Starting a YouTube Channel: Worth It, or Waste of Time?
I recently started a non-affiliated YouTube channel as an experiment — here’s what I learned after 1 month of posting videos
YouTube — a place where you can watch cat videos, reviews, pranks, and also how I figured out how to change my car key battery when it would no longer open my door.
YouTube is multifaceted — and has quite a few different groups of people involved:
Group 1: The casual viewers. The people who Google what they need and find it on YouTube — or just happen to watch a video when a friend sends it. These people also may be confused about whatever a “short” is, and if it’s competing with TikTok or Instagram reels.
Group 2: The “YouTube has replaced my TV” people. They’re subscribers. They watch certain people all the time, stay updated on their lives, and they know when their favorite creators haven’t posted in a while. These people also probably have notifications turned on — because their subscription boxes are entirely too full, especially with vlogmas in December.
Group 3: The creators. These are people who have watched so much YouTube that they’ve decided — hey, I can do that. They’re now working on their 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, or it might be an entire side-hustle or full-time job if they’re past that.
I recently decided to jump from Group 2 to Group 3 to become a content creator on YouTube.
However — it’s not affiliated with this account, my name, or any other name I’ve ever used to publish anything on the internet.
Why not leverage the brand I already have?
I dream of having separate streams of income. Some people say to stack it, but I say — what if everything collapsed and no one knew my name on a different platform anyway?
I also liked the challenge it brought. I started with zero followers and zero content on Medium once — I could do it again on another platform.
I wanted to know that whatever I created was solely enjoyed, liked, and subscribed to because of that new platform and viewership — not because they came from somewhere else where I’m already established.
Month 1 Statistics:
From November 9 to December 8, I published 10 videos.
I told myself I’d make 10 videos before I decided whether I’d keep going or not, and to be honest, this may become a moving target.
Subscribers: 53 (but it fluctuates anywhere from 39 to 60 on any given day… because bots)
Am I surprised? Yes.
Do I think all of the subscribers are real? No.
I think a lot of them are bots, or people hoping I will sub4sub. Which is funny, because unless your subscriptions are public there, you can’t even see who is subscribed to you or watching your videos.
Will I keep going?
Yes.
Lessons Learned:
Editing — is not for the weak, but it’s not entirely difficult either. I just used iMovie. I may eventually upgrade to something like Final Cut or Adobe Premiere Pro, but iMovie isn’t bad, especially when paired with Canva.
External drives — are going to be necessary. Your computer will likely not be able to hold all of your files until the end of time. You’ll need a good one — and one that won’t die if you drop it like I did.
Thumbnails — are important. Click-through rates literally depend on titles and thumbnails, and even if you think your thumbnail is amazing, keep trying different versions and asking other people what they think. It doesn’t really matter what you think — it’s what the viewers want!
Voiceovers — live or recorded later, are really way more difficult than they look. Stumbling over words, saying weird things later… it’s all very real. Luckily, subscribers seem to be okay with less than perfection as long as the content overall is quality.
Exporting your video — may take hours of your life away, especially if it gets corrupted in the middle of an export because you shot in 4K on your iPhone even though it really only needs to be 1080p but you didn’t know that.
A publishing schedule — definitely helps with the algorithm, just like all social media.
Upgrade as you go — for example, I added Epidemic Sound halfway through which really elevated the content, for a fee.
Subscribers will come once you have a content library — so it seems like even if you don’t have a lot to begin with, growth is exponential if you just keep creating.
Is YouTube better than Medium for content creation?
No. Absolutely not.
That may come as a surprise, but I feel that SEO and organic in-platform growth happen faster and more easily on Medium.
It’s easier to interact with someone else’s article and actually have them come look at your work — at least in my experience.
On YouTube it feels 100% like a rat race the entire time, and I haven’t found a genuine community to interact with. That’s not to say it’s not there — I just haven’t found it yet.
On Medium, even if I haven’t published an article in two months, somehow I still get views. On YouTube, I had quite a few days where if I hadn’t published a video in 48 hours, I had no viewers at all.
That changed a bit once I changed my SEO strategy, but it still didn’t stack up to Medium views. I have a substantial amount of followers here compared to YouTube, so I’m excited to see how that may change.
Medium vs. YouTube success factors:
This article doesn’t need my face in it to do well.
That being said — faceless YouTube videos have to be very well edited, thought out, and produced in order to do as well as videos with a face.
Again, this is also in my brief experience — but on YouTube, viewers like to know who they’re hearing from.
Faceless channels can 100% make it, but it seems that if a channel has one or two where they are featured in front of the camera instead of just behind it — they have a larger audience.
On Medium, you can write whatever you’d like without worrying what you look like, or if your voice is camera-ready.
For example, I came down with a cold last week and was unable to film any YouTube videos because my voiceovers would be ruined by congestion.
No doubt the algorithm stopped showing as many of my videos since I wasn’t publishing new content, but hopefully that will pick back up again once I begin my regularly scheduled programming.
On Medium, you can write whatever you want — whenever you want — even if you’re physically not fit.
Goals for the future:
- A more consistent posting schedule
- That means having backlog of videos to go up — even if I’m sick or busy!
- Learning more about SEO and video editing
- Getting more comments and subscribers from views
If you think you’ve found me on YouTube — let me know!
I’ll keep you updated about what month 2 on my channel holds.
Which group do you belong to on YouTube?
Have you ever thought about starting a channel?
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