Do YouTube Shorts help or hurt your channel?

If you make long videos, you have probably heard both sides. Some say shorts are the fastest way to grow. Others say they fill your channel with people who will never watch a 20-minute video, and drag everything down.

Both can be true. It depends on which shorts you post, and how many.

Three fears, and what’s true

Most worries about shorts come down to these three. Each has a grain of truth, and a way around it.

1. Fear “Shorts subscribers won’t watch my long videos.”

   What’s true Partly true, when shorts are about something else. Shorts cut from your long videos bring people who came for the same thing.

2. Fear “Shorts will drag my long videos down.”

   What’s true We found no public sign of a penalty. In the largest study we found, long videos only suffered when Shorts became most of what a channel posted.

3. Fear “My audience will get mixed up.”

   What’s true Shorts and long videos are shown in different places: the Shorts feed, and Home or Up next. What matters is whether the people who find your shorts want more of you.

What YouTube has said

A year after Shorts launched worldwide, YouTube shared this about music artists:

Official artist channels uploading both Shorts and long-form video are seeing better overall watch time and subscriber growth relative to those only uploading long-form.

It’s a real signal, but a narrow one: it covers artist channels only, and YouTube gave no numbers. YouTube has also built a direct bridge between the two: a Short can link to one of your long videos with the Related video option, so a viewer is one tap from the full thing.

What the numbers show

The largest public look we found comes from AIR Media-Tech, which tracked 18,000 English-language channels for a year. It compared channels that mix Shorts with long videos against channels that post long videos only.

• Mixing went with more subscribers in fitness, business, education and food, by 31 to 41%.
• It made little difference in travel, home and DIY, entertainment, and science and tech, at this size.
• Long-only channels did better in beauty, kids’ entertainment and gaming.

The study also looked at how much of a channel should be Shorts:

When shorts do hurt

Shorts go wrong in a few predictable ways. In the same study, channels that changed their mix sharply partway through the year did worse in most niches, though the study can’t say why.

How to make shorts that feed your long videos

The simplest rule: every short should make someone want the long video it came from.

• Cut your shorts from your long videos, not from trends.
• Post them while the long video is new, so curious viewers find it fresh.
• Link every short to its long video with the Related video option.
• Keep long videos as the core. Add shorts around them, not instead of them.

How to tell if it’s working

Give it three or four weeks, then look at your numbers in YouTube Studio, where you can see Videos and Shorts apart.

• Are the long videos you linked getting more views than before?
• Are Shorts bringing in subscribers?
• Is your long-video watch time holding steady, or growing?

Should shorts go on a second channel?

Usually not. Shorts cut from your long videos belong next to them.

A second channel makes sense only when the shorts are about something else entirely, for example a cooking channel that starts posting comedy. Then you would be building a different audience anyway.