There are several tools that both YouTube and TubeBuddy have that can help you with things like audience retention and drop-off rate. If you have been publishing videos to your channel, you’ll have some performance data to work with, giving you feedback on how your content resonates with viewers. #3 Audience Retention Metrics are Your Friend So keep creating Shorts if that’s the kind of content you love to do, but remember they won’t contribute to an increase in watch time. If we’re suggesting that you make your videos as concise as possible, should you be creating Shorts content instead of longer-form videos? Not necessarily.Īny subscribers you gain from your Shorts will count towards your goal of reaching 1,000 (the other metric you need to qualify to join the YouTube Partner Program and become eligible for monetization).īUT the watch time generated by YouTube Shorts, especially if they’re served to viewers via the Shorts shelf, will not count towards your 4,000 hours needed.

#2 What’s the Deal With YouTube Shorts and Watch Time? Being able to condense and package up your videos in the shortest amount of time possible will significantly benefit you. How long do your videos need to be? The answer is as long as they need to be to get the point across. It may be a much more successful strategy to create shorter videos that people watch longer than making a long video where people click out only 20% of the way through. YouTube is looking at those metrics, and the more viewers who abandon your content, the less likely YouTube is to serve it up to more people on the platform. That’s just not true and may even backfire if your analytics are reporting that viewers are dropping out before the end of the video. You may think that the longer your video, the higher the watch time hours. Need a visual tutorial? Watch our video to make sure you’re doing everything correctly when it comes to watch time: #1 Video Length and YouTube Watch Time

We’ll also let you know which TubeBuddy tools will help you. That’s a lot of minutes, but we’re going to give you some solid advice on how to get your videos watched by more people and get you to that goal faster. We’ll be covering subscriber growth in-depth in a future post, but for now, let’s focus on watch time and the importance of building it through your content.Ĥ,000 hours watch time = 240,000 minutes. If you’re a YouTube creator who wants to monetize your content through Adsense revenue, you’ll need to have generated 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on your channel over the last 365 days.

Bot view for 4000 hours youtube