I FEEL LIKE YOUTUBE GAVE ME NO CHOICE
I feel like YouTube gave me no choice. I had to start a new channel. Links below for those of you who haven’t been following the story.
As most of you know I noticed that my original YouTube channel had been capped at an average ranging between 250 to 300 views per day for the past two years. Why it has been capped is a mystery and even worse there doesn’t seem to be anyway to free my channel from this cap. I deleted over half my videos but it didn’t change anything. So I focused my attention on growing a new channel with the same content. But a funny thing happened, as I ignored my original channel it started to gain momentum. I didn’t sign into the account from June 21, 2021 till October 2, 2021. I figured the channel would slowly die off but to my surprise several videos took off and where getting way more views than usual. The subscriber rate was also holding steady but with a few more higher peaks. So with that data in hand I decided to upload some of my new content onto the original channel to see what would happen. Would I finally be able to bust through that glass ceiling of 300 views per day?
Unfortunately, there was no change and that’s what this blog post is all about. The images are screen caps of my original channel’s year to date. You can see the big gap in uploads where I ignored the channel and the several uploads I made when I noticed a handful of videos on the original channel started taking off. There are three interesting things to note.
A - Firstly, other than one video which rally took off for a week than died off quickly average views have been between 250 to 300 views per day. It’s been pretty steady like this for two years which is why I feel like this is an artificial cap imposed on my channel. I mean if there was an award for consistently getting the same number views month after month I would be in contention for first prize. Unlike my other channels this channel has zero monthly ebb and flow.
B - Secondly, even with several of the videos on the channel gaining huge increases in views they didn’t seem to make an impact on the daily average views. It’s as if the trending videos got their views and when my quota of views was reached the algorithm stopped suggesting more videos. It’s very strange. You would figure that as several videos pickup momentum those numbers would dive that channel’s overall numbers upward.
C - Finally I wanted to point out after October 2nd I wanted to test the waters and uploaded six new videos to the channel over the span of two weeks. You can see a slight increase in the daily views. But since I took these screen shots the numbers have come right back down to where they were over the summer. It’s as all those 500+ new subscribers I gained over the year don’t even get notified when new videos go live. I get a lot of positive feedback from people who see my videos but it’s as if my channel is suppressed. I don’t know how else to interpret the analytics.
It’s very disheartening considering how much time has gone into building the original channel. I keep coming back to it hoping that things have changed and this view cap has been lifted but it’s still there and it’s stressful to say the least. I feel like I need to stop thinking about it and abandon the original channel and just keep focusing on building the new channel. It’s going to be a long road to get to where I was before but it seems like that’s the only way forward.
Other Blog Posts in This Series
- Part 1: Optimizing My Channel For The YouTube Algorithm
- Part 2: I Think I Broke My YouTube Channel
- Part 3: I Started a New Channel
- Part 4: I Feel Like YouTube Gave Me No Choice
- Part 5: UPDATE - This Story Has a Happy Ending
