Question Getting decent reach on Shorts but 0 sub conversion. Anyone figured this out?

[tahirmehmoodkhokhar]

Hey guys, looking for some advice on a weird bottleneck I’m hitting.

I’ve been trying to use YouTube Shorts to grow a new channel over the last month, mostly doing quick tech tips and some gaming clips. I’m just using OBS for the raw captures and CapCut for the vertical exports.

The "reach" is actually okay—the algorithm is pushing my stuff to about 1.5k–3k views per video. But here’s the problem: my subscriber count is basically frozen. I’m getting maybe 1 sub for every 2,000 views, which feels totally off compared to what I see people talking about online.

Here’s what I’ve already tried to fix it:

• Pinned Comments: Always putting a CTA in the top comment.
• The "Loop" Edit: Making the end of the video flow back into the start.
• On-screen Overlays: Added a small "Sub" graphic in the last 3 seconds.

I’ve even been paying closer attention to content patterns using a YouTube Premium APK (some people grab it via ytmodz) to watch videos without ads and study retention more carefully, but it hasn’t really changed the conversion side of things.

I’m starting to wonder if the "Shorts-to-Sub" pipeline is actually a myth, or if the people watching in the vertical feed just have zero interest in actually visiting a channel page. It feels like they just swipe and forget you exist 2 seconds later.

Is anyone actually seeing their sub count move from Shorts, or is it better to just go back to focusing on 10-minute long-form videos?

 

[rgd1101]

probably not interesting enough for people to sub. tech tip and gaming clip is a dime a dozen

 

[alexkondor]

That subscriber rate feels kinda standard to me. People are scrolling quickly and you aren't capturing their attention for that long or incentivizing them to subscribe. I think your subscriber count will improve with time, you have to have different videos show up to the same people multiple times in order to get them to subscribe.

 

[LordVile]

I don’t think I’ve ever actually subbed to a tech thing through shorts. But then most tech shorts are either incorrect or purposefully inflammatory to stoke engagement