YouTube Channel
A YouTube channel for learning better web development
Nothing has changed since the last milestone, and I'm still on break from the channel. That said, 10k is a big milestone for me and is the culmination of hundreds of hours of work my past self has put into this thing. Worth at least a milestone post and mini-celebration!
I have seen and heard that once a channel reaches the 10-20k range, the algorithm starts to pick videos up more often, so on the unlikely chance that happens, will report back!
This was a really tough decision for me. Although the channel is still growing (~300 subs / m), it's not growing near as fast as I would have expected given the work I put into it.
- Each video takes 10-15 hours to create
- Each video averages 200-800 views after the first month (very frustrating)
Lessons learned
Lesson 1: No views, no motivation
"You should create things because you enjoy them".
That's what I've always heard, but I don't know many people that enjoy putting 15 hours into a video and only getting 200 views on that video.
My initial goal was to create a "Fullstack Roadmap" series that took someone from the very beginning to the very end of their web development journey. Unfortunately, the topics required for a series like this are the basics that have already been covered hundreds of times on YouTube already (JavaScript/HTML/CSS basics)
I realized that if I wanted to see real growth, I needed to cover more "interesting" topics (i.e. new web dev technologies). And if I wanted to stay motivated, I needed to see growth.
The conclusion to all this was simple for me. I'm not that interested in creating YouTube content full-time. I love making the occasional instructional video but was not enjoying the process as much as I thought I would when I started the journey a year ago.
Lesson 2: Making serious money on YouTube takes a LONG time
At 9k subscribers, I'm still only bringing in ~$200 / m. My original goal here was to bring in some meaningful side income and potentially turn it into a business.
With the slow growth and lack of personal fulfillment, I decided this was not the right path for me.
What next?
I'm sure I'll post to the channel again. After all, it is a valuable asset and communication platform. But for now, I'm taking a break to work on other (more profitable and fulfilling) projects.
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@zachgoll thanks for this Zach - it's totally resonating with me right now.
Though I'm much earlier on in my indie hacker YouTube journey on my new channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRglDsIjBqpmNqFLtwiBK_A
- You originally have this idea of the content you'd like to create on YouTube
- You realize the content you're putting out isn't leading to growth
- You start manipulating your content i.e. becoming a slave to the YouTube algorithm by coming up with catchier thumbnails, titles, and content
- You see some growth
- But now the content you're having to create in order to produce growth is completely different than your original intent...
This too has been my pattern and something I'm struggling with! Glad to at least know I'm not alone!
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You got my sub! I will say that sticking with it over a long period of time does have its rewards; just not immediate rewards. I've been off/on with this for 3 years and I have seen growth in a longer-term context, which has been super fun.
But if you're trying to grow quickly, you either need to be GREAT at entertaining, covering "hot topics", or spend a ridiculous amount of time editing your videos so that they are concise, have tons of animations/effects, and tell an amazing story.
For me, I realized I 1) wasn't an entertainer 2) wasn't interested in teaching trending programming topics 3) genuinely disliked editing videos.
I do expect that over a long time horizon my strategy will pay off (SEO + quality of content), but it's very defeating when you don't see any growth in the short term.
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Appreciate the support! You're totally right on all counts.
The coolest thing/gratifying aspect in the short term has just been through personal growth.
Going back and looking at my first video, mere months ago, vs watching one of my recent videos -> you do have the satisfaction in seeing how much more comfortable you get in front of a camera, seeing your story telling improve, seeing your editing improve.
It can be discouraging that regardless of those personal improvements, it doesn't necessarily translate to growth in the form of subs, likes, views but hey...it is what it is...becoming a better story teller, being comfortable in front of a camera are skills that prove beneficial across other ventures (like you mentioned with creating video tutorials for your SaaS, pitching, onboarding users, etc.).
I think you're right too, the nice thing about any form of digital content is that you're creating an asset that compounds over time with SEO, etc.
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Super important point you make here.
The growth I've experienced in my presentation skills, storytelling, video editing, being comfortable showing my face / being transparent online, etc. has been HUGE for me.
I posted every week for almost a year and although it didn't get me the results I wanted, it definitely moved me in a forward direction!
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This milestone is mainly a starting point for better tracking analytics. I have historically been lazy about keeping up with my traffic stats, so here is where we are starting:
Trailing month statistics:
YouTube subscribers - 4,000
Website Sessions - 1,500
Medium revenue - ~$100
YouTube Ad Revenue - ~$100
Just started a Full-stack web development roadmap series, which I intend to work on for the majority of 2021 and use as a growth driver for the channel and site. After this is complete, I will focus on building paid courses to sell.
I started www.zachgollwitzer.com so that I could have a home-base for my content. I had previously been posting exclusively on Medium, but realized that not having ownership of my content was a big risk.
I used Netlify and Stackbit (Jamstack) to quickly get a site running in a few days. From this point forward, I started posting the original content on my site and then syndicating that content on both Dev.to and Medium.
I previously had a personal site hosted on Github Pages but wanted to create something that could scale a bit further.
I did another round of videos in late 2018 and early 2019 on various topics like Bash, Git, and some DevOps concepts. These didn't gain that many views and didn't contribute materially to my subscriber count.
I reached my first 1k subs after posting a video series in early 2020 on user authentication in web apps (PassportJS). The documentation for PassportJS is not that helpful and a lot of folks needed some help using it, so this series did pretty well and has continued to drive subscriber growth.
I went to a blockchain conference shortly after learning to code, and spoke with the team members of the Hyperledger project. They mentioned that they needed some community tutorials for their technology, so I decided to create a small series on the Hyperledger Composer project.
This did really well for me and got me a few hundred subscribers, but unfortunately, the Hyperledger Composer project is no longer being maintained.
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