YouTube Views Vs Subscribers Vs Likes: What Matters More?

Subscribers, views and likes – the metrics every YouTuber follows. Your YouTube channel needs a healthy mix of all three of these elements to grow.

But what’s the difference between the three?

If you’re not sure which metrics you need to be focusing on or what they mean to the algorithm, we’re going to clear up any confusion that you may have by the end of this article.

What are YouTube Views?👁️‍🗨️

A YouTube view is what it sounds like: someone viewed your video. But what if a person only watches your video for 2 seconds? Is that a view? YouTube defines a view as:

If someone watches your video for just 25 seconds, it doesn’t count as a view. But the time spent doesn’t need to be 30 seconds straight. A viewer can pause the video or skip to another part in it and watch it.

A total of 30 seconds of view time on a video is a view.

YouTube pays per 1000 views, so you definitely want to do everything you can to get more views to your videos. High-quality views can turn into subscribers and also help you start earning money.

What are YouTube Subscribers?

Subscribers are your “groupies.” People spend an average of 36 minutes on the site every time they visit it. And the site or app gets a combined 94.54 billion visits every month. Billions of users are on YouTube, but all you need is a very small number of them to see your content to make money and build a brand.

And if your content is especially good, people will subscribe to your channel.

Why is this important?

Your subscribers:

You’ll gain and lose subscribers over time, but you should always want more subs since your content will be shown to them when they open the app or go to the website.

But subscribers are different than views because there’s no guarantee that a subscriber will watch your next video.

What are YouTube Likes?👍

“Subscribe and like this video,” is a phrase that you’ll hear one creator after another repeat. Likes are a “vote” for your video. Someone liked the video, alerting YouTube to let others see the video, too.

And a like is a form of engagement.

YouTube’s algorithm will use likes as a way to boost your content, but since they’re not the only engagement metric, you’ll also need to tick off a bunch of the algorithm’s other items, such as:

If you post at the right time, you might even get more likes because people are on the platform. Likes are a form of social proof that someone cares enough to watch your video and give it a “vote.” You should always ask your viewers to like your content and subscribe because it’s a call-to-action.

Simply telling your viewers to like your video will skyrocket the number of views you receive.

YouTube Subscribers Vs YouTube Views Vs YouTube Likes: Which One Matters Most?

So, you know the difference between a subscriber, view and a like. But which is most important? Unfortunately, this is a difficult question to answer because every little thing can help you succeed on YouTube.

Let’s break down each of the three in terms of importance:

Why🤔Views are More Important Than Subscribers?

Views from a purely monetary aspect are more important than subscribers because you earn money for views. And if you’re after money, you certainly want to have more views because they’re more important.

And some will even tell you that views are more important than subscribers, but this is only true with some audiences.

Imagine this:

If you have the same RPM, you’ll earn double for the single viral video. But if you have 500,000 subscribers and you have a 20% watch rate, each video will receive 100,000 views. Over the long-term, you want to gain more subscribers and have a consistently high number of views.

Why?

YouTube earnings are sporadic, and if you have a consistent number of subscribers watching your content, you can have greater earning consistency.

Why Likes Also Matter?

“Likes” also matter because they’ll help you get more video views and are also important for your channel’s ability to have YouTube recommend it more. You won’t find a video that’s viral without likes because:

Hundreds of factors influence YouTube’s algorithm, and many of these factors remain unknown to us. Likes are one of the important factors of YouTube that we know for sure will influence the algorithm.

Now that you know the difference between subscribers, views and likes, you’ll want to go into your YouTube Analytics and start dissecting your videos. Which videos receive the most:

If you begin focusing on these crucial metrics, you’ll start to see what type of content your audience likes and how to adapt your next video to improve each of these three elements. Review your Analytics data often to keep a pulse on your channel.