The 2018 crypto bear market wasn’t just bad for those holding crypto, it was bad for those producing content on the subject too. The 2017 bull run saw millions of people eagerly tuning in to the latest musings of their favorite influencers, fingers hovering over their trackpads, ready to snap up that week’s ‘coin of the week’ in the hopes that they were about to make a quick profit.
Our Candidates Revealed
As the crypto winter has set in however, the lack of positive price action in the market has been matched by a similar drop in viewer numbers for these content producers, some of whom had come to rely on it for income. We decided to assess the fortunes of five of the most popular content producers on YouTube to see how they have fared compared to last year and to see if it can teach us anything.
The channels chosen were Suppoman, Boxmining, Crypto Bobby, DataDash, and Crypto Daily. January 2018 and January 2019 were chosen as our comparison months, on the understanding that the most recent videos are only a week old and so have had less time to gain traction. However, given that these individuals often post time-sensitive content, a week is probably long enough for the vast majority of viewers to have consumed it.
Without further ado, let’s see the scores on the doors…
Productivity
As we can see, Boxmining was the most prolific video poster in January 2018 with 54 videos uploaded, twice as many as Crypto Daily. However, Boxmining was unable to keep up the productivity levels this year, posting only 13 last month – a 76% drop. Crypto Daily on the other hand uploaded the joint most videos last month and recorded the smallest comparative drop of 36%, making him the most productive in comparative terms too. Suppoman was the worst performer in this category, posting 80% fewer videos last month than he did in January 2018. Lazy.
Total Views
Once again Suppoman tops the table in terms of losses. Almost 2.5 million people watched his 30 videos in January 2018, the highest in the group, but this was down to just 105,000 a year later – a drop of 96%. Crypto Bobby and Boxmining aren’t far behind, both shedding 95% of their total monthly views compared to 2018. Crypto Daily received the second highest number of total views in January 2018, but managed to go one better this year, finishing top with almost double the number of views as the second-placed DataDash and nearly 4.5x as last year’s top dog Suppoman.
Average Views
Crypto Daily triumphed here again, shipping only 37% of the average number of views per video last month compared to January 2018. This is streets ahead of the competition, with Boxmining coming second, an average of 70% down compared to last year, and the others all having lost 78% each. Boxmining performed better here than in the total views category, suggesting that he has more of a core viewership than DataDash, Suppoman, or Crypto Bobby, albeit not by much.
And the Winner is…
Unsurprisingly, Crypto Daily was the overall winner, being only 55% down on last year. The fact that his numbers didn’t rocket as much as the others during the bull run but also didn’t drop as much during the bear market suggests that he has a high number of core fans who presumably see him as providing good value, whatever the weather. This is in comparison with producers like Suppoman, who finished 85% down on the year overall. He seemingly has less of a core viewership, but this is because of the kind of content he puts out – he taps into the hype of a bull market, ramping up the excitement, and focusing more on price action than fundamentals. Those kind of tactics don’t work in a bear market, hence his results.
No one can say which is better, but either way it will be interesting to see who lasts until January 2020 and how the land lies then.
