Introduction
Similar to how I launched my blog, I decided to start a YouTube channel. I followed the same concepts outlined on my other post about a minimum viable product. If you are curious to know, my first ever uploaded video was an introduction to this blog. Afterwards, I made several short format ones of some normal mundane events that occur in my life like cycling or petting a dog.
I did not spend too much time thinking of a spectacular idea as suggested by MrBeast to just fail :
A lot of people get into analysis paralysis and they will just sit there and plan their first video for three months. Any of you listening, your first 100 videos are not going to get any views period I can confidently say that. So for the average person like me who does not have a freak personality or a background in filmmaking, all you need to do is to make 100 videos and improve every time.
This statement turned out to be UNBELIEVABLY accurate. For example, I thought that almost getting attacked by a dog COULD get me some views, but NOPE.
My Beginner Approach
I try to work as much as I can with whatever I have while getting as much done and going as far as possible with the bare minimum. Therefore, every video I will make will be filmed with my smartphone as I can’t afford to purchase a high-quality camera, a microphone or any useful filmmaking gear. It is also worth noting that I have absolutely zero skills or experience with filmmaking. I have only done a few action movies with my brother when we were young using an old small Cannon camera and VideoPad video editor, but I forgot all of those skills. Apart from that, I made a video project in my final year of high school with another student, but he did most of the editing and I only took part in the video. Someday, if I do get enough viewers and my content appeals to a wide enough audience, I might get more serious about filmmaking. Until then, I will stick to the basics. So throughout my day, I keep an eye out for anything interesting that might happen and I have my smartphone ready to film. Once I finish filming, I edit the raw footage on Microsoft Clipchamp, which is the default application on my laptop computer and I upload immediately on the same day.
The Evolution
Over time, I will pay attention to what kinds of videos get views and I will improve on my editing skills. I do not expect to become an expert in any of those, but I still want to make good enough content to get advertisements. My other goal is to gain a wider audience. For example, some might discover my YouTube channel first which would prompt them to my blog or vice versa. One staggering observation I made was when I first typed the keywords “lifelongtale” and my full name with several possible wording variations on Google. After doing so, neither my blog nor my social media accounts having my website’s link in them (LinkedIn and Facebook) appeared first. In fact, none of them appeared at all on the first 20 result pages and probably even beyond. Who knows if any appeared at some point… This kept going during my first three months of blogging despite publishing new posts. It was ONLY after I created my YouTube channel, uploaded about five videos, shared links to my blog on the videos and links to my videos on my blog that it started appearing on Google’s search results. Now, when I type the same previous keywords and my full name, both my YouTube channel and my blog appear on the first page results! Therefore, I will be counting on YouTube’s unbreakable robust network effects to promote both. As a longtime VERY active user of it since 2007 myself, it was about time I try to have a channel of my own instead of just watching others’ successes growing up. I can take advantage of my YouTube habit to just upload my own videos as it would not require any more effort (shoutout to Atomic Habits). Because I use it so MUCH more frequently than any other platforms, I have a feeling I might get somewhere with it, because my uploads and posts will be more consistent.
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