Purposeful experimenting

Just posted my 19th animated video today. I spent more time than normal editing the final footage but I feel it was worth it. I recorded the audio a week ago and incrementally trimmed 15 minutes of material down to 4.

My last widescreen video finally received more than the typical 50 views – improving to a whopping 250 (). It’s not a lot but it’s a great and important jump.

I rewatched a documentary titled “6 days to air” yesterday. It’s about the creators of South Park and how they develop an entire 24 minute episode in only 6 days. Unprecedented in the film and animation Industry. It had me fired up to complete my work and post today.

There are 2 major metrics that youtube utilizes to determine whether a video should be recommended to a larger audience. There are surely more but I’ve decided the click through ratio and retention rate are the most important.

Ctr, or “click through ratio,” is the percentage of people who see your thumbnail and title and decide to click on it. The retention rate is how long viewers decide to stay, on average.

Last week I decided to dedicate more time to improv8ng my thumbnails. I completely credit the jump in viewership to this decision. After seeing its effect on my most recent video, I went back and created new thumbnails for all my previous videos.

With the video I released today I hope to improve on my retention rate. Ordinarily I do a rapid edit after all the footage is cut together. This time I decided to add digital zooms and sound effects throughout. This added a lot of time to the project’s completion. It fit with the theme of satirizing the bachelorette, and I also feel experimenting with little to no audience is always an integral pursuit on the road to success.

I am happy with the finished product and can only hope the video gets recommended to more viewers. It’s linked at the top of this post if you’d like to check it out.

I hope you have a great week and remember you are going to arrive at the destination you are heading towards. The real question is how fast you will travel to get there.