Since I started running my YouTube channel, I've been thinking about view counts and the feedback cycle you get with YouTube videos. Basically, YouTube will actively promote popular content, and popular content is likely to come higher in search results than unpopular content (not always, keywords and how well the video matches your search terms is more important, but views still play a part in the sorting). Videos that are seen a lot are likely to appear in the watch next and recommended for you lists. This means that a video which is seen a lot gets recommended more so it gets seen even more.
Popular videos get more popular by virtue of being popular.
This means that there are probably a ton of really good, interesting, or useful videos which are languishing away with only a handful of views because they're not popular enough to get more views. Looking into this, I've found there are sites which will surface YouTube videos that have zero views - meaning that even the person who uploaded them didn't check to see that the video had uploaded probably and played through. But that's not what I'm after. I'm not interested in watching some random video. I want to search for videos on a topic that interests me and see more than the same handful of popular YouTubers.
I'm not sure if there's a better way of doing this, and I'm eager for ideas, but my plan is to search for a topic related to books and writing, sort by number of views, and then skip past several pages of results to find some videos with less than a hundred views. I'm sure that I'll find some which have low view counts for good reason, but I'm also sure that there will be some videos as good as the popular ones that just never had the lucky break to get big. If there are any particularly good ones, I may start sharing them here to try and help them reach a few more viewers.
Also, if you make YouTube videos about books and writing that aren't getting many views, drop me a link and I'll check them out. (What's the betting I end up with two Rick Astley videos for every genuine writing video I get linked to?)
Is anyone interested in trying this with me? Maybe we'll find some interesting content.
