You may remember, back a couple months ago, I announced that I was starting a new YouTube channel. Well, not really, the channel had existed for a while already, but I just hadn’t been using it.

You see, my goal is to get my own cooking show. Look–every time I say that out loud, I know how crazy it sounds. I honestly think I’m good enough to merit one, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a ton of folks out there that also do, and are fighting for it as well. So it seems audacious of me to put my hand up, but here we are.

The goal here is to spend three months creating content and learning. One new video each week for three months. If no one ever gives me a cooking show, well, at least then I’ll have my own channel that I’m building and growing daily, and if that opportunity ever does come knocking, I’m gonna be ready. That’s what I keep telling myself.

I started all this at the beginning of April, so I’m now two months into my three month experiment.

Here’s what I have to report:

1. Here’s my channel in case you want to reference what I’m talking about (or subscribe–shameless self promotion moment).
2. New videos posted since April 1: 10 (plus 2 live videos–more about these later).
3. Number of new subscribers since April 1: 100. Yay! I started with 22 subscribers, and it was my goal to get to 100 subs in the first month. Current number: 122.

Here are my stats for the last 2 months:

Lots of good growth in many areas–especially in engagement: likes, comments and shares.

Watch time is down some, though, and that I find a bit disconcerting.

Here are some things I learned these two months:

• I created a template for my YT thumbnail that I reuse over and over to give my content that “branded” feel. It also helps for people to know what the video is about.
• I also have a template for the text I write to go with each video. It includes things like the link to the associated blog post (if there is one), a link to my website, a plea for people to subscribe, and links to all my social media.
• I am finally starting to understand some of the technical bits of YT. It took me forever to figure out annotations, and as soon as I did, they yanked them. I now use End Cards and Cards instead of annotations, and I have a watermark “please subscribe” that is automatically added to each video.
• Of all the videos I made over these last few weeks, this one about Vegan Egg Substitutes has been the most popular. Likely because I posted it to Reddit.
• I started vlogging. This hasn’t really been a thing for me up until now. I have been making cooking videos, where I demonstrate a recipe, show people how to do something, but I haven’t done a lot of that “straight to camera” stuff. I took a trip last month to Victoria, so I brought my video camera along, and shot my first vlog. It was fun, but honestly, I kept forgetting to shoot footage! I did another, shorter one, last week, the first of a series I want to do where I highlight Vancouver businesses that are veg friendly.
• I did my first YT livestream. Up until now, I’ve primarily been doing FB Livestreams, but I thought I’d try doing one on YouTube. It was a giant pain in the butt compared to Facebook! You have to use an emulator, etc. However, YT just changed all that by rolling out the ability to do livestreams from right inside the app, which is going to make my life easier. Having said that, just to compare, my FB livestream got 378 views, whereas the same one on YT only got 21. So I won’t be leaving FB any time soon.
• You can’t do all the things. I was doing tons of FB livestreams before I started my YT channel, and now I’m not doing that many at all. It’s hard to keep everything up when you have so many commitments, and then you add another one! Something has to give.

The name of the game here is slow, steady progress. Each day I get a few more followers… a few more views…

I’m also realizing that there’s lot of good about the long tail on YT as well. My most popular video is from November of 2015. Now, if I can just keep from feeling discouraged so that I can hang in there that long…

Okay! So my next set of goals:

• Integrate more people into my videos. Having others in your video is a great idea, because the other person will likely share it as well. I’m doing this starting tomorrow. A local kitchen showroom has graciously loaned me their space for the day, and I’m going to shoot as many videos as possible in one day. I would also love to do more coops with other YouTubers.
• I need a new channel trailer.
• Continue to pump out at least one new video each week on Thursdays.
• Grow my subscriber base to 200.
• Continue to play and experiment with different kinds of video formats.
• Get 10,000 views on my channel (currently at 6,600) so I can monetize.

I’d love to hear from you if you are a beginning YouTuber. What have been your struggles and successes? What lessons have you learned?

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