I’m 59 days past Q4 2021 as I write this, but it’s time to do a quarterly reflection around YouTube and my journey of being a creator. Though I’ve had a great start to 2022 Q1, I’m going to focus on everything that came before.
Back in the day, I used to document my journey by posting short-form videos and a long-form podcast series called “reflections”. But over time, I lost interest in the heavy lifting that was required to film, edit and publish content like this. So as of current, I’d rather keep any public reflection minimal and low effort through some casual writing on my website.
I’m putting this on wax because even though I’ve been on YouTube casually since 2008 and consistently putting out self-development content since November 2017, for the first time ever, I am serious about becoming a creator as part of my vision and I want to document my journey of achieving success in this space.
The format may range from monthly to quarterly, but we’ll start with quarterly today to capture October onwards.
Updates
After a massive change in how I wanted to approach content creation and YouTube, I spent the first quarter of 2021 recharging from my burnout on old formats (remember those hour-long vlogs?), not creating much and instead just evolving in silence. The universe then guided me in the right direction, from adding new channels, to getting affordable but badass gear, and at a certain point, it was time to rebrand my channels and start over with a fresh new main channel that’s built for growth on this platform. And I’m so glad I did.
I officially launched the new channel on October 18th, 2021 (TD fact check) with my first video about getting a camera.
In Q4 2021, on the main channel, I put out 4 videos and ended the year with 56 subscribers.
On my second channel, I put out 26 videos and hit 13 subscribers. This channel however isn’t meant for growth, but rather for connecting with my audience, documenting my journey, experimenting and just really posting whatever I want to assist in my creativity.
I also soft-launched a weekly newsletter as an experiment (purely archive basis without the email signup functionality) and wrote weekly at a format I’ve been wanting to do for many years (and have been loving it so far)
What worked?
Becoming part of the community by commenting authentically. I’ve been heavily in comment sections when I have something to say that’s relevant and authentic. If you’re around the communities I’m in, you’ll notice how frequently I’m in top comments. Since I can see that hundreds of views on my videos have come from “channel pages”, I’d wager to say that these comments have potentially brought back thousands of people to my channel — all from being myself in the comment sections of popular videos and speaking my truth!
SEO. For my first video, I didn’t expect much. But because I leveraged the phrase “Sony ZV-1” and variations of that key phrase, the community found it and I got 600+ views with only 10 subscribers. Given that I spent the last 4 years without practically any views, this felt great!
Not giving too much energy to social media promotion. Honestly, I just find the social media promotion is not all that great. I have too many people from my past lives on my social media who don’t give a flying fuck about my content and I probably don’t think it’s worth their time. I’d rather it come internally from YouTube and SEO. That currently feels the best.
DaVinci Resolve. I am absolutely loving this software and it’s helped my editing workflow so much with ease of adjustments and this unique zig-zag manner I edit in to achieve the smooth and beautiful audio pacing that you now experience in my videos. It’s probably too subconscious though for you to notice, but that means I’m doing a good job. (P.S. there is no right and wrong video editing software, it’s just about finding the tool that fits best for you. And currently, Resolve is that tool for me).
More Josh Moxey. Though I didn’t post anywhere close to what I would’ve preferred to, I love this as a secondary place where I can put content that’s more intimate, entertaining, etc. It can be self-serving, it can be pure humour, it can be whatever I went. And it’s helped me create much better videos because of it. It’s a massive creative outlet for me where I can post as much or as little as I want — total freedom, total flexibility, minimal pressure.
What didn’t work?
Overcomplicating videos. I had a lot of resistance to making the editing process simple for videos and it stopped me from putting out videos as much as I would’ve liked to. I’ve since done some healing on this and a lot has changed. Stay tuned for 2022 Q1 updates!
Sticking to my upload schedule. I told myself I’d upload once a week and once I got started it was a rush. A total game of how can I manage my time and ship perfectly to meet the timeline. Sunday’s were this haul ass day where I’d ship a video. But then I had the excuse of some very annoying errors within Resolve that made me miss my first week, then I found an excuse the next week, and then I only posted once a month for November and December. Not good enough. Need to change this for the rest of 2022 and execute faster and more imperfectly, while also not shipping trash in the name of speed. It’s a fine balance. But a challenging one.
Watch time. I had really rough watch time on the bedroom lighting setup video and Just Start. At the time, I thought I did a good job with both of those — especially Just Start — but I’ll have to analyze with fresh eyes what happened in the retention graph and the video. I’m not worried, however, because sometimes the video just doesn’t come across as intended. It is what it is. And with every video, I am doing my best to level up the level of engagement, so eventually, it will just be total clockwork.
My response to when someone unsubscribed. Yikes. This hurts me at times. But I have to remember, I’m not for everyone and this content isn’t for everyone, and no one is meant to subscribe for forever. I change, my content changes, people change, interests change — it’s all one big game of non-stop change, which inherently means people come and go. More healing to do on this.
Being behind. Though this idea of posting clips weeks, months or even years down the line on my main channel or second channel is working great, I dislike how late things are. I want to get to the point where I film, then edit, then post all within the span of a week. That’s such a cool thought. I’ll get there.
Lessons
Shipping a separate “deleted scenes” video makes your main video that much better. In times past, I kept in too many mistakes, bloopers, anecdotes and digressions that weren’t serving the main storyline enough and took away from retention. Since moving them all to a separate timeline and creating another video out of it, my videos have improved so much. It lets me cut everything that isn’t essential for the story, knowing that the footage that is special to me, that I find hilarious, and just total L’s that are worth sharing will all see the day of light for those who care to watch — but in another video.
Watch time is key for getting recommended by YouTube. I knew this conceptually, but it was another thing to see it happen on my Sony ZV-1 video. Use search and manual promotion to help get the initial high watch time that tells YouTube that it’s worth watching. Then, once the average watch time is high enough, YouTube will take over and start recommending it to people if you can communicate what the video is and who it’s for using SEO.
Shoot thumbnails separately. It’s a terrible idea to rely on just a still frame within a video for the thumbnail. You’re setting yourself up for a thumbnail lottery which will likely lead to a lower clickthrough rate and reduce your chances of growth with that video. Instead, deliberately shoot the thumbnail as a premeditated, well-thought-through opportunity to help create intrigue and visually show what the story is about is in as little text as possible, with ideally no text.
Flow in audio creates flow in video. Pacing in audio creates pacing in video. This is a seriously underrated insight that almost no one considers. Half the battle of video editing is getting the flow and pacing of audio just right. Not just music, but the words, the sounds, etc. If the flow and pacing of the audio are high enough, no matter if it’s a black screen or beautiful cinematography — the video on screen is insanely forgiving. This can be achieved through L cuts, J cuts, fading, overlapping, audio manipulation to speed up moments, constant new sounds, adding in sound effects, music, etc. All of it fundamentally changes your experience of what you’re seeing on the screen and how engaged you are. Side note, I also have a mini system I’ve developed for flow and pacing right now — from how many frames I’ll leave after a word to how many before I cut in, to what words I can easily L-cut and J-cut to — and it’s fundamentally changing the experience of my videos. I hope to demonstrate this point someday with proper examples because it blows me away how significant audio is to video and how frequently people diminish it and undervalue it. It’s arguably the most important part of your video.
Conclusion
I’m really excited for the rest of the year. So much so, that with the recent traction I’ve gathered in Q1 2022, I’m shooting for a YouTube partnership by the end of the year (which means I’ll need 4000 watch hours and 1000 subscribers). In the next edition, I’ll also talk about how and why my drone video ended up hitting the algorithm and everything I learned from this experience.
Thanks for reading.
