How to Increase YouTube Subscribers?...

Alright everyone, so here’s a predicament I’m in right now.
I have invested lots of time and effort and money into my YouTube channel. Being a nonprofit channel, I have to buy everything I get (alarms or otherwise) with my own money. I think that ad revenue is an unfair advantage that for profit channels use to increase their sub counts and videos. But keep in mind that is not what I’m talking about here.
So lately I’ve been getting these notifications from various YouTubers like ‘I just got 200 subs!’ and I end up commenting things like ‘Good for you!’ when in reality I want to hurl my phone put the window. Why? Because it hurts me personally to see that, for the last 4 months straight, I have stayed at 135 subscribers exactly, when other people who created their channels much later than me have tons of more subs than I do. And also keep in mind that 70 or so subs I have are my fellow students at school, so it’s not like I have a ton of people subscribed to me. And that hurts because these same channels I am subscribed to and they won’t sub to me.
So, quite honestly, I’m not thinking it’s my videos because I typically spend 2 hours just to edit and upload stuff. I also upload on a consistent basis (typically once a week). Now what hurts me more is people who upload less frequently get more views, comments and subs than my videos.
I understand that this isn’t some kind of competition for subs or a mental health board, but my question is, what do I do to get my subs and view counts up? Because I’m sort of at a loss for words at this point. Or should I just not worry about this and just keep making videos consistently?

Thanks.

I make my videos for fun and to share what I’m interested in, I honestly don’t give a damn how many people watch them.

Don’t worry so much about it, there are much more important and satisfying things for you to strive for than popularity with online videos - this is a small community of people anyways, so views and subscribers are inherently limited for channels like ours.

Thanks, that honestly makes me feel a lot better! :smiley:

Hey, no problem.

As long as you look at it from the right perspective, video making should be enjoyable. Heck, I’ve spent hours at night for weeks on end creating and editing videos that only a handful of people will see - it’s all about the enjoyment of the process and making sure that your target audience (whether large or small) will appreciate what you’ve created.

Don’t let yourself fall into a habit where video making feels like work. This is just a hobby, after all. For me, film-making and photography in general overlap with my fire alarm/industrial hobbies. Outside of my YouTube channel, I can tell you that 9 out of 10 videos I make or photos I shoot are never seen by more than 3 people. Of course, if I were to constantly publish all of these photos with the intentions of online views, or ad revenue as you mentioned, it would severely detract from the fun of the activity itself.

Now, this isn’t meant to downplay the topic of views and subscribers. Everybody loves to be able to share their work and receive feedback from a large group of people! If you focus on creating quality content and enjoying the content you create, eventually the other things will come around.

It all takes time.

Yeah. I still enjoy making videos, and I agree, making videos to the point of making it feel like work would be terrible. :slight_smile:

don’t worry about others, you should be happy for them for doing well.

I haven’t posted in a while, but I was actually just watching some newer users’ videos the other day, and had some thoughts that might help you out.

When I first started making videos, I was uploading several times a week and wanted to have all sorts of fancy stuff like intros, music, graphics to get people to subscribe, etc. At some point, I just kind of stopped caring about all of that, and began uploading whenever I had something particularly interesting to show. That was usually just once or twice a month. Out of laziness, I would shoot a single take with my iPhone and upload straight to YouTube. Oddly enough, that’s when my channel started getting a lot of views and subscribers. I think it’s because my viewers were more interested in consistently seeing new and interesting alarms, rather than all of the fluff or “me” personally. That’s my YouTube story, for what it’s worth.

If you’re making videos because you enjoy editing and putting a lot of time into the production, have fun with it! You can make your YouTube channel be whatever you want it to be. Just remember that substance, not production, is what attracts most viewers. Everything else can get in the way of your viewers’ experience. I’m not directing this at anyone in particular, but when I pop back onto the forum and watch new users’ videos every once in a while, I often have to skip past 2 minutes of EDM music intros and channel-related rambling to get to the substance. So if you make videos because you’re first and foremost into fire alarms and want others to see your latest and greatest stuff, focus on creating only that. Viewers will recognize your enthusiasm and consistency, and will want to stick around for more.

Best of luck with your channel! :wink:

And he returns!
In all honesty, I’ve been having that same sort of issue. I’ve had my channel since 2011 and I still haven’t even broken the 100-subscriber count. I guess it’s because my channel is all over the place in terms of content. If that’s the case, I’m considering completely scrapping the Netscape128 channel and starting fresh. I already have a music channel (Robert Aslin Music) so making a channel specifically for alarms (something to the effect of Robert Aslin Fire Alarms) sounds like a decent idea, right?

Thanks Destin! Your videos were actually what got me interested in alarms and that’s when I began to really take notice as to what kinds of Fire alarms were in buildings around me, such as at school when I became interested in alarms around 2013 or so. Before that I had an on and off interest in alarms, but being into emergency vehicles and their sirens and lighting at the time it wasn’t until then that I actually got into the hobby.