I’ve had many doubts over the past year as to whether I could grow a YouTube channel. I’m a 40+ year old woman, part of Generation X, what do I have to say that people might find interesting? And how on earth do I go about creating and uploading videos?
It’s been a long journey to get to 1000 subscribers and, like with my writing, the long time it takes for me to reach my goals has a lot to do with confidence. But I persevered and a few weeks ago I hit the 1000 subscriber mark. I was absolutely thrilled.
On Instagram I’ve spoken about my YouTube journey quite a bit and I know many people are interested in creating videos - but one of the main things that stop them is confidence. Whether it’s the technical side, or showing their face, or the risk of being trolled or real-life friends and family or acquaintances finding out…believe me I’ve had all these anxieties too.
But I went ahead and learned how to record and edit videos anyway.
One of the main things that has helped me is practice. Practicing the editing skills, practicing speaking to camera, practicing the setting up of my tripod, getting used to uploading and people seeing me talk on film…it’s a cliche but the more you do it the easier it gets.
I’ve gained a lot from experimenting with photography and films on Instagram. Whether it’s making short films of my day for Instagram Stories, or time lapses of my writing process or a slow-mo of the ducks (when I had them) flapping their wings. This has all helped me build my skills and with skills comes increased confidence.
The more you upload the more chance people have of seeing your videos the more likely they’ll hit subscribe. And having a specific topic to talk about, I’ve discovered, is a huge help in growing your channel. Likewise so is publicising it. Whether that’s through Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook or Pinterest. If you’ve uploaded a video then tell people about it.
I talk about all this and more in my latest video - which I hope will become the first in a series of videos about YouTube.
Over the weekend I sent out a newsletter which opened with a short anecdote about my YouTube channel. The subject of the newsletter wasn’t actually about YouTube at all but I received an email back from one of my lovely subscribers asking what had happened with my YouTube journey. She said: It feels almost like we followed you on your journey then when you arrived at the Emerald City, you left us outside the gates.
I completely agreed. I’d stopped talking about YouTube once I reached monetisation. I’d shared a lot of what I was going through including my analytics and how close I was getting on my Instagram Stories - but then just didn’t carry that narrative on.
My YouTube journey has dominated my life for a year. I was thinking about it a lot; anxious that I would not reach the relevant requirements and then, when I did, I was worried about being rejected and monetisation would not be allowed for my channel.
So I thought I’d explore why I stopped talking about my YouTube channel in this blog post, as well as looking at my YouTube journey so far.