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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Oh, and I now have around 50 or so subscribers (Feedburner number). 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? 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... :) 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/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
