Why do my views spike and then flatline every time on YouTube?

These are my findings based on thousands of videos, and many channels I had the honor to work with. So, bookmark this, share it with your network, comment, and remember it forever.

To truly answer this question, you need to understand two fundamental things at play here:

• How demand and supply works
• What the algo's on YouTube look for

Let's dive in.

Demand and supply.

Let's say you create videos about making soap. Think of your video as the red dot in this bubble here:

Your video is dropped in a pond of similar videos about the same subject. Soap making.

Once the algorithms start testing with your video, you will see an increase in impressions. Based on the performance versus the other videos being tested in your pond, it will get retested at some point, or not.

Now I will not dive deep into the concept of viewer satisfaction and how that is measured by YouTube.

There are smarter people who actually work on these recommendation engines at YouTube who can better educate you on this.

Plus this article would become a prequel to a book.. haha!

But what I can say, is that your topic has a certain amount of demand.

And when other videos that meet that demand have been executed better, you will simply lose the battle for impressions against those videos.

And that all is measured by viewer satisfaction.

How many positive signals did viewers give YouTube when clicking and committing to watching your video? (e.g. CTR, average percentage viewed, did they watch another video of yours after, commented, liked, added to favorites etc.)

All these actions have a certain weight.

All those metrics combined define how much of the total viewers interested in that specific topic on that specific day will see your video versus a competitor's video.

Still with me?

Okay.

Let's dive into what happens if you outperform the other videos in your pond of attention:

Your video starts being recommended to similar markets with slightly different viewers.

As you might understand, your competition starts to become different, and so do the viewers and what they like.

And that is essentially why a video stops getting traction.

The demand simply stops existing, your competition starts winning the attention and YouTube sees no more signals to keep serving it to viewers.

And that is exactly why your video concept and execution are key to its reach.

The broader appeal your idea has, the bigger the chance YouTube keeps finding viewers for it.

But it also means that attention and demand for a topic is fluid.

A flatlined video about soap making can look dead in the water for months or even years, but a shift in trends can suddenly revive your video and give it a second life.

The question you should ask yourself if you want more views is simple:

How can I package this idea better to appeal to a broader audience?

If this was helpful, please consider sharing this with your network and let me know your opinions in the comments. It truly does help!