System Of Levers

Solving problems no one else seems to be having

2026-01-09

A Peak at My YouTube Analytics

If you don't know I have a YouTube channel called SystemOfLevers. This is going to be a dive into some of that channel's analytics.

One thing about starting a YouTube channel that I've found challenging is that I had no context for the analytics. For the most part YouTube studio (the admin site for channels) gives you comparisons based on your own past performance. Things like:

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think comparing against yourself is the right way to go. Comparing against well established channels that have already figured things out is probably a great way to kill your motivation. As someone new to YouTube it's going to be VERY hard get close to their performance. You're just starting out, you're going to be bad at it, that's how you learn.

That being said I don't think the "algorithm" cares if your latest video is the best one you've made so far. It cares how the video compares to all the other videos on YouTube. At least I think that's the case.

It would be nice to have something to compare against. So this is a peak into my channel's analytics so that anyone else starting out can have at least one point of comparison.

About My Channel

History

I published my first video in May 2022. It's still a relatively small channel. At the time of writing it has 5981 subscribers and has 13k views in the last 28-days. I've published 31 long-form videos and 11 shorts. I was fully monetized in February 2025 (that means I earn money from ads). I also got a sponsorship last year that I'm not going to discuss further.

My channel has primarily focused on talking about Game Boy technical details.

I got some good luck with my first video, it was picked up by hacker news for a bit. I think my second one was too. But my 2nd-4th videos never got the same traction that the 1st one did. They were also pretty labour intensive to create so I wasn't releasing them very often. It was like 2 a year.

I found another hit of success in February 2023 with a video about the FPGBC, an FPGA based reproduction of the Game Boy Color. I think the success was because it was the right video at the right time. For a while it was my most popular video. It was also a lot less effort than my previous videos!

The Big One

My BIG hit of success came with a video I published at the end of January 2025 about telling you to make a Game Boy emulator. It took off in a huge way. It's currently at 140k views. It accounts for more than a third of my channel's views and a bit less that half of its subscribers. It's also the reason I was monetized!

I have no idea why that particular video did so well. In fact I almost didn't publish it. I thought it was boring and not particularly valuable to anyone. Also the video quality is kinda off in my opinion. The audio isn't my favorite either, but it's fine.

I've tried to reproduce that success but I haven't had much luck. None of my videos since have even cracked 10k views. That's not to say they aren't successful. If you ignore that 140k video then they're definitely strong performers in the context of my channel.

I've tried two ways to reproduce the success:

  1. continuing the topic with followup videos
  2. making a similar video for a different topic

The followup videos had diminishing returns. The 5th one in the series hasn't broken 1k views yet.

The similar video did quite well. As long as you don't compare it to the 140k video.

How I Feel About the Channel

I'm not going to lie, having that one video take off the way it did definitely helped improve my feeling about the channel. I wasn't exactly down about the channel, but I wasn't exactly feeling confident it would go anywhere. Before that big success I was getting nervous I'd miss my chance to get monetized. One of the requirements for monetization is 4,000 watch hours in the last 365 days. Before the big emulator video the bulk of my channel's watch hours came from my video about the FPGBC, published on February 23rd, 2024, and most of the watch time was within a couple month of that publishing. I published the emulator video on January 24th, 2025. By that point I only had 2,690 watch hours and I was getting maybe 5 new hours a day. So I was running out of time. In a few months a huge chunk of my watch time would pass beyond that 365 day mark and it'd be even harder to get monetized!

There are of course other measures of success. I got a bunch of positive comments from people about my videos. I think I was getting better at making them too. My audio certainly improved. And I was still enjoying making them. Being monetized would be nice though...

The Analytics

As of 2026-01-09

Channel

Channel views over time since it was created

A graph of my channel's lifetime views over time. There are two spikes near the start corresponding to my first two videos. Around the middle there's a bump followed by a permanent increase in views. That's from my video about the FPGBC. Later there's a big bump that gradually tapers off with another permanent increase in view rate. That's the big emulator video. After that there are a few spiky bumps for other published videos.

The two spikes on the left are when I released the first two videos. The little bump in the middle is the FPGBC video. You can see that it did result in an increase in the baseline views per day. The big bump is the big emulator video, and that also resulted in an increase in the baseline. Subsequent bumps are other videos being released.

Subscribers Over Time

A graph of my channel's lifetime subscribers over time. It follows a similar pattern to the view count graph above.

Monthly CTR Over Time

The overall CTR for my channel aggregated by month graphed over time. I can't really glean anything from it.

Monthly Average View Duration Over Time

A graph of the channel's overall average view duration aggregated by month over time. It increases over time for a bit then levels off around 2:30-3:00.

Monthly Percent Viewed Over Time

A graph of the channel's overall average percent viewed aggregated by month over time. I don't know if there's any meaning here. Maybe if I made more videos this graph could be helpful? I don't know.

First Video

First 24 Hours Views

A graph of cumulative views of my first video for the first 24 hours from the video being published. It shows a small bump at the start followed by slow growth. Then a bigger bump around the 16h mark with gradually slowing growth

Lifetime Views

A graph of cumulative views for the lifetime of my first video. It shows a big jump up to around 5k right at the beginning followed by gradual growth for the rest.

Watch Retention

Data about viewer retention for my first view. The average view is 2:22 with an average percent view of 33.3%. There's a graph showing viewer retention over the duration of the video. It shows a steep drop off right at the start, followed by gradual decline and a faster decline for the last bit of the video. There is text below the graph that says "52% of viewers are still watching at around the 0:30 mark, which is typical. Learn more by comparing to your other videos.".

This graph shows the percent of viewers who are watching at a particular point in the video. It primarily captures when people stop watching the video, but it's also affected by people skipping around in the video, which can cause the retention to increase at a particular point and in more extreme cases could cause retention to go above 100%.

Best Video (the one about emulators)

First 24 Hours Views

Cumulative views of my best video over its first 24 hours. It's showing a gradually increasing rate of views over time.

Lifetime Views

Cumulative views of my best video over its lifetime. It shows a fastish increase for first month or so, then a gradual slowing over time.

Watch Retention

Viewer retention for my best video. Average view duration is 2:11. Average view percent is 34.3%. The graph shows a drop off at the start but it's not very steep. Then a gradual decrease over time. The initial dro poff is significantly less steep than my first video. Text at the bottom reads "60% of viewers are still watching at around the 0:30 mark, which is typical. Learn more by comparing to your other videos

Retention Comparison

A graph showing my best video's retention compared to my other videos. The y-axis is labeled "low", "average", and "high". The line stays roughly around the average line with some wiggling above and below. The only thing I can really get from it is that there's slightly better retention at the start.

This graph shows the video's retention compared to my other videos. I'm not sure if it's videos publish before this one or all videos I've published. When the line goes into the high region it's saying the retention is better than others, and low means worse.

First 24 Hours CTR

A graph of click-through-rate in the first 24hours of my best video. It shows some high initial CTR, going as high as nearly 22%. Then it levels off around 7%

Lifetime CTR

A graph of the ctr for the lifetime of my best video. The overall rate is 4.7% and the graph stays around there with a bunch of variance.

Worst Video

This is a video about using javascript to generate visuals for a video. It did not do well. It's kinda outside of my core topic though so whatever. My thinking was that I was doing the work anyways, might as well have gotten some content out of it. The funny thing is that the stuff I was doing in this video was for my 3rd worst video (I'm not counting my 10 hour fireplace videos btw).

First 24 Hours Views

Views for my worst video over its first 24 hours. It's slow and ends at 50 views. The graph also shows a "usual" range. This video is below that range around the 7hour mark.

Lifetime Views

Views for my worst video over its lifetime. Not much going on here, it's almost a horizontal line. Below the "usual" range since day 1. Ends at 521 views.

Watch Retention

Retention data for my worst video. Average view duration is 2:03. Average percentage viewed is 12.4%. The retention graph has a sharp drop off at the start stays kinda steady at around 15% for most of the video. Text at the bottom reads "41% of views are still watching at around the 0:30 mark, which is below typical."

First 24 Hours CTR

The CTR for my worst video for its first 24 hours. The overall rate is1.7%. It's 0 for 5 of the 24 hours. it's max is 6%. Not good.

A Clickbait Video

I made a video about why I'm personally disappointed when I buy flash carts for consoles. It was a very low effort video and I made the thumbnail and title a little bit click-baity.

Retention

Retention data for my clickbait video. Average view duration is 1:33. Average percent viewed is 38.6%. The graph has a pretty small drop off at the start and just fairly gradual decrease in retention over time. It ends around 15%. Text at the bottom reads "66% of viewers are still watching at around the 0:30 mark, which is typical."

Lifetime CTR

CTR of my clickbait video over its lifetime. lots of variance for the first 3rd of it's life, then much less after that. Stays around 15%

Lifetime View Percent

Lifetime percent viewed of my clickbait video over its lifetime. Lots of variance at the start, which gradually diminishes until the first quarter of the lifetime. Stays a bit below 40%.

Conclusion

Well that's about it. If I had some kind of summary to say here I've completely forgotten it. So, I hope this data helps someone!

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