I'm very critical when people ask me to give my thoughts on their YouTube channel. There are so many content producers out there that, you basically have to make a viral video to become popular, there's really no gradual climb anymore. If you want to be successful on YouTube, you have to follow very precise details.
When it comes to making a YouTube channel, you have to realise that you're making yourself into a brand now and you need to treat yourself like a brand. Brands usually have logos that define them, images that someone could instantly see and associate to that brand. Even words or phrases that relate to the brand. You need to work hard on making these things to set you apart from everyone else who does what you do.
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Channel Description: Your channel icon is alright temporarily, but it needs to look more professional. Better lighting, make-up, photo editing, etc. It's the same thing with your channel art. It's pointless to put up links to all your social media when you can just add it to your channel links anyways. But do something that helps your brand, like include a schedule of when you upload videos, but mostly look at what other successful channels have for theirs and see how you can adapt it to your brand.
Your channel description obviously needs work, so set aside some time to maybe make a paragraph describing your channel, possibly include an email set aside just for YouTube in case anyone needs to contact you for collabs, sponsorships, etc. The links are unnecessary again since you can just add them to your channel links as I stated before.
You said your making videos with friends and family, if they have YouTube channels add them to your channels section, start networking with whoever you can. See if they can do the same for you, you may never know who clicks on what link nowadays.
You have 0 playlists, try to make themed playlists for a lot of things topics and keep them updated often. That's how you get first time visitors to watch a lot of your videos in one sitting since playlists auto-play the next video. For example, include "Vegas vlogs" in one playlist. Include "New years vlogs" in another playlist.
Your use of thumbnails is good to start out with, but you need to improve with custom thumbnails from now on. Possibly start making your thumbnails "click baity" because you need to do what you can to get people to start clicking on your videos. Also, make your thumbnails bright and eye catching so that someone who's glancing at videos on the side of a video they're already watching, they will immediately be attracted to your video.
Your Home tab you will need to work a lot on. When you have playlists you can include sections for those below your main video that you want to showcase, which is usually a channel trailer. These trailers don't have to be a scripted video, it can just be the best clips from many of your videos in maybe a 2-3 minute video all together to show just what your audience is getting into when they visit your channel, update it often.
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Video description: I watched "Beer Chugs | Jed's New Year's Eve Vlog". Your first clip was alright, made me smile. But your intro that brands you went 10 seconds longer than it should have. It started at the 3-second mark and went until 13 seconds. I agree you should put your brand name in there, but since it's only a word people don't need 13 seconds to read it.
After the intro you have your friend "chug for the video" then have music playing over it. BE VERY CAREFUL WITH MUSIC!!! Even large channels have been shut down for using copy written music, even if you do credit it in your channel description. I'm not saying that the music you used wasn't copywritten or not, but if you don't know, you should always assume yes. Look up with a google search, "Royalty-Free music", this is the kind of music you should use in your videos, if you want to use music. incompetech.com is a site that I've used in the past, the creator has made many different ranges of music and different genres that you can use, you just have to credit him any way you can, read up on his site he explains what to do with his music.
Overall, your videography throughout the video was pretty well done, when you were trying to show off the city you did some nice shots, very mesmerising. Your editing is fairly good, for the clips you decided to include.
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In summary, the video was a little odd. It definitely skipped around a lot and at some points I didn't know what was happening, you might need to include explanations of where you're planning on going, what you plan on doing, and how you plan to do it. So when you include clips of this event, your audience isn't lost and is wondering what is happening. You sort of need to forget all you remember from the video you filmed and pretend your an audience member, if you don't get it then your audience won't get it. Your ending to the video seemed abrupt, there was no real send off done by you or any of your friends so I was a little bit jarred at the end of the video when your outro came. Speaking of your outro, it's pretty nice for what it is. You include a video, annotations, and links to everything you want to advertise. You may want to hire a graphics designer to make you a nicer looking one in the future though.
Typing this makes me miss doing YouTube
I'd love to work with you more, if you're willing.
