Are you a small Utuber and trying to get those 4,000 hours of watch time so that you can get monetized? I’ve been there. I know how frustrating it can be, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why I’m going to explain how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube in this article.

We’ll talk about those retention hours and how you can retain your viewers so that those hours will keep accumulating. We’re also going to talk about views. Why are they there? What’s the difference?

So, let’s dig in and get those watch hours up to 4,000 so you can get monetized.

We’re going to compare the views versus the retention. And I’m going to show you why it’s important to keep an eye on both of them. But the one that you want to increase is the retention over views.

To understand this, you need to go to your channel and look at the analytics. On the left hand side, select analytics and then select overview.

Here you will see some stats for each video. These include:

• The number of views
• How many subscribers
• Your estimated income
• The retention rate

What we want to analyze is the views versus retention. For example, if you have 1000 views but the retention is only 1 minute and 16 seconds, that’s not ideal. You need to ascertain why people aren’t sticking around to watch the rest of the video.

In the example above, the retention rate is only 12%. Ideally, you want this to be 40% or more. When you get your retention rate up, your estimated income will also go up.

Why Is Retention Rate So Important?

Retention is more important than view count. Your view count only shows you how many people are finding your videos and clicking on them.

However, your retention rate shows how many people are actually watching your videos for a considerable amount of time. And, if they only watch for 30 seconds or less, it doesn’t even count.

So, if people are watching your videos to a certain point and then clicking away, you need to analyze this to see how you can improve it.

Most importantly, improving your retention rate will help to increase your watch hours. Ultimately, YouTube will notice when people are watching a particular video for more than 50% of the way through and start promoting it a little more.

What You Can Learn From How Your Viewers Find Your Video

If on some of your videos, your traffic is coming mainly from a YouTube search, it means people are searching for the topic. However, if your retention rate is low, it means that they’re not finding the information they’re looking for.

So, you might want to dissect that video and find out how you can improve it. To do this, have a look at the video up to the point where most people are dropping off. Have you already told them what they wanted to know?

If that’s the case, maybe you could redo the video and put the part after the drop-off point first.

Therefore, if people aren’t viewing your video for a long enough period of time, ask yourself these question:

• Why are people leaving?
• Why are they clicking away at a certain time stamp?
• Have you already told them everything they wanted to know?
• Have you started babbling and not saying much of any significance?
• Did you fail to create some curiosity of what’s to come?

Remember, people are fairly impatient and don’t want to waste their time watching something that is not giving them any value.

Another thing you can do is compare all your videos that are around the same topic. Are some doing better than others? Can you work out why?

My Top 5 Tips For Improving Your Retention Rate

1. Analyze and correct. Work out why people are dropping off at a certain point in a video and then correct it. Then, don’t make the same mistakes in subsequent videos that you create.

2. Get on with it. Don’t bore your audience. Say what you have to say and make sure your audience knows what you’re talking about. Leave out the fluff.

3. Make it visually engaging. As much as you can, add photos and images. Add some screenshots from your desktop or better still, share your screen when you’re explaining how something works. Consider zooming in and out to make it more visually appealing.

4. Keep your videos shorter. I can remember when I first started, all my videos were less than 5 minutes. Now, I find that I tend to talk more and my videos end up being around 10 minutes long. Think about whether your audience is happy to sit through a video for 10 minutes or whether you should keep it shorter.

5. Keep them hooked. Make sure you hold your audience’s attention. Use humor or different icons that pop up to keep your viewers entertained.

Tip: I’ve seen some videos where the presenter says “Stick around to the end because I’ve got something for you”. People like that. It makes them curious to find out what the presenter is going to offer them and they tend to stick around.

So, those are my five tips to help increase your audience retention. Most importantly, please don’t be discouraged. Just take one video at a time and look at the analytics. Then, improve things on your next video.

Consequently, each time you create a new video, you’re just going to keep getting better.

You’ve Got This!