Apart from basic, easily visible responses to your videos, such as views and subscriber count, there are plenty of other ways to see how your channel is doing. YouTube’s new Creator Studio and analytics might be a bit confusing to navigate at first glance, let alone interpret in concrete ways, so let’s go over some of the numbers and what they mean for you.

Where to go

First things first, let’s get on the same page here. To find your YouTube analytics, you can either go to your channel page and click the blue “Creator’s Studio” button, or you can click on your channel icon in the top right corner on any YouTube page and select “Creator’s Studio” from the drop-down list. This will bring you to your Channel Dashboard.

The first thing you’ll see is your most recent upload accompanied by its basic stats. This will include this video’s rank compared to your other recent uploads, its watch time, views and average view duration. We’ll get into each of those in more detail later.

On the right is a box labeled Channel Analytics. This is a very concise overview displaying your subscriber count, your total watch time and views, and how each of those have increased or decreased over a select period of time. Below that are your top videos and their recent view counts.

Alright, now that we’re on the main page, let’s dive in. On the left of the screen is a vertical sidebar with different categories. Each is essential in understanding your channel, but we’ll be focusing on the analytics tab — the icon looks like a bar graph. Once you click on it, a graph will take up the center of the screen, with several tabs on top.

Each tab will have a box of your Top Videos. These may be different depending on which tab you’re in. For instance, one video may have more views, but another has more watch time. The graphs will automatically show data for the past 28 days, but you can change the time period using the drop-down list in the top right corner. Now, there’s a lot of information that’ll show up all at once, so let’s break it down piece by piece.

Reach viewers

This tab shows “Impressions” — that is, how many times your videos have been shown across YouTube in sub boxes, recommended on other videos, and on people’s home pages. The sub-tab “Impressions click-through rate” shows the percentage of people who clicked on those videos out of the total number of Impressions.

The next two tabs, “Views” and “Unique viewers,” tell you the total number of views for the selected time period, followed by the estimated number of viewers. In other words, if one viewer watches multiple videos, all their views are represented in the Views tab, while they’ll only show up as one person under Unique viewers.

If your view count is far higher than your unique viewers, that means you’re engaging you viewers enough for them to watch more than one video, but it can also mean you’re not drawing in a lot of new viewers. If your view count is in close proximity to your unique viewer count, it’s likely the majority of people coming to your channel leave after one video. It’s a delicate balance between creating content your subscribers will enjoy and content that will bring in new people.

Beneath the graph on the left is a series of boxes with information about where people encounter your videos. “Traffic source types” and “Traffic source: External” give you the percentage of viewers who come to your video from each particular source, as well as a breakdown of the external (off-YouTube) locations where viewers found your video. This helps you find out where your content is being shown and why — it’s a great way to see not only what others think, but also what other content is related to your own.

Farther down is “Traffic source: Suggested videos,” where you’ll see the videos that suggest yours in the recommended section. Under that is a box showing the playlists through which people have found your content.

To the right is yet another box labeled “Traffic source: Youtube,” which lists the most common YouTube searches that have led people to your channel. These will often be similar to keywords and phrases you’ve put in your titles, tags, and descriptions. Side note: always use tags and descriptions! These are vital to your videos showing up in more search results.

Looking through this data can tell you how viewers are finding your content and where it gets the most shares. Digging in a bit deeper, you can make a hypothesis about why and how viewers are engaging with your videos. Are they being discussed? Critiqued? Used as sources? If your video is shared on Reddit, for instance, go see what people are saying about it. Whether positive or negative, the reactions and discussions provide extremely helpful feedback.

Interest viewers

This section shows exactly what it sounds like: how interested your viewers are in your content. The two main elements of this tab are watch time and view duration.

Watch Time

The watch time graph shows how much time, in minutes, your videos have gotten total over the period of time you selected. The aggregate amount will show up beneath the “Watch time (minutes)” tab at the top. Move your mouse along the graph to highlight certain days and see the estimated number of minutes your channel has gotten total across all your videos and views for that day. This is an essential metric to keep track of, especially if you want to become or remain monetized. 4,000 hours of total watch time over the past year is now required in order for your channel to remain monetized, as of January 2018.

View Duration

Similar to watch time, your average view duration shows how long each individual viewer spends watching one of your videos. This tells the algorithm whether your videos are clickbait and clicked off of quickly, or if they retain interest for longer amounts of time. It also tells you which of your videos are entertaining enough that people will stick around to watch the whole thing, and which ones lose the viewer’s interest. By searching for view duration for specific videos, you can also see which points in time during the video people tend to click off. If there’s a nosedive in watch time halfway through, go re-watch that video and see if there is an obvious reason people left at that part in particular.

Build an audience

This tab is all about demographics. In other words, this section shows you the kind of person most likely to be watching your videos. Here you’ll find: your channel’s watch time by subscribed vs unsubscribed viewers, the top countries from which your videos are being watched, the subtitles used, languages spoken by viewers, the most common age of your viewers and viewers’ genders.

While good information to look over, it’s not always reliable. For example, people on YouTube often watch from others’ accounts, aren’t logged in at all, or have an inaccurate age or location. Also, the gender metric is unreliable and binary, and not all viewers’ demographics are shown or enabled. Even so, being aware of these approximations can help you understand your audience a little better.

Other information

Outside of the YouTube analytics page, YouTube Studio offers plenty more information about your channel’s health. Clicking on the “Videos” tab on the sidebar will show you stats for each of your videos individually.

Comments

The “Comments” tab on the sidebar shows all the comments on your channel, which you can sort through by video. This is probably the best way to analyze and understand direct feedback from the viewers themselves rather than raw numbers. The relationship between your number of views, likes, and comments says a lot about viewer engagement, and engagement is one of the most important aspects of building a successful and fulfilling channel with a loyal audience.

It’s best to leave comments and likes enabled for all your videos, and you should also keep your sub count public. It’s been shown to make viewers feel more directly involved and aware of the other people watching. Fostering a healthy, supportive community is the best way to gain feedback and learn how to improve as a creator.

Are your view counts much higher than your comments? Think about how you can make your content more interactive and start a conversation.

Likes and Dislikes

YouTube also lets you see your like-to-dislike ratio for each video, which can tell you a lot about how that video was received. Compare your likes and views. How engaged is your audience? If you have way more views than likes or comments, it could indicate that the video is offering people something the rest of your channel isn’t.

Do you have a lot of dislikes but the comments are mostly positive? It’s likely viewers got a bad impression from the start of your video, disliked it, and left, while those who watched more enjoyed it more. Find ways to include your message and hook earlier on.

Endscreen stats

Card and endscreen stats can give you an idea of which of your links are being clicked, how often, and where they lead. Check out the Community Tab if you make posts there — it may have comments or simply show your text posts and polls.

Shares

Don’t neglect the Shares either! These’ll tell you where your content is being shared, which can lead you to external sites full of reactions to your videos you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I had one of my videos shared to a site specifically for videos of people getting slapped with various objects, so… you never know what you may find!

Making sense of the numbers

There you have it! That should be enough to help you wade through the murky waters of YouTube analytics to find out how your channel’s doing. With most of these categories, there is a “see more” option that will give you more detail, but these are the basics needed in order to navigate the numbers.

Keeping track of these stats periodically and being aware of how they can change over time will do wonders in helping you understand your channel and your audience.

YouTubers taking to written media has become more and more common over the years. While this movement has led some creators to pump out some overall okay works with their name on it for a quick buck, others have found natural, organic ways to grow their specific brand of content and translate it into the written word. This has resulted in some fantastic pieces of literature that feel like extensions of some already wonderful people.

These are their stories:

Selp-Helf by Colleen Ballinger

Colleen Ballinger is a woman of many faces, but arguably her most notorious is that of Miranda Sings. Miranda’s channel features Miranda, being Miranda, doing Miranda things, such as being as confident and entertaining as she is oblivious and talentless. With her book, “Selp-Helf,” Miranda seeks to impart on readers everywhere what they can do to be more like her, as we all aspire to be. With this satirical spin on the self-help genre, Ballinger doles out the laughs while helping readers come to terms with the harsh truths of life, like the fact that a well-done cateye look is fine, but you need whiskers to really pull it off.

Miranda Sings videos put the spotlight on her and her wacky ways, but “Selp-Helf” brings it all together in one solid book that readers can dig into and enjoy at their own pace as they make the transformation they have been waiting on for so long.

Nerdy Nummies by Rosanna Pansino

There is little that needs to be said about Rosanna Pansino that can’t be gathered from a quick scroll through her uploads: she’s nerdy, she’s a top-notch cook and she’s a pint-sized pack of adorable. Her channel, Nerdy Nummies, highlights techniques, recipes and even spins on classics that can help viewers make their own fun, festive and geeky food to blow away their friends.

Pansino’s book by the same name brings all of that and more directly into the kitchen, so readers can enjoy recipes, both old and new, in a clear and concise manner. A cookbook tends to be easier to parse than a video, but anyone who picks up a copy of “Nerdy Nummies” is in for much more than an average cookbook. Pansino packs all of her enthusiasm and humor in between the covers here, helping readers not only to make D-20 cookies, apple pi or robot brownie pops, but to also have a fun time doing it. The books transforms her signature content into something not only entertaining but practical as well.

The Book of Mythicality by Rhett and Link

Rhett and Link’s show, Good Mythical Morning, is more or less a variety talk show with strong emphasis on the variety. They have been known to make videos on weird psychology experiments, the best dance moves to avoid getting mugged and everything in between, all while preaching a message of being one’s mythical best to their millions of viewers. Their book, “Rhett and Link’s Book of Mythicality: A Field Guide to Curiosity, Creativity, and Tomfoolery,” pushes that philosophy even further. Amid bits of trivia, personal anecdotes and their trademark comedy, Rhett and Link offer readers direct advice on ways for them to take the reins of their lives and turn towards mythicality.

Within the pages of this tome, readers are given the mission to eat something that scares them, recommendations for making bold hair choices and instructions on how to speak at their own funerals. Rhett and Link use this book to put their mantra of mythicality into action and show their viewers just how they, personally, can be their mythical best.

All I Know Now by Carrie Hope Fletcher

Carrie Hope Fletcher is a tremendously accomplished actor and YouTuber, finding success in each independently. She has recently taken the time to pursue another passion: writing. Her first book, “All I Know Now,” is a memoir of the path her life followed to get to where she now finds herself. Unlike many books written in similar veins, Fletcher gives recognition to the mistakes she’s made and the problems she’s faced along the way. This mirrors the honesty and reality that her channel, It’s Way Past My Bedtime, is well-known for. Despite her success, Fletcher remains a grounded and relatable human being, and this really shows through in her memoir here. Readers will finish this book and walk away from it, not wishing that they could live a life like her’s, but knowing that she has lived a life like them.

Buffering by Hannah Hart

Creator of the My Drunk Kitchen series, Hannah Hart is no stranger to getting deep with her viewers. However, for the most part, this comes as brief asides or overarching morals explained as she hilariously stumbles her way through baking and booze. In her autobiographical essay compilation, “Buffering,” Hart expands on the beliefs and lessons she holds dear to heart and the trials and tribulations that taught them to her.

The sincere nature contrasts with the general tone of her My Drunk Kitchen series (although not entirely with her more recent deviations from these videos), but it never feels out of place or forced. Instead, “Buffering” lets fans of Hart get a deeper look into the aspects of her life that they know are there but are less commonly expounded upon.

You Deserve A Drinkby Mamrie Hart

Mamrie Hart (no blood relation to the above) offered a different take on memoirs in “You Deserve A Drink,” named after her video series wherein she dedicates personalized cocktails to whoever she deems deserving and partakes in them as she throws out pun after pun. Rather than showing off the polished portions of her life, Hart works to highlight the rowdier times, not shying away from any story she finds too funny to keep to herself.

“You Deserve A Drink” earns its subtitle — Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery — as Hart recounts stories of concerts and couch-surfing, tequila and topless tuesdays, all interspersed with detailed instructions for making some of her signature cocktails, helping readers simultaneously drink and laugh themselves silly all throughout her stories. Hart mixes equal parts wit, wine and wonderful tales, ending up with the perfect blend of everything she has made her channel to be.

The ABC’s of LGBT+ by Ash Hardell

“The ABC’s of LGBT+” differs a little from the other books on this list, offering up a detailed, inclusive and accessible educational resource for anyone looking to learn more about the LGBT+ community and all the different identities within. Ash Hardell is a prominent LGBT+ educator on YouTube who actively seeks to use their platform to promote understanding and acceptance of the myriad gender and sexual identities in the world. They have spent years putting out educational content, helping both those outside the community and those within learn about the people around them and, potentially, themselves.

The “ABC’s of LGBT+” serves as an inclusive encyclopedia of sorts that helps promote the goals Hardell pushes for with their channel, including a helpful glossary, detailed footnotes and an informational yet light-hearted tone. In an effort to make their work even more inclusive, Hardell features several anecdotes and illustrations by other queer folk, working to give those of all identities the voice and representation they are not often afforded. The book works wonderfully as both leisurely reading and a reference text, even having worked its way into some curriculums around the globe.

Art is Dead by Thomas Ridgewell

Thomas “TomSka” Ridgewell is one of the oldest YouTube creators out there with uploads dating back almost twelve years. Many of his videos are better known than the creator himself. In the decade and change that Ridgewell has spent putting out content, he has developed a specific brand of absurd, non sequitur-based and sometimes comedically-violent comedy. While his most common uploads are scripted sketches, often featuring other YouTube personalities, arguably his most popular and far-reaching work is the series of animated shorts he writes entitled “asdfmovies.” His book “Art is Dead” expands on the latter as a compendium of comic strips featuring bits and characters both classic and new.

In addition to a simple compilation of strips, though, the book also features personal notes from Ridgewell, explanations behind his works, and even original artwork by the man himself. “Art is Dead” is a great case of a book bringing content originally made for video to the written page while retaining all of the original quality and adding in elements that simply would not work in its original form on top of it.

The Amazing Book is Not on Fire by Dan and Phil

One would be remiss to write about books by YouTubers without acknowledging “The Amazing Book is Not on Fire,” by creative duo Dan Howell and Phil Lester. Across both their personal and collaborative channels, Dan and Phil have accrued a gargantuan audience with their light-hearted and uplifting comedy and general universal likeability. Their content is a little bit of everything: humor, discussions, games, challenges and most anything else you’d seen on the YouTube front page, but they always manage to put their own spin on it.

“TABINOF” draws on these bases in every respect and shows just as much variety in its pages as the boys do on their channels. Readers can find personal anecdotes, diary excerpts, quizzes, activities and more, each section dripping with everything that makes Dan and Phil who they are. The book serves a fantastic purpose in respect to their online presences. It is both a perfect starting point for those unfamiliar with the pair and a fun way for fans to feel like a part of the family they have built.

Books can be more than just a way to capitalize on an existing audience.

There are dozens of other worthy authors on YouTube, but this list should provide a starting point for anyone looking to get in touch with their literary side. The take away here is that books can be more than just a way to capitalize on an existing audience. With the right approach, writing a book can both complement existing content and expand overall channel reach.