Nobody watches or likes my films

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My name is Will i'm 17 years old (and on an imprtant note have aspergers syndrome). My passion in life is to be a filmmaker, my favorite genre to make is comedy (my inspirations are John CJG, Shane Dawson, SMOSH, and RackaRacka) I upload my videos on youtube to hopefully be famous and get a youtube play button award they give when you reach 100,000 subscribers. which I want because I never won any award in my life. But no one watches them I only get 50 views for each video and only 20 subscribers and I don't get it, I have an upload schedule and I use good tags and no one watches them. But I'm apart of our schools cable acess TV show which is shown to our media fundumentals class (who review our segments) and my segments have gotten negative reviews. What I do on the show is a series called A Halo Story which is loosley based on Arby n The Chief which is about two Halo action figures and they come alive and play my video games and they talk with a Microsoft voice voice and had a lot of video game refrenceces and footage which was my favorite but nobody liked it they call it annoying, repetitve, and copyrighted, sure I was inspired by that series but it had nthing in common with the Arby n the Chief execpt the protagonist is a Master Chief and Arbiter action figure, and because of the negative reviewws I was forced to cancel the series after 9 episodes much to my sadness and dismay, and when I put it on youtube nobody would watch it. I also do stopmotions with legos which I've been doing for years and yet I got negative reviews on those they call it bad animation and bad voice acting. I don't get it, my test audience which are fellow cast members and friends enjoy them, why not anyone else, why does nobody watch my gaming videos and yet they will watch a boring vlog from SHAYTARDS which is nothing about life which gets millions of views, why can't I have millions of views too I do funny skits and I only get 40 to 50 views, what do I do because this is what I want to do with my life, writing and directing films and doing youtube as a hobby.

Where's the link to your channel?

[quote="alex"]Where's the link to your channel?[/quote
https://www.youtube.com/user/WillRocks1997 warning there's no videos I had to delete them all

Put some videos up and I'll give you an honest review...

Yes. Please post your videos. Why did you delete them?

I'm afraid it just isnt that simple. Believe me, you cant just put up videos and expect people to find them... it doesnt work that way. And no, tags wont do it.

It's not about the quality of the videos; it's about getting people to even NOTICE them. If you were getting like, a couple thousand views on each video yet STILL no subscribers, then yeah, something might be off about the quality. But at only a few views per video.... nobody is finding/noticing them.

Getting these things to people is like, well.... getting any sort of product to consumers. It has to be shown off, advertised, waved around, promoted... and so on. Just making some new invention and suddenly setting up some random booth in the middle of who knows where doesnt exactly create a dramatic demand or desire for any new product.

And really, how COULD they find/notice without that? Youtube is absolutely DRENCHED with people putting up random whatever. If you have an idea for a video, chances are, it's been done before. Probably 1000 times. That's perfectly normal. Any tag or set of tags that you could use has been used before. ....often in a not-at-all-true sort of way, as some video makers stick literally every conceivable tag to their vids as they can, including ones that have nothing to do with them....

You have to get these things out there, show them to people, wave them around, push them forward as much as possible... and not give up on making them, because if you STOP during that process, you'll collapse the whole thing.


So... HOW do you do this? Heck if I know. I have a channel myself. Maybe about, ah, 300 subscribers? I havent the foggiest clue why anyone bothers subscribing to me; I do game-related videos entirely at random, most of which are shmup runs that dont have commentary. I have no schedule and just put them up when bored. Of course, 300 is like, nothing, so it's not like I've done anything special. That being said, I still have a couple of videos that have hit alot of views.... the biggest being over 120,000. And I never figured out WHY. It's a short video of a failure moment I had in Binding of Isaac, with a little joke at the end. I only put it up because I'd thought the moment was just so bloody stupid that it was kinda funny, so I may as well show it to friends, and... that happened. How does THAT make sense? ...it doesnt. Frankly, I dont understand how anyone FINDS the damn thing. But that's how Youtube operates sometimes. It doesnt always make sense.

Now as for the quality of your vids? Youtube is a toxic place. If you're going to put up videos there... you're GOING to get negative comments and insults and blah blah blah. It's inevitable. You could be making the most awesomest stuff in the history of awesome stuff.... and comments full of insults and jackassery will still come. That's the internet for you. Hell, it's even worse for the big guys, the super popular ones. Like, say, TotalBiscuit; if you're into gaming, you've likely heard of him. The comments sections in his videos were getting SO ridiculously toxic and awful that it was causing him major depression; he ended up shutting down ALL comments on his videos.... you cant comment on them anymore. And I cant blame him. But it just goes to show that even the big, super popular ones are NOT immune to this, and can generate WAY more ire than you would think.

Just make the vids that YOU want to make. If you think it's good? Put it up. Find people that have similar interests to you, and see what they think.... any feedback is useful, positive or negative, as long as it's honest. Learn from it, and then make more using what you've learned. And keep going, and keep advertising them... somehow. (and no, just waving them around this one forum wont do it, unfortunately).

It's not an easy thing at all to get to the big leagues with this stuff... it's usually *very* difficult from what I hear. So dont get discouraged, and accept that if it's going to happen... it's likely going to take awhile.

A bit rambly, but hope it helps a bit. It occurs to me that I've spent way too much time on Youtube, ugh.


One other tip though that I *can* think of: If your content is too similar to that of others, it'll be harder for you. In your case, it's Halo-related, one of the things you mentioned, and.... yeah. There's about 10 bazillionty Halo-related vids already out there, including the hyper popular Red VS Blue series. So that's competition, which is something you have to consider as well. It's like dealing with selling any sort of item... you have to make YOURS stand out somehow.

Overall though... dont get discouraged. Accept that it's going to be difficult and will take bloody forever, but just keep going!

I agree with the advice to just keep keeping on, don't stop, don't delete and take things down, just keep going and putting up the videos you want to put up. People will find them; as long as you put good tags, an audience will build -- but it's often a very slow progress.

I have a channel I've posted my videos to for maybe a couple of years now. I only have 36,000 total views, and just one of my dozen or so videos is responsible for most of that, with about 32,000 views. I have 49 subscribers, and those built up very, very slowly. So did the views. I now gather about an average of 1,000 views per week across all my videos, and it's slowly picking up more.

Also, my videos are in a category WAY overpopulated on YouTube -- wildlife stuff. There are literally millions upon millions of people posting cute ducks etc, yet somehow it's slowly come to be that my videos come up fairly high in random searches for that content. I'm actually quite amazed by that because it's such an over-saturated search topic on Youtube. So, I feel like even my paltry little 36,000 views and 49 subscribers isn't bad going considering how massive my competition is in my subject matter.

How long have you had your channel? I think most people have to be patient for years to garner an increasing audience, unless or until they post something so unusual that it goes truly viral. Getting one of your vids to go freakishly viral is the key to that success level on Youtube.

To make something viral get 4chan behind it.

There are ways to artificially creates hits for things that most people use so that it will then look more popular and more places will pick it up. There is a science to marketing; a disturbing, disgusting science.

I don't know how to artificially create hits (and personally I wouldn't want to go there!) but I agree that promoting on other sites is what gets stuff to go viral faster. That, and if you've got something people really go crazy about, will bring them to you.

Never give up on your dream man. It's not always easy when you're told your work is not good but you have to keep trying to improve. You have to fail before you can succeed.

Don't get too emotionally attached to your projects either. In other words, if you make a video and everybody else says it sucks and you're like "know it's not, I know it's good" Let me tell you this; if it wasn't your own work, would you watch it? You have to think in that mindset. If something just isn't good, then you have to find a way to make it better or try something else. Don't be afraid to ask people for reviews either as they can tell you if it's good or not, and make sure you can handle criticism.

Finally it may not be that your videos suck, it's just that theres not a huge demand for the videos you're trying to make. I'm a video maker myself and I have 4 different Youtube channels. In one of my channels, I upload Runescape clan wars videos that I record and I have about 30 subs. I know that i'm not going to get a ton of views or subs because theres not a lot of interest in watching runescape war videos. But I still upload videos anyways because it's fun. And in another channel, I upload epic battle music compilations and in my most popular, I have nearly 2 million views! (Type in battle music on Youtube and i'm the 1st result) Because theres a big interest in epic battle music, I get more views and as a result, I have 2000 subs.


But yeah, you should upload the videos to your channel so I can check them out. I will give you an honest review.

Most of the people who are youtube "celebrities" started their chanels years ago. Go back ten years and it was more of an emerging platform. It was much easier to get people's attention. Now, practically everyone posts stuff and there are millions of videos. Even using tags, it's still hard for people to find your videos because Youtube brings up popular videos first.

You are going to get negative feedback, no matter what you do in life. It's impossible to please everyone. We all have different tastes, and there are lots of trolls on Youtube who like to be mean to rile people up.

Perhaps a reason you got what you feel is an unreasonable amount of negative feedback about the Halo series, is because there are other chanels who have used those models before, most notably Rooster Teeth. People like original ideas. They don't want to see the same thing rehashed.

Don't get disheartened. Keep trying. Youtube might not work out for you, but that doesn't mean you can't use your talents elsewhere. Have you considered joining a short film makers club? That's a great way to get feedback, friendly support, and make connections in the industry.