Check out this video from Flaming Tree. It got over 12,000 views in 4 days. Now, they aren't popular enough for that to normally happen.
This was titled: "monster in my closet"
The icon is of a guy about to beat on a monster. I don't think that you can get that from the icon, nor is it super interesting...
The conclusion is that I think they managed to make this video slightly viral just by the title. =^)
You can often tell when it isn't rated very well (only two stars). That means it's being passed on due to the snowball effect rather than word of mouth. People aren't watching because it's "good" (being rated well or talked about), so that means they are watching just based on the image, title, and the fact that other people are already watching it.
UPDATE: I think YouTube fixed this. I have to verify. ===============================
YouTube Tips 13 - Wait for the background to load before inviting a friend
Now, in YouTube, it's possible to go to someone's channel, click "Add as friend" and then have the screen refresh back to the top with nothing having happened.
Why does it do that? Because it's still loading all the images on the page and it won't respond to the invite request properly until it's done loading. This could be video icons, but it is usually a background image (or animated gif) that is a large file size. So that's a reason to make sure your background isn't a large file size. =^)
Once it's done loading all the images on the page (your browser's status bar on the bottom of the screen should indicate this), you can add the person as a friend.
Question: Is there anything I can do to get featured on the front page of YouTube?
Nope. Make friends with partners and with people who are cool on YouTube. Try to make something you think will get featured. You really got to think outside the box to get featured, and the more often you think outside the box, the more often you get featured. Creative/entertaining songs and animations tend to do better, but they're much harder to do than a normal v-log.
The only vid we got featured was Fruits VS Bugs:
Check out the sequel if you haven't:
Our channel was also featured, on the day we released Episode 2.
Apparently swapping out the icon on a video is a partner feature. Lame. Well, I guess that's okay seeing how the best two partner features are shared out now (autoplay and the channels box). I just realized that some of these YT artists can justify making amazing vids cuz they make enough money in ads. Hmm. That might be a worthy challenge.
Jacksun's Tiger Woods commercial parody:
So I think Jacksun's Bloopers of Therapy Session got so many views because the icon is of him shirtless (if that was cleavage instead then boom baby). (Also that Jacksun had it autoplay during lots of visits helps too.) And I think The Gift lucked out and hit a small viral pocket (sort of random how that works, unfortunately). It helped that the icon looks a little more interesting than Therapy Session.
Since Jacksun asked me... here's my advice (take it or take it or leave it or take it; note that I don't give advice like this unless I'm asked):
(1) Change the titles to "Orgasm Man - Bloopers" "Orgasm Man 2 - Theraply Session" and "Orgasm Man 1 - The Gift" - This might eventually lead to a better viral slide. I used a similar method to get my "Godfather" vid to 10K and "Bucket Full of Cheese" to 40K (and others). Jacksun has a perfect character and name; he just needs to brand it.
(2) Go sign up on the Partners Channel! He's more than ready! The only requirements are a couple hundred subbers and that your vids get at least 1K views each. He's way beyond that! Turn some of these videos into $20 bills. Hahahahaha. It's kind of a lame rate of making money (unless you're getting millions of views in your vids), but it's still worth it to make that money if you're making videos anyway. Once you're a partner, you can swap out the icons and do a better job promoting your vids.
Question for the Emperor: What is a YouTube Partner?
A partner is someone selected by YouTube to be given tons of tiny priviledges that add up to coolness. For example, revenue sharing on ads (partners have more ads around their vids), autoplay on their channel, banners, and smaller features.
Question for the Emperor: How do subscribers help you to become a Partner?
Well, they subscribe and they watch your videos. The requirements include regularly making videos where thousands of people watch them. It's pretty vague, but basically you just build a case for having a strong, active audience that already goes to your channel. Plus, you won't get selected if you are just showing copyrighted images, music, clips that aren't yours, or clips of videogames. You've got to generate original content pretty regularly (like at least two videos a month).
Hope this helps! The only vid we got featured was Fruits VS Bugs:
We keep getting questions on how to become a partner, so here you go...
How to become a YouTube Partner
Qualifications
You need at least a few hundred subscribers and all your vids having "thousands of views." You also need to convince them that you're all about the YouTube community somehow. That was super easy for us, because all our vids are interactive in the comments (or with response videos), we've been featured on YouTube's front page twice, and we've entered (and won) YouTube contests. You also need to show them that you upload vids regularly (at least twice a month).
In addition, you have to own all your vids 100%. This is crucial. After looking at most channels, I don't think most people own all of their videos. So if you want a channel to get partnered, make sure it's all original content like vlogs, your own interviews, your own skits, your own animations, etc.
You may want to have two channels. The Kung Fu video doesn't look like it's yours. If it's yours, you should make that clear in the description by talking about how you filmed it and listed the credits of who was in it.
I'd take the "how to download" video down if this is the channel you want to do well with YouTube. Obiously, they don't want people to download YouTube videos. It makes piracy more painful for them to control.
What to do? Study the successful channels. There are three aspects of YouTube success and getting subscribers: (1) Social. (2) Entertainment. (3) Frequency.
So, be social (do a lot of commenting, friending, subscribing, etc. You need to entertain people (animations, music videos, and sketches of popular movies/people/etc. do well). You can also entertain people with crazy vlogs (just talking to the camera). And, finally, post these often. So all that is a ton of work, and, in some ways, the people on top definitely earned it and put themselves there.
Only people from certain countries can become partners
They only accept people from countries like USA, Canada, UK, and Japan.
Why?
Legal reasons and money reasons. =^(
Even hough it's not the most desirable Partnership feature to the users, the whole point of the partner channel to YouTube is the revenue sharing aspect. They are offering the partner channels tousers who get a lot of views in order to put ads on them and make more money. Well, the problem there is that there are no legal and legistic issues that need to be sorted out with each country's laws. So they're slowly doing that and sorting it out with the country's laws, starting with the countries that have the most YouTube users and going down the list.
It took us awhile to nail down any sort of system with the title, and it's a good system, but it also shows some vagueness within the system (which is why it is so accurate; YouTube is a chaotic place when it comes to which titles seem important).
So it started in a conversation on this video from GagaManMusic...
Saw this one again and made me think. To slowly increase the views, put "Flinstones Parody:" at the beginning of this title. =^)
Great job!
- cartoondisneypics
Then Andrei changed his title to "Flinstone parody" and left this comment to respond:
that's a good idea. Thanks :)
Thanks! Yeah, it worked for your Cow and Chicken (and I do stuff like that, such as our Zelda Parody). So you might want to add the "Barney's..." bit back as a subtitle like "FLINSTONES PARODY: Barney's..." or Flinstones parody - Barney's..." or something like that (I forgot what you had after "Barney's"
- TAE
I see what you mean - it was barney's invention
Ah yes. =^)
Cool. I think the idea is that the title (Flinstone Parody) makes people interested in that aspect. For example, our Zelda Parody. Then the subtitle might mention another name for a good keyword in searches like you have now. Or another example is our Zelda Parody: Link's a Moron. So "Link" is also a keyword in searches, and then "Link's a Moron" is interesting or controversial. Interesting to some, and then offensive to others, so they might click to watch it.
Oh, and then I see you also made the "P" in "parody" uppercase. This is also a good move. I did limited research, but I've seen VERY similar videos, and title casing (where the first letter of the word) seems to get better clicks than sentence casing (no caps on the first letters of the word). I'm still trying to decide with all caps. I think All Caps is good to lead with (or to put focus on a word later in a title) if the lead word or words aren't long.
Continuing title topic and using all caps... For example, "ZELDA PARODY: Link's a Moron" is probably good. Overall, I can't prove that this helps any with views (it might help a little, but not a huge amount), but it certainly does seem to catch the viewers attention more on the capitalized words, especially if not all the words are in caps. If all the words are in caps, then it doesn't seem to help any at all.
So here are our FOUR RULES TO TITLES:
1. Begin with the easiest sell to brand it. EXAMPLE: Flinstones Parody EXAMPLE: Kiera and Johnny! (this was a short series from LisaNova)
2. Use title case instead of sentence case.
3. Use caps to grab attention on specific words (either at the front or in the title somewhere).
4. Don't use all caps through the whole title, unless the all caps makes the title interesting, because it also makes the title slightly harder to read.
5. Use all lowercase when you have multiple words that are intriguing somehow.
6. Make sure your title is interesting or controversial. (Or includes a reference to something popular, which then becomes interesting or controversial.)
What is "interesting" or "controversial" is VERY subjective. In other words, you can argue about it all day and not make any progress. However, here are examples to paint the picture.
A little less than a year with about 6 months of doing nothing in between bursts of posting vids. How's that for not answering a question? =^)
So I guess about 6 months of dedicated time in trying to build an audience. And stuff.
Q2 - How many subbers did you have?
I forget. Probably around 1300 subbers. That was in like early 2008.
However, subbers aren't that important. A few hundred are good. Anything over is just a bonus. What they want to see is that most of your vids have at least a thousand views (or lots of vids with over 1,000 views, even if it isn't most). That's really what they're looking for. Plus that you can justify that you have something to offer to a market of viewers. Also how you integrate into the YT social scene. All that would go in your essay when you apply. We applied and got accepted on our first try.
Q3 - Did becoming a partner increase your viewership?
I think. A little. Yeah. Depends on how social you are I guess. I'm pretty social, so that helps. If people don't go to your channel, the autoplay won't help much. [UPDATE: Autoplay now works on all channels, so the biggest reason to be a Partner no longer exists. Getting money from ads is also a big reason, but if you don't get a ton of views, you wouldn't get any money from ads anyway.]
Plus you don't make much money off of it unless you're super popular (100K plus views on most of your vids).
Autoplay is nice. Banners and other little channel things are nice. That's about it. Plus it's cool to say, "I'm a YouTube partner." =^)
It's not huge, but it is nice. On the negative side, it is a little painful to do and it takes a long time to process (like when you turn in your application, you pretty much need to wait 3 months to hear back; when you get accepted, you need to wait like a month or so for it to kick in: yes, it's that slow).
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