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3 hours ago
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In a few months it’s going to be 2 years since I started to make videos for YouTube. Many things happened since then and I would like to reflect on this journey. My channel is still very small, low number of views, approximately 1.5k subscribers, low engagement and so on. I never reached YouTube’s requirements for monetisation, even first level.
Despite all of these I keep going and make new videos. Now I would like to tell a story from the start until today and how making YouTube videos helped me in many ways: I accepted myself more, I care less what other people will think about myself, I learnt many skills and I found new friends online.
Before we can go to the end of this story you will read about things like:
Why I even started YouTube channel
How I tried to hack YouTube algorithm with information from YouTube gurus and why it was a stupid idea
Mistakes that buried my first channel and I had to start from scratch
How editing style evolved: starting from applying all “tips&trick” from “experts” and ended with my own style (not saying it’s good, but it’s mine)
Challenges I face to make videos: technical, personal
Benefits
And where I find motivation to continue.
And if you’re like me still in plato state for a long time in your creation journey - you’re not alone. It does not mean to be YouTube specific, I believe most of the things I will write here about can be applied for any content creation journey - writing, YouTube, indie hacking and so on.
Start
Back in 2023 I decided to finally give a try to make a YouTube channel. That was in my mind for a long time, but I did not consider it seriously. Having all sorts of uncertainty, new Google account was created with the new channel.
In July I uploaded my first “talking-head” video - this one
It is accessible via link only as it belongs to my first channel I had to bury later. You will see why later.
I would not blame you if you close this video without watching a second of it, but that was an achievement for myself - I’m a YouTuber now! Well, at least I started.
To contrast with highlighted video this is my main and only YouTube channel at this moment - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi1Hco_0efrqucQPbRraqbQ
But why I even decided to start?
I am not good at public speaking, I prefer to stay behind the camera rather than to be a subject within the frame. My personality is not a type that can entertain people or give a good looking image.
I was always amazed how people can just take a topic and make an interesting to watch video about it. I was in software development for around 12 years already when I started. Having enough experience and ideas to confront and other ideas to push forward I had an illusion somebody will be interested in this.
When I started I had 3 main goals written before I upload my first video:
Promote ideas that I believe are healthy in Tech industry and confront harmful one
Share my experience with other people hoping it will help them to grow professionally
Find people who share the same ideas and principles to expand my network and have a community of mind-liked people
There was another point I kept in mind: eventually it would be great to grow to certain size so channel can help me financially as well. I considered even having YouTube monetisation enabled as very good achievement here. Spoiler: I did not hit this at all.
In general I wanted to build a place where I can share my thoughts and perspective on Software Engineering and Tech industry, but to be honest, I was terrified at first what if I tell something stupid or some people start attacking me.
I am glad I started it anyway, despite all fears and concerns I had in mind. But the results I got so far are very different from what I expected.
Most of them are unexpected for me.
They are not about the channel itself, they mostly about myself.
Trying to make a YouTube channel made me realize few important things.
But before we can see the results and why I still run YouTube channel after so many failures - let’s dig a bit into the journey.
Mistake number 1 - listening to “YouTube gurus”
Recently I’ve been reading a post from Dan Koe and there’s a quote that correlates with this stage of my journey:
Mistakes are the only source of truth. Not the thoughts in your head. Not the advice of a billionaire. Failure is the only teacher that is absolutely 100% tailored to your situation.
In my case that was “not the advice of a youtube guru”.
I can say that it was the most stupid thing I could have done to my channel and myself. But I had to do that mistake to realize it.
Once I decided to make a channel I started to watch lots of video about making videos to quickly boost it. Videos like: how to edit to hold attention, how to make TnT (title & thumbnail) to boost CTR (click-though rate), how to make an intrigue so people will click and so on.
And I tried to apply these advices. Again, like all channels like this wants to sell you a course with great knowledge which will boost my channel even further. I even watched a webinar about one of them.
Once I saw a slide with some random numbers representing “market value” of each topic in the course magically turned into four nines price - 9999$ - I was like okay, they do really a scam.
These channels, of course, have videos about starting equipment, but now looking back it’s clear this videos were sponsored by concrete manufactures. I don’t have problems about videos that suggests specific products. But usually I found valuable videos at channels dedicated to something specific.
E.g., if I want to find good mic for my needs and budget - search for a channel that does review sound equipment. Camera and lenses - same, search for videographers or photographers. Editing - same.
Once I started to search and watch concrete youtubers - I got much better information. Even about scripting, talking to camera, video editing. But, I will cover that part next.
Funny things that these “gurus” focuses you on clickbait stuff, but no one talks about being consistent in making videos. Going a bit further, but my second channel (which is main now) got more attention once I started to make more videos daily, practice talking to camera, be more consistent and stop trying to hack the algorithm.
There is no algorithm on YouTube. Well, yes, it is, but it based on people’s input. If my videos not watching - then there is something not good about video and it’s a signal to improve myself.
Don’t make this mistake, practice and practice. It will take time. For me it’s almost 2 years without “outside” success. Hopefully you will succeed faster in that regard, but I am still learning and improving myself.
Mistake number 2 - compensate for lack of skills with money
Spoiler: this mistake forced me to close my first channel, re-upload some videos and start over.
It was time when YouTube launched in Beta what they call YouTube Promotions. It is like Google Ads, but much much easy to setup. You just presented with few options what you want to target, setup your budget and that is it.
So, instead of trying to improve videos itself I want to make a small shortcut to get some tracking to my channel. I run promotions 2 or 3 times. I spent small amount of money, maybe 100$ max.
I have no idea what YouTube did, but just in 2 days I got +500 subs. But no views, no engagement, nothing. It just looked like they subscribed to my channel 500 bot accounts with very questionable view history.
That was the end for my channel, I just did not know that… yet.
First, when I publish a video youtube tries to make an impression to your subscribers. And new audience. But it takes into account something like average profile of a subscribers and tries to match it.
In my case I started to get very weird and unrelated to whole Tech industry views.
I kept fighting and I have been making new videos for another year from this point. At the same time I started my second channel where I posted live coding videos of me solving and building different things. The content was very raw, just a screen and myself in a small window.
But apparently, it was more real and people actually had interested in these videos!
So at some point I realized my main channel is buried deeply in YouTube I closed it and move some of videos I like to my second channel. On one hand it was hard decision because it was the first channel I made. But, spending more time there was pointless.
Mistake number 3 - video editing style
I used to be a commercial photographer in parallel with my early software engineering career. I spent many hours in image editing software like Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture one. For me editing media is something I am comfortable with. And I actually enjoy it, especially running experiments.
My first incorrect assumption - photo and video editing are mostly the same. It’s just video has more frames to edit.
Stupid, stupid assumption.
While there is a common knowledge between like color theory, working with color curves, circles, presets, material organization and many other things.
Editing a video is much different. Even from tools to work with color&light.
Also, there is big difference - photo tells a story though static frame while video tells you a story in dynamic.
Anyway, connecting to one of my previous mistakes - I tried to follow all suggestions from “youtube gurus”. Stuff like using lots of stock B-rolls to complement a speech. Or changing the frame size every 2-3 seconds. Or using all sorts of motion animations.
It always felt unnatural for me doing those things, but I tried. At some point I relalized it’s not the type of content I want to make and I got rid of most of these things.
Another downside to make all of these stuff is making a 10-15 minutes video took my like approximately 8 hours on average. That is a lot.
I learnt FinalCutPro a lot while doing this, so now it takes me way less time to edit a video. I am trying to find a good side from it.
Right now when I rewatch my recent videos I like them more. I still see so many things to improve, but right now they look in a way they resonate with me. It does not mean they are good or even perfect, but they are truly mine.
Again, trying to not be myself cost me many hours.
Now I know.
Challenges
Oh boy, there are so many of them. I am not sure I should even write about all of them, it will take took long. So you will see the major ones.
One of the first challenges I faced is dealing with gear. I was familiar with using a camera for photography very good, but video is different beats.
Plus, I did not have any equipment apart from my old Sony A7ii camera and two prime lenses I used for photography.
I wanted to buy new gear, but I did not have big budget for this. And gear in photo & video area is costly. Even something “budget” can cost you hundreds of dollars.
So I started to try some very cheap options like microphone, light, back light and so on. I purchased and return many items util I started to use the light I am mostly comfortable with - natural light.
Using natural light for video when you recording yourself is difficult as you need to check exposure during recording many times. This is why I prefer to record during cloud days as the light is more predictable.
Also, I had 2 lenses: 50mm and 35mm. 50mm requires a lot of space to make a talking head video. The 35mm one had a very bad auto-focus, so I had to manually set the distance by placing a pillow in a place where I sit. Of course, few times I totally miss focus and I had to record once again.
Therefore, I found the gear I am using at this moment as I had to resell some of my old stuff and new purchases. I even changed the camera that works better for self-recording. Now it just takes me 5 minutes to assemble recording setup with all correct settings for composition, light, color and sound.
Another big challenges was - time.
Most of the time while I am running my YouTube channel I have a kid, a small kid. My kid was born after 6 months of me trying to build a channel.
Work from home, helping with a kid and trying to find a time when it’s silent to record is not easy. Plus, before I used script for all my videos and it took me a long time to record a video. I went line by line, remembering the text and tried to recall it on the camera. I don’t do that anymore.
I am not complaining that having a kid interfered with my goals, not at all. It just added complexity, but that’s all.
Benefits
If it is so hard and challenging - what are the benefits? As they are not in numbers for sure at this moment.
Benefits I got from running a YouTube channel actually surprising. I learnt a lot about myself.
My channel is not about some personal development, and yet I always wanted it to have a bit of my personality within.
But first, I had to face myself on the video. Back then I did not like myself on videos at all, including the sound of my voice. Then I got “locked” with myself during video editing. And I just… accepted myself. The more I had to edit video, the most I have been accepting that it’s me, it’s who I am and it’s how people see me. And I stopped thinking about how other people will judge me. Sure, some will, but it does not matter.
Second, once I created Discord server for my channel - people started to join and some are very active. We discuss things from time to time, give suggestions or just exchange memes. That was one of my goals actually - to find more like-minded people.
Once I decided to change video style I have been watching videos about cinematic recording. I always appreciate good image in a movie or video, so I am trying to learn this as well. Overall running YouTube channel solo opened many new skills for me: video editing, audio editing, scripting, seo, talking to camera. I am not saying I am good at them, but I am learning and who knows how any of these skills will help me in future. It will, I just don’t know how yet.
And, I accepted the idea it will take me a lot of time to grow the channel. Maybe it won’t happen at all. But it’s a good way to practice new skill, make content and do not give up. The last one is the hardest.
Motivation to continue
You know, mostly motivation comes from benefits I just mentioned. But there is one more thing. I just want to do this. Will see for how long, but now I really interested in making video content.
Maybe someday I decide to go with different channel format, maybe it is going to be something different from Tech. Also, while my kid is so small I want to spend as much time as I can. To do so - I need to sacrifice something. But at some point he will go to kindergarten, then to school and available time together will be less. So I will have more time for stuff like video production, work, new challenges and new interests. But my kid is never going to be 1 year.
I know I will have more opportunities in future, so now I do whatever I can when I can. Skills I learnt for past 1.5 year will not disappear, they will just get better and better.
I accepted the idea my channel won’t grow in next couple of years and that is fine. I have other benefits from it I really appreciate.
Since you’re here - here is my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi1Hco_0efrqucQPbRraqbQ
If you like me - trying to grow some channel, it could be YouTube or SubStack or anything else - you’re not alone in your “unsuccessful” journey.
Good luck and keep up!
Cheers, Roman
