How to Increase Watch Hours in Youtube

Let's Start

Many of us have woken up to an email this morning announcing YouTube’s new conditions for monetising your channel.

Coming into force on February 20th you can only monetise your channel if you have got 1,000 subscribers and also have 4,000 watched hours in the past year.

We know that many smaller vloggers are feeling a bit sad and deflated by the news. 

For many of us, 4,000 hours of watch time (equivalent to around 20,000 minutes view time per month) is a pretty high target. On my own channel, I have several videos with over 15,000 views, yet the channel doesn’t meet the watch time target. 

However, let’s not despair! 

Rather than feeling disheartened, try some of our tips and techniques to increase your YouTube watch time. And of course, the more time people spend watching your videos, the more your subscriber numbers will grow! 

What Is YouTube Watch Time?

Before October 2012, total number of views was YouTube’s primary factor in ranking videos. However, when YouTube updated their algorithm that same month, watch time became the #1 ranking factor.

Watch time (or audience retention, as it’s popularly called in YouTube analytics) is the total amount of time in aggregate that viewers spend watching your videos.

 Ideally, videos topping in this metric result in higher overall viewing sessions.
With a boost in watch time, YouTube is more likely to promote your channel through search and recommended videos, which in turn leads to more views.

#1: Structure Playlists to Drive a Linear Viewing Experience

Creating playlists for your YouTube videos is a way to guide potential viewers toward a longer viewing experience where they watch more of your best content.

When you organize your videos in interesting sequences (as shown in the image below), viewers will be more likely to watch your other videos. This ultimately boosts watch time, giving you a higher ranking on YouTube.

To optimize your playlists, use the start and end time function on YouTube to enumerate IN and OUT points for each video, which creates a more impressive user experience.

Video playlists give users a better viewing experience because they’re shown similar content they’re likely to be interested in.

If you use the playlist feature, consider getting rid of your video intros and outros to avoid boring viewers which causes them to stop watching.

Tip: YouTube lets you link to related videos at the end of each video. To increase watch time, link to a themed playlist instead. When viewers click on the playlist URL, they’ll quickly be redirected to the playlist player.

#2: Choose Titles and Thumbnails That Accurately Reflect Your Content

The titles and thumbnails of your videos impact your video views and rankings. They serve as the primary trigger for viewers to click, and give preliminary insight into a video’s content. Choosing the right combination of thumbnails and titles can help you improve your watch time.

YouTube’s Creator Academy offers these suggestions for creating clickable thumbnails:

• Choose an image that accurately reflects the content of your video so viewers know what to expect when they click. It’s important not to mislead viewers, because they’ll be more likely to be disappointed and stop watching.

A captivating thumbnail will draw viewers to your YouTube video.

• Design an image that will compel viewers to click and see more.
• Use both the thumbnail and title to tell an intriguing story.
• Make sure your thumbnails will work effectively on both mobile and desktop.
• Look at the Audience Retention reports for your videos to measure the effectiveness of your thumbnails. If you see a sharp drop off in the first 10-15 seconds, your video may not be delivering on the expectations suggested by the title and thumbnail.

Your thumbnail, title, and description should give potential viewers a good reason to watch your video over others in your niche.

Something Different Read : 

You get people to watch your videos. Lots of people. And watch all the way through.

Let say you publish 12 five-minute long videos. On average, each one of those would need 4,000 viewers to watch all the way through. (Math: 12 time five minutes is an hour total. 4,000 people times 1 hour is 4,000 view-hours.)

How to you obtain that? You are going to have to market your videos in the places where your target audience consumes other content. Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, newsletters, Kickstarter, or whatever you can think of that works. You might post paid ads. You might print flyers and hand them out at film festivals.

I have no idea who your target audience is. That’s your job to know. After all, you are deliberately making these videos for someone, right? And making exactly what they want to watch, right? If you have not created your videos for a specific group of people, you are not going to be able to reach them through marketing. There is no “everyone” that you can effectively reach with marketing. Even a Superbowl ad or World Cup ad is only reaching a specific (but massive!) audience.

Marketing your YouTube content is, possibly, a harder job than making that content. But a required skill in order to successfully monetize your channel. People aren’t just going to randomly run across it on YouTube without you doing anything but posting it.