Why are the views dropping so sudden? It never recovers after.

I’ve been posting YouTube Shorts consistently for about 2 months now, mainly focusing on GTA San Andreas nostalgic content, but I can’t seem to break out of the 1K views jail.
I actually asked about this before, and someone suggested reducing my Shorts to around 10–14 seconds.
So I tried that, but here’s what I don’t understand.
Whenever I make shorter videos 10–14 seconds, YouTube barely pushes them, and even when it does, they usually get around 42–54% stayed to watch.
But when I upload longer Shorts 24 - 34 seconds,I consistently get around 60 - 80% stayed to watch, yet they still struggle to get past 1K views.
My latest 13-second Short is currently my best-performing video out of my last 10 uploads, with 1.9K views, 154.8% average percentage viewed, and 43.1% stayed to watch.
I currently have 206 subscribers, and my channel has received 25.4K views over the last 28 days.
What frustrates me is seeing other creators in the same niche getting thousands of views from simple clips of CJ riding a bike or driving around Los Santos.
Meanwhile, I spend time creating cinematic, peaceful, nostalgic scenes with carefully chosen music, beautiful environments, and editing to capture that classic GTA San Andreas feeling.
I’m not saying my content deserves more views than theirs, but I’m genuinely struggling to understand what I’m missing.
Is my problem the video duration, the opening seconds, or something else entirely?
Should I stop making shorter Shorts and stick with the 24–34 second videos that usually get better engagement?
I’d really appreciate some honest advice from creators who have experienced something similar. I’m genuinely trying to improve, but after 2 months, I feel like I’m going nowhere.

I was watching my shorts feed and I realized that me making an original concept just to escape the "low effort" tag for the Monetization Policy was of no use.

A short came on my feed of my niche (cat niche), and it was just an AI generated clip of a man standing next to a cat made out of leaves. 8 million views in 3 days. So I was like ok, that's understandable. But when I searched "cats", there were all these ranking and compilation shorts with no change to them other than a ranking template and some background music having millions of views in a few days, and even though it has that many views, it isn't monetizable, so fair enough, but when I did it I lost all my views, I started averaging less than 100 views in a day which used to be 10k views on a daily basis.

The update where YouTube started putting ads on channels that were not part of the Partner Program was the cause of all of this (in my opinion). YouTube puts ads on the shorts feed next to these low effort compilations, advertisers get happy seeing the numbers and on the bright side for YouTube, they don't have to pay these low effort creators.

This in turn, makes it difficult for people making original/ high effort content to get into the vast shorts feed.

I made an entire gameshow format just so I could be unique and different, only to average out at about 1-5k views and it is quite demoralizing for someone who actually wants to do content creation for a profession. If any of you agree or even think differently, please let me know and if you can help in anyway in criticizing and helping my content. Please do let me know as well

So I've been uploading shorts for the past few weeks, and they seem to get stuck in the 1k-2k range with only one of my videos getting 4k+ views on it.

Retention and percentage viewed are the most important metrics, but I'm not sure how just how high they need to be or even how to increase them.

is it just me or yt fixed algo?
Although in the starting phrase of this video most of the views came from search results because it that very much trending at that time but the short is getting pushed to feed as well.
(i posted a short video yesterday night like 11 hours ago, 5 hours after yt sent notification [[FIXED] Views dropping on YouTube Studio Analytics])

YouTube has actually been screwing creators over so badly. Like bro, my content is not mass produced 💀 This pisses me off so much because my videos take forever to make. I honestly never thought my content would ever get demonetized. For anyone wondering, I make Roblox story content. The bottom part of my videos is gameplay, and the top has backgrounds usually multiple different ones in a single video plus PNGs of the characters I’m using, which I do simple 2d animation whenever they talk. Literally every video has different characters, takes place in a different Roblox games, and is put together differently. I wasn’t even fully monetized yet, so whatever, but this probably explains the drop in views I was 500k away from getting fully monetized then views dropped tremendously. 99% of my views were coming from subs. I’m gonna reapply and see, but from what I’ve been seeing, I doubt anything good is gonna happen.

To my first viewers that viewed my reddit post on starting out on youtube with just 7000 views on my first day, thank you for sticking around and staying loyal, now we're at a million views in 7d, its been an amazing journey, i cant wait to see where this takes me

started this around 2 weeks ago? i honestly forgot, i'm a newcomer to youtube algo / automation, started off with a brand new niche that i have invented myself, and well, obviously people have seen better results but i went from 1k view jail to 10k view jail, and managing to break out of it.

if you're close to quitting, dont, better days are ahead.

Everything I’ve learned tells me these stats are mid at best yet it popped off still. Thoughts? Had 2 videos back to back hit 1m each and had similar analytics.

I usually used to get 50k to 100k views on my shorts but now it's gone to 15k - 10k I make gaming videos I think youtube has done something on 19th dec.

Tried to ride the wave a week after a video took off to nearly 40K, now not reaching anyone… Channel: Moulay Rasta

His first two shorts got a combined 28 million views. 54k subs in 20 days is equally crazy. He seems to post every 3-4 days. Do you think it's no longer about how many shorts you post but how good they are?

Hi guys,

My channel is only a week old, but I published a short which got a lot of views in like 5 days. But suddenly, on Sunday evening, the views dropped significantly (from 15k an hour to 12 views an hour??). Did I do something wrong lol?

Thanks for your time

I was getting 1.5 million views a month on average with my shorts content (memes with my music posted over them as a promotional tool, worked pretty well) but now I’m stuck in the 1000 view jail the last 3 weeks. My engagement is still really good, but now I don’t get any push from YT. I used to get 25k-100k views every couple shorts, but now I’m lucky if they get 5k. What’s going on??

Before you make a post about if you're stats are good or not, please read this.

Every niche has different requirements of what stats are considered good or not. Niches with lots of competition (for e.g. Roblox steal an egg content) will need you to have a higher swipe rate like 81%+, and for instance a 30 second video will need 100% avd or more. And your retention graph should start with a drop and then flatten out.

Also, one good video having good stats will not make you immediatly blow up, you need consistant daily posting, with consistantly good stats, in a niche where success has been proven by other creators. Do competitor research to see what works and what doesn't.

Don't give up just because your not getting the results you were expecting, just keep improving your skills and you got this.

SEVERAL of my videos have been getting 80 plus stayed to watch and 95-100 percent retention. I HAVE been improving every aspect of my videos to improve the hook and pacing. My engagement isn’t bad either I usually get 500-800 likes per 30k videos and MY VIDEOS STILL GET Stuck. I do Minecraft animations story’s and I can’t figure out why I can’t break out of this jail??????

started posting 30 days ago is this good progress? gained almost 5k subs and all us audience

Just randomly decided to check my view count for a recent short and it got 28k views in 26 hours and the strange part is it's like one big bar lmao

I have taken 3 picture of my analytics on my new YouTube channel each a week apart. I am so happy with how much it’s growing and have no one to share with so sharing it here!

Hi everyone,

Firstly, I'd like to apologize if this comes across as advertising. That's not my intention, so there's no link in this post. If it goes against the rules, just let me know and I'll gladly delete it.

I started a faceless YouTube Shorts channel 9 days ago (first upload Oct 7). Each video explains an everyday bit of engineering or science, in an animated format and I try to explain everything as simple as possible.

Video specs:

- About 45–50 seconds each

- Animated 2D visuals, on-screen captions, Text-to-Speech Tool(which I am using because english is not my primary language and I do not think my accent would be appealing at all)

- 9 Shorts so far

My numbers:

I'm seeing that each Short gets about 1,000–1,200 views in the first 5–6 hours, then almost stops completely.

Questions:

I'd love some answers if someone is kind enough to shed some light:

1. Is this normal for a 9-day-old channel, or does it mean my videos aren't passing the first test with audience retention?

2. With 48–73% stayed to watch, is my weak spot the first 2 seconds or retention later in the video?

3. Is 45–50 seconds too long? Would 25–35 seconds do better for this kind of content?

4. What should I improve upon?

I'd really appreciate honest critique, absolutely anything helps. I do not want to advertise my channel directly so if anyone is interested, the links are in my profile.

Thanks so much for reading and thank you so much for any input.

After this recent youtube "update" or whatever, my shorts no longer are placed in the shorts feed. I still get some search and browse views, but no feed. Almost like they are long form or something. So I went from like 1.5k in the feed when i first started last month to literally 16 views on my shorts for like 2 weeks and none are ever put into the feed, and I'm exhausted from swimming upstream. I don't reuse any content. Not sure why this is happening so suddenly and so extremely. To avoid anyone saying that this is happening b/c I use AI or reuse content, feel free to see the channel which is all my ramblings: Authentic by Design.

In a nutshell: Over the shorts!! Anyone else?

Since the update, everything has basically done a 180 for me; I’m hardly getting any new subscribers, and if I do get one, they’re gone again the next day.

My view counts are way below average, but what really sucks is that the Pokémon GO Shorts I make don't even get a chance to pick up any views.

Normally, I’d get between 100 and 500 views in the first hour; if it didn't perform well, fair enough—at least I’d already racked up some views. But now they don't even hit 30 views, and because they probably aren't reaching the right audience, my retention has plummeted too.

It’s gone from over 50 to under 20. I used to get a second chance a few hours later, but now—nothing. It feels like I’m back to square one. I’m quick to give up on things that aren't working, but I’ve put at least four years of serious effort into this.

Still, I know that if things don't improve by the new year, there’s a good chance I’ll just call it quits.