Early in my very public experiment with YouTube, I hit what seemed like content gold. A short video I produced racked up over 100,000 views and thousands of likes in just a few weeks (it’s the video shared with this week’s story). The simple one-minute-long "short" was on bending PVC pipe using hot sand (it's really cool...I mean hot).
For whatever reason, people were watching and commenting.
Mine wasn't an original idea. Instead, I learned the technique by (you guessed it) watching YouTube. The difference between my video on bending PVC and the others I saw was that I decided to make a one-minute short on the subject, not a feature-length video.
That’s right - I was the first to make a YouTube Shorts video on bending PVC pipe. (Please engrave this monumental feat on my headstone when I'm laid to rest.)
The video now has over 425,000 views and nearly 20,000 likes. Sure, it's not like some actual "viral videos" that receive millions of views in mere days. But compared to my other attempts that have garnered between a few hundred and a few thousand views - after months - the PVC video is indeed an outlier. (Note: one other short I made - on bending wood with a table saw - also did well for the same reasons explained here for the PVC video).
Don't get me wrong - I think my PVC bending video is decent. I'm confident I presented the material in an easy-to-understand way. Plus, it has broad appeal. The technique is immediately applicable for handy persons, makers, and artists. And best of all - one doesn't need any fancy tools to bend PVC this way, making it all-the-more accessible.
But there any many other good concepts that are well-presented on YouTube. And most never take off. Success is not only about a good idea; the algorithm-driven mega-media machine YouTube needs more. What that is is anyone’s guess. And while a relatively rare few seem to figure it out, most barely scratch the surface.
So why did one or two of my videos catch on but not the others?
When I made the PVC bendy video, YouTube had only recently rolled out its "shorts" format. These are one-minute-or-less videos, shot vertically (portrait instead of landscape) for smartphone viewing. They launched this feature to compete with TikTok, which exclusively uses said format.
As YouTube tested this feature, they arbitrarily promoted all kinds of videos including mine. They were “slinging spaghetti to see what sticks.” Essentially, YouTube shared my video a lot, resulting in an elevated (and atypical) number of views. The result was a small but significant percentage of this great number of potential viewers watched and liked my video, but it wasn’t enough percentage-wise to appease the almighty algorithm.
This I didn't know at the time. No, I thought I was on to something. And I expected it to continue.
As I saw it then, there was an incentive to keep trying. I was getting thousands of likes and my following had grown to over ten thousand. Surely I was on track to success, right? All I had to do was replicate what I had done in subsequent videos. And then more successes would follow. Victory would be mine! Time to watch all the cash and fame roll in.
Okay, I was never this naive, but I was somewhat unrealistic about the possibilities. And that kept me going, for a while.
Not surprisingly (given what I know now), I never captured a similar level of success in subsequent videos. And I tried. Shorts. Long-format. Catchy titles and flashy thumbnails. I was goofy. I was serious. I acted. And I was myself. But only marginal interest came my way no matter what I tried (insert big sigh).
To be honest, YouTube is a decidedly challenging way to craft a living, even a partial one as a side hustle (as I was attempting). The platform continues to evolve, and the opportunity for independent creators is shrinking. Some say the day of the little person making it big on YouTube is long gone.
But YouTubing or not, there is a good lesson in this somewhere.
The most obvious: depending on luck is a terrible YouTube, business, and life strategy. But this we all know already.
An arguably better lesson: With YouTube, as in business, anticipate what's coming and prepare to jump on.
Said another way:
Find an emerging niche.
Do the homework.
Be ready to act when the time is right.
Gosh, that sure sounds like work (and entrepreneurship)! And it also means not always making videos about what we want, but instead making videos that others want to see.
I didn’t set out to become a YouTube star, however. Not at all. I was looking to piece together my new career as a maker/writer and I gave YouTube a shot to see if it could be part of my overall strategy. Alas, it looks like it probably isn’t.
And I’m okay with that. YouTube might not be in my future, but I sure enjoyed the process.
Capturing what I created and distilling the approach into a coherent story that others actually wanted to see - it was creative indulgence from start to finish. Yes, YouTubing was fun while it lasted. Successful or not.
This leads me to the best lesson of all, one where my channel keeps on giving in surprising ways.
Even though I haven't posted in months, I get regular comments on my existing YouTube videos. Some viewers chime in to say they like an idea. Others want more details on particular steps and processes. And a few inquire about materials and tools I use.
I always reply.
It's not many comments - one or two a week. But its enough to know that what I created still has meaning for at least a few. I’ve connected with people, in positive ways, out there in the great abyss we know as the internet. And that feels good.
It reminds me of teaching where all it takes is that one smiling, nodding kid to make the whole daily grind worth it.
Not a bad lesson, I’d say.
Until next time.
JRC
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