose the keyword phrase 'Happy Birthday Lyrics' Birthday or happy birthday have too much competition to rank well for, but 'Happy Birthday Lyrics' has a decent amount of monthly searches and not too much competition. You can use something like the Google adwords keyword planner to get some idea of good phrases to use

In the above video I used my keyword phrase with in the title, the description, video tags and also in the closed caption text I uploaded.

Great Title - Youtube will automatically name your video with the file name, this is BAD. you need to change it, video.mp4 doesn't rank too well with the search engines. Ensure you use a relevant annd catchy title, and be sure to get that keyword phrase in.

 

Description - You need something in here, write as much as you can, information about the video. If you're doing a 'How to' video write down all the instructions in here. Make sure you get your keyword phrase in here again, a couple of times naturally, Not too much otherwise the search engines will think your spamming.

Transcribe videos (Closed Captions) - these are like subtitles for your video, specifically for people with hearing difficulties. They're also used by the search engines, so be sure to add your script in here. 

Get the click with a great thumbnail - SO you've done all the above and your video has come up on page 1 of the search YEY. But what makes some-one click on it? The answer is a good thumbnail picture. Youtube will randomly select a thumbnail for your video, but it may be rubbish.  So you can either choose from 1 of 3 that Youtube selects for you or upload your own. Make sure it's a clear thumbnail, relevant to the topic and compels the viewer to click on it. Cute kittens and dogs work pretty well, like the video below. But make sure your thumbnail is relevent, if you trick viewers into clicking on a video then they'll only click away if they are dissappointed and this will effect your rankings.

Annotations/call to action - Annotations are a great way of getting a little more out of your viewers. They are little pop up notes on your videos, You can ask for subscribers, share or comments or link to another video.

Great 'sharable' content - it goes with out saying that if your video is rubbish then no-one will be watching it to the end. So make sure that your video is interesting and holds the viewers interest until the end. Also the more shareable it is the better, as I think think is one of the most important factors in getting sustained views.

Build subscribers - Your most loyal fan base are your subscribers. Your new uploads will appear on their feeds. So it makes sense to get as large a fan base as possible. This is going to happen organically, DO NOT be tempted to buy subscribers, and 'black hat' techniques that attempt to fool the search engines will at some time or another come back to bite you on the bum. The best way to get subscribers, apart from producing fab videos, is interacting with other peoples videos. Subscribe to them and leave a comment.

Use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You'll find the vast majority of your video traffic does come from Youtube, However Facebook contributes around 40,000 views a month to my stats which is not to be sniffed at. And you never know who's going to retweet you or share that Facebook status. It could be just the break you're looking for if it goes viral.

Check out the Competition - before you upload your video do a search and see what other related videos come up, which have lots of views. What titles and descriptions are they using? Can you figure out their tags?  

That's all the tips I can think of for now. Please leave a comment below and add your own tips and advice to get more youtube views, I'd love to hear from you

March 2014 Earnings from Funny Youtube Videos

My earnings for March were up some what to $788.77 from $648.81. 366,483 minutes watched up by 84,807

So a good month everything up (even dislikes)  due to 3 main events

• Uploading lots of new content, I uploaded 18 new funny youtube videos in March
• My Facebook page, went viral in Iran, I have no idea why, but it has generated extra traffic to my channel, and I'm not complaining :) 
• 1 particular video doing very well...I bring you Grumpy Cat... (again!)

If I could understand why some videos do so well and others don't I would be a very rich person! However anything with cats in seems to do OK, and this video has had shed loads of shares which all helps. 

Here's a comparison of 2 videos uploaded on the same day 22nd March. Grumpy Cat started with about 1500 views on the same day and kept on rising, while Singing Candles managed around 500 views and then dropped. They were uploaded less than 2 hours apart. 

I guess the learnings from this are to maximise the views on the video when launched

• Use social media
• Upload at a time when it will be seen by most, which apparently is a week day lunch time (Wednesday or Thursday) Although I guess the social media activity is more important that the actual video upload time

What worked this month?

• Verifying my account - I noticed on my account that it was not verified, no idea why, I wasn't even aware this required doing. Any how I have now duly verified my Youtube video account which has enabled me to post videos longer than 15 minutes. I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon, there's only so much  'Happy Birthday' one person can take! 
• Over Lay Videos - But more excitingly I can now overlay a video on top of all my others. I've decided to show this in the final 10 seconds of each video, in the hope that people will click onto the next video. Cunningly I chose a video that has a good pay per 1000 views. I will report back on that in a separate post.
• Deleting videos with a low retention rate - I weeded out a few more videos with an audience retention rate less than 50%, but my overall rate stayed at 69% still which is pretty good.
• Uploading new content -  goes with out saying, the more quality content the more views

What's Happening Next Month?

My main focus for April is to load new content for free, which I've been able to do by finishing half done projects and reusing voice overs in new animations. One of my fiverr.com partners has also taken to sending me some very good ideas and voice overs which is a great help. So I make sure he gets a link back in the video descriptions.

Finding out more about Closed Captions, this is adding text to the video which converts into subtitles. More opportunity for increasing  keyword search views I think!

That's the March up date, I'm a little behind so I'd better get on with April's update now, thank you for reading. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question...