Posting 48 YouTube Shorts in 4 Days: What Happened?
I posted 48 YouTube Shorts in just four days to see if I could use them to increase watch hours on my longer, wide-format videos. My goal is to get monetized on YouTube, and I'm currently about a quarter of the way to the 4,000-watch-hour requirement and a third of the way to the subscriber goal.
In the past, I've had zero success using Shorts to drive watch hours, so this experiment included a new strategy: creating a direct appeal video. The idea was to create a Short with a hook and an explicit invitation for viewers to watch the full-length video. Let's dive into the results.
The 4 Short Formats I Tested
To conduct this experiment, I created four different types of Shorts:
- Podcast Episode Clips with Branding: This is my normal, go-to format.
- Podcast Audio with Stock Video: This format takes the audio from a podcast clip and plays it over interesting stock video.
- Text over Video: These are short, looping video clips with a block of text that people can read.
- Direct Appeal Shorts: This format, which was the most important part of my experiment, provides a hook and a direct invitation for viewers to check out the full wide-format video.
The Results: The Numbers Don't Lie
Here’s a breakdown of the stats after posting 48 shorts in four days:
- Total Views: 17,441
- Engaged Views: 4,895
- Percentage of Viewers Who Stayed: 22%
- Shorts Watch Hours: 19.85
- New Subscribers: 1 (I also think I lost several)
- Wide-Format Video Views: 6
- Wide-Format Watch Hours: 0
Key Takeaways from the Data
Watch Hours
The experiment was a bust for its primary goal. I got six views on my long-form videos but zero watch hours. My new direct appeal format didn't work any better than anything else. It seems very difficult to get people who are on the Shorts feed to watch other videos. For Shorts to actually drive watch hours, I think I would need significantly more engaged views per video, likely at least 10,000 or more, to see any real translation.
Subscribers
I was surprised to get only one new subscriber. In contrast, all my Shorts from earlier this year generated 33 subscribers. It seems that YouTube Shorts may no longer be a reliable source for subscribers, either, at least at my current level of scale.
Which Format Performed Best?
When looking at the four formats I created, the first two performed the best across all metrics (views, engaged views, and percentage of viewers who stayed to watch). The formats I posted earlier did better than the later ones.
- Format 1: 29% "stayed to watch" percentage; 2,500 engaged views.
- Format 2: 22% "stayed to watch" percentage; 1,500 engaged views.
- Formats 3 & 4: 18% "stayed to watch" percentage; less than 1,000 engaged views for both combined.
There are a few possible reasons for this:
- YouTube Algorithm: I was less active on Shorts before this experiment, so YouTube may have given an initial boost to my first few posts and then tapered off.
- Audience Familiarity: My audience is most familiar with Format 1. The other formats were new and may have performed worse because they were different from my normal content.
- Content Quality: I used generative AI (Google Gemini) to select the most compelling podcast clips for Formats 1 and 2, while Formats 3 and 4 were more ad hoc. The content for Formats 1 and 2 may have simply been more compelling, which made a significant difference.
My New YouTube Shorts Strategy
Going forward, I'm going to reorient my YouTube Shorts strategy away from a focus on monetization through watch hours. I've learned that for a small YouTuber like me, Shorts are more of a distraction from content that would actually help me get monetized.
My new approach will have two main shifts:
- Focus on Scale: I'll create Shorts and distribute them across multiple social media platforms—like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads—using a scheduling tool called SmarterQueue. This will allow me to reach a wider audience by publishing the same video in multiple places, streamlining the distribution process.
- Promote My Books: I will create Shorts that directly promote my books, such as The Path of the Freelancer and The Jump. This strategy will have a direct aim: to drive financial benefit from my content. Shorts are an excellent channel for discovery, and I'll lean on them to help readers find my books.
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