My last update on my YouTube journey thus far was back in May 2019. We’re into into January 2021 after a very odd year in 2020. I thought it good to do a YouTube Progress Update as at December 2020.
Important Numbers
A YouTube channel gets paid a small amount of money whenever an ad is actually watched beyond a certain point by a viewer. This is referred to as ‘monetization’. However, before any channel is allowed to monetize its videos, then there are two important numbers that need to be met:
- The number of Subscribers: 1000
- The amount of Watch Time: 4,000 hours in the previous 12 months
Back in May 2019, I had 247 Subscribers and 510 hours of Watch Time after just over 10 months of releasing videos pretty much every week.
Progress against these numbers
As at 31 December 2020, my subscribers had grown to 1,515, with watch time over the previous 12 months just over 3,000 hours. So, subscriber wise, I’ve passed the target. Watch Time, I’m around 75% of where I need to be. To put this in context, my first video was released on 16th July 2018 – so I’ve been at this almost two and a half years and still not hit the target.
All in all, on the surface, not so good you might think. However, there is now light at the end of the tunnel on this monetization journey.
Watch Time
4000 hours of watch time equates to 240,000 minutes. YouTube publishes statistics for the past 28 days (so, effectively dividing the year into 13). Therefore, once I manage to generate an average of 18,462 minutes over 13 lots of 28 days, my watch time hits the target.
During the first 3 months of my channel, I averaged only 868 minutes per day. By the time we reached May 2019 (last update), I had hit a daily average of 4,508 over the previous 3 months.
It took a little while, but by 9th December, I had, for the first time, breached the magic 18,500 minutes in the previous 28 days and, so far, have managed to remain slightly ahead of this figure.
I think at my last update, I was overly optimistic. I had originally calculated (by assuming the same level of growth) that I would hit this figure by January 2020 whereas in fact it took to the end of the year to do it.
Let’s come back to this shortly.
Subscribers
I’m pleased that my subscriber count has now passed the 1,000 mark. In fact, at the moment, I’m averaging subscriber growth of anything between 90 and 100 new subscribers every 28 days. So, by June I should comfortably pass 2,000 which, of course, can only help my Watch Time metric.
Content Strategy
Like most people trying to create a YouTube channel, I spent lots of time watching other YouTube videos by ‘gurus’. We are generally told that to succeed, you should be posting a minimum of 1 video per week. So, during the first 18 or more months of running this channel, I followed this advice.
I would rack my brains for any type of idea on which to create a video and ensure that I had something to release each Monday. However, by December, 2019 I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t necessarily the best strategy for me. Indeed, lots of my videos – notwithstanding the growth of my channel in general – were getting very few views.
That’s not to say (I don’t think) that the videos themselves were bad. Rather, they just didn’t resonate in that particular format. Equally, advice from ‘gurus’ was to create ‘written’ versions of videos to post on a blog. Effectively, using the same base content in two different formats.
However, a commenter on a link I shared on a FaceBook Group suggested that anything without a ‘piano playing’ component was best done in writing rather than as a video. This, I thought was an extremely sensible suggestion. I therefore decided to slightly modify my content strategy going forward.
Videos
I noticed that the videos that actually got views were those on Recording Piano and other Technology ideas and, of course, actual Tutorials for popular pieces. I therefore decided that I would focus my videos on these two strands and reduce my output to 1 or 2 videos a month. Whilst this might go against the general advice, the fact is that these videos generate many more views and over a much longer period. Equally, clearly they are the videos that resonate with people and add value to them. This, after all, the real aim of the game.
Articles
I used to create videos that fitted into what I have nicknamed the ‘musings from the keyboard’ category. However, I decided that these would be better done as posts on my blog. I call them ‘musings’ because they tend to be ‘alternative’ ideas that I have come across or formed by combining other things that don’t necessarily go entirely along with generally received advice.
As an example, you’ll often see ‘if you want to play fast, you must practice slowly’ and similar ‘truths’ appearing everywhere online. However, given I have played slowly my entire life and still have difficulty playing fast, then to me this doesn’t hit the mark. With a little research, there are many respected teachers who suggest alternative ideas. Therefore, I’m on a bit of a mission to introduce fellow amateur learners to as many of these things as I can.
Whilst it is possible to create videos on them, in reality, I think they do make better articles.
Promotion from other social platforms
I have continued to use Facebook, Twitter and Reddit as places to promote my content. Facebook has piano-related ‘Groups’ of which I’m an active member, Reddit has a piano ‘Subreddit’ that I contribute to frequently. On Twitter of course you can follow people of similar interests so they are more likely to read your tweets.
However, on these platforms, I still avoid continually posting ‘watch my video’ type links. I see many people who try this strategy and suspect that people start to automatically filter out this type of post. Even worse, they may even simply stop following someone. My strategy remains linking a video or article if it directly answers a question that is being raised.
Mailing List
I also set up a Mailing List using Mailchimp. This, again, is following advice received from various gurus about ensuring you have a diverse base. Here, when I create free downloads, then I simply ask for people to provide their email address in exchange for the download.
I started this in January 2019 and to date only have just over 300 people who have signed up to the list. Again, I don’t bombard people. Rather, I try to get out a newsletter 4 times each year and also let people know of new downloads as I have them. I probably need to work a little harder at this
I still have my Tommy’s Piano Corner Facebook Page. This is now up to just over 3,300 likes and is a useful place to let people know of new articles and videos. Again, I suspect that I don’t post enough content here really as FaceBook doesn’t surface things as often when they contain links to things off the platform (unless, of course, you pay for an advert to do this).
Here’s to a great 2021
Anyway, there we go. A quick update on the current overall situation of Tommy’s Piano Corner. I’m still having a great time with this and will definitely be continuing. Of course, the main point of things is Piano. Whilst I might have released less content last year than previously, I did manage to put in 666 hours of piano practice (against 363 the year before) and that, of course, is the main thing!
Have a great 2021 with whatever piano related activities you are up to!
