100,000 (and change)

You probably don’t know me. If you do, you know that I am an introvert, that’s capable of extrovert-like social interactions in situations where/when it’s called for.

That’s the main reason why it’s so strange that I participate in social media. And you might think: “YouTube isn’t social media”, but to me it is. Your personality goes out in your content, and you interact with viewers in the comments.

Plus, the deck was stacked against me:

1. no digital art skills to speak of

2. no video editing skills

3. no competitive market analysis

4. I didn’t watch much TY content, so I didn’t have anything to emulate

My start was not one of fast success. I didn’t know what I was doing, and it showed. As the kids would say, the early efforts were "“cringe”, but the writing and pacing were solid enough that I was converting watch time and subscribers on meager view counts. Packaging improvements bumped up impression conversion.

From there, it was just reps.

To look at the view counts on old videos now is misleading. Most of those videos have added significant view counts in the months since testing ended, and it’s not representative of how the videos performed when new.

Last August, I qualified for the YouTube Partner Program, on the performance of Dad Ruins VPN Services. Since then I’ve had 5 or 6 “big”-ish videos that have brought me to this milestone.

Of my 4 major weaknesses, I’ve really only improved on my video editing. It’s still primitive, but I think it has a certain “old person doing a thing” charm.

Thanks for helping me get here. It doesn’t really change anything, in terms of performance, expectations, or pay, but it’s nice to accomplish a goal - arbitrary as it is.