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by zahlman 397 days ago
How did you get people to know about your Youtube channel and start watching the videos? Getting into "the algorithm" seems to involve quite a bit of luck of the draw these days.
2 comments

Honestly, it was all the algorithm - I started with very shoddy[1] live programming videos, and slowly I got better[2] by listening to feedback from the early users who gave my videos a chance

There is an element of luck involved (i.e. for extremely viral videos), but most of it is iteration - learning how to record and mix audio properly, learning how to make the best of the lighting you have available, learning that if you want to make live coding videos you need to increase your text size to an uncomfortably large size so that viewers have a more pleasant viewing experience, etc.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ece_NCcgiMY - one of my earliest videos

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1yECfF7Qyg - my latest video

You’re a big fat liar. While your new videos are slicker, that first one is not at all shoddy. It’s actually pretty good.
You are too kind, or maybe I am too harsh on myself, or maybe some combination of the two :)
As self appointed arbiter, they actually aren’t too different from one another. Looks like a little bit prettier PIP effects, the multiple window navigation, are main visual differences that look better but don’t actually changes the experience imo. The introduction of title screen transitions was nice, videos like these the best thing you can do is organize by topic to make it somewhat scannable. People finding the videos from search or whatever aren’t wanting to watch a 25 minute video, they’re looking for the part that solves their problem or discusses it at least. If you can, and maybe you have and it’s not showing up on mobile for me, is adding descriptive chapter names to the videos
Analysis: true
You have to make a video.

Then another.

Then another.

Etc.

The algorithm will try to find an audience for them if they are sonewhat something some people might want.

But without actually making videos there’s no point in thinking about the algorithm. It is entirely empirical.