YouTube vs Rumble - Starting a Photography Channel | Uncommon Sense with Mike Kovaliv

In this honest update, I share my real 4-month experience running a new photography channel on both YouTube and Rumble simultaneously. YouTube has been amazing — closing in on 150,000 views and 2,500 subscribers — but Rumble has been a completely different story with almost no views or search visibility.

My channel focuses on photography and gear reviews covering DSLR and Mirrorless cameras, lenses and accessories.

I dive into:
Why I chose to post on both platforms
The massive view difference (e.g., 56K on YouTube vs. 14 on Rumble for the same video)
My attempts at proper Rumble SEO (titles, descriptions, etc.)
Searching for my channel name "Mike Kovaliv" or videos like "Back to DSLR" or "The 50mm lens" — and finding NOTHING on Rumble
Multiple unanswered emails to Rumble support
Whether cross-posting to Rumble hurts YouTube growth (spoiler: I don't think so)
Tips for new creators considering multi-platform strategies

If you're a beginner creator thinking about YouTube vs Rumble, dealing with low discoverability on Rumble, or wondering how to grow on alternative platforms in 2026, this video is for you. I'm not bashing Rumble — I like the platform and its focus on free speech — but the search/indexing issues are frustrating.
Have you had similar experiences on Rumble? Drop your advice in the comments — how to improve discoverability, what actually works for SEO there, or if I might be missing something obvious. I'd love feedback from other creators!

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why I chose YouTube + Rumble for my photography channel
0:32 - My growth stats: YouTube success vs Rumble struggles
1:09 - Stark view differences and checking my Rumble page
1:54 - Testing Rumble SEO and search visibility
2:23 - Searching my name/channel — nothing shows up
3:32 - Contacting Rumble support (multiple times, no reply)
4:36 - Still invisible after 4 months (examples: "Mike Kovaliv", "Uncommon Sense with Mike Kovaliv")
5:50 - Does being on both platforms hurt YouTube?
6:44 - Asking for your help and advice!
7:36 - Thanks for the support — update coming later

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Photography | Gear | Creator Journey

#YouTubeVsRumble #RumbleSEO #PhotographyChannel #CreatorTips #MultiPlatform #RumbleDiscoverability #YouTubeGrowth #NewCreatorAdvice

Thanks for listening — see you in the next episode! 🚀

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When I started my photography channel about four months ago, one of the things I had to decide was which platforms to stream on. YouTube was the obvious choice because of its dominance and size in the industry, but Rumble was something that I'd been considering for a while, and I made the decision to be on both platforms. I wanted to put this out there to hopefully get some feedback from people, but I also wanted to put this out for people who might be starting a new channel and considering going on both platforms to maybe spend some time and make sure you're doing things right and to see, you know, if there's a best way to do both platforms. So how has my experience been in the last four months using both? You know, I'm closing in on about 150,000 views and about 2,500 subscribers, so I couldn't be happier with the way things are going over the last four months. That's YouTube. How are things going on Rumble? I didn't expect it to be anywhere near what would be happening on YouTube if things went well. Uh, but I have to say that I'm uh I'm a little surprised at how things are going on Rumble. If you take a look at my page and I'll show you some numbers here, um, it's almost non-existent. Um my first video that I put out, for example, on YouTube has uh over 56,000 views. And I think on uh Rumble here I'm at about 14 views. Um pretty stark difference in my view. That's a little bit further apart than I thought they would be. I decided to look into what was going on with Rumble, and um, you know, one of the first things that I did was um, you know, to make sure that I was, you know, doing SEO properly, making sure that I was using the right titles and you know, the usual things that you look for when you're uh when you're trying to help promote your channel. And everything seemed to be okay, everything was uh in line. Um the next thing I did was I said, okay, how easy are my videos to find on Rumble? And this is where it got really interesting and frankly very confusing for me. So uh very early on, maybe a month into starting the channel, uh, I went on YouTube and did a search for, for example, you know, my name. And sure enough, I show up on YouTube and my videos start to show up. I did the same on Rumble, and I'm not there. Uh, couldn't find myself, couldn't find anything. So I thought, okay, what's going on? Did a little bit of research online, and you know, like the standard answer that I was getting from everybody was that it takes time for you know Rumble's uh, you know, search engine to, you know, index your videos and you know, be patient. After a while it'll start to show up. Did a few more videos uh on YouTube and also on Rumble and posted them both. And uh about two months went by and things were going very well on YouTube, and I went back on Rumble and I went, okay, let's see what's going on. So again, I went into the search engine and uh typed in my and my name and the name of my channel, and nothing, nothing showed up whatsoever. So I thought, okay, I'll do a search for you know a title of the video that I actually used. And um, nothing again. And uh, you know, I thought, okay, I'll do some searches for the topic. You know, my my most popular video has been back to DSLR. Uh, so I did a search for that, and again, nothing, all kinds of other things, including things that are not even related to photography, were showing up. So at that point, I decided to uh to reach out to support at Rumble and see what was going on. So I emailed their support and uh, you know, explained to them my situation and said, okay, this is what's going on. Am I doing something wrong? Can you help with something like this? And uh, you know, I got the form letter back, you know, right away. You know, it usually takes us 24 hours or so to get back to you, and we'll look into it and uh see what's going on. Uh let's just say that I have uh I have yielded that emailed them five or six times now and uh still have no response and no um, you know, idea if there's anything that they can do or anything that I should be doing directly from Rumble that has helped me uh, you know, been able to help me get this figured out. It's been about four months now, and uh this morning I decided to go and take a look on Rumble again. I posted a video a couple days ago. And uh same thing. Uh you can literally go into the search box and type in, you know, Mike Kovaliv, and nothing shows up with my name. And, you know, I mean, I don't have the most popular or common name out there. I think it should be pretty easy to find somebody with a last name Kovaliv. Um YouTube finds me right away, Google finds me right away, other search engines find me right away, uh, but Rumble seems to have no idea who I am. Uh so again, I typed in, you know, uh uncommon sense with my Kovaliv, nothing comes up. Um typed in, you know, back to DSLR or the 50mm lens, some of the videos that I've actually done, and nothing shows up whatsoever. So at this point, I really have no idea. I don't seem to be getting any uh help from Rumble. And the few people that I have talked to seem to say that I'm doing everything right, um, but not sure why it's not happening in Rumble. So I'm not making this video to you know complain about Rumble. Um I like the platform, it it seems like a great uh a great system, but I'm I just seem to be struggling into how to get my videos seen. Um I think if you were to type in something about photography, about a video that I've done, um, it seems reasonable to expect that you know eventually on one of the pages my videos would show up. Uh, but that doesn't seem to be the case. One of the other things that I've heard from some people is that being on both platforms can actually be a detriment. And I don't know how true that is, if uh YouTube is actually looking to see if you're on Rumble and uh they see them as a competitor in, you know, um don't spread your video as much if you're on Rumble. That's something that I've heard, but the more I think about it, the that doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Everything I've seen from YouTube is that they seem to be in the uh the interest of you being successful. The more successful you are, the more successful they are. Uh bottom line is, you know, the more ads that you you know they can run on your channel, the more people watching your channel, the more you know profitable it is for them. So I don't see why they would want anybody not to do well on the channel. So um I'm appealing to the audience if there's anybody out there who uh you know has any experience with Rumble and is able to uh you know offer some advice or some insight on how to get this uh taken care of. Or, you know, I am 100% aware that it could be something very much so that I'm doing wrong, uh, you know, that I'm not doing something correctly, and I certainly would like to uh to you know to get that figured out. Bottom line for me is I'd like to stay on both platforms. That uh, you know, I like the variety, I like uh, you know, the fact that uh Rumble promotes itself as a uh a free and open platform, you know, for the sharing of ideas, um, you know, and YouTube, of course, is a great platform. I uh enjoy being there as well. So I'd like to stay on both platforms. We'll see what happens in the future. I'm uh, you know, I wanted to put this out there very quickly just to kind of see if I could get some uh some feedback from people as to uh what might be happening there. So this has been my experience using both YouTube and Rumble to this point. It's only been about four months, so like I said, I'm very happy with the way things are going overall. I really appreciate everybody, uh everybody who subscribed to the channel and everybody who watches the videos. It's just been a great experience. Uh hopefully I can get things uh going a little bit better on Rumble. Uh perhaps I just need to put more energy and time into it to uh get things figured out. So I'll uh I'll maybe do an update down the road and see how things go. My name is Mike Kovaliv. Thanks very much for watching.