One year ago I started an experiment. I moved my live YouTube shows to a whole new channel, on the theory that the live shows on the main channel, which get great views while live but then very poor views after (which is understandable), were hurting the main channel. 1/🧵

Not sure if I’m happy or sad to report that it made no difference. Views/clicks/etc on the main channel saw no notable change comparing before/after the new channel. So the good news is I can move my live back to the main channel. Bad news is main channel metrics still suck. 2/🧵

Which means I can’t blame the live shows for hurting the channel. Given the extremely good relative performance of the ONE uploaded video to the live channel, I’m still convinced that the main channel is somehow broken, but there’s nothing to be done except keep on trying. End/🧵

what can happen though is a string of underperforming videos basically signals the algorithm that this channel just isn’t working. so a bunch of live streams could do that. a string of SEO friendly videos that do very well could pop you out. don’t go for quantity.

I still believe that YouTube wouldn't be so ignorant to consider livestream performance the same as uploaded video performance. They even give you different metrics in the studio for each type so I don't think this is far fetched.

if you do a search you can see a lot of creators talking about this exact thing - they've also said shorts don't impact your channel's weight in the algorithm, and there's plenty of evidence to the contrary.