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r learns youtube - but will she like it?

 
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I'm hoping to do a mix of different length videos.

It takes 1 to 2 hours of editing (not including filming) to make one min of video.  So if I want to do it every other week, I need to get some short ones in there too.  But, I would also put together playlists which is a fun feature.  
 
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The list of videos I want to make took up four pages, double-sided.

I made a decision.

The current plan (subject to change):

Take some time to make videos in advance.
Don't release any videos until March.  In March I release the big project for the public to see on youtube.
After that, try for a video every two weeks.  See if I can manage it.
Assess after a few months.  Use the youtube metric of monetization to see if I'm on the right track.

 
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Here I am on the monetization metric - the way to know if I can "make it" as a youtube artist.  

I think it's excellent for such a new channel with so few videos.  I also think there's a long way to go.

Right now I've finished, uploaded, and put the CC on the giant film that comes out in the first week of March 2021.  Hint, make sure you are signed up for the Daily-ish email to learn more about prizes.  

What I'm working on now is to make some more videos so I can be a bit ahead of things.  
The filming part is fine, but my back has been hell lately.  I have an appointment with my doctor to talk about the different support garments available, including looking at history for solutions.  My shape is very common in my family and I'm the first female in many centuries that has never worn a corset for support.  We'll see what the doctor has to say about that and possibly make some films... if it's something people are interested in.  Or maybe I should just make films that I'm interested in and the people who are interested in the same thing will find me?  I don't know.  

But what I do know is that I am THRILLED with how this big film turned out and watching it now, I want to redo the whole thing because I've learnt so much since I started the project.  
youtube-jan.JPG
[Thumbnail for youtube-jan.JPG]
 
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Oh, I don't know if I mentioned this yet, but I discovered how to record my voice so it's almost okay.  From here, what I really need is better equipment, but I'm not going to spend money on that just now.  

So one of the videos I plan to release in March will have my voice on it better than the earlier videos.  Of course, dyslexia and reading from a script mean I stumbled a lot while talking.  But that's something I need to work on.

It was also very interesting because I filmed most of it and recorded the sound during a multi-day power outage, but the last few bits had the power on.  There is so much background sound when the power is on!  I never noticed it before.  Fridges, heater, well pump, woodstove fan, electric woodstove fan, chainsaw next door cleaning up the blowdowns...  I need to learn more about how to avoid that background noise.    
 
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I subscribed, today. I could have sworn I already had, but... For anyone who hasn't already, be sure to hit the bell, to get updates! I didn't realize there were already that many videos, even though I'd seen a couple.
 
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r ranson wrote: The filming part is fine, but my back has been hell lately.  I have an appointment with my doctor to talk about the different support garments available, including looking at history for solutions.  My shape is very common in my family and I'm the first female in many centuries that has never worn a corset for support.  We'll see what the doctor has to say about that and possibly make some films... if it's something people are interested in.  Or maybe I should just make films that I'm interested in and the people who are interested in the same thing will find me?  I don't know.  



I think there’s a lot to be said for sticking to a ‘niche’ but then again... it almost seems like most big influencer types are turning more and more to having their name and who they are be their brand. A podcast I listen to just changed their website name from something generic to the woman’s own name... her online business is now being branded by her own name- who she is.. rather than the name of the podcast.

As long as these films are just once in awhile, I think it’d be super cool. I personally had no idea corsets actually had a function in terms of support... even though I’m a woman you’d think I would have figured that out on my own lol! I’d be very interested in hearing the history of corsets and how we came out of using them... in addition to what you are learning about the health impacts you are feeling of our modern garments.

If you make these videos- disperse them among your normal content rather than doing a big corset content dump. A blogger I used to follow very religiously lost me when she started to give ‘marital coaching’ in her podcasts. She’s a parenting coach... I was there for the parenting part.. not the marriage stuff. And so I stopped following because it was podcast after podcast of marriage talk- it appeared the parenting talk was gone even though it’s still a big part of her business.
 
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Here is my recent attempt.

It's a combination with some locals and they do most of the 'acting' and talking.  It was a lot of fun, and so much more fun because when I was editing, I didn't have to hear or see myself.  



(if you really like it, please pop over to youtube and give the video a thumbs up - those thumbs act like candy to fuel my film making)

The biggest change you will notice is the thumbnail.  I wanted to make this different from my regular short tutorials.  I wasn't sure what to do until I saw the frame with her looking at the distaff.  What a fantastic look on her face!  

I kind of like the thumbnail.  It's not something I see on youtube very often so I might just keep that formatting for future big projects and the old-style thumbnail for short tutorials.  



Watching this again after so many months working on it (nearly 7!), I feel that I need to focus on improving my sound.  I think this might actually mean I might have to buy some new equipment.  

The sound of the craft is a big part of doing it.  Touch, sound, sight, smell.  We can get two of these into a video.  But right now, I'm only managing half.  I want to do better.

I want to make my sound be more like the ones in these videos https://www.youtube.com/c/cnliziqi
What do I need to know and do to make that happen?  
 
r ranson
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Right now I'm feeling frustrated that youtube is putting adverts on some of my videos.

I know it's part of their terms that if I'm not monetized, they can put ads on anything they want.  

BUT!  There are some videos I DO NOT WANT ADS on.  

I need to get to monetization - FAST!

I am 1/3rd there.  

If I focus, I can make one longer video a month, and probably a short (less than one min) or two videos per month.  

If anyone is reading this and wants to subscribe... here is where you find me https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLSQmfBOvV2KoK0l2POeFTA
 
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I am over a third of the way to monetization!

I'm eager to get there - not so much for the money, but because youtube is sticking ads on my videos anyway and keeping the money for themselves.   I have one (soon to be two) videos that I don't want adverts showing on, so I need to get to monetization so I can be in control of adverts.

It looks like youtube pays through google Adsense.

I found out I already have an account from my blogging days and there's actually money sitting there from over 5 years ago.  No interest sadly.

It's going to take a while to update my tax details.  Some people say it takes months, so I started now.  Once that's done, I can add the details to get the money to me, which takes more time.  

But I'm kind of excited.  

I've got two videos being published next week.  Another one for mid-month and I've started editing one for early Oct.  I'm going to TRY for two a month.  

I sure would like to get my subscriber rate up.  1k is a lot of people.  
getting-there.JPG
[Thumbnail for getting-there.JPG]
 
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I had hoped the tree would get bigger the closer I got to monitization.  
 
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Today I released two new videos as an experiment

Video 1 is a contest entry, so it has people talking, people focus, and a soothing pace.  

Video 2 uses footage from the same shoots, but has just music, not talking.  A much faster pace.  And focuses the story on the item and emotion rather than the people.

Even though they are from the same batch of footage, and often use the same shots, the storytelling focus and method are very different.  I wanted to find out which is more popular with my audience.  Which do they respond to?  

I promoted each in a few different places, trying to give them an even chance at their target audience.  Now to sit back and find out what the stats say.  

What I would love from you, is if you are willing, to watch them both and maybe give some feedback on the style you like best.  
 
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I first watched Video 1. Then started watching Video 2. But soon I knew: I prefer to know what's happening, so my vote is for Video 1!
 
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I don't know what's wrong with my youtube stats.

Yesterday this video was at just below 400 views, then it dropped to 301 just before bed.  301 is a pretty famous number in the history of youtube, so I thought it funny and turned off the computer. When I woke up, it was stuck at 257 views.  It's been hovering there all day.  My likes have gone up by 6 today.  So I suspect someone is viewing these videos.  

Same with my other videos.  They all lost about 50-200 views overnight and got stalled.  thisone is stuck at 155 for over two days but I know the judges have been looking at it today.

I can see from the stats and from talking to people that they are viewing my videos.  

The only thing I can think of is that I deleted a few private videos from my channel (I upload drafts for feedback and so I can watch it on a few different devices before publishing the final version).  Could this mess up the algorithm that tallies views?

I also sent some feedback on their subtitle page saying that I like it, but it would be better with more/clearer tutorials.  Maybe it put a hold on my numbers while it waits for a real human to examine my channel?  

I don't know.

What I should be doing is not focusing on the tiny numbers like this.  I need to be looking at trends - preferably comparing month to month.  It's much better for me emotionally and it also gives a better picture of how I'm doing.  

But it bugs me to have my view numbers shrink and stall like that.  
 
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Hi R. This time I watched the video with only music to the end, maybe that will count as a view (first I only watched the start). And I wrote some comments. Of course I did already 'like' both of them ...
 
Inge Leonora-den Ouden
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And now I shared a link at my Facebook. I hope more people will have a look ...
 
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Today I'm procrastinating from doing more important things.  So I made a banner and custom link for my youtube channel.  

I hope I spelt the new link properly because I cannot change it: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrowingHen

The banner needs work but I figured a poor banner is better than no banner.  Come and see and let me know what you think.  
 
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Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:And now I shared a link at my Facebook. I hope more people will have a look ...



Thank you, thank you.

After youtube, FB is one of the biggest sources of traffic.  So sharing links like that make a huge difference.  Thank you for taking the time.
 
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The numbers are very slowly going in the right direction!  Up.  One to three views most hours, the subscriber numbers go up one or two a day.  For a channel my size, I think this is amazing growth and I need to keep telling myself that.  


release schedule.  

At the moment, I have 3 videos made, uploaded, and scheduled to publish.  2 normal length and one short.  The hardest thing is to not go in and publish earlier as I cannot wait to share what I made.

That's going to be 4 videos published this month - when my goal is two.  

Looking back, I should have spaced out the two videos I published on the 1st of Sep and made one this month and next month.  As it is, I published them both within 5 min of each other and I suspect they split the views - which made the youtube algorithm confused.  But it was an experiment and I wondered if the two would fuel each other - but no, they are too similar.  

For now, my goal is to release a new video on the 1st and 15th of the month (if I can keep up) and possibly, if the short coming out in a couple of weeks is received well, try for one to two shorts per month to fill in the gaps.  Youtube Shorts are fun, and fairly quick to edit, except for cramming horizontal content into a verticle box.  

 
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r ranson wrote:The goal - to learn how to make youtube videos and get enough experience to be able to say "yes, I hate making videos" or "no, making videos isn't so bad."

The method - to make 12 videos, roughly one per month, and learn new techniques with each video.  Learn by doing.

After a few rocky starts, here is my youtube channel: crowing hen

To be frank, my videos are shit.  I don't have the skills to make the video turn out how the vision in my mind is.   The closest I've gotten to achieving this vision is my most recent video on laundry. But, alas, it's not a tutorial video - it's more like a lifestyle video.

It's also a lot of work to create disappointing results.  With planning, set up, filming, clean up, editing, publishing, etc, it takes me about 2 hours to create 1 min of finished video.

I also want to learn a bit about how youtube works from a creator's point of view.  I really like this:



My goal with youtube is to ...
...create tutorials
...reach a greater audience than I can with photography and text alone
...fill in gaps in the cannon
...to explore youtube as a passive income stream


What would success look like?

  • make at least 12 videos
  • aquire an engaged audience (watch time, subscriptions, likes, comments)
  • get a decent way towards the monetization because this is the metric that Youtube uses to show success of new channels.
  • to make videos turn out the way I envision them



  • What's the goal of this thread?  
    - Momentum.  I want to get to 12 videos and interacting with people on forums help motivate me.
    - Tips and tricks - not just for making videos, but for understanding youtube.
    - somewhere I can talk about this project without boring the people in my household any more than I need to.





    I like this plan.

    A plan is a good thing.

    I'm learning to make my plan...reading this is helpful.
     
    Rob Kaiser
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    Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:And now I shared a link at my Facebook. I hope more people will have a look ...



    This is part of the reason I'm going to reactivate my personal Facebook and Twitter pages.

    To share more positivity in the world.
     
    r ranson
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    Today's video is the one I am most proud of so far.

    Not only does it have a voice-over (by me) but it is the start of my experimenting with an end screen.  For this one, I tried to incorporate a cute animal interacting with the subject.

    The goal is to increase watch time by rewarding viewers with something fun at the end.  

     
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    r ranson wrote:Today's video is the one I am most proud of so far.

    Not only does it have a voice-over (by me) but it is the start of my experimenting with an end screen.  For this one, I tried to incorporate a cute animal interacting with the subject.

    The goal is to increase watch time by rewarding viewers with something fun at the end.  


    I don't do reddit, tiktok, or Instagram, but shared on Facebook.
     
    r ranson
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    Carla Burke wrote:

    r ranson wrote:Today's video is the one I am most proud of so far.

    Not only does it have a voice-over (by me) but it is the start of my experimenting with an end screen.  For this one, I tried to incorporate a cute animal interacting with the subject.

    The goal is to increase watch time by rewarding viewers with something fun at the end.  


    I don't do reddit, tiktok, or Instagram, but shared on Facebook.



    Thanks for the share!  
     
    Carla Burke
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    My pleasure!!
     
    r ranson
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    I just had a really nice moment.  I was reading other forums and someone asked a question.  The very first reply (by a stranger) was that they should watch one of my videos because it has the best explanation.  

    Anyway, it is now 24 hours since I published my apple video and I had hoped I would get some good analytics to see how it did.  

    It's not going to be awesome numbers as this is a very small youtube channel compared to most out there.  But I think I'm happy.  

    The thing is, I'm not understanding the analytics yet.    I'm going to post some screenshots here and see what (if any) conclusions I can draw.

    Conclusion 1
    This has the most views of any video in the first 24 hours so far.  But I did put a lot of effort into promoting it yesterday.  I chose about 8 different places and posted something unique to that place to each place so that I didn't look like spam.

    I was also careful to choose places where my target audience might hang out so it could teach the youtube algorithm what kind of people might like my video in the future.  

    Anyway, here are the numbers.  You might notice, they don't actually add up, but it's what youtube has given me to work with.
    1.JPG
    view count
    view count
    2.JPG
    a different view count (taken at the same time)
    a different view count (taken at the same time)
    3.JPG
    [Thumbnail for 3.JPG]
    4.JPG
    [Thumbnail for 4.JPG]
    love.JPG
    Woot! retention awesome in the first 24 hours. I'm sure it will go down, but for now I enjoy the goodness
    Woot! retention awesome in the first 24 hours. I'm sure it will go down, but for now I enjoy the goodness
     
    r ranson
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    That first image where it says I had 358 views has now changed to 293.  watching how my other videos behave, that view count will probably go down again.

    I've been testing a few things, but I suspect some of this decrease is to do with bot traffic. I also suspect that some of it has to do with embedding videos.

    With videos that I only embed (and not share a link to it on youtube), the views from external traffic plummet after about a week.  It's not that the number of views per day goes down, but the total view count goes backwards.  

    I don't understand why.  
     
    r ranson
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    I am about 30 subscribers away from meeting a youtube goal - unlocking the community tab.  (it used to be unlocked at 1000 subscribers, but is now at 500 subs)

    I don't know what that means, so I'm taking some time away from editing to learn what this means.  I might hit that goal in a day or in 3 months.  I don't know.  I hope I get there in about 2 weeks.

    The thing is, I've never actually seen a community tab before this week.  Is it something anyone knows about?  

    edit to add: it won't be available at my level until the middle of Oct.  That gives me lots of time to learn about it.
     
    Inge Leonora-den Ouden
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    r ranson wrote:I am about 30 subscribers away from meeting a youtube goal - unlocking the community tab.  (it used to be unlocked at 1000 subscribers, but is now at 500 subs)

    I don't know what that means, so I'm taking some time away from editing to learn what this means.  I might hit that goal in a day or in 3 months.  I don't know.  I hope I get there in about 2 weeks.

    The thing is, I've never actually seen a community tab before this week.  Is it something anyone knows about?  

    edit to add: it won't be available at my level until the middle of Oct.  That gives me lots of time to learn about it.


    I think I saw Community tabs. Several channels I follow have this 'community', where they chat with their followers.
     
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    Watching the analytics, I wonder if Reddit is killing my channel.

    I had hoped the apple video would do better.  But after the first four days with lots of views, it is only getting one or two views a day!  That's not much better than my paint drying video.  I'm bummed out about this.

    So what happened?  

    Before we get into that, I want to mention that youtube retroactively corrects the stats to remove bots or repeat views.  

    It seems to be when I share a video on Reddit, it gets a lot of views very quickly.  I can easily get 400 views (a lot for me) in 2 days from that venue.  But then something happens.

    A couple of days later, those views are taken away.  When I go to bed, the video has 400 - 600 views.  When I wake up, it has 200 views.  From there, the number slowly trickles down over the next 24 hours even though I can see people are watching the video and giving it likes and comments.  After this, youtube stops recommending my videos for about a week.  Then slowly, very slowly, it starts again.

    The traffic source information also seems to suggest that it is reddit views being removed, but I don't know how to read this well, so I'm not 100% certain.

    This only happens on youtube videos that I've shared on reddit.

    Now, last spring when I stopped making videos for a while, I wasn't sharing on reddit.  This fall, now I'm making videos again, I am sharing on reddit.  So it might be something else causing this.

    But I don't know.  But I do think that Reddit and embedded videos would be a good place for bot training.

    So I'm going to stop EMBEDDING on reddit for a while and see what happens.  Share it as a link and description instead.

     
    r ranson
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    This is me playing with youtube shorts

    It's quite a bit of fun to make these quick videos.  I took this footage at the local Fibre Festival and threw it together into something under a minute.

    here's a thread about youtube shorts  But basically, this is a thing youtube is playing with to compete with the other social media platforms.  

    Now that I've published it, I see a big problem - it's under 30 seconds long.  I've read that a 'view' isn't counted as a 'view' if the person doesn't watch 30 seconds of a video.  I don't know if that's true or not.

    I'm also doing very little promotion for this video.  A blog post, one mention on Reddit as a link, not embedded.  A few places here on permies, and shared it with the knitting machine group on Ravelry.  

    I've given up on homesteading today.  The forum used to be okay, if a bit militant against self-promotion, but now every time I go to that site, it's all politics and other unpleasant current events.  It feels like the site has lost the positive, attempting to make our lives better, vibe that it used to have.  I was getting a lot of views from them before, but now, I think I'm not the only one feeling this way.

    If you have any suggestions of another place that might be fun to hang out, answer questions about yarn, and occasionally share the cool things I made, please let me know.
     
    r ranson
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    Ug, my farm is still brown from the drought, so I thought I could go to the local park and get some footage of me playing with yarn.

    Difficult enough that I didn't bring the right stuff (I left home in a rush), but as I'm packing up in disgust at myself for not being good enough, I get a random member of the press with his camera come over and start chatting me up.  Apparently, I am looking like a story.  I gotta go pee really bad by then and the public washroom in the park stinks, so I make my excuses and go home.  

    This youtube thing is hard.  
     
    r ranson
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    A new video comes out tomorrow - https://www.youtube.com/crowinghen


    I'm now halfway to monetization.  I'm eager to get there because once I do, I get to control how many, if any, advertisements are on my videos.  I don't really think it's fair to have 45 seconds of ads on a 31-second video.  I hate that youtube is putting my viewers through this.

    I am focusing on making more and better videos.  The hardest parts are
    1) I hate my speaking voice, so editing those videos is not fun.
    2) I have too many ideas for videos.  

    If you want to help, feel free to subscribe and share the videos with your friends.  

    I need 1 thousand subscribers.  I wonder if we can get there by Feburary?  That would be a fantastic birthday present.  
     
    r ranson
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    r ranson
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    REDDIT:  This seems to be the best kind of post for both engagement and stats.  Targeted, picture, and then a link to the video.  The views I'm getting from this aren't vanishing like the ones I get when I embed the video.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Handspinning/comments/pzwvz2/silky_smooth_growing_yarn_in_a_small_space/
     
    r ranson
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    I now have enough watch time to get to monetization.  I just need a few more subscribers.

    Not sure how to do that without spamming my videos with "like and subscribe".  Even cute stuff like this is still annoying.  



    (at this time, this is a secret video just for you)

    It's been a rough week with the weather deciding to wash away a big part of where I live, power outages, and ... well people being the way that they are.  So much to do that I don't know if I can get my December and Jan videos out in time.  

    I'm turning the computer off to finish some filming and hopefully get the thumbnail for Jan's video shot so I can get started on that one tomorrow.  

    But I'm also kind of down about how slowly the subscriber number is going up.  If I can get it to 1k, then I have control of the monetization and I can take the stupid ads of the shorter videos.  

    Any thoughts how to get the subscribers numbers going up faster?  (and without breaking youtube terms and conditions like buying subs or sub4sub)
    watch-time.JPG
    [Thumbnail for watch-time.JPG]
     
    r ranson
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    I finally feel like a real youtuber this weekend.   I convinced some family members to subscribe.

    I know, that's supposed to be the first thing you do, but meh.  I do things out of order all the time.  

    But it does feel like a milestone reached.  Not only am I making videos and sharing them with total strangers, but I'm now enough not crap that I can talk about it at the holiday family dinner.  

    (that last sentence got away from me, but you get the gist I hope).

    ...

    Now that I've run out of family with youtube accounts, what I need to do next is to drive really hard to getting to 1k subscribers.

    Not sure how to do this as I hate self-promotion.  But I'm not asking people for money so... I imagine it would be easier?  Maybe?

    The thing is, youtube has this metric of "good enough" which they call the Monetization threshold.  I need 1k subscribers and 4k watch hours (but those watch hours have to be within the last 12 months).

    I need both.

    Most of my watch hours came at the end of February last year.  So I need to get to 1k subscribers before the end of Feb (also my birthday) this year.

    Once I get over 1k, youtube reviews my channel (real human looks at it and decides if I'm worthwhile - which is as judgemental as it sounds).  This should take a couple of months.  

    But only if I can make it over 1000 subscribers by the end of Feb.

     
    Carla Burke
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    I'm not sure how much I can help with subscribers, but I can help with watch hours, and I'll share more, wherever I can.
     
    r ranson
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    Carla Burke wrote:I'm not sure how much I can help with subscribers, but I can help with watch hours, and I'll share more, wherever I can.



    Thank you.

    I don't know what the solution is.  

    It's a difficult metric to achieve because it's not directly related to my actions.

    I can make videos.  I can share (but hopefully not too spammy) the videos with others.  But I can't actually go around their place and help them press the subscribe button.  

    What I would like to do is to do some sort of give-a-way when I get past 1k subscribers.  I've got my book and handspun yarn.  
    Make some sort of event of it, maybe on permies since I suspect it's permies that have been the most supportive of my journey.  That and my household who put up with me saying "shhh... I'm filming, you can eat lunch later"
     
    r ranson
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    Looking at the analytics, this is my worst performing video in the first 3 days.  https://youtu.be/oQPk7fmVvGA

    I think I made the mistake that most new youtubers make - put a lot of time in it does not equal high quality watching.  

    There was a lot of experiments and most of the feedback I have gotten is that they are disappointed it wasn't functional.  

    I want to get defensive and say "well, no one else even did this much and it's harder than it looks."

    What I should do is make it a challenge to others to do better than I did.  But no one seems interested in taking me up on it.  

    Feeling a bit of that youtube-noob grinch mood.  I tried really hard and it wasn't good enough.  Got to take that energy and do better for the future.  

    At least the item I made in my Christmas eve video is fully functional.

     
    You know it is dark times when the trees riot. I think this tiny ad is their leader:
    Heat your home with the twigs that naturally fall of the trees in your yard
    http://woodheat.net
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