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It's been around 1 month since I started trying to build up a youtube channel and it's been a surprisingly awesome growing experience.  I know not everyone here likes Youtube or other traditional social media platforms.  The way I see it is, if it can help me create better content, help me earn more and reach new people, and even bring new people to Hive, what's the problem?

I've been learning a lot, and in the same way Hive forced me out of my comfort zone to explore new ways of expressing myself and the art of catching peoples attention while balancing authenticity, Youtube is doing the same thing but in a much larger and more saturated ocean.

The things that work at Hive can basically work at Youtube, but only if taken to the next level.  There are far more people to reach but every person is more bombarded with unfamiliar names and have much less connection to the creators they are consuming from.   There are less incentives to interact, and the algorithm plays the biggest part in whether you succeed or not.

Contrary to most peoples beliefs, the algorithm is just human nature...but it's human nature on steroids.  It gives people what they want.  Not what they think they want or say they want, what they've shown it that they want.  So the guy who says he uses youtube to study English but looks at sexy girls half the time will get 40% English study videos, 40% sexy girl videos and 20% sexy girls teaching English.  

The algorithm spits back exactly what you give it, and it ranks everything based on keyword relevency and view time, so if you can get someone to watch 100% of your videos, they'll be recommended more of your stuff every single time.  If they watch 50%, they might get recommended your stuff 50% of the time, unless they watch 20% of everyone elses videos, in which case, they'll get more often. 

So the goal is to get people to watch 100% of your stuff, even more than getting them to subscribe. 

So if you can get people clicking and watching, the algorithm is free advertisement.  You want to make sure you are advertising what you can provide consistently though, because the algorithm will punish you for not being able to keep your audience around.

I'm not suggesting anyone ditch Hive, but especially for those who live in a place where the cost of living is above $800 a month, I think diversifying income streams is really the best way to make a living from your content.  

The average salary in Tokyo is 325,000 yen, $2,346 USD as of right now, but if the yen recovers, it will be more like $3000+ USD. Im trying to make a few more income streams through my creative work, since I'm much more of a creator by nature than a trader, investor, or crypto-enthusiast. 

While I enjoy my day job, I would love love love to earn a full income from creating content, and then treat my day job as something I can do as much or as little as I like. I want to be able to take vacations whenever.  As of right now I have no paid vacations, no benefits, no nothing, so back when I caught the rona, I missed out on almost 3 weeks of salary and it took me 3 months to recover.  By monetizing my passions, this kind of thing will no longer be an issue.

So I hope to build a solid base of 1000 supporters who would be willing to check out anything I put out there (of course, scaling back from daily blogs to put out 2-3 videos a week, 1-2 novellas a year, and a music album...eventually lol).  

I am not compromising on the substance. If you want to reach 10 million people as quickly as possible you have to, but to reach 1000 people who love you for you just means you have to be more you. 

My whole policy has always been, I can change the surface stuff...how often I post at twitter, putting a little more work into a thumbnail image, titles and descriptions, or the order in which I release things, but I never want to change the core message of what I share, and I never want to pretend to be someone else.  The good news is that I don't think it will be necessary to fake anything.  Nowadays, consistency and a desire to learn and improve, and experimenting is really all it takes to be successful SOMEWHERE. 

I realized that if I had been focused on better content at Hive, rather than more content, I could have used that content elsewhere to build multiple income streams for myself.  Multiple income streams as a creator is really the only way I see myself making a full salary from my creative work.

To earn a full salary from Youtube is tricky too, it can take over a year just to get monetized.  The threshold is 4000 hours of watch time on long form (over 1 minute videos) and 1000 subscribers.  I currently have 111 hours of watch time and 148 subscribers.

I think, if anything, YouTube helped me develop a healthier relationship with Hive.  I don't feel it as necessary to push out content every day, I spend more time and energy on images and titles and think more about how not to waste peoples time and give them as much as I can in as little time as possible. 

The only complaint I have is that the algorithms reward you for having a one-track-mind. I’ve been experimenting with different styles and I find that any style works as long as you keep with it, but once you start mixing styles, unless you have a core following, the algorithms get confused and recommend you to the wrong people.

I’m currently in the process of bringing back my long podcasts because I realized editing them down was too time consuming and the people who watch consistently like the long ones as much as the short ones. Long form content has to be good…and I worry about the production quality but by changing my thumbnails to be less misleading but still eye-catching, I think I’ll be able to slowly build a real loyal community around the podcast. 

If I can just find 10 people who want to watch every 50 minute episode, YouTube will recommend these videos to 70+ people, then from there if just 1 of them subscribes and watches my other videos, each of those videos gets recommended to 7 more people. As long as I attract the right kind of people, I think that 1/70 of them will like the podcast enough to keep watching, and that is how the channel can keep growing. 😃 

This is contrary to a strategy where I spent 3-5 hours making 5-7 minute videos as perfect as I could and attracted more people with shorter attention spans who were more likely to click away after one video. 

During that time I hid the 40-50 minute full podcast episodes but I recently started bringing them back with some better “branding” that is neither misleading nor boring. Here are two full podcast episodes if you are down for a journey:

How to Love and Forgive Yourself 💙 Finding Home💚
https://youtu.be/Jv2PSYT1n0g

Traditions and Culture Shock in Nigeria 🇳🇬
https://youtu.be/g4GHomToyB8

And if you have a short attention span, check out this new video: 
Almost 40 and still dreaming…
https://youtu.be/uX3mwXQlEDM