I’ve been making videos on YouTube for almost 2 years straight and I’ve really learned a lot in that time. To say the least it’s been an interesting process of seeing which videos work and which ones don’t. We’ve covered travel content, videos editing how-to’s, as well as a few other topics and all have had wildly varying amounts of success.
To dive into that data a little bit, my most watched video, posted 2 years ago, is a lengthy, boring, Fusion tutorial and yet it has over 26,000 views and is still growing yet I have other tutorials that just don’t seem to grow any. The same sort of pattern can be seem for all our travel videos that we’ve made as well. Although, travel content doesn’t get as many views on my channel.
I think the reason some videos perform well and others flop is 2-fold. The first reason, I think some videos just aren’t very good. I’m fully willing to accept that and learn from it. There have been times I’ve been in a rush or simply didn’t care at the time some of my videos just aren’t up to par even with my own standards because I focused more on cranking out content rather than the quality of the content.
The second reason, I think my channel has such a wide dichotomy of content that the Youtube Algorithm can’t quite figure out fully who it is I am, what it is I do, or who my target audience needs to be. There’s just such a verity of content that YouTube doesn’t really know where to fit me in and thus prevents growth.
All that is to say I’ve been shotgunning videos at the wall to see what sticks trying to figure out what type of videos I need to be making and I’ve collected enough data at this point that I think I can make an informed decision as to where I want this channel to go. When I first started this channel I wasn’t that serious or consistent about it but I began by pushing VFX how-to’s in Fusion which at the time was in demand but not a common topic on Youtube. Given how popular it is now, I think if I had stuck with it and continued that trend this channel would have probably skyrocketed into success. But hindsight is 20/20. While I would have been feeding the algorithmic beast content that it would have wanted, I wouldn’t have been making content that I wanted to make and so I started making other types of videos to see what would happen.
We started making travel content videos, informal vlog like projects, and we even changed the name of the channel because I wanted it to reflect who it is we are what we are about. I wanted to focus more on lifestyle rather than simply video editing how-to’s. To me, Rather than treating Youtube as a way to gain views and fame, it’s a way of making memories and leaving something to look back on years down the road all while doing something I love. But it’s also a way of building a community. I want to continue to make things that make me happy. And so that leaves us here, asking, “What comes next?”.
I want to continue making more cinematic travel videos and series. However, these projects take a lot of focus, planning, preparation, editing, sound design, and they are really hard to be consistent with. But not to worry, these projects aren’t going anywhere. I want to continue to plan and focus on making travel series’ but with the amount of work they take it’s not something that’s going to be weekly or bi-weekly. These are a special series that I want to take my time with and make them look good. I don’t want anything to change with them except improvement.
Secondly, I want to make less filmmaking how-to videos. I want the YouTube algorithm to better understand what it is we do and who we are so I want to reduce the videos on the channel that just don’t fit in. Not that I want to do away with these types of videos but they just don’t quite fit in with the content I want to make so I want to be more selective about what I post rather than just making content for the sake of making content.
Thirdly, I want to formally start a regular vlog on our Channel. I want it to be more of a lifestyle vlog or a place I can just make videos where I cover a topic all without worrying about the production quality of content. Not that I don’t want my videos to look good but I want to have something I can upload more regularly and allow me to focus more on the topic rather than the B-roll.
But lastly we want to hear from you guys what you want to see out of our YouTube channel. So if you have ideas or recommendations as to what we should do, drop it down in the comments down bellow and let us know.
In addition to all this, we’ve also been working on a few other things as well. Last year we built this website and started the blog. Taylor has been posting most of her writing there but I think it can also be something that I can utilize as well for things that happen on our channel. Along with the blog we also started a podcast. We only made 6 episodes last year as we were trying to figure out how we should utilize it with everything else we do.
Both of these platforms together make a great way to share a behind the scenes look at our adventures and cover other topics as well. So you can expect a blog post or podcast so likely accommodate any large production we do on Youtube and it’d be a great place to share things that wouldn’t necessarily fit on the channel but are still related to what we do.
So that’s pretty much what you guys can look forward to happening this year. Like always, let us know what you guys think down in the comments bellow and check out all our social links to follow us and our adventures.