60 Day YouTube Update: 830 Subscribers, 88K+ Watch Time Minutes and Over 20K+ Views

Ahhh…. If you haven’t heard yet, your girl started a YouTube channel and published my first video on June 8th. In just 60 days, I’ve learned so much… and I’d love to share that information to help with your journey!

Q: What made you start a YouTube Channel?

I’ve been wanting to start a YouTube channel for at least a year. I procrastinated and found a million reasons to avoid starting. Whether it was not having the right equipment, my home wasn’t set up for YouTube (lighting, clean background), I wasn’t sure if I had a large enough following on Instagram yet, it was quarantine and my hair wasn’t done, and so forth and so on…

Q: What was the breaking point that finally pushed you to do it?

Honestly, I was tired of watching everyone else flourish on YouTube. I researched more than enough to at least start and every single video and post I read just said to START. Everything will not be perfect the first few tries, but you can’t learn until you start. I filmed a Target haul video and posted it to Instagram that did really well. Then, I realized that Instagram videos do well which leads to engagement and followers, but YouTube videos doing well eventually leads to monetization. I put so much effort and time into my Instagram stories, I’m like.. I could easily convert some of my audience to YouTube with this same content.

Q: How often do you post videos on YouTube? Did you have a schedule?

Ugh…. Well first I started with a goal of 3 videos per week. That didn’t happen, so then I said 2 videos per week and that didn’t happen either. It was tough for me because (1) I was still working my full-time job, (2) I was still so critical of my videos and wanted them to be perfect and (3) I was lazy (to be honest). In June and July, I posted 4 videos each (a total of 8). Then I heard about VEDA (Videos Every Day in August) and for some crazy reason, I agreed to try and here I am… 17 days of consecutive videos on YouTube. I’m super proud of myself for even making it this far.

Q: Videos Every Day?? How did you go from not being able to post twice a week to posting videos every single day?

Good question! The biggest reason I’m meeting this goal is because I communicated it to my audience. It’s like me giving my word to someone. Once I do that, it’s more about my character than anything else. Even if I upload a video saying I won’t be able to upload a video today (which is something I did this past Friday). I can’t allow myself to not meet this goal. Committing to videos everyday forces me to be more creative and not sweat the small stuff. I don’t have 2 days to edit a video - it needs to go up tonight! So I’m forced to accept progress instead of waiting for perfection. I don’t have time for it to be perfect, I need it to be good enough and in time, I’ll learn to be better.

Q: But Videos Every Day?? How are you doing this with a full-time job? Seriously!

HA!! Listen, sometimes even I don’t know how it gets done. I think because I’m so good with IG Stories, the story telling skill is kind of there already. So I’m not really learning to talk to an audience or getting over stage-freight. While it is a different audience and a different language (what works for IG won’t always work for YouTube). Instagram stories hold attention for 15 seconds, on YouTube you’re trying to hold someone’s attention for 3+ minutes. Since my IG stories performed so well, I felt like I have the basic knowledge to start. I just had to learn to break stuff up and use lead magnets to encourage folks to watch my other videos. Like if I’m going to H&M to shop, that will be one video and then a try-on haul is a second video. If I shop in multiple stores in the same day, I separate the content to have more videos for YouTube. I also would start editing as the day goes on… So after I leave H&M, I’ll upload that video content to InShot (the app I use) and at least start getting content in there so it’s easier to edit and post later that night.

Q: How has posting videos every day helped your YouTube?

Oh man… it’s helped me tremendously! In July I posted 4 videos I gained 385 subscribers, had 19652 minutes of watch time, and 4,584 views. As of August 20th, I have 832 subscribers, 88,256 minutes of watch time, and 20,483 views. So I’ve more than doubled my watch time/views in comparison to July and the month isn’t even over yet. It’s helped me tremendously!

Q: What is your current YouTube goal?

Well first to build an audience and a community similar to what I’m building on Instagram. Second, is of course to monetize my channel and eventually work with brands.

Q: Top 3 Tips to any new YouTubers that might be struggling?

Work on your channel art (banner), take time with your thumbnail pictures and title (they should be eye-catching), use tags for your video (which are like hashtags for Instagram) to help appear in searches, and stay consistent. Find out reasons why you lose interest in other YouTube videos and make sure you’re not doing that in yours. Start off with shorter videos until you build up your audience. Find a good time to upload and try and stay consistent with the time. I found myself uploading right before midnight on most days which was horrible. The videos did well, BUT when I uploaded during the daytime, the videos performed better! More folks are on during the day so it pays to be early.

Q: Top 3 Tips to anyone thinking of starting a YouTube channel?

YouTube isn’t for everyone so don’t feel like you have to start a channel, BUT if you want to then start! Get comfortable in front of a camera first and then start, start, start. Maybe just do a couple of videos to see how you feel (won’t hurt). But the key is to just start. If you’re comfortable talking to your phone on IG stories, you’ll eventually do fine on YouTube. I started using my cell phone, InShot (app) to edit videos + Over (app) to help with overlays. I blamed my delay in starting on timing, but it honestly wasn’t the issue. We make time for the things that are important to us and at the time YouTube just wasn’t important.

Q: What is your best performing video right now?

My best performing video is an H&M Try-On Haul that’s currently at 1834 views and 7,365 watch time minutes. Second is my Target Haul (which was my first video by the way) and third is a J Crew Try-On Haul,

Q: Why do you think those videos did so well?

They’re relevant and that’s what people are searching for. While home, we love online shopping and we would all love to see someone that looks like us try on clothes. I order stuff online, get it and I’m immediately disappointed. I posted my Target style video right as two new collections dropped with them. It was the perfect storm.

Q: Any final thoughts?

Learn to master one platform before jumping on another. If you’re under 10K on Instagram and trying to grow your following, I’d focus on that first. Then, once you have a routine together, then jump to YouTube. It’s hard to learn everything at the same time and you don’t want to confuse people. But once you have it together just start and promote, promote, promote. Get comfortable promoting yourself because that’s the only way you’ll grow. Nobody will be checking for you when you first start. You’ll have to get on their radar.