Whoops! I missed month 4… but I have a good reason. I was on vacation. 🙂
Despite being on vacation, I was still shooting video. In fact, I was maybe shooting more? I came home from Europe with lots of video footage, which it has taken me a month or so to sort through and create a series of videos with. You can see all of them here.
I finally passed a significant milestone this month: I reached 10,000 views, which means I can now monetize!
It was kind of a big pain in the butt, however, as I had to go back and redo a bunch of things I had already set up. Not sure why that happened, but my channel is now monetized, and everything is back to how it was before (except that it defaults to showing me the “new user” view every single time and it’s driving me crazy. I can’t figure out how to change it–and my YT trailer plays automatically).
I didn’t attempt to make any cooking videos this summer. I know that stuff is my jam, but I was traveling, so fell back on a vlog-style format. The feedback seemed positive, and it’s a great way for me process and remember my trips, so I kept making them.
I also had a couple of TV appearances, which I recorded with my screen grabber program and uploaded to my channel for posterity. I did a couple of live streams, too, just for fun. All together, since July 1, I’ve created 12 videos.
And here are my most recent YouTube stats:
| Subscribers | Watch time | Views | Average View Duration | Likes | Dislikes | Comments | Shares | # of videos | |
| Mar-17 | 22 | 1126 | 483 | 2.19 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 2 | |
| Apr-17 | 83 | 2074 | 1221 | 1.41 | 22 | 2 | 7 | 14 | |
| May 17 | 117 | 2024 | 1040 | 1.56 | 21 | 0 | 22 | 35 | 6 |
| Jun 17 | 130 | 2342 | 1207 | 1.56 | 32 | 0 | 13 | 7 | 5 |
| July 17 | 136 | 2355 | 1361 | 1.43 | 14 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 4 |
| Aug 17 | 155 | 3226 | 1919 | 1.4 | 27 | 1 | 8 | 18 | 6 |
Everything is slowly climbing in a upward direction–yay! Except my watch times–boo. But I did finally reach my goal of getting 10K of views, so I’m counting it overall as a win.
Here’s what I’m still struggling with:
Format: I still haven’t found something that really works. I’m continuing to play with formats and using lighting and multiple camera angles. But I still haven’t hit the magic formula that works for me. Some of this is also technical stuff I’m still working out.
Location: this is something that I have found a major challenge from the beginning. My own kitchen is too small, and the layout doesn’t work. I’ve tried a few other locations, but I just can’t seem to find something that really works for me.
Views: views on my videos continue to be quite low, which I guess is to be expected as I’m still just growing my channel and only have a couple hundred subs. Facebook is also a challenge; do I upload the entire video to FB where it will get views, but then take away from my YT channel views? This has been something I’ve gone back and forth over again and again.
Onwards and upwards! What will month 6 bring??? My goal for this month is to shoot a new YouTube channel intro. I badly need one–my current one is about 3 years old.
