youtube progress

I'm gonna be busy for the next three days at the northwest permaculture convergence. 

But I just noticed that on youtube I have 990 subscribers.  Since I get about 10 to 20 new subscribers each day, I suppose that sometime tomorrow I'll hit 1000!

I currently have 359,343 upload views.  I get about 2000 views a day, so I suppose I'll hit a half million in a month or so.

I currently have 68 friends.  I wish there was a way to email all of my subscribers and ask them to be my friend.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/paulwheaton12[/youtube]

paul wheaton wrote:
I was sure it was going to get 100,000 views - maybe more than a million.  And after a week it got 4474.

try adding a celebrity appearance.  or somebody mostly naked.  or somebody falling off of something.

really though, I'm not sure that using this particular medium (youtube) is going to be very effective for achieving your goals.  the videos you make are great teasers for folks who are already sort of interested in that stuff, but Joe Blow killing some time browsing youtube at his desk job isn't going to rave about them all over the facebook.  looking at the categories of most popular videos at youtube, I see Entertainment, Music, News & Politics, Film & Animation, Sports, Howto & Style, Science & Technology, and Gaming.  your videos really don't fit into any of those.

I don't think it's a problem with your videos.  you're obviously not a professional, but for what they are, your videos are pretty good.  it's the medium that's the problem.  youtube can be a great resurce for folks looking for instructional videos, and some of those folks may stumble across your videos and enjoy them.  but the great mass of youtube is a whole lot of garbage with occasional hilarity here and there.  and that's how typical youtube users like it.  that garbage is what they're looking for.

the other issue is that it's primarily a visual medium.  your videos' primary content is the ideas you're trying to spread.  to overcome that bias toward visual entertainment, your ideas would have to have some very wide appeal.  and I just don't see that happening.  I suppose you could also make them very visually appealing, but that isn't easy.

I don't think you should stop making videos and posting them to youtube.  I think that's a good way to share the things you get excited about and 4500 views in a week really isn't bad.  you might want to adjust your expectations or goals, though.  if that's not palatable to you, consider hiring professionals.  I know a good cameraman and video editor who passes through Missoula from time to time.

lastly, there's a relatively good chance I'm completely wrong about all of this.

you're obviously not a professional

Well, yeah, but you don't have to say it out loud! 

I guess I see other videos on eco stuff getting 250,000 views in a day and thinking that I might have finally come up with enough substance to hit that. 

As for getting professional advice: thanks for the offer, but I kinda like the way I do it now.  My tiny little pocket camera and cheap editing software. 

I think I need to stick to the 2 minute videos with an hour of editing.  They get about just as many views.  In other words, for the CCD video, I could have made a dozen regular videos in that time frame, but I stuck it out because I thought this would be "the big one" that would get a million views. 

In other news, I now have 1100 subscribers, my overall view count is closing in on a half million and one of my videos is gonna hit 50,000 views in the next few days.

I pushed links to the video out to reddit - maybe it will get some more views and I'll be happier. 

the CCD video definitely has more concrete information in it than the other videos of yours I've watched.  because of that, and to a lesser extent the good editing and use of pictures, I would say that it's far and away your best, whether or not the number of views reflects that.  so I'm glad you made it and I think the extra effort will ultimately prove worthwhile.  whether it was worth it to you to put in the time is another story.

I think a podcast would get a lot more philosophy out there and a lot more information, not that I don't enjoy the videos.

Podcasts are definitely easy.  And they seem mighty popular.  the trick is that somebody has to arrange a topic, a call in time, then record and post the results.  And those can be freaky big files. 

If somebody here wants to do the work behind it, I can provide server stuff.

Paul, FWIW, you are not running a popularity contest here (at least I hope not).  There are going to be a certain subset of humanity who will be attracted to, and benefit from this site.  They will find you.  I do not subscribe, and I do not "friend", so I will no be in that statistic.  You tube hits do not equal merit.  Evangelical zeal has many fine qualities, but those qualities are lost when one uses it to fuel individual egos.  Do what you do, do it well, and the world be damned if they don't listen.

Exactly.  If I don't put some work into getting this information out there, then the people won't find it. 

If I didn't put some work into promoting the web site(s) and/or the videos, then these forums would be so trivial that you probably would not have ever known about it. 

There are skillions of videos on youtube that never get more than ten views.

There are hundreds of permaculture web sites that get ten to fifteen visitors per month. 

If anybody wants to change the word and thinks that my sites and my videos have a world changing effect, then I would like to ask that these people help me.  And one easy way is to subscribe to my youtube channel, and be my youtube friend, and give a thumgs up to my latest videos.  This helps!

As for the forums: I think the idea is to get a million people to walk by and a hundred stick.

I now have 1556 youtube subscribers.  610,418 upload views and 131 youtube friends.  I'm currently getting about 4000 views per day.

As for my ego:  I think this stuff doesn't fuel my ego,  but my ego fuels this stuff. 

As for the world being damned:  I don't know about you, but I don't want the world to be damned.  I want the world to be on a healing path.  And I hope that the messages I am conveying help in some way.

tel jetson wrote:
I don't think it's a problem with your videos.  you're obviously not a professional, but for what they are, your videos are pretty good.  it's the medium that's the problem.  youtube can be a great resurce for folks looking for instructional videos, and some of those folks may stumble across your videos and enjoy them.  but the great mass of youtube is a whole lot of garbage with occasional hilarity here and there.  and that's how typical youtube users like it.  that garbage is what they're looking for.

eh i don't really agree with this.  for one the great mass of everything is garbage.  i don't frequent youtube, but anyone who uses the internet is going to stumble upon or get pointed to videos.  and while the last tomato video wasn't especially so the topic is very visual!  btw i've been watching permaculture videos on my roku via vimeo lately and there are a lot of really bad & really long ones out there!

as far as getting eyeballs paul seems to be doing it the right way organically getting more views by consistently publishing things.

I love youtube for learning.  There is a lot of junk on it, but I've learned more from youtube videos than all the books I've read.  It's a lot more fun to see and hear things than it is to read, and a LOT quicker.  In an hour of searching for "hugelkulture" you can learn as much as reading a book for 4 hours.  The videos are pretty good.  I sometimes fast-forward if it's a lot of the same thing stated in different ways, but overall good.

Total view count is now greater than 1 million.

On december 11 I said I was getting about 4000 a day.  I still am.  I thought by now I would be getting about 10,000 a day.

  WOO HOO!!! Over a million views! This is something to celebrate! (Even if you're not at the daily views you thought.)

paul wheaton wrote:

I currently have 68 friends.  I wish there was a way to email all of my subscribers and ask them to be my friend.

http://www.youtube.com/paulwheaton12

Why not do a video asking them to be your friend?

1,159,945 views

3,534 subscribers

Still doing about 4000 views a day.  If I do a lot of promotion, I'll see more.  If I do nothing for a few days, it will drop under 4000. 

I once read that once you hit 100 videos, youtube somehow supercharges your account.  I'm currently at 94.