1000 YouTube subscribers — Why, What, and How?
After I quit my startup in June 2020, I was hopeless, and it felt that I had lost all purpose in life.
The only thing that kept me going was my bi-weekly sessions with my students, where we would learn about the art of building a business during college. The only time I felt energetic and lively was during these sessions.
The news of me moving away from Stoned Santa was known only to my parents. But during one of these sessions, I finally let it out, and I felt so relaxed after a really long time.
Sharing my feelings with my students was very liberating, and their warmth somehow led me in the direction of kickstarting my very own YouTube channel, which had been a distant desire of my subconscious.
Therefore, I thought the first video on my YouTube channel should be announcing the news of my departure from Stoned Santa. In under 10 hours, the video received 400 views, 250 subscribers, and tons of messages. This felt like the perfect start to my creator journey.
Alas, I wasn’t as consistent as I thought I would be, and with the regular breaks in consistency, my channel missed out on building momentum. This blog shall be an attempt to introspect, and revisit my journey, and while I do so, I can only hope that you find some value in this.
This blog is broken down into 2 sections —
- Stats — Views, subscribers, watch hours, avg watch duration, etc
- The topics I’ve chosen and the reasons WHY
If you’re still interested in reading further, swiping along to the next section.
Let’s start with the Stats
Out of the 1,000 subscribers that you see in the dashboard below, the estimate breakdown is as follows —
- About 300 subscribers are my dear students
- Another 100 would include my friends, family, college, and school folks
- At least 200 of them are from Quora
- An estimated ~300 may have come from organic YouTube searches
- The balance 100 includes some of my customers from Stoned Santa
Had it not been for my experiences with writing, teaching, and Digital Marketing, I perhaps wouldn’t have been writing this blog at all. I am very grateful that these little skills are helping me immensely in my YouTube journey.
Thanks to my experiences in Digital Marketing, I convert my YouTube videos into blogs, and post it on different platforms with the intent to magnify it’s reach from just YouTube to global Google searches.
Engagement Metrics — With over 16,000 viewers, and an average watch time of 2 minutes 40 seconds, my YouTube channel stands at a total watch time of 721.3 hours.
The spikes appearing after Feb, 2021 are because of YouTube lives which I think is very good for increasing awareness, and engagement, and I would encourage fellow YouTubers to stream more often. At present I’m doing it once a week, but hoping to double it by September.
With most of my viewers coming from external sources such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Quora (All the places where I’m actively contributing content), I am now hoping that the discovery of my content will now start to extend beyond my limited online existence.
Looking at the stats below, I can see that out of the 16000 impressions, only 4500(27% of views) have come from YouTube suggesting my content, and the total watch time is about 234 hours, which is about 32% of my total watch-time.
The following chart shall give you a decent idea of all the traffic sources for my YouTube channel — Trippy Entrepreneur.
Chosen topics for the YouTube channel
Since all I had was experiences in building my startup — Stoned Santa, and leveraging different modes of digital marketing to drive traffic, the best way for me to work on my Youtube channel would centre around business, and marketing.
Following is a chart that takes a look at my top 6 performing videos, you will notice that it’s very much related to my startup, and my experiences around Digital Marketing.
To further fuel my growth, I started YouTube Live sessions where I attempt to impart actionable content using unique case studies. Some of the topics of my past YouTube Live’s are as follows —
- Marketing strategy for IITJEE and Medical coaching centres
- Digital AD strategy for a beauty salon run by Miss Mirchi
- Kickstarting your Digital Marketing career, …
- Exploring Unacademy.in’s content marketing strategy, etc
What I realised during these LIVE sessions was that people today want to be engaged, and for that Live uncut sessions are one of the best ways to connect with them.
Going further, until I hit 100 videos, I am going to be open to experimenting with all random ideas that strike my head, and I am hopeful that by the time I hit the 100 video mark, I would have crossed my 10,000 subscriber mark.
Post that, I shall launch my podcast — “Potcast with Santa”, which is a story for another day.
All in all, I will continue my experiments, and I am hoping to learn a few skills, and become a better version of myself when I am attempting to explore more and more of YouTube.
Consciously, I know that my YouTube journey will play a pivotal role in the shaping my career as an Educator, and I look forward to that journey.
If you’ve been reading so far, thank you so much.
If you’re an aspiring YouTuber who is on their way to the 1000 subscriber mark — All the best, I wish you luck, and strength.
and if you’re interested to check out my YouTube channel, then here’s the video that kickstarted my YouTube channel.
Thank you for reading.
