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After giving more thought to this: Have you other suggestions that immediately come to mind aside from professional voice acting?
This is not sufficient reason for deleting them, any more than the fact that an employee has been made redundant is sufficient reason for killing him.
Thank you for this.
Here's a test using Facerig. What do you think?
Ah, many thanks. Breaks down the relevant performance components of the graphics card; worth the attempt, at the very least.
That is excellent, thank you. Do you think a mobile PC with an Intel® Core™ 2 Duo @ 2.8GHz and an ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 can handle the minimum specs of Intel® Core™ i3-3220 or equivalent and NVIDIA GeForce GT220 or equivalent?
Edit: Here's Father with an animated face and a one-liner in the beginning. Thoughts?
Can't find rights information for the image, and the music is royalty-free. Will endeavour to minimise the pauses in the future. How much of the difference was due to content, would you say?
If that is the least bad option, then barring showing a face, what would you say is an actually good option?
Face: Attractiveness and confidence are non-issues, but still can't show a face. The true objection is for reasons of privacy; one of those reasons is a negative impact upon professional life. On the plus side, upon achieving a sizeable audience, that reason no longer applies. At that point, a face may be able to be shown.
Here's the only other channel with similar content that does not show a face. They keep viewers engaged with animated subtitles that take a month to produce. If you watch Father with subtitles on, is your interest held better?
Will make a new banner. Was going for a homey, casual vibe; still want that vibe, but will make it look more produced.
How about this as a slate / one-liner example?
Fun.
Making money would be amazing, but is not the primary goal. These files will be made regardless of whether there is a YouTube channel hosting them, and YouTube seems the ideal platform with which to achieve the secondary goal of monetising the files.
The bare minimum purpose is to have work that can be hyperlinked. That bare minimum has already been met. However, seeing a video with very few views, or many views and few likes, does not signal positive things. It would be wonderful to be able to hyperlink these files in contexts where sending a positive signal is a necessity.
Spare time is being spent to market and try to monetise the files; ideally, this effort will result in a moderately sized audience that likes the files. These are the goals of the project. If you have more promising ideas, please share them.
EDIT: Here's an example video incorporating a few of the ideas you suggested.
Pretty things: A fairly static visualisation, basically a four pointed blue star that very slowly rotates, could be used as a standard replacement for every video. Would you suggest that, a similar option, or one of the following: an image of nature that may not fit the theme of the video, crudely drawn images of one thing that do not change, crudely drawn images of characters that change infrequently if at all?
Music: Do you suggest inserting background music into the audio files? If so, should the music be opposite the tone of the file (e.g. happy-go-lucky music to the Documentary), or match the tone?
Thank you.
What video do you mean by, 'first'? Father, or Donerly?
Banner: Is this better? Or is the font the main issue? If the latter, what attribute would you recommend in a better font - more rounded letters, blockier letters, more Gothic letters, more elongated letters?
One-liner: This sounds a very good idea. Will it work without showing a face?
Relatable subjects: See the comment to Christian for descriptions of the audio files. Would including those descriptions in the in static image, and/or the description box below, keep you listening?
Apologies for the onslaught of questions; you are in no way obligated to answer any of them, and thank you for the above feedback.
The two longer videos somewhat rely on the unexpected for their laughs; working around that, here are descriptions of each video. Do you think the descriptions would help engage viewers?
Father: A son, apart from his father for many years, returns home to his father's mansion to restore the intimacy of their relationship. As context, imagine you told your father to listen to this for Father's Day, for this was their present.
Documentary: A satire of serious public radio news stations: the modern expectations parents have of their children is taken to a logical and absurd extreme.
Donerly: A parody of the character and substance of reality television programming. Donerly is a vulgar figure, prone to foul language - be advised.
Silly Things: Mini-parodies of the common types of voice overs. These are, in order: sales; promotions; quickly relating terms of service; avant-garde marketing; IVR; two normal people like you having a conversation; and a jingle that isn't selling what you were expecting.
Your reaction is typical. There is an 18% view rate for 75% of the 'Documentary'; only 8% watch the whole thing. Even those that watched the whole video did not engage with the channel, or watch other videos. Thank you for the feedback!
The only similar channel is OwnagePranks, which has images of characters, and animated subtitles. The latter is infeasible, while the former is a promising indication of a needed change.
Which video did you watch? And do you know how could that impression be averted, at least from a personal perspective? Thank you for the feedback.
Thank you for listening. There wasn't really any context beyond 'son returns to Father's mansion', and the matrimonial surprise revealed during his speech.
Would perhaps a static image in the background with text stating the above have helped?
17/7 - Update: Thank you to everyone for their assistance. Here is a re-worked version of Father. It is unlisted, for testing purposes. If one happens to comes across this post, please consider giving feedback regarding how long it captures your attention.
In the interests of privacy, please excuse the specialised account and lack of identifying personal information.
A bit of background: recently created a YouTube channel for the dual purposes of creating an online repository of works that can easily be hyperlinked, and establishing an alternative source of income. The channel is intended to be humorous, though neither speciously nor vituperatively so. One aim of posting this here is to see whether the humour is agreeable to elements of the LW community.
Another is to ask for advice. After a few days utilising Google's AdWords to generate views on one of the videos, of the 600 views received, not a single one engaged with the video beyond merely watching it. All the low-hanging fruit - enticing the viewer to engage by liking, subscribing, etc. has been plucked. One question is whether these requests for engagement are too subtle; perhaps erring on the side of not trying to annoy viewers has led to missed opportunities? The prospect for channel growth seems bleak in light of the above statistic.
Social media marketing, in the form of reddit, Twitter, and Pinterest have not yielded any subscribers. Word of mouth has yielded positive feedback, but no engagement outside of personal acquaintances. If the advice received here does not help, the next step is to create an account on a YouTube specific forum asking for assistance.
Are there obvious avenues for marketing being overlooked, here? Is there an obvious demographic or audience that would most enjoy these videos? Outside perspective is needed, and the dearth of feedback from strangers - both positive and negative - does not offer much indication of how to do things differently. Thank you for your time.