In the monthly Channel Reports, I take a look at my YouTube channel and breakdown the numbers and talk about what I did right and what I did wrong.

December is normally a great month when it comes to content creation on Youtube. Obviously, for monetary reasons as Advertisers are running more ads spending that marketing budget, but outside of that, I saw views and Subscribers go up dramatically. I had 651,000 views and gained 3,032 new subscribers. This is up almost 25% in both categories from last December. I always love comparing months in the current year to last year to see where I am at!

The Happenings In The Month of December:

I released 8 new videos in the month of December which is about average for what I have been doing this year. (Next Year I plan on creating a release schedule so my community knows when to expect certain pieces of content). *** More On This in a future post!

I tested a new type of thumbnail on my videos with a different design. I have learned that by including a border around the thumbnail, it makes your videos stand out from the rest in search results.

Example of my new thumbnails here:

To learn how to create great-looking YouTube thumbnails I have created some great video resources Here.

I also have signed up for an external YouTube Application called TubeBuddy.

TubeBuddy is a great tool that can be utilized to do certain things that are not available to creators from the native YouTube platform.

For more information about TubeBuddy go Here:

Overall it was a fantastic December on YouTube and a great Year overall. I cannot wait to commit more time to YouTube in 2016 as well as this website to help other’s like yourself reach their YouTube goals in 2016.

As always guys don’t forget to listen to the YouTube Creators Hub Podcast, where I interview other YouTubers and ask them questions about their YouTube careers and any other advice they would give to aspiring YouTubers.

Once a month, I write a detailed report about my youtube channel analytics. I always begin by describing the things I did within the previous month that might have an impact on my channel growth. Then, I breakdown the channel growth itself and always finish with what I’ve learned.

March 2014 Channel Breakdown

March was another fantastic month for the channel and I am proud of the way that it is continuing to grow. The channel accumulated over 410,000 views and 2,775 new subscribers in March and those numbers I am glad to say are continuing to grow.

The Happenings In The Month Of March

March was a month of consistency for me in that I published 1-3 videos every week and continued to add the end cards to the end of each video to link to my older/similar content. As promised last month I told you guys that I would report back on the results. I am glad to say that by dedicating the extra time to create these end cards I saw an almost 40% increase in click through rates on my YouTube Annotations. If you want to learn about Annotations and how to use them click here. This is fantastic when trying to increase the oh so important watch time on your videos.

If you want to see an example of the End Cards that I am using on my videos watch the end of this video.

Also, I released the first ever episode of the YouTube Creators Hub Podcast and have been putting the llinks to that in my new videos. I have seen some great results from those links and have found that many of my viewers are interested in this content. If you havn’t heard our podcast download it here.

March 2014 Channel Analytics

• Views – 410,599 Total Views (Up 4.44% from February 2014)
• Subscribers – 2,772 new Subscribers (Up 2.30% from January 2014)
• Total Minutes Watched – 907,920 Minutes (Up 3.58% from January 2014)
• Video Likes – 3,936 Likes (Up 3.98% from January 2014)
• Comments – 1007 Comments (Down 3.80% from January 2014
• Shares – 113 Shares (Down 6.7% from January 2014)
• Favorites Added – 565 Favorites (Up 3.50% from January 2014)

What I learned in March

This month I learned that consistency is key in creating content. When you have an audience that wants to watch your content they don’t want a channel who publishes content once every other Month. They want a channel that publishes content consistently. I have found that creating a content schedule is the best thing to do for this. Map out on a piece of paper or document on your computer as to when you are going to release your  videos and what the content is going to be about.

Thank you for everyone who listened to the podcast this month and for those of you  who have been responding and supporting the website and YouTube  channel. I am looking forward to the future of all of the stuff we are creating!

Once a month, I write a detailed report about my youtube channel analytics. I always begin by describing the things I did within the previous month that might have an impact on my channel growth. Then, I breakdown the channel growth itself and always finish with what I’ve learned.

February 2014 Channel Breakdown

February was a great month for the channel racking up right at 400,000 video views and almost 2500 new subscribers. I tweaked and added a few different elements with my videos that I believe are beginning to have an impact.

• I have started putting end cards/end slates on my videos. An end card is something at the end of the video that links to my other videos. I have tweaked the time that I leave them playing on the videos anywhere from 15 – 20 seconds. I am still trying to find the sweet spot. Here is an example of one of my end cards.

I have decided to use these endcards to see if it can bring some life back to some of my older videos, and from what I can see it has done that. Within my analytics it shows that since adding these new end cards with the spotlight anotations my click through rate for my annotations have gone up over 20 percent! This may not seem like a very big difference but when you are talking about thousands of clicks per month it adds up!

To create these end cards I just open up Adobe Photoshop and create a 1920 x 1080 template. I then add a background and subscribe button on it, and then add the video thumbnails to the image. Once my video is uploaded to YouTube I then go back in and add annotations to the videos to link back to my older content. I even link to my subscribe button right from the end card. You Can Sign Up For A Monthly $19.99 membership of Photoshop Here.

I also added this website to my video discriptions for SEO purposes for both the website and the videos.

February 2014 Channel Analytics

• Views – 394,980 Total Views (Up 2.44% from January 2014)
• Subscribers – 2,484 new Subscribers (Up 12.30% from January 2014)
• Total Minutes Watched – 895, 798 Minutes (Up 3.58% from January 2014)
• Video Likes – 3,632 Likes (Up 5.98% from January 2014)
• Comments – 1028 Comments (Up 16.16% from January 2014
• Shares – 151 Shares (Up 33% from January 2014)
• Favorites Added – 555 Favorites (Down 9.5% from January 2014)

All in all this was a great month of growth for the channel. It is always good to see increases in all of my numbers. With all of that being said though, its not ALL about the numbers. This month I was able to build connections with a few of my viewers that I believe will last for a long time and will help me create better content.

I also ordered one of the new Mac Pros earlier in the month and look forward to receiving it very soon!

Lessons Learned In February

February obviously is a short month BUT I learned that communicating and interacting with my viewers has positive effects on my channel as a whole. When I communicate as the creator and try and interact with my auidence it makes a big difference.

I also learned not to get complacent. As a creator it is easy sometimes to just go with the status quo. This month I tried to step up my game and this showed in my results.