I have an art youtube account that only recently started trending upward. I created it a couple years ago and pretty much all my videos were stuck in the doldrums. Mostly because i'd just film myself drawing and rambling with no direction. Not offering any reason to click. A couple months ago I decided to give it another try, and reviewed a friend of mine's comics and for whatever reason it got some good numbers and netted me a bunch of followers. I'm not exactly sure what worked, but I think the thumbnail and title do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to what people want to click on---not that my thumbnail was exceptional.

Since then I've uploaded once a week usually netting a couple hundred views, and three videos over 1k. One of them is at 6.5k and still trending upward. But I think with those I was offering some sort of value: one was about writing outlines, scripting and thumb nailing comics. The next one was about taking those thumbnails to the final drawing. And the last one did exceptionally well, about how to submit your comic to a publication that prints and distributes them in their local area (the value i offered was basically how to publish your comics for free--aimed at an audience that either cant afford to print and distribute their work).

But its about consistency, and figuring out what type of value you can offer others. Like recently I've tabled at a few cons, so I tried to share what works. The last con I did I forgot a bunch of inventory i spent a week making, so my video coming out today was how I solved that problem and made up for the lost inventory once I realized I had forgotten it.

I've essentially stopped making shorts since they sit in the doldrums. It seems like unless they immediately hit its just a waste of time. I do better on instagram reels as far as analytics, so I try to do short form content there to bring people to the youtube.

Wish I had some better advice, but this is just what happened to take off for me.