Insight Into Self Publishing on YouTube

I've been posting my little video lectures about self publishing on YouTube for nearly a year now. YouTube does offer some publicly viewable information about the source(s) of the video views under the Statistics&Data tab, but it's limited compared to the data available to the channel owners when logged into their accounts. For example, the quick stats for my fonerbooks channel (accessed by clicking "account" at the top and not choosing any drop down items) shows:

fonerbooks
Videos Uploaded: 22
Video Views: 26,955
Channel Views: 2,161
Subscribers: 35

Or in longhand, that my 22 videos have been watched a total of 26,955 times, that 2,161 individuals have clicked on my channel to check other videos, and that 35 people have signed up to be notified whenever I post a new one. But when I logged into YouTube yesterday, I saw a new option on the "account > My Videos" page called "YouTube Insight." Below is a screenshot of the main Insight data for my publishing channel for the past year:



The main takeaways are that my video are currently averaging a little over 80 views a day, that just over a third of the viewers are female, and that the vast bulk of viewers are in their productive professional years.

Next I'm going to show the YouTube Insight data for my new website, for which I promised to publish progress updates on this blog. The sad truth is it has already gone off-mission, as my plan for a general repair site has bogged down into endless work on the project car which was originally intended to give the site a narrative thread. The mechanical work I wanted to start with has all been pushed off until I finish repairing the unibody and installing new floors. But the new site does offer an interesting insight of its own into self publishing videos on YouTube.



In the past week, all of the viewers (as measured by YouTube) were between 18 and 44, with half as many female viewers as my publishing channel. In addition, the overall number of video views per day isn't that far below my publishing channel total, despite the fact that this website generates large numbers of publishing video viewers, while the ifitjams.com website generates relative few viewers for the car repair videos. All of which tends to support the generally held view of YouTube, that its main audience is younger people, and that it's not generally seen as a source of specific professional information. Many of the little repair videos pick up a number of viewers on YouTube who are planning a repair themselves and are looking for How-To instructions. But relatively few people, especially in the demographic who watch my publishing series of videos, would go to YouTube and search for various publishing related phrases in hope of finding a video to watch. The publishing videos probably pick up a few viewers directly from search when they show up in Google results.

I'm a little disappointed that the little live action repair videos I knock out while working on the car attract nearly as many viewers as the publishing videos which I put a real effort into, including multiple takes and talking to myself. But it's important accept the various Internet publishing options for what they are, and not waste too much time trying to force the wrong content into a publishing platform just because it's available or popular. I also gained a little insight into my failure to find a wife and settle. Analyzed objectively, the problem must be that I'm sending out the wrong publishing signals for finding a nice Jewish woman within walking distance:-)



My other excuse for embedding this re-run video is to point out that it is embedded with the "Don't include related videos" option. So when the video finishes playing, YouTube doesn't display a bunch of related videos. I do this whenever I remember in order to combat video hijacking. I don't want a bunch of random videos from unknown pitchmen showing up on my web pages, especially when many YouTube videos are designed for that specific purpose.