--- In [email protected], Rupert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm on a roll, today. > > I'd like to suggest that more of us should try to be open about how > many views we get. I mean, not *all* of us, obviously. There are > those of us who won't want to say for commercial or other reasons. > > But I keep hearing people worrying about how few views they're > getting. And I'm sure that part of their worry is that other people > are getting far more. And I'm not sure that that's true. I'd bet > any money that 99% of the people on this list get two figure views > for all their videos combined per day. And I'd bet the majority get > single figure views per day. > > This is important in the discussion of monetizing videoblogging, too, > perhaps.
Yes. I think you're right. Lack of the ability to prove viewership numbers is half of the problem with monetizing videoblogs. First of all, you can't tell how many people have seen the videos. The statistics tracking is inaccurate and some groups count how many times your video was played all the way through as opposed to how many times it was STARTED. If your video gets started 17 times and is never watched through to the post-roll ad (for instance), that's not going to be good for advertisers. If the same person watches your video 17 times, that advertiser's reached one person 17 times. On top of that, there's no accounting for demographics, since a computer sits somewhere, and there's no telling WHO's pressing the buttons. It could be a 10-year old kid watching your video several times and getting something advertised to him that he either has no interest in or has no authority to buy. > I think Youtube has distorted expectations - by its nature, it > attracts clusters of people to feast on certain featured & popular > videos in a way that's quite different to what a lot of us are > doing. And as Mark Day said last week, even on Youtube the really > big view numbers are rare. YouTube numbers are useless. We discussed this on this group a while back. First of all, YT uses autoplay. As soon as you go to the page, the video automatically loads and plays. Even if you go there to SEE what it is... the video plays. Next, every time someone leaves a response, you have to go back to THE SAME PAGE to read their response. The video that you ALREADY SAW loads up again and starts playing. Most of the comments on YT are people trash-talking anyway, so even the nay-sayers are contributing to the "popularity" of a video. If they separate the comments from the actual PLAYING of the videos, then you'd get a better estimate of how many unique views each of those videos are getting. Having said that, there are videos with literally MILLIONS of views, hahahaha so I'm not hating on them at all, just pointing out that the way YouTube's set up makes the videos look more impressive numbers-wise than they really are. > Personally, I don't think that getting just a few people per day or > per week is bad at all. Your films are still being seen by more > people than they would if you were taking them to a local film night, > or showing them in a local gallery, which was the only forum for them > before the web. That was another discussion that went on a while back, about the "audience of ten" or whatever. There's nothing wrong with having double or even single-digits-worth of people subscribing to your feed. It's also no indication of how many people saw your video. If someone downloads your video with fireant, for instance, then shows everyone at their job and then everyone at their house and then everyone when they go to their family reunion your video, all you know is that you got ONE download from your host. > And you're actually connecting with the people who are watching them, > in a way that wouldn't happen otherwise. And probably in a more > profound way than you would if you had 1000 people all wanting to > talk to you. This is an interesting thing about putting videos on a feed. Without feedback, there's really no telling WHO'S watched your videos. When I post an episode, within the first few hours, I'll have between 15-24 views that aren't my own from the process of cross-posting and confirming that my videos have made it to my feed and are DLing successfully. Normally, my videos don't go past 160 views over the course of a few months. Recently, I've brought myself up to date all the way from PodCampNYC (April, 2007), and I've posted 90 episodes between June 12th and July 4th. I'm looking at a FEW 40s, but mostly in the 30s and the 20s for views on each one of those 90 videos. Meanwhile, like I said, I have no FEEDBACK from any of these video downloads, so I don't know WHO'S watching them. So I ASSUME that NOBODY'S seen them. :) So I keep having these IRL conversations with people, and I go to explain to them something that happened in a video, and they're like "yeah... I saw that one, hahaha" or they tell me something that happened in the video or something that someone said..... When you think about it... How many people do you know IRL in the first place to be upset that *ONLY* 20 people watched your video? Or, I should say... your video WAS WATCHED 20 times, because we don't know how many people played it over and over. > You don't have to join in this game - it's not Truth or Dare! - but > to get the ball rolling, here are my own stats. > > They're a bit weird compared to most, probably, because I only > started Twittervlog 3 months ago, I've made 89 videos in that time > and I pimp it all the time on Twitter - that must be where I get most > of my views. > > I feel it's been successful on a personal level - I've met all sorts > of great people and it's been a lot of fun. But featured status on > Youtube - or even on Blip - it ain't. > > I have posted 89 films. With 14,000 views in total. That's an > average of 150 per film. I figure - what? - half of those have > actually watched the video to the end? > > 25 videos ( a third of them) have less than 100 views in total > > another 57 videos (almost two thirds) have between 100 and 250 > > and only 7 have more than 250 - all of these have been featured > somewhere, like The End of Pixelodeon, or the Vlog Deathmatch video. That's another thing. The videos of mine that have passed the usual numbers have been syndicated somewhere else. It's not people coming to MY site to watch MY videos. It's people watching someone else's video collection or links or delicious or whatever that's POINTING to my videos that take it to stage-2 to continue the journey of views. > The Vlog Deathmatch video is the most popular, and has topped out at > 765 views. Which is a fraction of what Irina and The Burg's total > votes were, I'm sure! At the end of the Deathmatch, I think it'd had > 350 or so views. My Vlog Deathmatch Official Entry = 1114 views, 3 yesterday My Vlog Deathmatch Promo = 633 views, 2 yesterday, 1 today My Vlog Deathmatch Rules Video = 745 views, 1 yesterday Yesterday being July 04, 2007, when I posted them on 5/11, 5/01 and 4/27, respectively... approximately two months ago. > The only Youtube context I can give to this is the Flashmob video, > which has had 13,000 views on Youtube, and 746 on my site. I have very few views on YouTube. I've never publicized my videos there, though I've put some of them there to see what would happen. I did the same thing with Revver, Brightcove, Veoh and probably a couple of others that I've forgotten already. > Oh, and I now have around 50 or so subscribers (Feedburner number). My "subscribers" fluctuate between 29 and 13... many of which are search engine robots. :) > I don't know - maybe I'm wrong and you're all getting thousands and > thousands of views for every film you make... but my heart tells me > that's not so... and if it isn't, do we average non-commercial > videobloggers need to readjust our expectations? I used to care about this but now I don't. I'm not selling anybody anything. My videos are about what happened where I was that particular day, and it's never the same thing, because I never DO the same thing. I used to have four shows on blip, but now I've consolidated them to one... with the theme of "whatever the hell I feel like posting". With the lack of feedback, I couldn't care ANY less whether 15 people watch my videos 4 times each, 30 people watch my videos twice, 60 people watch them once.... My Vlog Deathmatch Official Entry has over 1,000 views... and has *27* comments on it. :/ 4 of them were BY ME! So as far as I'm concerned, the people who commented can share the 1,000 views amongst themselves as if they each watched that video 50 times! :D Unless you're planning to pitch your show to someone, "numbers" are completely useless. I was just having a conversation with Rob Boudon (http://www.robboudon.com) about this on the way to Lux Nightmare's 4th of July party yesterday. I'm switching to a posting style that encourages downloading as opposed to one that makes it so people have to come back to my permalink in order to see it again. I'm more interested in them being able to watch it however they like than I am in getting my numbers to go up to 160 as usual. YAWN. > Is getting 100 views on a video after it's been out there for a few > months really so bad? Imagine those 100 people in your local bar or > in your house! That's quite a lot of people. And then add all your > videos together. You've made 50? And they average 100 views in the > end? That's 5000 in total! And 5000 was a big number for Jesus... :) It's true. Amongst my 4 shows, I probably have somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 documented views. I think that's pretty incredible, personally. Does that come anywhere near the number of people that saw television shows or news reports or promos or music videos I put on the air? Nope. However, none of that stuff was "Bill Presents _____". It was all bought, paid for, produced and advertised by other people and companies. My feed is MY feed. 38 times, someone clicked on my video in Brother Jimmy's where I'm trying to get Grace Piper to rap. 29 times, someone clicked on my video in loft2point0 where Francisco Daum is trying out Bre Pettis' relaxation machine. 183 times in the last 5 days, someone's clicked on the video where I'm beating up a heavybag. I don't know who's watching this stuff :D but it's *MY* stuff. > I remember a time when we complained about people's Feedcounters, and > the pressure of popularity that comes with people talking about > statistics. I hate that. But on the other hand, it's terrible if > everybody thinks that they can't say how many viewers they have > because they'd be perceived as unpopular and unsuccessful. > > I'd be really interested on your thoughts about this. > > Rupert > > http://twittervlog.tv/ > http://feeds.feedburner.com/twittervlog/ Really good post and idea, Rupert. :) The way I see things, I either make videos for myself or for someone else I'm specifically thinking about to be able to share in whatever the experience was that I'm documenting. As long as those people see what I want them to see, I couldn't care less about how many views I get past that. Everything else is icing on the cake. -- billcammack
