Watch hours are a YouTube stat that’s super important. It shows just how long people are watching videos. This can help you determine whether you have the right content going, and also if your viewers are interested. Plus, if you’ve got a higher watch hour, YouTube will promote this a lot more.
It also plays a role in monetization. In order to make money, you need 4,000 watch hours within the last 12 months. If you hit this, you can apply to partner with YouTube, and then, you’ll make some cash.
How does this work though? What can you do to boost those watch hours? Well, you’re in luck, because here’s everything you need to know about watch hours, and how to make these better for your channel.
How Are They Calculated?
On a video, if your video gets ten views and each viewer watches 10 minutes, this gives you a total of 100 minutes of watch time, or one hour and 40 minutes. Pretty simple math, huh? However, it's a bit more complex than that.
However, YouTube also gives you the total time watched for both individual videos, and also the entire channel time.
The analytics tells you about the different analytics available. If you click on this, you can from there see that time, along with other unique customization options if you want to use them.
YouTube also tells you if it’s been more, or less than your average view time. This can be good to look at to determine the channel growth. If you notice your views are going down, you might wonder how to fix this. Well, we’ve got the answers here for you.
How to Increase Your Watch Time?
Better watch time means a better place in the algorithm. If your videos should be getting more watch hours, here are some ways you can fix this.
Make your Content Engaging
This is the simplest way. If your content is boring the audience, they’ll leave. You want to make content that’s engaging and keeps them hooked. Don’t be afraid to leave hooks in your videos such as “watch till the end” so you can retain watchers.
Evergreen Content, Too
Okay, this is dependent on the current content you create. If you're a politics or news channel, your videos will be less evergreen. However, you want to make content that’s unique and different whenever you can. If the parameters of your channel allow it, don’t be afraid to explore. It could be good for you, because it’ll help you with getting new viewers, and keeping them around too.
Entice Viewers
Have an intro that gets people to want to continue watching. Ask an interesting question or state a shocking fact, then promise to elaborate on it later in the video. Doing this will increase your watch hours with ease. If your video takes too long to interest your audience, they will tune out, and your watch time will be hurt. Don't do that.
Be Sure to Reach Your Target Audience
Your content will suffer if you're reaching an audience not interested in your videos. Use the proper hashtags and keywords to reach an audience wanting to watch your videos from beginning to end. These will help you get seen properly in the algorithm, and the right ones will help you get the correct audience. This is a process, and you might have to do some legwork on your own, but it’s necessary.
Follow Good SEO and Be in Tune With the Algorithm
Finally, make sure that you follow the rules, and practice the correct SEO. YouTube is constantly changing all of these, so it’s important to keep abreast of it. make sure you’re following the right SEO and have a plan to utilize the correct methods for SEO. This will markedly increase the watch hours.
Buy Some YouTube Watching Time
If you need a faster result or do not have enough viewing hours to access monetization, then you should think about buying watch hours on services such as VideosGrow.
Conclusion
Like all platforms, YouTube is a grind. You'll have days where it feels like people love your content and days when you wish more people were tuning in. However, if you keep at it and create the best possible content, you will succeed on this platform. Never give up; always hop on the latest trends your audience follows and provide evergreen content that people will watch again and again.
