I did a horrible experiment on my YouTube channel while it was growing really well, and I want to tell you about it so you don't do it. Here's my crypto channel. This is a pretty new channel. If I show you the lifetime on it, it's brand new, started in December 2022. And look how we were growing here. The growth coming on this channel was just popping straight up. Then we got some problems. My channel got terminated for a week over some bot reports and BS. But as soon as the channel came back on, the views went right back up. Until I tried this little experiment.
The idea: go all in on one perfect video
I had an idea in my head. I was watching so many videos by all these different YouTubers, like MrBeast, talking about how to go all in on one video instead of just grinding out videos, which is what most people do. Just go all in on one video. Research it. Make the perfect thumbnail, the perfect title. So I thought, what if? Because if you notice, when my channel was growing, I was consistently cranking videos out. I was just cranking videos out. Then there's a two-week time period, even longer, almost all of May, where I really tested the hell out of this. I barely put anything out for like a month on this channel. There are a couple of videos, but there were whole weeks where I didn't put anything out.
And then I released this video: a six-hour complete crypto course. I researched it and thought, this is what people really need, this is a complete education. I thought about what would be a great title. I researched a thumbnail. I saw other videos that had millions of views and figured, this is going to really be great.
How the "perfect" video actually did
So how did that go for me? Well, let me tell you. A new video I just put out, called "crypto YouTube is stupid," that I quickly recorded on Twitch and ranted on for 10 minutes, already got a hundred views in the first 15 minutes. But the one I put weeks into? That was the worst performing video out of the last 10 videos I released. It didn't even hit in the typical range. The click-through rate was 50% or even lower than usual. Now, the average view duration was way higher than usual, but for some reason YouTube doesn't really care about that. Like, oh, people spent 14 minutes on this one instead of five. That doesn't compensate for the lack of click-through rate, I guess. So this video, in the short term at least, has been a total bomb. In the long term, maybe it'll do well.
I had hoped that if I could focus and make really high-quality videos and make fewer of them, that would make it easier for me to go off on the algorithm, right? Nope. What I underestimated is how much people like seeing me every day. Next time I do something similar, I'll just put out 101 little short videos instead of putting them all into one video. Because it turns out a lot of you who watch, and a lot of YouTube viewers in general, would prefer to get a little less, more often, instead of a whole lot at once, not very often.
Twelve years of testing, and this is what sucks
This is what sucks so much about it: you research, and you try. I've been on YouTube 12 years. I have six children. I have six channels. I've been doing this a long time. And no matter how much you research, no matter how many different things I've tested, it still surprises you. On my main channel, some of my best videos were in-depth, really long courses. But I used ads to promote those, and it was a different time when those went off in 2015, 2016, 2017. I've tested so many things on YouTube.
I tested unlisting a bunch of my other videos too. I thought, well, why don't I just make sure I have the highest-quality videos on my channel? I should just unlist everything that's not a quality video. Nope. It turns out you're better off just letting old, stupid videos that are no longer relevant stay out there. Maybe people will watch them, and then watch one of my newer videos.
The same lesson on Twitter and Facebook
I tried this experiment across my other social media platforms too, and I paid the price for it. If you look back, I hardly posted on Twitter for weeks, and the results were that my reach on my tweets was all massively down. I also tried putting out a massive 101-cryptocurrency-lesson thread, and the impressions on all my tweets were down. When I was posting every day, constantly on Twitter, I was getting real reach. One pulse chain post went off and did bring in a lot of new people, but that was an automatic Zapier post from a new YouTube video, and it got 92,000 impressions. Everything else I was posting was getting hundreds, close to a thousand impressions, like everything. One got 6,000. My whole Twitter was starting to go off. Then I stopped posting. I tried a thread that went nowhere. I tried doing fewer tweets and going for more reach. One of those did work well, it got 7,000 reach, because it was something people really cared about. And then I stopped posting hard. I hardly posted anything until I made this new video, and this new video absolutely bombed on Twitter too.
Same story on Facebook. I was posting videos consistently on Facebook, and these were going out to maybe a few hundred people, sometimes over a thousand. Then I take a few weeks of hardly posting anything, and occasionally a post would go off more than usual, but you're seeing 500 to a thousand. Some days I'd post a whole bunch of posts all at once. So what happens after I take a few weeks off of hardly posting anything? Well, the reach dropped to about half of what I was getting before, on the same kind of content. One reel did go kind of viral, better than usual, but I also hadn't posted much for a while. Basically, posting less ended up dropping the reach down.
There's no substitute for showing up every day
You get the idea. There's no substitute for just grinding, for just showing up every day. Look at this: "crypto YouTube is stupid," which I just published, is getting way more views than the complete course. I'm glad people are watching it, but this has been a powerful lesson. Just show up every day, and you don't even need to try that hard. I've watched all these videos about making thumbnails and trying to get that click-through rate higher, and at this point I don't even understand it. Some of the videos that have gotten the most views I've ever done, it's like I didn't even try. I just showed up, and the video went viral and got hundreds of thousands of views. And then some of these videos I tried so hard on, like this last one, just flatline. If you want to see how I think about all of this in more depth, I've put a lot of it into my YouTube Coaching playlist.
So what I intend to do going forward is just live stream whatever I'm doing every day on Twitch, upload it, and then upload parts of my stream to the relevant channels. I've got six channels. We'll upload the crypto reviews to the crypto reviews channel. This one's going on my business channel, where I talk about the business of being a YouTuber and a creator online. Just shoot, just fire from the hip all day, all over the place. Talk about whatever's on my mind, reply to the chat, play whatever game I want, and just show up and not even try to hit the algorithm. That actually sounds really relaxing. Not even care. You can find a lot of that other side of me, the games and the comedy, over at jerrybanfield.net.
How relative everything is
It's funny how relative things are. My mom was watching a video of me watching my crypto video. She has this dog channel she watches, and she said, you've got more than they do, and they're a very successful business. She said they sell really expensive dogs, and you have this crypto channel. To me, 13,000 subs is nothing. I already had a silver play button for six years. I've had 100,000 subs for years. It's funny how relative things are. Getting 1,000 views on a video, to me, is like baseline. Like, you suck if you don't get 1,000 views on a video. Maybe that's because I've been doing this so long. But if you think about it, it's also a heck of a compliment that everything I do, no matter what kind of stuff I'm doing on Twitch, you all show up and are here. And no matter what kind of videos I upload, somebody watches it.
So I'm going to lean in more to being gracious and grateful, and learn from this experiment: all I need to do is show up every day, do the minimum, have fun, learn new stuff, teach it, and upload. I've got plenty of money. My wife makes enough to support the whole family. I've got financial freedom already. I've got great kids. I've got lots of people who watch. The trick on YouTube is to be enough. Look, I get enough views on the videos I put out, and I'm shocked at how much you all appreciate seeing me every day compared to seeing something I think is higher quality. So I'm glad we can throw that out now. Forget about higher quality, and just show up every day.
If you want to get to know me, message me directly, and learn everything I'm doing with YouTube and crypto, the best way to work with me on all of this today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family. That's where I'm putting my energy now, and it's where I'd love to keep sharing lessons like this one with you.
I hope to see you on the Jerry Banfield business channel. Thank you for being here, and thank you for teaching me, over and over again, that all I really have to do is show up.