Top 7 YouTube Technical Problems Professional YouTubers Face
Being a full-time professional YouTuber can sometimes feel like you’re in a losing battle. You’re caught between the significant amount of competition across the site and a faceless corporation that frequently makes arbitrary changes to it. Add to that the numerous and random technical problems you’ll face, which YouTube rarely fully fix and you’ve got some serious challenges to overcome.
The following is my list of 7 YouTube technical problems professional YouTubers Face.
7: Delayed Analytics Data: This is the most common issue reported on YouTube. View count, subscriber, likes, comments, watch time and Adsense earnings are usually always two to three days behind. Adsense earnings can sometimes be several more days behind. YouTube has never bothered to address it, which is odd because a few years ago all of our YouTube earnings could be viewed live and up to the minute on the Adsense website. At the time of making this video a major view count issue has pushed analytics information back by five full days.
6: Video Processing Problems: So you upload a new video and following completion of the upload, the processing begins. Unfortunately the processing gets stuck at 95% or even 99% and then reports an error and crashes, leaving you to re-upload it all over again and hope for the best. Few YouTube technical problems on this list are more frustrating.
5: Monetisation Problems: This issue can manifest itself in two different ways, either you attempt to monetise your video and it gets rejected for no particular reason, or you successfully monetise it only for the monetisation icon to later disappear without explanation. Either way, your hard work is going unrewarded.
4: An Error Occurred…: You click on a video and you receive a blank video box with the message that “An Error Occurred, Please try again later”. Sometimes you don’t even get the error you just receive a blank screen. This issue can be browser related, try clearing your cache or using a different browser. If that doesn’t work, you’ll be forced to just sit this one out until it starts working again.
3: Subscription Box Problems: As with the majority of YouTube glitches on this list, this one has been occurring on and off for many years now. You upload your brand new awesome YouTube video and begin awaiting for the views to roll in from your subscribers. Unfortunately as the minutes tick by you begin to experience a sinking feeling that something isn’t right when you notice that your video is not being watched.
The view counter remains at zero because the video has not hit your subscriber’s subscription boxes. This can pass after a few minutes or in some cases hours, but in rare instances it requires a reupload or worse, a visit to that tech support abyss known as the YouTube Help Forum.
This is a place where content creators complain about the technical issues they’re experiencing and YouTube experts cherry pick the easiest issues they wish to respond to. At best the YouTube Help Forums serve to offer moral support from other YouTubers. They can share their experiences and provide comfort by knowing that they’re not the only ones affected by a particular issue.
2: Delayed, Frozen or Lost View Counts: I’m writing this article in December of 2015 and this issue is currently rampant across YouTube, including my on own channel. Real-time analytics are displaying significantly more views than those on the video manager page or on individual video counters. Views freeze at random numbers and then fall hundreds and in some cases, thousands of views behind real-time figures, only to take days to fully catch up.
Views can even decrease on some videos randomly with no explanation. No one knows why this occurs and why only some YouTube accounts are affected. Additionally, no one knows why YouTube doesn’t have the common decency to simply communicate to YouTubers with a quick message acknowledging the problem and apologising for the inconvenience.
1: False Copyright or Content ID Matches: This is among some of the most common YouTube technical problems. The YouTube algorithm that analyses your videos can sometimes make mistakes. You may have used all original content of your own creation in your video but you still receive an erroneous copyright flag from an MCN or digital media rights holder. I once used a 15 second public domain audio file of a cheering crowd but YouTube mistook it for three and half minute Indian pop song. Once your video is flagged you will be unable to monetise it, the audio may be muted or worse still, you could receive a community strike on your channel.
You can appeal these errors and in most cases your protest will be successful but nevertheless, this remains a nuisance on YouTube. Some social justice warriors have even used false DMCA claims to silence the free speech of people who disagree with their views on certain hot button political issues.
Being a part-time or full-time YouTuber shouldn’t be this difficult. While I accept YouTube is one of the world’s biggest websites with more than 300 hours of video uploaded every minute and technical issues will occur, many of these issues I’ve listed are long standing recurrent problems. Perhaps YouTube’s IT infrastructure is in need of a major overhaul, whatever the reason for these challenges, be prepared for demoralising technical headaches from time to time.
For more YouTube advice on developing your channel, check out my book, Living Off YouTube: A Complete Guide to Turning Your YouTube Channel into a Full-Time Job.
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