Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
Another month down and it’s time to take a look at the YouTube channel when compared to WriterSanctuary’s blog. And I can say that everything is looking up. Well, improving at a slow rate…but it’s still a victory.
My only regret is that I’m unable to monetize the channel. I still need more than 900 subscribers and a ton of watch time before I can include Adsense in the videos.
Still, I am pleased that I have been able to help quite a few people. Seems like most of my interactions are from those who are working with the Textbroker system.
Blog vs. Channel Views
For this comparison, I use video views when compared to blog visits. Essentially, it’s the same thing. If a video gets lower than five seconds of watch time, it’s comparable to a bounce rate for a blog post.
In March, the YouTube channel hit 1,250 views. Unfortunately, this number is a bit skewed thanks to the Reddit traffic whom down’t watch the video. Still, I saw quite a few views on videos that were purely from YouTube traffic.
The WriterSanctuary blog, on the other hand, only had 836 views. This number is taken directly from the Stats screen from the WordPress.com tracker I use connected with Jetpack.
This means the videos have about 50% more views than the blog. Which I figured was going to happen anyway. After all, video consumption is a big part of Internet activity today.
I just wish I could capitalize on the traffic somehow. But alas, I need to wait until I am worth investing in I suppose.
But in the end, I am still helping quite a few people, and that’s the real goal of both the blog and the YouTube channel. So I can still call all of this a win.
Average Watch Time vs. Visitor Retention Rate
I am using the average watch time of YouTube videos and comparing it to the average time on-page for the blog. Unfortunately, this might not be a very good comparison simply because there are a lot of things that can affect on-page time of a website.
Still, let’s take a look at the numbers.
For the YouTube channel in March, I had an average view duration of 3:11. The sad part about this is a majority of the Reddit traffic, which accounts for nearly 10% of March’s views, watched less than five seconds.
I wish I could figure out what happened with this one specific video and where on Reddit it sits.
WriterSanctuary had a an average time on-page of around 3:26. So, it’s a few seconds better than the watch time. I wish I could compare this to last years numbers, but I had a severe problem with Google Analytics being duplicated…which corrupted the data.
I guess I can’t really rely on this comparison for the simple fact that Reddit screwed up YouTube watch time and duplicate Google Analytics codes messed up last years numbers.
On the up side, both the channel and the blog are improving visitor retention rates when compared to the month before. So again, I’ll call that a win.[template id=”2087″]
One Month Visitor Retention Growth
In this comparison, I’ll use the growth of total watch time on YouTube versus the growth of average time on-page for the blog. This is the amount of time everyone spends absorbing my content.
On the YouTube channel, the total watch time grew by 31%! And that’s including the paltry numbers from the Reddit embedded video. This means people are spending more time watching my content than before.
In fact in March, viewers watched 3,980 minutes worth of my content in total. Which put it slightly over 66 hours. It’s a far cry from YouTube’s requirement of 4,000 hours in a year to monetize. However, it’s an improvement.
The blog’s time on page grew by 6.38%. It’s not a lot of growth, but it shows me people are spending more time on the site in general. And this is without really putting in effort to add more content.
It’s something I plan on remedying in the near future.
In a way, I am competing with myself across these metrics. I want to see which platform has the highest performance. And what these numbers above tell me is that I need more high-quality blog posts to compete with the YouTube channel.
Then again, I already knew this. I just need to put it into practice.
Comparing Click-through Rates
The next thing I want to look at is the click-through rates, or CTRs, of both platforms. This shows my progress for developing titles, descriptions and engaging thumbnails.
A CTR is calculated by taking actual views and dividing it by impressions. In other words, it’s how often people click videos or search results after seeing them.
So if a blog post showed up 100 times in Google search and was only clicked on 5 times, the CTR would be 5%.
According to YouTube, the average CTR of any video can range between 2% – 10%. WriterSanctuary’s YouTube channel has an average of 4.9% in the month of March. Which is better than a lot of other channels on the system.
Unfortunately, the blog only has a 3% CTR from Google Search. Which is much lower than the other two blogs I manage. Another bad point I want to focus on is how February had a higher CTR as well as average position in search!
This tells me I need to focus on fixing and fine-tuning the content on the blog.
How Close am I to Monetizing?
According to the numbers and the amount of growth of the YouTube channel, it might be closer to November or December before I can monetize the channel with Adsense. Which is kind of a bummer, but not a complete loss.
My numbers are doing good for the content I am offering. People are watching the majority of videos, the click-through rate is exceptional and my fans like the content.
What would put me over the edge is if I can find something other than Textbroker that can pull in an audience.
Today, I am uploading a WordPress video. Maybe I’ll get lucky with it and start bringing in those viewers.
Still Got a Long Way to Go
So far, the YouTube channel is growing month-after-month. And I guess I can’t be disappointed in that. After all, it could always be worse. At least I can relish in the fact that the important numbers are in the green.
In reality, I am a micro-sized YouTuber. But at least my viewers are engaging the content and interacting. And for me, that’s really worth the time it takes to upload a new video. I love being social and helping others.
Perhaps one day I can focus on a full-time YouTube and blogger career. But until then, I am off to pay some bills.
Clients need my attention![template id=”2089″]
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