If your video has little or no views on YouTube, you need to carefully analyze it to understand the root of the problem.
In this post we’ll discuss 10 most common reasons why YouTube videos get little or no views at all and outline possible solutions.
See a quick summary checklist of 10 things to check first when your video isn’t getting any views:
Keep reading to learn the solutions.
Why my YouTube videos are not getting any views?
This is one of the most common questions we hear from new YouTubers!
If you want to increase your YouTube views and engagement, the first step is to understand WHY your video fails to get the views.
It can be that people simply can’t find your video or it can be that they don’t like it, so YouTube demotes your video in the search results.
We looked at a great deal of videos with near 0 views and we came up with 10 common reasons for low views and engagement.
We will start with most obvious issues that are the easy to fix and move onto the more complicated problems.
1. Did you set the visibility to public? Dah..
We know this sounds completely obvious but must start with the basics, right?
If your video’s visibility is set to Private no one but you can see it. No surprise you’re not getting any views 🙂
If your video’s visibility status is Unlisted, people can see it if they have the exact link but the video will not appear in searches on YouTube or Google. If nobody can find it, you won’t be getting many views.
Make sure you set the “Visibility” setting of your video is set to Public!
You may be laughing but we actually went over the videos in our channel and found an unlisted video somewhere down on page 3.
Tip: use the visibility filter to quickly locate videos with any status other than “public”.
2. Your video is not optimized for search
If you want people to find your videos on YouTube pay attention to your video’s meta data.
What is the meta data exactly?
When you upload your video YouTube asks you to fill a lot of information like video’s title, description, tags, the thumbnail, and more.
All of the above are to help YouTube understand what your video is about and to match it to other people interests and search queries.
The solution?
To solve this issue always provide YouTube with descriptive and accurate metadata, including the title, the description, the tags, the hashtags, and the category.
Here are some very helpful video optimization tips directly from Google’s marketing SEO team.
Here are some free tools to help you fill the metadata quickly:
More free tools for video creators
Can’t come up with relevant tags to use in your video? See what tags the successful YouTubers use:
3. Low search volume for the topic of your video
Imagine you made a video on cleaning wooden spoons (this is just an example, we have nothing against wooden spoons or people who love them!).
It’s a great video, all perfectly optimized for search but.. not so many people are in fact looking for “wooden spoons” videos on YouTube.
The solution: Try to make videos based on the keywords and topics that appeal to a large enough audience.
To estimate the search volume for your video topic head to YouTube’s analytics section and click on “Research”.
However, be careful when choosing very popular keywords. The chances are the competition will also be very high.
Which brings us to the next possible issue that can severely affect your video views.
4. Your niche is too competitive
Making the videos about a topic that has low search volume can lead to low views.
It would be reasonable to assume that simply focusing on a popular topic guarantees lots of views on YouTube.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Focusing on a high-level topic (even if it’s super popular) can be another reason why your video gets 0 views.
Here’s an example. Say, we want to make a relaxing spa music video. Let’s see what YouTube analytics says about this keyword.
Look at the video below. It has all the metadata that YouTube asks for, yet it can’t get through the millions of other “relaxation music” videos that are already on YouTube.
And here are the statistics for this video. Unfortunately, it has 0 views.
The solution?
Avoid high level keywords where you see high competition. Try focusing on more precise and narrow versions of your main keyword or topic.
You many not get as many people searching for this exact keyword but your video will a have better chance of appearing in the search results.
5. The thumbnail is not click worthy
Thumbnails can make or break your video on YouTube. In a nutshell the thumbnail should be interesting enough to make the user click on your video.
However, there is a thin line between being interesting and cheesy.
Our suggestion: Consider your audience when making thumbnails.
If your video cover professional topics (like a software tutorials), stay away from cringe worthy “in your face” thumbnails. However, that kind of thumbnail may work perfectly for a parody or prank video.
6. Your video is blocked or muted due to copyright
Typically YouTube videos get blocked or muted for copyright violations.
Learn how copyright works on YouTube.
Learn how to resolve YouTube copyright claims.
If you’re looking for music to use in your video, listen to royalty free music for videos.
7. you don’t promote your video outside of youtube
Nowadays you can’t just rely on people accidentally finding your video while browsing YouTube.
If your metadata is good and the topic of your video is well focused some will find you eventually. However, you’re competing with millions of other YouTubes who crank new videos like there’s no tomorrow.
You must promote your video outside of YouTube!
This includes things like sharing it on social media, including it in email newsletters, and adding links to your Web site. Asking your viewers to share the video will also help!
8. your video is too long
Now when we covered all the basics let’s look at some less obvious factors that still can affect how many views you get on YouTube.
The length of your video can be one of this factors.
People tend to have shorter attention spans these days, so a video that is too long is likely to lose viewers before they even get to the main point of your video.
How to see if your videos are too long?
You can’t just say 15 min. (or 1 hour or 10 hours) videos are too long. It really depends on the video.
Once again, YouTube analytics will hold the answer. Now go to the Engagement tab.
Ideally you want to see a flat line. That means that all your viewers watch the video to the end.
As you can see, only 10% of the users watched this particular video to the end.
Most users dropped within the first 30 sec. That tells us that the intro is too long to hold the viewers attention.
What this has to do with the number of views?
When people drop your video soon after starting watching, YouTube will push your video to the back of the search results. So less views for you!
9. video quality is poor
These days people who browse YouTube for both entertainment or searching for information do expect to see HD or even UHD videos that are done well.
If your video brings back memories of blurry VHS tapes this will be a huge turn-off for most people (unless they’re looking for the retro vibe specifically).
Have you ever tried following an onscreen tutorial done in standard resolution? Right.. it’s be completely useless.
As with the previous point, if YouTube detects people abandoning your video early on you can forget about getting more views in the future.
The solution is obvious: Make quality videos up to the modern production standards.
10. Your video provides little value
This final point may be the most difficult to accept for most new YouTubers.
Above all YouTube (and Google) cares about one thing: Your video must provide value to the viewer. Not necessarily in a professional sense. It can be an entertainment value.
How YouTube determines value? People watch your videos to the end and engage (leave comments, likes, share, and so on).
What YouTube does in this case? It pushes your video up on the search results and, voila, you get more views!
If you’re STILL not getting views after doing all the optimization and promotion it can be for one of the following reasons:
a) Your video is not relevant to the title (clickbait) or the keywords in the search results.
b) Your video is simply not interesting or plain boring.
The solution: Take a long hard look at your videos. Ask for feedback.
The bonus advice: Don’t buy views
It may be tempting to boost your views artificially. Our advice: Don’t!
There are many reasons why people should not buy views on YouTube. One reason is that YouTube could flag and remove the video for having fake views. This could lead to the channel being banned from YouTube.
Additionally, buying views could also lead to YouTube demonetizing the channel, as YouTube does not allow channels with fake views to make money from ads.
If you’re aiming at long term career as a YouTuber buying views is simply risky and not a sustainable way to grow your channel.
Questions? Comments?
In this post we discussed 10 possible reasons why your video gets little views on YouTube.
If you’re struggling to get the views and engagement on your YouTube videos, it’s important to take a look at each of these potential factors and see if there’s anything you can do to improve.
Tell us about your experience growing your channel. Post a comment
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I posted a short 2 days ago that got 4.3K views. I posted a similar one today at the same time with the same hashtags and keywords and I git 4 views. FOUR! I just don’t understand how this works. I usually average 400 views per short. Why does one blow up one day and another do nothing?
Appreciate the recommendation. That actually makes sense. Will try out some of these ideas, will see if it makes a difference.