End of August 2024. YouTube after slowdown, about Rutube, Zen and VK video
The article is for those who are interested in how the slowdown affected a blogger who creates large (time) horizontal videos. The article is of no value for YouTube Shorts* channels developing with the help of vertical orientation videos. I have two channels: my own information channel with 4,300 subscribers and an entertainment channel with 148,000 subscribers on support.
* YouTube Shorts
These are videos filmed in vertical orientation. The maximum length of YouTube Shorts is one minute. Basic video parameters: – length from 15 seconds to a minute; – aspect ratio – 9 by 16; – resolution 1080 by 1920 pixels; – title up to 100 characters.
I will answer a popular question: – how long does it take to get 100,000+ subscribers on horizontal videos?
Since the entertainment channel was created as a hobby and only generates income from broadcasts, it will not be mentioned further in the text.
About subscribers
Every subscriber is different, only one thing is important! How active the subscriber is and how he interacts with the content on a regular basis. That is why small channels with an active audience have permanent advertising contracts.
Three years ago, the goal was set: – “Create a channel with an organic active audience.” This channel will be used as an example in the article.
1.5 years ago I launched “Plan B” to find a Russian platform if YouTube is banned.
Spoiler, there is no alternative to YouTube, but to have a domestic alternative you will have to use: Rutube, VK Video, Zen and Telegram.
Below is a description of each platform with its own nuances that you need to know and what functions of the platform you will need for working with video.
RuTube
The first platform that is widely known as an alternative to YouTube, but even with all the money in the world it will not become one, the problem is in the team. The RuTube team does not understand what to do with bloggers.
What's wrong with RuTube?
To show good growth figures without investing in bloggers, what is needed?
David Kocharov
General Producer of RUTUBE video hosting
That's right, post pirated content on the site: films, TV series and reporting figures will be great.
Pirated content
And in order not to waste time working with bloggers, it is necessary to introduce motivation, which most bloggers will not fulfill, their content will not need to be promoted manually once a week. Fewer support staff – savings on RuTube personnel, about personnel only an assumption.
When I came to RuTube, I was assigned a personal manager who promoted one video per week, exactly that many videos were shot per week. 4 videos per month is an unspoken norm that allows you to maintain a good level of material and advertisers are not scared by the abundance of changing content.
Yes, RuTube didn't always load in the evening, and it's still not always possible to view it from a mobile phone, but a dedicated personal manager allowed me to believe that sooner or later RuTube would take its rightful place on the Internet. It turned out I was wrong.
Motivation “Team R”
To stay on the promotion you need level L3, but even with personal promotion when publishing one video per week it is impossible to get 5000 views from all videos per month. Didn't get it, two months without promotion. If you don't care about the quality of the content, you can get 5000 views by publishing many videos.
What they started posting on RuTube
To publish many videos, you don't have to be their author, you can steal from YouTube and even from RuTube. Stole, published on the channel. There are no sanctions for stolen and published content on RuTube.
They can delete, but no one will punish if the deleted content is republished. The exception is musical content protected by copyright on paper.
Pay attention to the number of views. 5-10 views from the video were enough for the authors, so they got the necessary 5000 views to move to L3.
Seeing that spammers and content thieves are more important to RuTube than bloggers with original content, he stopped publishing on Rutube and returned to Rutube only in August 2024.
Why, below is my answer.
Useful in RuTube!
After August 1, advertisers asked to send videos available via a link for approval not from YouTube, but from any Russian platform. Of the domestic platforms I use, the only Russian platform that provides this opportunity is RuTube.
VK Video
Actively competes with RuTube, invests in top bloggers and could become the N1 platform, but the problem is the greed of the owners of VK Video, publishing your videos on VK, you automatically get built-in advertising in your videos for which you are not paid. There is no free algorithm for promoting your videos. If you as a blogger become interesting to VK Video, do not be surprised by the barter work “exchange for promoting your videos in VK Video”.
Useful in VK Video!
The only clear platform with clear promotion for money. For advertisers, it does not replace, but complements YouTube. August 2024 – advertising case VK video + YouTube. With RuTube, such a case can be collected, but the report at the end of the advertising campaign spoils everything.
Zen
The transition to Zen will cause you euphoria, there will be a lot of activity on each new video, subscribers will grow every day, but this will last about a month, after which all activity will fall to the minimum. And Zen will start offering you: – “Log in to the VK Advertising account.” It is logical from VK, but Zen for me “Feed the wrong horse.”
Zen Analytics
A platform with a controversial audience, which is difficult to interact with and has a minimal check. This is not a general rule, there are segments in which the Zen audience shows itself well, for example, which is aimed at a female audience. On my channel, 96% of men and only 4% of women. Zen should be completely useless for me, but it is not.
Useful in Zen!
Zen is great as a video hosting for embedded videos in Telegram. A logical question, why is RuTube or VK video not suitable? When posting a link to a TG channel, Zen creates a preview of the video in the form of a gif, scrolling through the feed creates dynamics that increase interaction in the TG channel.
Telegram
How did Telegram end up on this list? For 1.5 years, I still haven't been able to find an alternative to YouTube in Russia. The main disadvantage of all platforms is the lack of convenient search for high-quality multinational content. So the dilemma arises: what to promote in case of a complete ban on YouTube? Simple answer: – Telegram. Telegram was blocked, but it was not blocked. In your TG channel, you yourself determine which video hosting service at this stage is best suited for your subscribers, which one delivers faster, that video hosting service wins. You do not become a hostage to the situation with the move.
Let me summarize the first part.
YouTube = RuTube + VK video + Zen + Telegram
What has changed in my YouTube traffic and how has it been redistributed?
Starting from August 11, some advertisers wanted an alternative to YouTube, and it was at this point that VK video had to be unfrozen, the “dogs” in subscribers had to be cleaned up, and the case “YouTube + VK video” had to be launched.
Starting from August 12, YouTube analytics stopped being encouraging, views dropped, only subscriber growth remained stable.
YouTube Analytics August 2024
Analyzing where traffic was lost for August 2024, I saw that YouTube lost TV, the audience, the audience that gave the channel the duration of views. Analyzing other platforms, I found where the TV audience moved.
Channel Audiences by Device Type
Let me summarize the second part.
25 days after the slowdown, YouTube made adjustments to its work, the type of traffic changed, VPN began to spoil analytics, Western countries appeared, analysis became more difficult, but more interesting.
YouTube has seen increased mobile traffic, which will make YouTube even more interesting for advertisers.
There is a reaction to every action. The easiest way to bypass YouTube slowdown has appeared, in the Chrome browser -> Extensions -> Chrome Web Store -> Type in the search “Bypass YouTube slowdown”. Install the extension and YouTube slowdown will no longer bother you.
My team continues to film and post new videos on YouTube, and thank you very much for reading this far.
That's all 🙂 I hope it will be useful to someone.
