Reward (and Shoutouts!) Restructure Plans

Friends, companions, and noble steeds,

Recently I spoke with an ex-youtube channel manager who used to work with a large MCN, and I showed them my video retention rates. Overall things looked pretty good, until they pointed out a massive drop off consistently at the end of every single video to which they said: (direct quote) "That's not normal, that's gotta be a glitch or something".

Turns out the Patreon shoutouts at the end of every video have done me a significant damage which I hadn't ever considered before - almost everyone turns off in the last few minutes of a video. If I upload a 30 minute video, and the end 3 minutes is me doing patreon shoutouts and rambling on, that's a pretty sizable drop off rate which is (apparently) going to impact my video statistics pretty massively. As far as Youtube are concerned, 10% of the duration of all of my videos go unwatched, and that's applies only to viewers that watch all the way through normally anyway, rather than just randomers who stumbled across the channel.

Now I'll be the first to admit, I have seriously no clue when it comes to retention rates, click through, and other buzz words Youtube Studio likes to throw around to make us feel like we have any semblance of control over our channels.  And though I don't really care how aggressively promoted the channel is, I want to try and find a way to acknowledge the patrons more actively but maybe without a gigantic list of poor pronounced names.

Now I should point out up front, this is not me saying "I'M NEVER DOING SHOUT OUTS AGAIN." because that's absolutely not true. I just wanted to get feedback and suggestions from you guys, and maybe try a few different things to see how we can do things. I also wont be making any changes until the start of next month, so if the shout out is all you're here for then you can cancel as appropriate - I don't want people feeling like they're missing out!

So here's a bunch of ideas I would be up for testing - maybe one of these, or maybe all of them at once:

A) Randomise the Patreon list and read off a selection of names every day, aiming to read off the entire list once per week!
B) Change the minimum shoutout tier, but add some extra rewards to the tier to make up for it (names added to Rimworld character pools, or CK2 cultures, before series start, so characters will naturally appear in game rather than me renaming)
C) Credit scroll of the patrons every episode but only read a few names (in addition to option A)

More importantly, I want to know what you all think seeing as you guys are the ones most invested in the changes! Feel free to leave a comment here, or message me privately here or on discord if you fancy a one on one chat.

Thank you for your continued support!

Mr Streamer,
Roll1D2Games,
Sam.