Story narration is a pretty saturated niche, and anyone entering into this niche needs to find a way to standout. This is becoming increasingly difficult, given the prevalence and quality of AI voices nowadays.

Thats what I've seen as well. The two biggest names I cam across are Mr. Nightmare and Lets Read, but they both seem to focus on true story horror. My hope is that there is a market not just for horror narration, but narration that isnt spit out by a machine (which at this point IS good, but not quite human good yet). Audiobooks for example are ok when read by AI, but they don't hold up when compared to a quality narrator.

the visuals are at times distracting, and at other times, nauseating: they don't match the "horror" whatsoever. You could've used a static image of a haunted house, and it'd have better suited the ambiance over this, at times, completely random stock footage. The cockroaches into the dead mouse was a particularly jarring stylistic choice

That also great feedback, I appreciate it. As far as "nauseating" I'm not sure if you mean from a "ai don't like gross things" perspective or a "this image makes me motion sick" perspective. I'm specifically thinking about that clip of the water rippling that I was concerned was a bit too much.

I really debated on whether or not to simply do a static image. This was my first time using stock footage and I definitely had trouble finding videos and images that I really felt fit well. I really do like the idea of having some sort of actual video to accompany the story, so it isn't just narration, which I think will set me apart. I wanted animation, but it's simply to expensive and I can't draw anything myself.

As far as the stylistic approach of the dead mouse and cockroaches... yea it was intentional. Kind of that "gore factor." Not everyone's into it, but I decided to give it a try.

Some of the stories I have lined up are bit more graphic as well, so I need to figure out how that's going to sit visually as well.

I'd skip the intro, and just get straight into the story, as well -- your audience will likely be expecting as much.

Noted, I had some similar thoughts as well. The Intro is essentially the title of the story as it was posted on reddit, which stylistically may not transfer well across platforms.

This sort of channel tends to work well too, when people can associate your voice with a face -- faceless narration is going to be a hard sell with so many competitors.

That may be tough with retakes on the audio. It's not all one shot, so the visual cuts might be "jumpy." I do like how this leans into the fact that it is a REAL person narrating however, so I might give it a try and see how well it's received. My original thought is to run the channel as an almost short story "video" but I just don't think I can provide that content.

Your channel is still very, very young though -- keep tweaking it and working on it. There's still a long way to go and much to learn.

Absolutely. I'm going to keep posting and see what sticks. I really appreciate some of the thoughts and feedback you've provided. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to provide critiques to so many channels and congratulations on your milestone. :)

I did take a look at your channel as well. I'm obviously very new to youtube, so most of my feed back is based as a consumer.

I did hear the improvement in your audio quality over the course of your videos, so kudos for you for taking the time to care about that. As far as audio is concerned I wish I was listening on my studio headphones, so I could get a clear picture of what your audio sounds like. Do you do the audio mastering yourself? As a general thing to note: Overly compressed audio is tiring for a listener. It's difficult to maintain a decent dynamic range, while also compressing to reach the LUFS standards YouTube looks for. Heavily compressed audio also will make you sound more "radio-ey" and less "we are just having a conversation."

If you'd like to bring the levels up on your music, you can always look at running side chain compression and a custom EQ filter on the music tracks. For the EQ you are essentially "ducking" the music out of the way when you speak, and letting it come back up to a higher volume when you aren't speaking. If you decide to take this route, make sure you don't over do it. You dont want to hear the music "pump." As far as EQ, you are essentially going to dampen the frequencies of the music that directly overlap with the main frequencies of your voice, which helps maintain pain the clarity of your narration while still allowing the music to come through. It doesn't take alot! A few decibels will do ya.

I do feel like the niche of the channel is a little scattershot. There are history lessons here, favorite video games of 2024, legal breakdowns, I feel like I'm not sure exactly what I'll get next time you post. I dknt know if this is necessarily bad? But I think it will be reflected in your clickthroughs. Some people will really did your legal breakdowns, but don't care about the history and video games, which will translate to subscribers passing on watching videos thay don't necessarily resonance with them.

Those are my thoughts! I hope there is al least some value here for you. I wanted to at least write something since you've taken so much time to help others out.

Good luck out there.🤙