What I learned from making 100 YouTube videos

What I learned from making 100 YouTube videos

My stats

  • 2,4000 subscribers
  • 100 videos
  • Impression to click-through rate - 6%
  • Average view duration - 3:30
  • Most viewed video - 72k

100 is the minimum

Don’t give up until you hit 100 videos… at a very minimum.

The only way to get good at YouTube is by making and publishing more YouTube videos. No amount of reading or watching “how to” videos on YouTube will replace real-world experience. If you’re going to start publishing, set yourself a goal, and don’t think about anything else, otherwise you’ll quit too early. Ignore all the other signals, just make content!!!

You really need to love your niche

I started a YouTube channel because I love kitesurfing so much, and I had learned a lot from the online kitesurfing community and wanted to give back. I did not start it because I thought I would build a business, and I wouldn’t start a YouTube channel today with the primary intention of trying to build a business. The real motivator for me to create this content was that when I was learning to kitesurf, I found the content on YouTube to be lacking. I wanted to contribute the knowledge that I’d gained through a lot of trial and error to other people learning to kitesurf. I wanted to add to the body of knowledge out there that was available to the world.

The addiction is real

Watching a new video perform is highly addictive. Once you hit the publish button and start seeing the views go up in real time, you can’t put your phone down. I’ve caught myself refreshing my YouTube stats over and over again throughout the day, and that obsession can motivate you to make your next piece of content. Same thing goes for when a piece of content gains traction after launch, sometimes they gain momentum with seasonality. I noticed that happen with my highest performing video “How you can learn to Kitesurfing in 15 Hours”, it got off to a slow start the first month, and then growth compounded. Breaking 20,000 views is one of the most powerful motivators I found that kept me putting in the work to make more videos!

Subscribers don’t mean much

When I started the channel, I became obsessed with watching my subscriber count go up. It’s natural because it's one of the most visible metrics you see, and it’s one of the two criteria for monetization. Over time I realized this obsession was unwarranted. I saw that my new videos didn’t perform better when I had more subscribers, so there’s no real long term benefit. From the screenshot below, you can see my many of most recent videos didn’t even break 1k views. Having followers doesn’t help if your content isn’t good or is too niche.

The more I read about the YouTube algorithm, the more I learned that each and every video has to stand on its own. If it’s good and it gets a high click through rate, and a high retention rate, then it’ll get more views. If it’s not, there’s no amount of subscribers that will help your video perform.

The stress and pressure are real

We are beholden to the great algorithm in the sky… and that means the pressure to perform with each video can become immense. I mentioned above watching your videos perform can be addictive, but watching your videos fail to perform can be soul crushing. I don’t make my living on YouTube, so the stakes are low for me, but I can imagine that full-time creators feel incredible anxiety and financial pressure when things don’t work.

You have to think about traffic acquisition

I don’t think you can rely on the YouTube algorithm alone to find your audience. This means you need to do some leg work to figure out where you might find communities of people interested in what you’re doing. Join forums, find facebook groups, participate in the subreddits. Don’t just spam them with your content, you’ve got to be a valuable and active participant in the community, and the content you make has to be useful to them.

Simplify and streamline

If you are the talent, the DP, the camera person, the sound person, and the editor… you’ve got to find shortcuts somewhere. At every step of the process, you have to find a way to streamline your workflows

  • Don’t aim to have the video production quality of a top 10 YouTuber… it’s not realistic when you’re starting out.
  • Get things right in camera , you’ll have plenty of other things to do when you’re editing. This means record sound in camera, get the lighting right in camera, get the exposure right in camera, get the crop right in camera.
  • Organize your b-roll footage so you can find it quickly during the editing process.
  • Create templates for your thumbnails so you have your regular graphics, fonts, and colors all ready to use each and every time.
  • Save your common video presets in your video editing software.
  • Shoot the thumbnail first, so you’re not trying to find a thumbnail in your video footage after the fact. You’ll save time, and the thumbnails will be better.
Big battery, wireless monitoring, wireless mic, and a remote trigger are all things that make recording myself more streamlined and faster.
Big battery, wireless monitoring, wireless mic, and a remote trigger are all things that make recording myself more streamlined and faster.

You can’t be perfect

The single biggest learning I’ve had from my time on YouTube is that you cannot allow your perfectionist tendencies to take over. You can waste infinite time making a video perfect, and if you do, you’ll never publish a video. You can always trim the edit just a touch tighter. You can always fiddle with the audio settings a bit more. And if you go down the color grading rabbit hole, you may never come out again.

My journey into becoming a content creator has largely been a battle between my inner perfectionist and my inner desire to get my thoughts out into the world in video form. I made private travel videos for years before I ever posted to YouTube, and in hindsight I wish I’d just started publishing videos to YouTube much much sooner.

What’s Next

So now that I hit my initial goal of 100 videos, it’s time to set a new one. I want to set it lower because now that I have a kid, the amount of time I’m able to dedicate to side projects like this is continually shrinking.

150 videos or bust. That’s my next goal. I’m going to have to get a lot faster at creating them, and I’m going to have become a lot more comfortable with my content being imperfect. For that balance to work out, my content will need to be much much better at telling a story and conveying useful information that other kitesurfers care about. I’ll also need to streamline my process, I have less time than ever to go on kitesurfing surfing trips to get amazing b-roll, so I’ll have to rely more on a simple talking head desk setup.