Should a gaming channel PICK ONE GAME? Build a channel the right way!

Hey, it's Jordan D Hahn. So a lot of gamers that want to start a YouTube channel like to play more than one game. And they hear the importance of niching down on YouTube. But is a gaming channel that covers 3 games niched down enough? Or should a gaming channel pick one game? In this video I'm going to teach you how to build a gaming channel the right way! As a new YouTuber creating a gaming channel, you really need to focus on one game, at least at first.

You might have heard a lot of people on YouTube talk about the importance of niching down. The reason people say to niche down on YouTube is because you want to have a very targeted audience. Or in other words, you want to focus on one game. By having a more targeted audience, YouTube is much more likely to recommended and suggest your videos.

If you are currently struggling to grow your YouTube channel, it could be because you aren't getting your videos suggested or recommended. And the majority of views that big YouTube channels get, come from suggested and recommended videos. So I'm going to share with you why picking one game can significantly increase how many views your videos get.

Now when I talk about recommended videos, I mean getting your videos to show up on the YouTube home page. When I talk about suggested videos, I mean getting your vides to show up after someone watches a video. So I'll start off sharing how YouTube recommends videos, and I'll talk about how videos are suggested later.

So YouTube is more likely to recommend your videos to: people who have already watched one of your videos, people who have recently visited your channel page, and to viewers that have a high watch time and engagement with your videos. So YouTube looks at viewers search history to help determine what videos each viewer will most likely want to watch.

So here is where picking one game comes into play. There is a certain time-frame that YouTube uses search history to recommend videos. So to grow your YouTube channel, your goal should be to create videos that people engage with, and to create videos where those same people will want to engage with your next videos.

This way, people that watch one of your videos, will continue to watch more of your videos, and remain in your recent search history. So say you post a League of Legends video on your channel one day, and then the next day you post a World of Warcraft video.

The people that watched your League of Legends video, may not want to watch your World of Warcraft video. So if YouTube recommends the World of Warcraft video to people that just want to watch league of legends content, YouTube will see that you don't have that high of a click through rate or watch time for that video.

And if you don't know what click through rate is, it's basically just how many people click on your thumbnail divided by the people who have seen your thumnail. If YouTube sees that you have a low click through rate and low watch time with that viewer, YouTube will be less likely to recommend your next videos to those people that either didn't click on that video, or that didn't watch that much of your video.

What this means is, by the time you post another League of Legends video that they WOULD want to watch, YouTube is less likely to recommend it at that point either due to your previous videos having lower watch times and click through rates, or because by the time you created another League of Legends video, you are no longer in that viewer's recent search history due to them not clicking on your previous video.

Now I'm going to talk about why you should pick one game so that YouTube is more likely to SUGGEST your videos. So again, suggested videos are videos that show up either below the video you're currently watching if you are on mobile, or the videos on the side if you are viewing on a desktop.

YouTube suggests vidoes mainly based on related tags, related channels, and that video's metrics such as watch time and engagement. So first off, your videos are more likely to show up in the suggested section if people are currently watching YOUR video.

And it's even more likely that your videos will be in the suggested area if those videos have similar tags and keywords. And by similar tags and keywords, I basically mean the same game. So if people are watching a World of Warcraft video that you've created, but you haven't created that many other World of Warcraft videos, then you are less likely to have more of your videos show up in the suggested section.

And the next video people watch might take them away from your channel. You want to get people to keep watching YOUR videos. So if you have more videos that cover the same game, then you will have a better chance of your videos showing up in the suggested section.

Let's look at an example real quick. Here I just searched for a League of Legends video. I just clicked on a video from Foggedftw2, and you can see that most of the suggested videos are other League of legends videos, with the majority being from foggedftw2, the same channel of the video I'm currently watching.

Ok, that's great, so what about people showing up in the suggested area when people are currently watching someone else's video? Well this is where video metrics such as watch time, engagement, and viewer history become more important. So these other League of Legends videos from other channels are likely showing up in the suggested section because they have similar tags, keywords, high video watch time and engagement, or you have previously watched one of these other channel's videos.

We are currently watching a foggedftw2 video. In the suggested videos, there is a video by Glacierr Gaming and TC Zwag. Now I have recently watched a video by Glacierr Gaming, but I haven't watched a video recenlty from TC Zwag. And you can see that there are more Glacierr Gaming videos in my suggested area ; this is no coincidence.

So with all of this information that we have, I just want to give you a quick strategy. When starting off on YouTube, pretty much all of your views are going to come from YouTube search or external sources. And by external sources I basically mean when you share your videos on Facebook or Twitter.

So when you are trying to grow your gaming channel from the very beginning, you should focus on optimizing your YouTube title, tags, and descriptions to get your video to show up in search. I use a tool called Tubebuddy to help me with this. If you are interested, a link for TubeBuddy is in the description below.

Now just think of growing your channel as making a recommendation train. So as people watch your videos, YouTube is more likely to recommend your next video if it is the same game. So when people watch a video of yours, they get on your recommendation train.

So by sticking to only creating videos for one game, you are more likely to keep people on your recommendation train. And with each video, you are adding people to this train through either YouTube search or external sources. It then becomes a compounding effect.

As you get more people on your recommendation train, you are more likely to rank in YouTube search, which then increases the rate of people jumping on your train. This will eventually help you gain a massive following on your channel. Don't forget to like this video if you found it helpful, and subscribe to my channel if you want to learn about more YouTube strategies like this.