Ok, so I was thinking about my conversation with Miguel, and something occurred to me. It probably won’t work, but I have an odd plan. I’m sure you’d like me to tell you the idea, but I think I should first explain the conversation.
You have to understand that Miguel is one part wants to do stuff and one part doesn’t want to do shit. If he could magically make every project idea that he ever had magically appear fully completed, he still wouldn’t have as much material as if every project idea I ever had magically appeared fully completed, but there would still be a lot of stuff. The problem is that while I probably have a lot more ideas, Miguel does a better job of avoiding working on his ideas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m lazy at times too, but I do at least try a bit more. Anyway, the general discussion of things we would do if we had more time and focus led into a discussion about how to get our videos noticed on You Tube.
The problem is that there are many things we could do to appeal to the masses. We could do some sort of lip-syncing (while it’s still legal) and appeal to the Numa Numa crowd. We could auto-tune our comedy sketches to appeal to the “auto-tune everything and it’s still funny” crowd. We could make a video response to a high profile video (which we actually did do) to appeal to the gay and/or a virgin crowd. We could make a music video for the “and the song’s not bad either” crowd. We could shoot funny sketch comedy (which is kind of what we thought we were doing) for that seemingly nonexistent crowd out there that like sketch comedy. We could do vlogs for the “this would be interesting if it was a cute chick” crowd. We could do a “How to Get Views on You Tube” video, except that we’re part of the crowd that watches those trying to figure out what we’re doing wrong.
Except that the last one isn’t such a bad idea is it? I mean I give money advice on this blog even though I’m broke and in debt. My advice is “don’t do the shit that I do wrong.” I was thinking about how we would do a “How to Get Views on You Tube” video. I think it would be a matter of making it funny, and attributing all our wisdom to people who actually have multiple views. Would it get us a bunch of views? Maybe. It’s really hard to say I guess. It would be just as much a shot in the dark as any other attempt at gaining views that we have done or thought about doing.
About the time that I was thinking through the part where I try to convince the world to seek out the lesser known stuff, as though I was talking about the atrocious listening habits of our pop music culture, I wondered what would happen if we featured videos that weren’t getting featured on You Tube. Hmm. How would that work?
I remembered an idea that Nathan had a while back where we would each look for websites that interested us, and we would write a blog about them. I’m not sure why it never happened. I remember trying to compile some links for idea generation and writing prompt websites for my featured website, but then it never came up again. I also remembered that I was supposed to look for You Tube videos with a lot of views and write an examination for Miguel as to why it has so many views. That I probably would have done if I was ever able to get online in between work and sleep.
The next logical progression to these thoughts was what if we made a video about getting views on You Tube where we basically asked people to message us with links to videos they have that are funny, or otherwise interesting, but haven’t managed to get many views? We could then make blog posts about videos that are on You Tube that we find interesting, but that haven’t gone viral yet. Maybe by doing that, we could even draw some attention not only to our video about views on You Tube, but our blog while we’re at it.
It might not work, but I think it might be worth trying. My only requirement is that our video be funny. I’ve always preached that I didn’t mind doing videos that are pandering for an audience as long as the videos are good. I think that applies here too.
As far as the blog is concerned, we should probably do posts like that anyway. Not only might it get people to our blog, but we can message the people who do the videos that we feature and tell them we featured their video. That might be enough to get a few people to our blog. I don’t know what our guidelines should be for choosing videos, but I’m sure that nothing with 100,000 views or more should be featured, because they’re already getting good coverage. This is about pointing people in the direction of overlooked videos. And yes, that should include a few of our own. I think that Miguel should help us find videos, and every [whatever interval is best for us] we can do two jointly written blog posts in a week with our picks.
So with that said, go to our You Tube channel and message us with links to your videos.