I... DON'T Recommend YouTube Shorts to Most Creators Right Now. Here's Why.
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- Опубликовано: 12 фев 2024
- RUclips Shorts aren't playing well with growing on RUclips right now. Here's what's happening.
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Tell me more of what your experience with Shorts has been so far!
I strongly dislike shorts. It's a totally different skill set and with dog training, I hate leaving so many important details out (which is why I chose long form content in the first place!). I'm putting out 3-5 shorts per week because I feel like I have to, and they do get watched, but it's not the work that I want to be doing. It's a big bummer.
Even though I have published a good number of videos on my channel, my long form videos are still weak, IMO.
Nearly ALL of my views and subscribers are coming from my shorts, which is great, except for the fact that it appears they are not the audience I am trying to reach. :(
I'm striving for views & subs to grow my community and channel, but I feel like I'm reaching the wrong audience with shorts. I'm not trying to reach kids scrolling shorts, but the adult soccer coaches who I feel I can truly help.
Hello great video information and now they are pushing live streaming on the RUclips short shelf I think if you make a short it has to be on what you’re channel is about and not just a short of random stuff Nate
I started a shorts channel in entertainment space on September 10, 2023. In 5 months 4 days (today), I will cross the 1 million view mark. I have 6.8k subs and 5k watch hours 99% of videos are shorts.
I found using related video from a short to a long to be a disaster. When I link short to short, I get a 10% boost in views. I test this by linking to an older short that's not been in the feed to track its views.
When I link from short to long, the AVD of the long plummets. When my AVD drops from over a minute to a few seconds, the views on the video just dies.
Good luck,
-=DGG
I play games, which are horizontal; it just doesn't translate well to vertical.
Besides that, though, I don't shorts because they aren't long enough to say anything of substance. Of the few shorts I've made, the best have been like my long-form content, but not long enough for a full episode.
I recently deleted 50M shorts views.
I had one short getting thousands of views per hour, absolutely ballooning my subs per day. That was awesome until I realized all those new subscribers are from a completely different demographic than the audience that watches my long-form content. I gained about 150k subs in a few months, and found that it negatively impacted the CTR and retention of my longer videos.
The new subs from shorts were getting served my long-form videos and not clicking them. Because like you said, that’s the wrong audience. That shorts audience has a different behavior.
I’ve concluded that “shorts” is almost like its own niche on the platform. I’ve thought about what the solution might be for so long- I think it may be separating shorts subs into a different metric like “followers” or “shorts subscribers.” That seems so convoluted though.
Great vid! Thanks for all the info you provide
Yep, that was almost EXACTLY my experience with Shorts as well. I did 30 Shorts in 30 Days about 9 months ago. I found a formula that worked well (story-telling and chopping up bits of my long-form videos) and I had multiple Shorts hit over 1 million views. My subs climbed from about 2K to 15K in the span of 4 weeks.
Cool, right? Nope. Far from it. My CTR on long form videos took a massive hit and seriously killed the momentum I had gained with the long form videos I pour all my time into.
Ended up deleting all the Shorts, but my long form videos have struggled ever since.
Very unfortunate. I wish I could go back and have a do-over 😂
Yes, shorts and long-form audiences are completely different.
Those are practically Tiktok audience. 😆😆
Such a good point. I hadn't considered checking my click-throughs for long form.
@@thrift272 Yes, the shorts are good to earn subscribers, but they are not really interested in long-form videos unless your short video convinces them to watch long videos.
I think RUclips should separate the platforms. As a long form content creator that has 0 interest in watching or filming shorts, I'd love to either: get them on to a platform called RUclips Shorts, or if too much damage has been done already, create another platform called RUclips Classic where all the long form content creators can transfer their stuff. They can sync the two sites so that a creator can do both if they want, or completely ignore one or the other. Thanks Nate for all that you do!
Thats not a half bad idea,problem is its youtube.They dont do things for the people,they want the $
At the same time, TikTok is trying to push us to make “full screen”, long format videos. Yet they get no traction because they simply aren’t what the audience goes there for.
True that! It doesn't make sense to introduce long format on TikTok.
TikTok is trying to be both Amazon and RUclips now 😩
Depends, if you make a good long format full screen on tiktok that people engage with it can work well, I manage to make a 8min long with 470k views in tiktok while it did "only" 170k on youtube!
Is TicToc store the new Temu? @@NamesWithSteph
Is TicToc worth the effort? I have been thinking about uploading my content to another platform. I was considering TicToc.
I’m so bummed. At a last ditch effort to get my channel going, I made shorts. The idea was to just start (which seems to be the hardest part for me). The first short I made went viral and hit 1.1M in the first 3 weeks. It also gave me 1500 followers. That’s great and all but they aren’t my people! I’m almost 100% confident they aren’t interested in what I really do and create. Hoping I haven’t shot myself in the foot here. Your videos I find so helpful and I really enjoy your personality and appreciate your special touch on everything. Just wanted to say thanks. 🙏 ❤
That's tough. I had a similar experience on one of my channels last year but with a long form video. It was the first long form I posted on that channel and it got 450k views in a month and over 3k subs but I quickly realized that I was kind of screwed because those people weren't the right audience for the content i wanted to create. In the next month I posted 2 more videos both of them didn't even reach 1k views. As an experiment I posted one of them on a brand new channel as I thought it was a good video and it could get a decent amount of views but it just wasn't being served to the right people because of the first video that went kind of viral. And i was right a month later the video on the new channel with 0 subscribers got just under 20k views and on the other channel with 3k+ subscribers it's still sitting under 1k views.
@@blurio1642 wow. I wish it didn't have to be this complicated! I'm determined to be in this for the long haul. I'll just keep learning from people like Nate and a few others I've grown to like and listen to. Good luck to you!
The only person I have seen integrate shorts and long form symbiotically is Ryan Trahan. He has made a ton of shorts that are just cut up versions of his older long form videos and he leaves the shorts on a cliffhanger, therefore pushing the short audience to the longer video. It's genius. But yeah for the rest of us plebs that don't have a team of editors, a think tank and videographers, we gotta stick to one format
I’m starting to get traction. I film, write and edit my videos for one minute increment sets. Therefore I can turn a video into 6 shorts
that's awesome! So you you make your long form with the intent of cutting them up into shorter bite sized chunks. That's something I should try to incorporate in the future. @@CEDtalks85
The biggest thing for sure is making sure your shorts attention span match the same as your long form attention span… that way someone who watched your short, then goes to your long form and sees something of the same pace and speed.
This means if you’re going for long form AND shorts, you would have to keep the pacing on your shorts the same as the pacing on your long form video.
You got it right Sean. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
one of the forex traders guru make shorts out of her long form videos. Some audience will not like it when we make shorts out of long form videos, but most content creators will not care. They just want their shorts to attract viewers for their long form videos
You nailed it...shorts don't convert. Short form viewers don't watch long form content. It may create some new subscribers (I have 20 from a short yesterday, first short I've done in months) but they usually don't join your Livestreams or watch your long form content. I'm glad to finally hear a "RUclips coach" say what I've been saying forever.
I deleted my shorts. I followed all best practices but at the end of the day the results weren't worth it. I made shorts that aligned with my long form that blew up, but the conversion was either poor or not worth it. And so what if you get a short with a million views and 10k subs earned. Those 10k subs will never contribute to your long term success unless you want to pump out high quality shorts to give RUclips HUNDREDS of millions of views for pennies on the cpm/rpm. Shorts only line RUclips's pockets, they get a huge boost in stats while paying virtually nothing. Meanwhile you're artifically pumped and excited over the vain success from a piece of content that will never result in higher authority or more money.
Can absolutely confirm. I'm so much more of a short form creator and generally struggle with long form. Have brought in millions of subs to my channel through Shorts but there is zero conversion to the long form
interesting to hear that! maybe we should do a deep dive sometime
What if you did BTS of your viral shorts? Hidden pattern fruit
Create a new RUclips channel for the long form and promote it with the RUclips shorts one redirect your shorts audiences to your new RUclips channel
You got it right Kevin. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
@kevinbparry I watched some of your shorts and long form videos. You're really talented! You deserve that million subscribers. Also, that 500 drawing basketball flip book was really nice. And yeah, I just hope I can be as patient and creative as you in doing contents.
My opinion on short-form content has always been that if you are looking to build a strong community, shorts are NOT the way to go. That's why I stayed away from shorts on most of my channels. However, when RUclips introduced the related video option, I got excited and started posting shorts on this channel as a way to keep the channel active while I am working on a big project. I was hoping that with the related video option, the short-form viewers would move over to my long-form content. But I couldn't be more wrong. I posted about 10 shorts that targeted the same audience as my long-form content, and the 10 videos got around 40k views combined. Out of these 40k views, the related videos got just 13 views, and in total, the channel got less than 15 subscribers from shorts. In comparison, the least watched long-form video on this channel is sitting on just under 700 views, and it brought in 16 subs. I don't want to say long-form is better than short-form as both have their pluses and minuses, but it's important to know what we want to achieve with our content before making decisions on the format.
Have you noticed any effects on how many impressions your video received in relation to posting shorts?
Very helpful info, tks
It is very tricky! Thank you for sharing!
@@Mr.Rhombus I haven't noticed any increase in impressions for long-form videos while I was posting the shorts.
@@blurio1642 You got it right Blurio. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
I stopped making RUclips shorts 4 months ago. My channel has grown significantly since then.
Wow
Really?
Well,i just have 1 short on my channel😅
And yea,I just subscribed to your channel...
How is the fashion business going?
And you have great views too from what I can see❤...all the best
@@tchibazzshorts for me have a false sense of success. You can get thousands of views from a short. Gain 30 subscribers. Then post a long form video and get 40 views. Unless you are trying to focus on shorts. I think shorts can absolutely destroy a newer channel.
@@tchibazz ayeeee , thanks for tappin in. Things are well. I don’t have to struggle with video ideas. I still have to be creative and provide value. But in the fashion world my 💡 is the next sneaker coming out and if I can get my hands on it.
RUclips Shorts really destroyed entire ecosystem on RUclips. When i have 90K Subscribers, my channel easily make $15.000/month from long from videos, now my channel 1.4 Million subscribers, i only make $4.000 monthly on average. Since youtube launched shorts, youtube no longer push long form video. That is the fact. That's why you see lots of big youtubers decided to retire 😂
Makes sense. My videos got way less attention in the past weeks or smt. The quality got better btw but they just got showen to way less viewers.
It might be because you are making youtube shorts on the same channel.
You can check if this is the case by looking at your CTR on your long form videos.
RUclips is showing your long form videos to your subscribers and since a lot of them come from shorts and they are not interested in long form videos your CTR is dropping and you get less views. Your average retention also might be affected by it.
I guess a way to fix it is to start a new channel where you make only long form videos and leave the current channel for shorts.
This is definitely not an ideal solution, but since you are already good at making videos I think you can grow pretty fast.
Over 500,000 subs, making less than 5k a month. When I was at 200,000 I got more views and more money.
@@Sharivari
You got it right Sharivari. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
@@afor_ayush Hi. I would love to learn more.
I have a healthy shorts and long form strategy rn.
I do vfx tutorials in my long form and just the final results in yt shorts. So they work on their own. But also together.
Took me a while to figure that out
As I saw my shorts doing better, my long form content started to do worse. Last year, I deleted all of the shorts and within a month my long form views and related revenue started going back up. Shorts seem to attract a different audience that doesn't watch long form video when the algorithm recommends it. That tells the algorithm that these "regular viewers" aren't interested in my latest videos.
This appears to be one of the biggest issues RUclips is facing with the two formats right now, agreed.
Also, great to see you again @BlackBearForge!
You have a good energy on your videos. I hope you do well
I think you should not have deleted them but just stop making them…you really never know who will be interested…👍🏻😃🥰🦊
So do I have to delete them? I only have like 4
@@Justyna-dg4hs never delete a video if you can help it. Just leave it…
I think I am one of the people you are talking about who has done very well with shorts and it hasn't hurt my long form in anyway but rather helped me out. I gained almost a million subscribers on my channel within a month and my shorts feed into my long form vids since they are the same content but in a longer form. My niche is gaming and I usually play minecraft.
As a Minecraft creator, this is generally the same thing most Minecraft creators say. Your audience is significantly larger than that of the average gaming content creator. Compare Minecraft to anything-World of Warcraft, Palworld, anything-and the searches are significantly higher. So, of course, it doesn't affect you, but for most creators, they're not seeing the same results
that's solid - super good to hear! Now you've got me considering what would make minecraft audience convert between two formats so well (vs others)
none @@VibingHumanity
Oh my god its cheap!
Crap dude, you literally came out of nowhere 6 months ago and got over 1M subs! Most of which came to you in the last 30 days. Good job! So does your shorts drive most of your views and subs?
Nate, I actually started making shorts based on your advice almost 4 years ago now, and I think you made some good points here. The biggest difference between youtube proper and shorts is culture. There are little pockets where I can see some overlap, but in general, the audiences and experiences are very different. It's true that what you need to do to get a response is different for both, but fundamentally, the skills needed in terms of video making and community interaction are the same. This is why I enjoy creating for both. When the grind of ideation and implementation of thumbnails burns me out, I mentally switch to shorts and it helps me to recenter.
I miss the old RUclips where our RUclips channel was like a myspace page and it felt so personal with your audience.
the new RUclips has more ways to monetise for small content creators & lower requirements. We just need to find the one that resonate with us
Nate, I love your insight. I think RUclips fears that if you had access to all of their data you would become too powerful. haha
I started this channel partly as an experiment for my high school video production class to show students the analytics side of YT. It has since started to really take off so I’m taking it more seriously. Lately I have been creating a short and a long form video simultaneously but I am seeing that they draw in 2 very different audiences even though the content is from the same source footage! In terms of the road to monetization, one might bring in the subscribers but the other grows at a totally different rate to bring in the watch hours.
You may have saved me a lot of time and frustration. Getting ready to ramp up my channel with long form, but also trying to figure out how to incorporate shorts in there... somewhere... to find the time to learn all the ins & outs of doing both.
I was getting information overwhelm and wondering if I really wanted to do this. Now I know. Thank you!
Two separate channels I guess.
I do long form videos where I react to Supernanny/parenting techniques and then I chop them up to make shorts. I’ve had a crossover where some do watch the short and then click the “related video” link. Interesting information!
Good to know! I like hearing what’s working. What do you feel is working best for you?
@mommybreakdown, I just wanted to start doing comments on a personal development channel .Would you mind share what App is working for you to do the commentary? Thank you
@@ThatNateBlackI feel like combo of shorts and long form together are working for me. Maybe it is because they are the exact same content?
@@mafolux7464hi! I use OBS which is free. I pull up RUclips and then use my phone for the reaction view. I hope that helps!
So I experienced this YESTERDAY. I was close to 10k subscribers, and sort of wanted to get me over the hump. So I cut together a pretty okay (not great) short, to experiment with what might occur, and hopefully get me over the hump.
I haven’t posted a short in months, long before I started growing, and figured why not experiment?
Well. The short bombed. Like 25 views in 6 hours. And then my VPH for my video taking off went from 40-100 per hour to 21vph.
Is it correlated? I don’t think so per se, i made sure to uncheck “notify subscribers” cause I didn’t want this to go to them.
But it was weird for me. Really weird. No more shorts for me, even though I used shorts for 2 years to grow other channels I’ve worked closely with for years. Good video, wish I saw it yesterday:/
I've got an education channel with a couple breakout videos (for me), but most still have a low view count. My videos are primarily long form, but I also do "tips and tricks" with shorts. The shorts are an offshoot of my long form videos and usually support the long form or other things I know my viewers will need at some point. Generally I get waaay more views with my shorts, but they are also bringing in some subscribers and also get some crossover to my long form. I would like to focus on just one, but I feel like I still need both.
I'm also hopeful that this will help grow both, but it is indeed very tricky.
Yeah I get more views on my shorts on Yt and on TikTok I get just a 100 more than usual (310 views vs the 200 everyone be stuck at) so I’m tryna see what I should do I like making both… but to get monetized on YT with shorts is a lot but so is the 4,000
You got it right dear. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
Everytime I try to add shorts i see my stats falling down. Especially when long formats starts running better, only one single short can kill that strike.
Exactly. That's why my video has 500 views then I added a short and new long video has 10 fucking views
Thanks for another great video Nate. There are some really dumb things about shorts that hurt we creators, really, really dumb. Like not being able to put links to products or more information or even other of our videos in our replies to comments. Any how-to channel relies on these links to help viewers. Without them viewers are lost. That's why these things are super popular and heavily used on long form videos. So why in the world would they be disallowed in shorts? (I know YT says it's to prevent spam but that's just laziness on their part since they don't worry about spam on long form vids). It makes no sense and it hurts shorts and a channel's performance. Then, there's the related video. Yeah, good idea but terrible execution by YT. Viewers don't see it because it's hidden in plain sight. That link should be so obvious there's no way the viewer isn't pointed to it. But you have to hunt for it and YT has changed its functionality twice already. Changing things on viewers is the best way to ensure they can't find things. I'm sticking with shorts but YT has to do a much better job with their functionality.
You got it right Jim. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
Great video as always Nate! Shorts are a tease too. What I mean by that is, and by no means do I get tons of views, but for awhile I was getting a good amount of views on shorts but then bam I get a lot less views. I have to agree I got sucked into the shorts thing and my long-form content got hurt from it because I was focusing on getting those shorts out there. Instead I should have been doing what I was doing and kept making long-from content which I enjoy much more because I get to teach what I love doing building models and 3d printing.
For most cases yeah shorts can be in the way of long form. But if the shorts and the long form are the exact same content, it's a great match. Just be real about where long form views and short form views are coming from. Think of them as two different audiences that need to be built independently from each other.
probably these short should just be a preview of the highlights of the video so people get a nice overview if they want to watch the long one and the other creators should get the hell on tik tok. I mean there is a reason why Mark Zuckerberg removed the fund for short creators, since the audience is completely distracted and lost. This destructive forces are a lose lose for everyone
Stumbled on this video and can't agree more. As a viewer (non-creator), I watch Shorts not because I want to, but if you pick and choose, you generally don't get ads on the RUclips app. (Long form videos are so over-loaded with ads that they are nearly unwatchable on the app.) I am different, though, in that I don't endlessly scroll within the videos; instead, I only look at the ones from people I subscribe to or I may stumble on a short on the home page and check out others from that creator. I will also agree that in most cases, a creator's work is best in one or the other. The best counterexample of this would be a science channel that does a Short with a cool science reaction, but then has the longer video explaining WHY it happened. (Give the quick snippet that most people want to see - an explosive reaction! - but then have the deeper dive for the more curious viewers.) Most channels I watch are much better as long-form video and Shorts are an after-thought.
Thank you Nate! We have noticed the same thing. We make specifically Shorts content and have not noticed our other shorts being viewed more just because there is another suggested short. We are hopeful that will change, and for now we just enjoy making our content. 😊
Great video Nate! I find myself going back and forth on this almost daily. For the last month I’ve been trying to make sure that I get two long form videos out every week, and then turn those videos into shorts. Most of the time I just need to film a quick intro for shorts, and the pair down the video to the essentials. I do lot of Star Trek tech and character breakdowns that I can generally trim down to a minute or less. I just try to make sure that I’m not spending too much time on it. So far it’s been working but we shall see.
I try to do something similar with Star Wars but mainly in shorts. Just subbed to our ch
Very interesting... I have seen a significant drop in impressions shown for my new videos and even my community posts, especially since the beginning of the year. I have researched, changed titles, thumbnails and had come to the same conclusions - shorts are eating up the recommendations on the home page. I have made very few shorts (none recently) and have noticed a spike in views of my shorts as late as Monday 🤔 But they never translate to my long form content. Just yesterday I had begun making plans to film every recipe in my next video in a way so it woukd be possible to cut it up and make a short for each one to go live at the same time my long form video went live in an effort to connect the audiences. NOPE! Not wasting anymore of my time and head space on this game. I'm a long form, building a community type of creator and I'm not giving the milk away for free, gotta buy the cow 😂 Thanks for EVERYTHING you do for this community here, you always just seem to address exactly what we are all dealing with in such a helpful and clear way. 😊
You got it right Mel. It is actually true that the audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of the channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
So I’m one of the few cases where I do like the RUclips shorts and an even rare case where the right kind of RUclips Shorts has helped me build my confidence within my channel.
HOWEVER, recently I’ve been doing shorts as a way to see as both of a bite size action bits for my longer content as well as strategize on the two as different demographics while still staying loyal to the main theme of my channel(s).
At least that’s how I see it.
As a track and field coaching channel I was unsure of shorts - but started producing them a couple of years back and with regularity (same day/days) each week from about a year back. Basically a third of my viewers watch shorts only, two thirds shorts and long form videos and one third long form only. Shorts have increased my subscribers quite considerably (30% of subs coming from shorts last year - I have near to 45k subs). Oddly enough the shorts that do the best are those that are 15sec and show a drill or a jump from an athlete with technical tips added and a long-ish written description (although I don't know if that is read!). To me shorts are an easy option to make content - in fact too easy hence not "valuing" them myself compared to the work that goes into a long form video for me. However, I guess as you said certain niches may have better traction with shorts ... as an educational channel I thought they perhaps had limited value but I guess I'm finding otherwise. With a young-ish core demographic (18-35 yr-old athletes) perhaps this explains why shorts can work for me. And they don't seem to be detracting, rather they are adding to the channel. Keep on educating us! Thanks from the UK.
Totally agree! I did start up our channel with lots of shorts to begin with (daily at first, then 3 a week, now..one per week). I have tapered them off as we reached monetization recently, but I definitely expected better cross over from the "related video" option, since that was more or less always what my shorts were for -- like a little teaser commercial for each week's long video. The long form view analytics don't show more than like 10% of the views coming from the related short. 😐
I'll keep posting one short to point towards each long form vid, for now, but I'm definitely considering dropping them entirely.
Thanks for your on-point insight as always!
I'm in the beauty niche, and RUclips shorts work well for most creators here. You can share an instant makeup transformation lip synching to a fun song and direct the viewer to a longer tutorial, makeup compilation or product review. The conversion is still low, as you say, but I'm okay with that, since I enjoy doing RUclips Shorts on their own, and I would be doing them regardless. I also do already make most of this content for TikTok and Reels, so it doesn't take a lot more time to get it ready for RUclips Shorts. For some of my successful shorts, views don't just come from Shorts feed, but a lot come from search or sound pages, aka people are actively choosing to watch that video.
Hey Nate! I agree with you completely. The viewer behaviour AND the skill set in creating an effective short are very different. My shorts on Instagram very often go viral but in YT, it’s painful how badly they perform in relation to my long-form content. What my team and I have noticed is that there is not a lot of overlap between my long form and short form audience. They’re almost entirely different audiences. The reason I’m still publishing them is because I am creating them for Instagram and tiktok anyway so they’re already done and because they do add to my subscriber base. I am consistently gaining subscribers from them which looks good when I’m negotiating brand deals. It’s bizarre to me how they repeatedly fail even though they get hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram. So bizarre.
I've had the exact same experience. Gained a lot of followers which look good to brands but none of them watch my long form stuff.
You have the opposite problem! My viewers watch my long form but not my short form@@TrustInTheShorts
Maybe I am too new to even say but I have posted 12 videos and 9 shorts since Dec 30th and in my analytics it tells me that 60% of people are finding me through my shorts feed. I try to relate my shorts to my long form video topics and I do have people using that link.
In all honesty I truly believe you can post either and eventually you will see it be picked up. Not every topic is going to be a massive immediate hit. Some will be more slow and steady. VidIQ hit it on the nail when they said you have to play the long game. Plan for posting for three years before expecting real success. That’s what I’m aiming for. Slow and steady 😅
My subscribers are finding me via shorts too according to my analytics!
True, focus on long form video is more valuable. Extract portion to become shorts as teaser
Great insights, Nate!
While I tend to disagree with a lot MatPat's suppositions when it comes to Shorts, you presented a really well thought-out conversation about why someone might not want to embrace them. I personally have been loving Shorts because of how undeniably impactful they have been for educational/resource/utility channel discovery and reach. What I've been extremely discouraged by is how poorly Creators have been embracing content strategy when it comes to short-form videos.
More often than not, they treat them like repurposed, disposable content and (no surprise)... their audience responds accordingly.
Maybe one of these days we should catch up and compare notes!
Love what you do, pal ☮❤
My beloved DR tutorial channel is here as well. What's your strategy for the Shorts to help boost the Long Form Contents?
I have been studying Shorts and the effects on long content channels. Since they started taking over my subscribers home pages, my views and earnings got reduced by more than 50%. I tried getting my content into short form to remind my viewers I still exist but this just got me followers who don't know me and ask for the full video concluded in 1 minute. As a result many of the creators I analyze and myself are forced to look for other platforms and ways to recover outside of RUclips. Resulting in less time to provide quality content for RUclips. 😢
I like all this info! I have been talking with a few friends that are also creators and you validated a few points that we have been discussing. Great info and Thank you
Congratulations, Nate, on your fascinating and authentic videos! My own channel is in a small niche with educational content. I started shorts a year ago and found the 60 seconds limitation and the vertical format an interesting challenge. What you say about the passive viewing experience on the shorts feed is certainly true for the vast majority of shorts. However, some of my more successful shorts - everything is relative - were not pushed by the feed but got the majority of their views from RUclips search. And I think that's because RUclips massively pushes shorts in their search results. So you can actually attract "active" viewers to your channel with shorts.
As audience, I sometimes like to just watch a few shorts to get little nuggets or entertainment/good feelings from them (so, that's essentially coaching/spiritual tips, comedy or just something nice like cute animals). BUT some of these shorts are clearly snippets from a longer video that did spark my interest in the longer video and I've been frustrated that there wasn't an easily visible link to the full video - now we finally got that! Obviously, I won't watch it right away, but it goes to my "watch later" list where I will revisit it later. So, as I'm excited about this from the audience POV, I also like to use it in my own shorts that are taken from long form videos. I don't have enough of an audience to have an idea how high the percentage of people is who're functioning like me, but I always assume there must be SOME. 😄
Hey Nate, I love your videos. You've always given great advice. I used to make YT shorts because I felt like I had to supplement my long content. The last time I made a few shorts was just for fun. Of course the recent comedic goofy shorts won out over the others and I had a blast making them. The shorts created from long content felt like a chore and didn't perform well. I guess my point is I think everyone should just make content they have fun making whether its short or long.
Thank you for sharing! This is what I have been looking for as I am just starting a RUclips channel.
Great video as always. We're a smaller channel but I noticed a positive impact on long form videos when I began unchecking the box "Publish to subscriptions feed and notify subscribers" when uploading a new video. It takes a few days longer for the long form to start gaining impressions but the click through rate went up several percent. I still upload shorts to gain subs but focus most of my effort making sure long form thumbnails and title mesh well with the audio content. When I have enough subs to matter, I'll likely cut way back on the number of shorts.
I make what I call "CHAOS SHORTS" (*Boop, Trademarked by me) - - I take my Long Form content and chop out 8-12 segments, which adds up to 12-22 seconds of Big Reaction Statements or Actions, then I shuffle them out of order. Slap on some crazy music, and Go!! They are entertaining, fast to make, and really.... don't tell a story at all, yet they kinda do, but you've got to go to the LF content to understand it. - - They are like teasers to my LF content. They seem to have some success and the "Short Attention Span Peeps of the World" seem to like them. They frequently have a high view duration. - - - Keep up the great videos Nate. Appreciate them! - - J.Andre. / Old Iron Acres
Half of my subscribers come from shorts, but the related video link benefit has been marginal to non-existent. My audience ratio is 41% shorts only, 29% videos only, and 30% both. Not sure what I should make of this.
Mine are similar seeing thousands of views in December from shorts with a good few subs but from the related videos link I see either zero views from it or below 10 views. There's no benefit in shorts and actually hurt my channel instead and now I'd rather do 1 or 2 shorts from a charity stream to promote that instead.
@JamesH97Gaming I'm a little confused. If it hurts your Channel why do you want to do 1-2 shorts at all?
@@VioletEmerald Cause it's from my LiveStreams and to promote my fundraiser for Make A Wish to more people especially in the arma 3 community. When it comes to my videos what I said above and I'm only livestreaming more recently too.
Very well said and explained Nate. It is actually true that audience attracted via shorts doesn't get converted to long form content. But since I am a video editor myself and also run an end-to-end content management services agency, I have observed a pattern and co-relation between both shorts and long form that is performing better and results in much more conversion.
We usually push shorts and long form separately on the same channel, rather if we could start strategizing and optimising shorts as per our long form content, that leads to better reach of channel and ultimately gets better long form traction.
I am more than happy to share more details to someone who is interested.
I have been looking for your channel. I am so glad that YT algorithm put this on my feed. 🙏
I’ve been hesitant to make shorts but I will say that I have found myself looking for shorts first when trying to learn something because I just want a quick how too. But I primarily go for long form because I enjoy that format better.
Same
Great video... Nick. 😆
I've only found shorts provide a very short term dose of viewerships and sometimes subs, but don't think any of these are translating over to watch the full length videos. I've removed all my shorts... from RUclips that is.
Your encouragement in this way meant heaps to me! Long form is where its at for us. ❤🎉
As a teacher, the challenge for me is being thorough while not being boring and causing people to lose interest. I don't get into sensationalism but I try to be informative. It seems to me that shorts almost demand sensationalism. My most successful shorts have been on a trending topic or a very highly ranked keyword. For me, the challenge is creating videos I believe the viewer needs vs. videos they want to watch. I try to bridge this but as I said, it is a challenge.
i make both forms of video. the shorts are faster and easier to make. my longform content is a bit boring as i am just learning to edit videos. it is trial and error. my biggest challenge this year is to master editing so i wont have to shop it out. (aka fiver) like i said it all takes time and effort. it won't be the same for every creator. good luck everyone.
Nate, I've recently dedicated more time and effort to publishing shorts, and it's been going very well for me. I feel lucky because all I need to do is pull out little pieces of my long-form content (with some tweaks), so it's very rare that I actually focus a filming day on "shorts/toks". Maybe it's my niche, but there are always good little nuggets in my content that I feel can be distilled down from my longer videos.
...in terms of payment, yeah it sucks. I feel like i'm still in the "audience-building" phase of growth, and I'm stoked that people are even paying attention. Thanks as always, Mr. Nate.
Last year I noticed that and I shared it several times in different channels like yours, but no one caught on to this. In my case, I had gained momentum with long video format but decided to join in the shorts following everyone else, But!! All it did was give me subscribers but not quality ones,
Because I never saw them again and my long form videos was affected, something that I’m still trying to recover from…
So I decided to stop them and concentrate on Long form, but like the song says the damage is done so I guess I’ll be leaving 🎵🎶 literally I keep debating on whether or not stop content creation 😢
Thanks for the updated take on Shorts Nate. I started experimenting with them after your previous video and have seen a few subscribers come from it. However, my channel is still in its infancy. So, time will tell I suppose. I will also say that I saw some of the pitfalls happening to me and had to mentally stop myself and make sure the long form was my focus.
I never did a single short, and I never regret that. Channel is doing ok, as I feel it. In my niche and with my core audience, shorts don't seem to have any value to me. Honestly, I don't watch them myself )
Great video, Nate!
I got lucky with millions and millions and milliuons of views from shorts in 2023. There has been very little crossover to long-format videos. When they do watch, its only for a minute or less and that seems to hurt more than help.
I've even used shorts previews for long videos and that didn't seem to work either.
super interesting to hear your experience! And thank you!
Thanks for sharing this. I had wondered if shorts would help push people to my channel. Sounds like that hasn't been your experience. I'll keep ignoring shorts for now.
Very true, I am also getting highly affected by this RUclips shorts has slowed down my growth!
Thank you, Nate. Very well said!!!
Lo traduces. TEngo una media de 8 millones de views al dia en mis shorts. Y solo vinculando 30 shorts a un video de formato largo, este video pasó de 1200 views (3 semanas de publicado) a + de 200K views en 28 días.
Recomiendo que salgan de su zona de confort.. dejen de quejarse y trabajen para complementar y unificar todo con las herramientas disponibles.
Wow.. It does not work like that for most people
I found that's for me! Thank you Nate.
Love to hear from you. ))
Appreciate it, thanks!
must admit I have found shorts have helped subs and some do go over to long-form but I am a small channel and my niche is I do music so very different from many big channels in the comments. The shorts I do are just clips of my long-form songs so they then go and listen to long-form sometimes that's not always. It may change with bigger channels and they have more room to adjust but initially, especially in music, subs are a big barometer especially when getting booked for gigs. Great video as always Nate. Also stop being so happy I am used to singing miserable sad songs if ever you want to bring some misery to your viewers I am your man😢
We used shorts a LOT to grow the channel.... For nearly a year we posted shorts almost daily... And it did wonders for our subs numbers. However, very obviously, the audience that came to our shorts didn't watch the long-form all that much. But it still did help a lot in growing the channel. So for that I would still advice every new channel to include a shorts strategy. Even if you're more of a long-form channel.
Now that we're at over 2K subs we will do shorts a LOT less... We will continue with shorts, but it will probably just be 1 or 2 each week. On the other hand, we will also produce less long-form. We're going for more quality, less quantity because our focus now is watch hours, no longer (just) reaching as many people as possible... The next goal is monetization, and it's still a LONG, LONG way to go for that.
I agree 100% with you and had the same experience. Shorts allowed me to get subscribers, I reached 1000 in a year, but that audience was not watching my long form. I am in the same boat trying to catch up my watch hours now.
Your comment was super helpful. I’m going to start posting more shorts now because it’s taking so long to get subscribers. It looks like you have a really good strategy in place!! Hope you get monetized this year😊
@bonjourtasty glad to hear that!! Good luck with your channel! It looks amazing. We might try out one of your gluten free recipes in one of our videos some time (and obviously mention where we found it). Any suggestions which one we should really really try?
But the question still remains… can the short form subscribers make fertile soil for long form content..? Will your channel be able to grow long form videos if the foundation is built on short form videos. I understand the race to 1000 subs… but does this cost you on the back end?
@KeishaJones obviously that depends on many things. But feel free to just check the numbers of views on my long form and how they did climb together with the number of subs climbing... So, while it is still a work in progress, I'm tempted to say it does really work to grow a sustainable long-form-focused channel
Shorts FTW. My channel is 13 yrs old. It took me 12 yrs to reach 100k subs with long form videos but when I started the shorts my channel reached 4.5M subs in less than a year.
Thank you for your feedback. Congratulations 🎉hard work pays off! 👏
your welcum homie@@vegastocali
The problem with shorts is they boost the subs, but then the ratio of views/engagement on a reg vid compared to total subs can be extremely low (i.e., % of views to total subs can be less than 1%). If I have 100K subs and my vids are only generating 50-100 views per vid. Eh.
bro literally all of your shorts have young women in bikinis as the thumbnail. No wonder you are getting so many views. that’s just lazy and gross
@@smetlogikshorts is 100% click bait. It’s the only thing that matters.
It’s what this guy who posted this does
That's a very interesting topic, and on the other side of things, there are multiple "shorts" channels I've seen try to convert into long-form and their numbers are abysmal in comparison. Still an impressive feat for channels who amass millions of subs and views and I'm sure they have others means to generate revenue such as brand deals and whatnot but it's astounding to see just how one audience does not seem to transfer over, at least in most occasions. There is always exception to the rule of course.
Thank you so much Nate, and your wife (who you said helps with research, and is probably the real brains behind the outfit). Looks like our long form will monetize way before our shorts, so we're backing off shorts for now. The few shorts we have are driving new subscribers hard. We think because our content connects with our target audience at a deeply emotional level, we'll develop a shorts strategy that looks like a trailer for the long form story. The short will create an un-resolved story that the narrator will point out can be completed on the long. But first we want like 50 long forms in our library so the traffic we drive in with shorts eventually will produce more as people explore our other episodes.
Google needs to take shorts tf off of RUclips and make a separate platform. I hate short form with a passion.
amen
The problem is not that short viewers dont translate into long content views.. but more so people have just failed to convert them.
Running away from the problem in my opinion.
my analytics say the 50% of my audience watch both my shorts and long content, 25% just long and 25% just shorts. (A very nice split, i was surprised)
This tells me 75% are watching both my shorts and longs.
Why?
because my shorts are directly related to my long content. They're almost like a teaser to the main video.
It brings exposure to your channel in a way long form can't.
When that person is ready to watch a longer vid, they might just watch your long video.
"This tells me 75% are watching both my shorts and longs.
Why?
because my shorts are directly related to my long content. They're almost like a teaser to the main video. " Yes you would expect better results doing that. But this isn't exactly a new concept. It existed even before the internet in marketing. I'm pretty certain many other channels tried this and I'm guessing didn't have as good results. I'd like to hear info to the contrary however.
Nick, thanks so much for so much specifics and details on your work. Your videos are always so informative. I always look forward to seeing your stuff, Noah. It really seems like you care about helping small channels, like myself, to grow. Thanks for all you do Nigel! You’re awesome.
Great video! In retrospect, I probably spent too much time producing shorts in the beginning.
That hair tho
...whatever
I’m here as a RUclips Shorts success story. My wife’s channel completely blew up from shorts (30K to 500K). The idea that shorts can’t build up audience loyalty or translate to long form views in the long term is completely false. The key is create shorts that bring back large amounts of returning viewers over and over again. The more time they spend with you (even on shorts) the more loyalty you build. Before shorts we could barely crack 1K views per long form. Now getting 80K-100K per long form (all returning viewers from the shorts audience that was built).
I had a short do very well for me and it ended up doubling the sub count of my channel but my long form content never increased in views, in fact quite the opposite. I wound up making all my shorts private because i didnt want to get any more shorts subscribers. My channel is at a weird point in its life where the shorts subscribers are slowly unsubbing, the game i mostly made content on from the start isnt my main focus anymore as i wanted to branch out with other games, and ive been focusing a lot more on livestreaming and turning that into videos for youtube. I think one good thing i realized is what is my viewing preferences because i do watch both long and short form content. I realized a pattern with myself. The creators that i watch long form content i tend to stick to watching only their long form content. The creators that appear in my shorts feed i tend to only watch their shorts and hardly ever their long form. So in my case, i want long form viewers so making shorts is not a viable strategy for my channel.
My channel is doing well, with videos on psychology and personal growth. I started with some shorts, but they were lowering my average watch time rate, which is generally high. I preferred to stop and focus on longer videos. I've seen channels like mine not getting as many views on longer videos because they had posted too many shorts. I think it's better to position oneself on one side or the other. Thank you, Nate, for confirming this impression of mine!
Ciao, dall'Italia con Amore!
I've been doing shorts a bit under a year and they've become my biggest source of new subs. I decided to go into the shorts knowing ahead of time what the deal is and sure enough when a video gets thousands of views on the short feed it's pretty indescriment who it goes out to and I wind up with negative comments, over 10% dislikes (when I have a 99.7% likes to dislikes on my long forms and lives). The good part is it gets a taste of what I share out to much larger audiences but if youtube is serious about continuing to push out shorts they need to upgrade the shorts feed algorithm so my videos on spirituality and psychic reading stop going to fundamental christians and such...there's AI technology now RUclips can employ to update the very antiquated short-from algorithm to help get our shorts out to more of the right people just like they do with other content.
RUclips Shorts are perfect for History channels like mine. History videos take hours of research but don’t need massive amounts of editing. Shorts take a fraction of the time, I just find one interesting tidbit and explain it to camera and the whole thing can be done and dusted in under an hour. My viewership is roughly 50/50 Shorts only/both forms, almost none of my viewers only watch long form videos. Sometimes just a little tidbit is all the history you want! So I think Shorts and long form in combination works really well for the History niche.
100% on the distraction element, the last year has been my best year for growth and I threw away a few good ideas that I made into shorts when I could have built them out more into a solid long form video
As a tiny channel, I'm torn, tbh. The shorts drive my subs and views on my long forms. I create my shorts from my long forms 99% of the time and tie my shorts to the long form through the "related video" option. So, where I'm torn is: shorts are driving the channel but is it "short"ing my long forms? (then again, it's hard to get true analytics as my channel is niche even in the gaming sphere.)
I think they should release a 2nd App for Shorts only. It would help long and short form content a lot. You can‘t be an all in one App.
Thanks for this information, I just started my storytelling channel a couple of weeks ago and have not got into shorts yet so after hearing this I probably won't for now.
What’s up Nick?! 😉(just kidding Nate 😜) We agree. Struggled to not feel “forced” to post Shorts, but we’ve experimented with it a bit. Not against them, but honestly try real hard to only post Shorts that either are funny, or tell a full story or deliver a point so the viewer is satisfied in that moment, because we fully know they will not click the link to watch the longer form of the video because that’s not why they came there. It was shown TO them, they didn’t choose it. It’s a lot like trying to get a Facebooker over to YT and it simply doesn’t work. Therefore they most likely are not going to follow the rabbit hole to continue watching more of your content or subscribe.
Love your channel! You help us learn SO much to utilize and try on both of our channels.
Also, we agree with a previous comment, it would be awesome to do Shorts in landscape so we don’t have to film so many different takes! Thumbnails would be awesome too! But…we’re not in charge here so 🤷🏻♀️
Thank you for making this. I just had my first viral long form video and tripled my subscribers and was wondering if I should put out some shorts defining technical terms that come up in my longer videos. Maybe I will scrap that plan.
This pops up as I open my app to make a short lol Thanks Nate! 100% agree. I have literally only made shorts to gain subs….
Hello Nate. Thank you for sharing your analysis. I think you are right, shorts and and long videos are both important, we should not start focusing on one strategy. Shorts are going well for me. 😊
I think now looking back, I think the plan for Shorts is make different channels about them albiet depending on how related the shorts are to your long-form content. If you're me and you have a 2nd channel based on sports/sports news, Shorts could coincide with videos if the long-form videos you make are short. However, I think for majority of RUclips creators, it probably would've been best to have two seperate channels: One for regular content, and one for short-form content that away one doesn't directly impact the other negatively. This is something I really should've done.
As a currently small channel, I make short form vertical videos that I post on all platforms to try and grow, get my content and name out there and talk about little nibblets of things I want to say. Sometimes I have things I want to share that arent 10 minute videos, or at least shouldnt be
So I really do like the format, but I admit, Ive probably focused on it way more than I should have.
But my channel is also a bit sporadic as well, so Im used to fighting uphill I guess
Thank you for this video! This answers a concern/observation I had been wondering about, thinking maybe i was doing something wrong.(I still need to fine tune a lot.) I noticed when I cut down on doing shorts because I have a hard time compressing my content to a minute or under, most progress came to a grinding halt. At least I have some idea why.
So glad you did this vid & I notice your take on this has changed since many of your previous podcasts, vids & tutorials that I have watched/listened to. 1/2 way through '23, I put all my shorts on private. My largely Information channel was plummeting every time I posted one. Curious about my travel channel, though. Additional problem - nobody's teaching solo content creators how to actually produce shorts, much less effectively - maybe you could? I stink at them, personally.
I have a gaming channel (car and racing games) and use shorts to show edited clips or highlights of things like race incidents. I have found that they have driven some traffic to my live streams, but on the whole, the audience is separate. I also upload them to TikTok so have built a small following there too. Conversely, TikTok does appear to be pushing longer content.
I use shorts as an intro in reaching more viewers. They are, for me, commercials that let people know my channel exists. They do help my subscriber count go up a few every time I post one. I can agree, however, that shorts/commercials are not super helpful at bringing me closer to the 4,000 watch hours. As always, thank you for your perspective.
Not hearing you out before I comment Nick, Great Morning and have an Awesome Day! Now I need to smash the like button and go back and watch the video :)
Thanks Nate, I keep feeling like I should divert my energies to regularly posting some shorts when I'm having trouble staying on track with my long form vids which average 30-40 minutes each. I will probably continue to make a short here and there if I think I have something that would be entertaining.
This video came at the right time for me. I'd been thinking about jumping into shorts, but long-form seems to be working just fine. Better to focus my efforts and improve the quality of my long-form content, rather than split my attention between long-form and shorts. Great video, as always! Thank you!
i think it depends on your niche. for me, i started off with a ton of shorts and it helped me gain lots of traction to my static channel. I then transitioned to long form videos and it seems to be doing well. I also noticed a handful of the viewers came from my shorts and actually enjoyed that i was making long from videos. but either way, ill be doing both short form and long form but mainly focusing on long from videos.
I find that the shorts I’m confident in (and that take a lot of time to make) don’t do well. And the ones that I’m not feeling great about sometimes take off! I have no idea what works and what doesn’t!
Great video! We struggle with our shorts strategy. It has helped create subs over time but it takes so much time and we really enjoy long form so it seems like work. We are trying a new Shorts strategy moving forward and will see what the results are over the next couple of months. Appreciate you and all our best!
Something I've been curious about is how shorts affect long form content when it comes to the algorithm. My channel is a gaming trivia gameshow channel, and the shorts that I've been putting out have just been snippets of my long form videos (takes me about an hour to make, so effort diverted to shorts is minimal). Is it known how the two mediums correlate when it comes to the audiences that they get shown to? Or to be specific, if my shorts do poorly/well, will that affect how many impressions my long form videos get? And will those long form videos show up in the same feeds as the shorts viewers? I do understand the overlap is minimal when it comes to the types of content shorts viewers and long form viewers watch. I have just been unsure if the only detriment to making shorts was the time it takes you away from the long form content you make, or if it can also affect how your channel performs as a whole.
Thank you for the information, what would you say about livestreams? leaving VOD's listed or unlisted, or should you not stream at all?