Only 29 of the top-200 user-owned channels on YouTube could manage to grow their viewership over the past three months (June 1, 2021 – August 31, 2021), according to an analysis by VideoAmigo.
‘View Growth Rate’ (VGR) is a metric by VideoAmigo that quantifies the performance of a YouTube channel. VGR is the percentage change in the views of a YouTube channel over a period of three months. A higher and positive VGR equals faster growth of a channel!
For this analysis, VideoAmigo considered only channels managed by YouTube users and not brands which were easily achieved by applying the ‘Producer Type’ filter to the list of top YouTube channels populated by VideoAmigo, a feature that you can find here. YouTube channels with kids’ content were excluded for analysis from this populated list.
Without further ado, let’s jump into the findings:
10 Billion Views in Three Months – Gamers Among the Top
Of the top-200 user-owned YouTube channels analyzed by VideoAmigo, only 29 channels had a positive View Growth Rate over the past three months. These 29 channels received close to 10.5 billion views. And, of these 29 channels, 11 are YouTube channels owned by gamers, accounting for about 30 percent of the views or around 3 billion views.
Non-English Language User-Owned YouTube Channels Make it Big
Almost half of the top-29 user-owned YouTube channels provide non-English content. Of the top-29 channels, 13 channels offer content in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, French, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Italian, and Hindi.
Although YouTube channels with non-English content constitute 44 percent of the top-29 channels, they received 52 percent of the total views in the past three months, as they garnered 5.3 billion views. Khandeshi Movies, a channel providing content in the Hindi language, garnered 947 million views, the highest among the top-29 YouTube channels.
This finding should not be a surprise as a 2019 study by Pew Research Center found that Popular YouTube channels produced a vast amount of content, much of it in languages other than English. Also, according to Think with Google, 6 of the top 10 largest markets by watch time for coming-out videos in the first 4 months of 2018 were non-English speaking countries. Moreover, the automatic captioning feature by YouTube provides a great opportunity to audiences on YouTube to view videos that are not in their native languages.
Video Publishing Frequency
YouTube channels owned by gamers publish videos almost twice more frequently than YouTube channels owned by non-gamers.
On average, the VideoAmigo analysis found that in the 92 days (June 1, 2021 – August 31, 2021), YouTube channels owned by non-gamers published videos on 28 days, whereas the YouTube channels owned by gamers published videos on 53 days. Some of the gamers published multiple videos every day for the entire 92-days-period.
Video publishing frequency of non-gamers
There are 18 non-gamer YouTube channels among the top-29 user-owned YouTube channels. Of these 18, nine channels published videos on less than 20 days out of the 92-days-period, but the views they received are staggering!
Tokai on Air, a YouTube channel providing content in Japanese, published videos on 13 out of the 92 days but received 500 million views. Mmoshaya, a Saudi Arabian vlogger, published videos only on 19 days but received 883 million views. US-based David Dobrik and MrBeast published videos on just 11 days and seven days, respectively, but received 667 million and 736 million views!
Video publishing frequency of gamers
Gamers are highly active on YouTube. Of the 11 gamer YouTube channels on our list of top-29, three channels – DaniRep, Felipe Neto, and zbing z. – posted videos daily over the past three months. Three other channels – Ssundee, Yogscast, and H2ODelirious – published videos for more than 60 days.
High-Quality Content is Immortal
The importance of high-quality content for the success of a YouTube channel cannot be stressed enough. ‘Key of Awesome‘ and ‘The Epic Rap Battles of History (ERB)‘ are two channels on our list of the top-29 user-owned YouTube channels that did not post a single video over the past three months.
Key of Awesome, which shot to fame for its musical parody videos spoofing well-known artists, has not published a single video in the last three years! But it received 21 million views over the past three months. The Epic Rap Battles of History did not publish a single video over the past three months but received close to 91 million views.
29 Channels that Hold Lessons on How to Grow Faster on YouTube
| Channel Name | Gamer/Non-Gamer | Views – Past three Months | View Growth Rate | Language |
| DaniRep | Gamer | 195 Million | 5.01% | Spanish |
| TheRadBrad | Gamer | 166 Million | 6.63% | English |
| Tokai on Air | Non-Gamer | 500 Million | 7.04% | Japanese |
| VanossGaming | Gamer | 428 Million | 12.8% | English |
| Felipe Neto | Gamer | 809 Million | 2.20% | Portuguese |
| Mmoshaya | Non-Gamer | 883 Million | 5.49% | Arabic |
| Squeezie | Non-Gamer | 332 Million | 2.49% | French |
| Guava Juice | Non-Gamer | 354 Million | 1.36% | English |
| Bright Side | Non-Gamer (Curator) | 642 Million | 14.2% | English |
| David Dobrik | Non-Gamer | 667 Million | 3.54% | English |
| Enes Batur | Gamer | 403 Million | 1.22% | Turkish |
| SSundee | Gamer | 412 Million | 15% | English |
| Yogscast | Gamer | 59 Million | 15% | English |
| Reaction Time | Non-Gamer | 319 Million | 23% | English |
| SSSniperWolf | Non-Gamer | 437 Million | 9.3% | English |
| People Vs Food | Non-Gamer | 320 Million | 20% | English |
| Sky Does Everything | Gamer | 25 Million | 39% | English |
| Thơ Nguyễn | Non-Gamer | 412 Million | 7.7% | Vietnamese |
| Deji | Non-Gamer | 81 Million | 51% | English |
| FAP TV | Non-Gamer | 335 Million | 26% | Vietnamese |
| Zbing z. | Gamer | 310 Million | 10.6% | Thai |
| CaptainSparklez | Gamer | 46 Million | 13.5% | English |
| The Key of Awesome | Non-Gamer | 21.3 Million | 1% | English |
| ERB | Non-Gamer | 90.6 Million | 37.6% | English |
| OHA diyorum! | Non-Gamer | 137 Million | 1.7% | Turkish |
| FavijTV | Non-Gamer | 131 Million | 21.5% | Italian |
| MrBeast | Non-Gamer | 736 Million | 21.4% | English |
| Khandeshi Movies | Non-Gamer | 947 Million | 14.2% | Hindi |
| H2ODelirious | Gamer | 149 Million | 37.8% | English |
Success is an Ongoing Phenomenon
More than 80 percent of the top-200 user-owned YouTube channels failed to boost their viewership over the last three months. Generating quality content, optimizing videos, increasing viewership, and audience engagement need to happen continuously – even when you are one of the most-subscribed channels on YouTube!
If you are a YouTube creator, sign up for the Creator Tool Suite by VideoAmigo to gain analytical insights into the performance of your YouTube channel and videos, find out the areas of improvement, and ultimately succeed on YouTube.
