Seriously, I hope you are correct. I am not getting that impression.
The more effort I put into a video, the better the production values, the less it gets viewed.
I do hope that all these new subscribers are gonna be driven to explore the long form content, having been brought over by “lady stuck I talk she still stuck”.
It’s too early to tell as in the last three months I have exploded in terms of views/subs. But, I have done everything I can to make my site “attractive”…
It’s not necessarily about production value though. For proof on long form being valuable, ask yourself how often you watch long content during a given day. Just because we (on the creation side) haven’t cracked the code yet doesn’t mean others haven’t. Like I said, it’s hard to execute.
None of those are clickable. They don’t ask question, nor provide answers. They don’t inspire someone to think “oh that looks interesting”. Lacks intrigue, novelty and clarity.
Also with shorts you have to bear in mind that they are scrolled views. Youtube throws them in front of someone and you get a ‘view’. With a normal video the comparable metric is ‘impression’. Shorts are basically ‘impressions’ without a requirement to click.
I wouldn’t worry too much though. Just post if you want to post.
The problem with karting and Youtube is its expensive to make the videos that might work. I post stuff that I like or just fancy doing so because I happen to be bored so my views are generally around the 1k mark nowadays, but I do know I can get around 10k+ if I really think about it and put some effort in. I could probably build a half decent channel, but the problem is the costs are astronomical to make the videos I think would work well. So I wouldn’t worry too much about chasing some elusive goal.
Absolutely. The issue karting has in this regard is the amount of classes and competitions. We don’t have one absolutely above all else focal point. We get as close as we can get with Pro Shifter in SKUSA. But to achieve the desired reverence for drivers and for them to be the Super Heroes you’d need to sacrifice almost ALL promotions and attention for other classes. As long as KA100 gets pretty much 1:1 coverage KZ gets we’ll never really achieve this. This is talking purely form an entertainment standpoint for ‘kart fans’ of which I think there’s about 11 in the word lol. Whether this is desirable or not is debatable.
Aha! What defines it? Seriously? In the day, you had alot of viewers, yeah?
One video I watched emphasized that the videos were successful because they were deliberately poor in terms of wording and thumbnail.
I have not played with the idea of using obviously clicky attention grabbers. I don’t think I want to since it feels super douchey. “My BIGGEST crash” eg.
Yes I used to be able to get very good views. but that was because Youtube was new and karting was a novelty.
My relatively recent self-built kart project had potential. My budget kart challenge did OK (not great). All these kind of projects had potential if I had the resources to make them to a level I really wanted. I can see that from the data.
The thing is the viewer doesn’t really care about you. You have to be seriously famous before they are invested in you as a person. So plain racing videos are 99.99% not going to generate anything interesting. Why are you more interesting then their own racing. If you take Jimmy Broadbent. His videos that focus on his real life racing can often under-perform, and this is partially because racing alone can be somewhat boring. Racing is only interesting if it’s high stakes. If you aren’t able to inject some jeopardy there, it’ll be a struggle.
Take the self built kart. If I completed that and entered a race with it we have genuine mystery there. That would be interesting right? TJ’s adventure on the BestKart made the KA100 Supernats vastly more interesting to follow for everyone here.
There’s a journey we go on. A real narrative with some novelty and in the end a mystery. But this is the reality of modern Youtube. You do have to invest money with a risk you could lose it. There will always be sectors and individuals who explode by just talking to a camera but they are few are far between.
You have to play the game if you want clicks. Douchey or not, it’s a saturated market place with millions of people fighting for clicks.
I get what you are saying I think, that there needs to be a narrative or a question to be explored/amswered.
And I totally get that we are not important individually, that I am a vessel for a subject and that it’s not about “me”. They came for supercharged, not Dom. They want to see the space tracks and I am competent and put up clear videos that are well made so they get views (some).
But there’s something else going on. Something far, far stupider. And it works.
My only shorts sub is this Kat that cronches things:
Yes Xander. Exactly! I’ve heard amazing stories about racers and teams in the pits or on the grid at Rock Island that might work in both scenarios. I’ve talked with several region cable crews about coverage but all they could see was “no experience covering kart racing.” I’ve told them to tell the “people stories” and just plug on some minor racing footage of those people, but they don’t see racing that way. So we move on to things we can do.
We’ve gotten quite a bit of pushback over our lifespan for solely promoting the top 125 single speed and shifter categories stateside. Not everyone gets it like you do. But to keep it simple: KC’s business model doesn’t make that much sense if all I’m trying to do is be a LIVE security camera feed for friends and family. It’s built on the belief that karting can have fans and viewers beyond the immediate circle of the drivers.
And luckily, we’ve got the data to prove that we’re on the right track.
For reference, when X30 Pro and Pro Shifter are on track, there’s a 20-25% uptick in the live viewer count. When we switch to the next class, it drops back down.
Overall, the trends from a national race weekend usually look like this.
With all that said, the highest view count classes without a doubt are the ‘tide that raises all boats’.
While pushing the most popular divisions to be more popular, there’s a trickle-down effect that’s effectively been a 30% Year-Over-Year growth per LIVE weekend that we’ve seen on equivalent races.
In all fairness, our sport still is trying to overcome it’s reputation to the general public. And we’re a long ways away from that happening, so I get it.
But I will say that at least thanks to F1 there’s more and more wannabe documentary and movie crews poking their noses around. It may only be to look for the ‘future F1 drivers’ and crazy parents in Micro as that’s all they think karting is – to @Alan_Dove’s absolute and utter dismay – but it’s a start.
Once they’re here, I invite them in, explain the world of motorsports to them and how karting actually fits as both a launching pad for future funded car drivers, it’s own professional and independent realm, and for most, a form of hobby racing that provides the best bang for your buck when it comes to track time and competition.
The highest to lowest is interesting. Do you think that is based on speed, driver talent, play by announcers or ??? Wonder if 4 cycles would break down the same…any interest at all?
Usually, the fastest single speed senior division tows the line, unless the shifter class is at least as stacked with talent or more stacked. Then the rest of the senior classes, then down the rest of the order.
At CKNA Grands, the Medium class only slightly peaked over the rest, but Cadet outpunched Junior there.
But then series to series, the views also vary too. My theory is a lot of the racers from around the country watch the races ‘higher’ up that they either can’t afford to attend or aren’t at the level yet to attend.
The series rankings from this year went:
SKUSA / USPKS (225-275 entries per weekend, I think at one USPKS had near 300)
Thanks. I suspect your assessment is right. Are there significant differences in number of viewers from event to event or fairly similar? Is there any following of these high profile events from outside US or just N. America?
There’s definitely more international eyeballs with the USPKS / SKUSA series than anyone else, but in general out audience is only about 70% domestic.
Event to event viewership partly varies on a few things from what I’ve seen.
Winter events when no other racing is going on – November / January // February do better than the summer.
Entries partly matter just for more drivers in general. For example, ROK Vegas was nearly triple the size of ROK FWT, and SKUSA SuperNats was 4x the size of a regular Pro Tour on Main Event Sunday.
Vibration popped a cable out that needs to get re-sautered but we didn’t build the casing quite right. It worked pretty well though. Just need to do a few more tweaks. Will definitely be trying it out at more events in the early part of 2024.
I think we weren’t a million miles away in the lates 70s into the 80
I wouldn’t want those documentary and filmmakers within a mile of the circuit. They will increase the stigma around karting, especially for anyone over 14. The narratives they tend to go with are about how expensive and exclusive karting is, which doesn’t help. In the last five years, I’ve, anecdotally, seen an increase in ‘Am I too old for karting?’ posts from people 16 and over. There’s also some level of stigma and shame for young drivers who are maybe 16-21 and still racing karts successfully. To some extent, I sometimes feel there’s shame there. It doesn’t help when you watch the FIA Gala and have Paulo Ippiloto on stage being spoken about by the presenter as if he is a literal child dreaming of F1 success, despite being older than Max Verstappen.
I know where the money is - the F1 dream. I am not unaware that this will win almost always over any other narrative. It would require investment beyond all our means and karting competitions that exclusively cater to the principle of a full standalone motorsport. This would require no junior or cadet classes too. Makes it financially more risky.
The FIA, with all its resources, couldn’t help itself mentioning Max Verstappen throughout the KZ World Championship coverage; it was embarrassing. To control our own narrative would take a huge effort, and you’d soon butt up against F1. We’d need something like Monster to come in, but they told me they have no interest in karting as RedBull have that apparently (I tried with them and they weren’t interested either. RedBull kart Fight seemed to fizzle out, and wasn’t great anyway). Other entities generally have perceptions of karting that aren’t wholly aligned with the reality. It could be I am missing a key component, but in the end trying to do something with karting would mean you have to present it in a way where you’re in direct competition with F1.
I think the states can weather this better than other countries though. I think the motorsport culture is a little bit stronger over there. But F1 is not a help long term.
