samspade
Member
Recently I was curious about how YouTube channels focusing on GameMaker tutorials do, and what I could learn from them, so I did some research and came up with the following information: Google Sheet Link. I'm not being particularly rigorous, but I believe most of the numbers are correct (or were as of the time or recording them). I'd be curious if people spot mistakes or think of other things that might be useful to add (I considered checking into whether people had twitter or a Udemy course) or if I missed anyone.
I didn't find many take-aways, but one that seemed mostly solid, unsurprisingly, is that subscriber count was correlated to when the first GM Tutorial went up. With a few notable exceptions, channels around the five or so year mark approach 5k-10k subscribers. Interestingly, to me at least, there didn't seem to be much of a relationship between amount of viewers and subscribers or even type of tutorial and subscribers. It also didn't seem to matter to much how active the channels were, many channels that hadn't posted in a year or longer were still doing well (in terms of subscribers for a GM channel). One thing to note about that is that all the YouTubers with breakaway numbers did focus on Let's Make a Game type tutorial, but there are also many channels with more normal numbers doing the same thing. Being featured on YoYo's learn page seemed to help, but its tough to say whether they were featured because they were larger and more well known or became larger and more well known by being featured (at least at this point in time).
What was most interesting to me though (and this isn't in the chart) is that Shaun Spalding's newer less viewed tutorials get around 3k views while his most viewed recent tutorials (such as at the start of a series) get around 20k or more. The reason I find this incredibly interesting is that these are more views than pretty much all other active tutorial makers combined (this is almost true even if you include YoYo's own channel) which implies that the vast majority of GameMaker Tutorial viewers watch one, and only one, tutorial source (and its not even the official one). This seems like really unusual YouTube viewing behavior. Anecdotally, I can't think of many people I know who watch just one content creator for a subject they like. What is it about GM that makes it so the vast majority of people seeking a tutorial on GameMaker go to one, and only one source?
I didn't find many take-aways, but one that seemed mostly solid, unsurprisingly, is that subscriber count was correlated to when the first GM Tutorial went up. With a few notable exceptions, channels around the five or so year mark approach 5k-10k subscribers. Interestingly, to me at least, there didn't seem to be much of a relationship between amount of viewers and subscribers or even type of tutorial and subscribers. It also didn't seem to matter to much how active the channels were, many channels that hadn't posted in a year or longer were still doing well (in terms of subscribers for a GM channel). One thing to note about that is that all the YouTubers with breakaway numbers did focus on Let's Make a Game type tutorial, but there are also many channels with more normal numbers doing the same thing. Being featured on YoYo's learn page seemed to help, but its tough to say whether they were featured because they were larger and more well known or became larger and more well known by being featured (at least at this point in time).
What was most interesting to me though (and this isn't in the chart) is that Shaun Spalding's newer less viewed tutorials get around 3k views while his most viewed recent tutorials (such as at the start of a series) get around 20k or more. The reason I find this incredibly interesting is that these are more views than pretty much all other active tutorial makers combined (this is almost true even if you include YoYo's own channel) which implies that the vast majority of GameMaker Tutorial viewers watch one, and only one, tutorial source (and its not even the official one). This seems like really unusual YouTube viewing behavior. Anecdotally, I can't think of many people I know who watch just one content creator for a subject they like. What is it about GM that makes it so the vast majority of people seeking a tutorial on GameMaker go to one, and only one source?