Adventures in the Negative Zone

I'm not actually going to go in the order in which I made the playlists, since some of them were compiled in a playlist long after they were actually completed. So, next up was my first real attempt at a Let's Play:

Adventures in the Negative Zone

Status: Complete

Now, when I got my EasyCap, that was the first time I ever really considered doing a Let's Play. However, as I am entirely indecisive, I couldn't decide what I wanted to play, or with who... So, we just sort of started to film exactly what we were playing. I had already beaten the Wii version of Avengers Alliance on my roommate's Wii at college, so I knew the next section of the game was somewhat self-contained, and I decided that that would be a good test of whether or not Let's Plays/walkthroughs would be a good idea. At the time, I hadn't considered adding my voice or video to the video, I was just trying to see if I could get the EasyCap to play as a sustained video.
I was also having issues that I still have to this day with it, but I have since realized that there will always be somewhat of an issue with video quality when you are splitting the video portion (The yellow wire of the RCA cables) into multiple inputs. I also have a somewhat on/off again issue where the video file for the EasyCap has this annoying squealing noise. It's mostly been worked out since then though. 

Double-Time (Or, more commonly known as D-T, but has since taken to JB for JackBauer -- who you can find on Twitch.tv) joined me for this series, and it's really the first time I ever thought of doing multiplayer  LPs as well. The videos themselves are of varying qualities because I was trying to test the outputs from ULead. This series also marked the first time I would ever add text to a video, which would definitely come to help me out later. We actually did die a couple of times in the video, and with that I realized that you don't necessarily need to be a perfect player for people to watch your stuff.

I guess you could say that for all the testing the waters I did with this series, it turned out okay. Up until quite recently, actually, I've had people ask if I'd ever do a whole LP of Ultimate Alliance 2. While I don't think I would at this point in time, I have actually considered the idea. I played through Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 on the Wii, and then I went out and bought X-Men Legends I & II but I haven't actually beaten/played through either of those either. Maybe after I play them I'll go back to Ultimate Alliance and give them another shot. I do miss Psylocke, after all!
While the videos in this series have a nominal amount of views, the video with the most in the series happens to be the one where Iron-Man from one of the cutscenes is the thumbnail. That would be Adventures in the Negative Zone 2: 

Okay, so to add onto the point I made about custom thumbnails in my post about Konoha vs the World, I mean, it also helps if the thumbnail in general can grab someone's attention, regardless of how professional it looks. Iron-Man from the cutscene really looks nothing like the in-game graphics, so I'm sure it piqued someone's interest. For the most part, when YouTube chooses an image for thumbnails, it sort of... changes them in some slight way, like, there's a zoom effect, and generally speaking, it's a little more pixelated than that frame actually is in the video, probably due to the zoom effect. I just happened to get lucky with a cutscene appearing in one of those preselected thumbnails.
I also found out that it can be quite difficult figuring out where and when you want to break up footage. What I've found to be most useful is to break it up where a break naturally occurs, so it doesn't lose the audience. Let's be real, nobody likes cliffhangers. 

It's also better, when you don't have a steady following, to keep things short and sweet, since people that are only viewing your page/profile for a short period of time need to get all they can get in one sitting. Something I should have learned from this playlist is that it's relatively small, but the views are mostly in the same range (not counting AitNZ2 and AitNZ4, which have a lot more views than the rest), meaning that at least some people watched it the whole way through. 

Speaking of those two having more views than the rest, since I became a partner with Fullscreen, I've gained access to applications that can track what people are searching for when they find your videos, and I just might track those two videos and see how they are being found far more than the rest of the series. Tags  REALLY do help guys, so don't neglect them! 
I think for a new LPer, or someone new to YouTube without a significant following, it might be best if you kept the games you're playing through to a maximum of 10-15 videos. Now, I'm not saying that you ABSOLUTELY, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES CANNOT EXCEED THIS NUMBER- but it might be in your best interest. 
ALSO ALSO ALSO, if you're trying to keep your content coming, remember that it's actually significantly better if you are to grab A METRIC BUTT-TON of footage in one sitting, and then edit it down for upload at a later date, than it is to just grab exactly what you need in one go... That's something I've spent almost my entire tenure on YouTube figuring out...