It’s no longer news that YouTube has become the largest search engine for video related content, which means more competition for creators who are present.
Since the advent of course creation and other forms of targeted online income revenue, the view on YouTube channels has shifted. These days, people will no longer purchase items because their favourite celebrities advertised it, people now focus on the authority of the person making the offering. By authority I mean ‘how much they think the person knows about what they’re offering’. Therefore, it is safe to say that the scene is shifting from celebrities to experts, and from the certified to the knowledgeable. People want to be sure that you know your stuff, they are stopping to care about your Harvard and Oxford degrees combined, they want to be certain that you can deliver transformational services to them. People are now results oriented and will follow the person who will deliver transformational results, things that really work.
In the light of these, there is a new tussel on YouTube which I call the ‘Social Number Game’, which has to with ‘Numbers against Conversion Rate’.
The YouTube algorithm will recommend your channel to those they think will love it. Now there’s a problem if you’re too niched down, this means that your potential audience will be quite a small one in theory. The good side of this is that you’re able to create a true corporate family who are genuinely interested in your brand even with the small views.
On the other hand, humans have ‘the crowd mentality’, which means that they’ll want to be where others already are. This means that low views can sometimes be a total turn off for new viewers as they’ll think that you have low views because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
This should not make you fret though, because as a creator who’s interested in having high ticket clients, your interest should be in how many people buy from you and not how many people follow you.
Here is what the Social Number Game looks like:
Social Number Game
The Creator
The Viewers
~~~~
High Views 
The creator suffers dwindling target audience and increased zigzag audience. 
The audience is elated by a perceived channel authority.
Low Views The creator experiences more targeted viewership and less mass accumulation. Viewers’ disappointment in perceived lack of channel authority.
The YouTube algorithm is a double-edged sword when you haven’t mastered how to use it. Most coaches are more comfortable teaching how to garner the numbers, but as observed in the numbers game, focusing on numbers hurts your channel. Therefore, instead of just focusing on the numbers, focus on the engagement. By engagement I mean how many people actually responds to your calls to action and sales pitches. You could have a million subscribers and 3 million average views per video and still find it hard to convert as much sales as someone who who has 10k subscribers and and 2k average views per video.
If your main source of income is ads, brand deals and maybe affiliates, then views and subscribers will work perfectly for you, after all, numbers and popularity attract brands, and they’ll pay you whether or not your audience end up buying from them.
As for affiliate programs, if the audience sees a link anywhere bearing something they want, they’ll click and buy even on their enemy’s channel. It has nothing to do with you, they’re just buying what they like, and the more people buy through your links, the merrier. This is why the big numbers are important when affiliate marketing is one of your major sources of information, for easy discoverability and maximum patronage.
On the contrary, if you have a personal product or service that you sell which requires high ticket clients, the numbers won’t help you if three things are absent:
1) Bond
2) Loyalty
3) Converts
The bond here is simply the relationship between you and your audience. They need to believe you, trust you and agree with your values, and this brings us to loyalty. It isn’t easy for someone to bring out money and give just because someone online promised them a better life, they at least need to trust that you can deliver.
Loyalty is of two folds:
1) Subject loyalty
2) Object loyalty
The audience need to be loyal to the “subject”, which is whatever your brand conveys. It needs to be something that they’re already interested in, a topic they value, a pain point they have, something that they’re actively searching for and are willing to pay for.
Object loyalty on the other hand means that they need to have faith in you and your brand, not just the topic that you convey. They need to be running around your channel waiting for you to drop a post, and when you do, they jump to watch it, they comment, they share, they email you their questions, they search for you on other social media platforms, they just love you.
Then, lastly, the converts. If the bond exist already, which adequately creates loyalty, it becomes easier to convert this audience no matter how small they are into actual high paying clients.
Focus more on bringing your audience into a family-like circle where they feel seen and appreciated. Heart and reply their comments, make your videos conversational. Let them feel the bond and a sense of familiarity and relatability whenever they come to your channel. These are very easy ways to start creating the bond effect. This way, even if you have 100 million subscribers and 10 billion average views, they’ll be a truly powerful army of potential loyal clients, and not just visitors who come and go as they please.