What I’ve learnt after one year on YouTube.

So at the time of writing I have been uploading videos to YouTube weekly for a whole year. So what have I learnt during that time?

Well, loads!

It’s been great fun is the overriding impression of the year but some of my goals have not been hit and in this blog I want to explore that in a bit more depth. I have just completed editing a video to accompany this, with the added advantage, for you, of watching me shoot some lovely ancient woodland while I go through my thoughts. So go and check it out, it’s released on Sunday 3rd September at 6pm as usual. ( Link here )

So first of all, what have I gained from YouTube over this last year? Well, for a start 507 subscribers. That is awesome and thank you to each and every one of you. I hope you have enjoyed at least some of the video’s you have watched! More about subscribers and views in a minute.

Benefits

I think the main benefit of uploading videos to YouTube as my main focus in life (and I am very lucky to be able to do this I know) has been the amount of time I have got out with my camera. One of the goals I set at the start of the year was to produce a video for you to watch every week, without fail. It’s a case of being ‘persistent and consistent’ with it, which is the way to go to build up the audience, without whom there would be no point in uploading videos at all I guess. I’ve successfully hit that goal and I’m proud to say I haven’t missed a single week. I have even produced enough to upload some on a Wednesday night as well. I really enjoyed producing my ‘Woodland Wednesday’ playlist You can find the playlist here and more recently ‘One Sho(o)t Wednesdays’ These shorter vlogs have tried to emphasise fun and enjoyment, which is what I want you to feel about your photography.

Getting out more has had the unsurprising effect of an improvement in my photography, practise makes perfect as they say and I have learnt a lot. YouTube has also helped with this as kind people leaving comments under videos have made me think and I have learnt a lot from contributors. It remains a truth that the more you get out with your camera the better your photographs become as long as you are reflective.

The same can also be said about my discovery of woodland photography. I said, right at the start of the year that photographing woodland was not something I had done a lot of and certainly not successfully. The challenge of producing weekly videos for YouTube has meant that I have visited woods on numerous occasions and I can’t remember a single occasion when I have been disappointed. It’s true that the photographs have not always been amazing, certainly in the early days, but I discovered the 65x24 crop plus a few other tricks and all of a sudden the woodland as a source of photographic inspiration has come to life! Even without producing anything worthwhile just being in the woodland with time on my hands has been nothing short of magical. Without YouTube and an audience I doubt I would have ever used my camera in front of any trees at all. It’s now my favourite genre.

And, that has also led me on to my processing, which again has improved through practise. I’ve even come up with my own version of the Orton Effect for woodland ( link here ).

Plus the skills of producing videos, working with sound (the bit I’ve found hardest actually), learning about editing, choosing music, transitions, captions etc the list goes on but it’s been an enjoyable experience. I can now produce a video in a day if I have to and this is getting quicker still. I think the quality has improved as well along the way.

YouTube has also allowed me to connect with people, which is its goal as a platform and I’ve enjoyed hearing from people from all over the world. I’ve also made a friend in Garry Sugden, my northern buddy who came and said hello when I was on top of a hill at Kelly Hall Tarn producing a vlog. We’ve met up several times since and are going to be running photographic workshops together in the near future.

Now what about the downsides of YouTube?

Well the purpose of YouTube and the creator’s reasons for being on YouTube are different, is the first thing to remember. YouTube wants video’s on its platform that people enjoy watching, it wants them to come back to the platform again and again and either buy into their subscription service or watch the videos and the ads that it gets paid to put on each of the videos. Clearly it’s all about driving up viewing hours and so increasing ad revenue.

The creator on the other hand has a few of several aims by putting videos up on the platform. Big business might use it to create a user manual for a product rather than producing a paper one (anyone seen a paper car manual lately?), or to encourage troubleshooting videos or to advertise its latest model (and use creators to do this for free) or allow creators to review their products. From the creators side, this, I would imagine, is one of the benefits of running a big YouTube channel; you get products to try/keep. I certainly remember looking on enviously at some of the biggest photography names getting their hands on the new Nikon Z8 recently before anyone else had even seen it. So one reason is advertising and getting your name out in front of people, and I think a lot of photographers see it as another necessary arm of their business model. Certainly for me, the aim has been to increase my profile and therefore find a market for workshops etc.

Another aim is the aim of getting monetised. Once you have 1000 subscribers and 4000 view hours in any 365 day period you can apply for a little slice of that ad revenue I mentioned earlier. The slice though, it has to be said is very, very small and you will not earn a decent living doing it until you have a huge number of viewers. My aim had been to get to 1000 subscribers in a year and then start making small sums alongside everything else to help with costs etc. I have failed in that and I think I know why.

It all comes down, to a certain extent to the amount of views and subscribers you have. YouTube know who the big names are in your chosen sector and the assumption is made that if you have a lot of views and subscribers you are producing good videos. And I think that assumption is pretty spot on. I cannot dispute that the biggest YouTubers that I watch produce excellent videos.

But that doesn’t mean that less successful creators produce crap videos although that is certainly possible.

So the big creators, who are already big, get their videos thrust into the feeds of the consumer as YouTube wants you to enjoy your time and come back. Makes sense…unless you are not one of them.

So what do you do if you are not one of the bigger channels, or even if you are and you want more and more views? Well the most important chance that you have to attract viewers to your channel, if you happen to be on their Home Screen, is to have a catchy thumbnail. This often features the creators face big and smiling, or set into a grimace and if it features a piece of camera equipment in the case of a photography channel even better. Loads of people enjoy camera porn it seems. If you can come up with a thumbnail that features the creator, a question which is intriguing, a camera and also the hint that people might learn something then you are onto a winner. I know from my own year that my most successful videos have featured camera gear, although there are very few of them. This means your video might get watched, you therefore produce more videos with a slight variation on a theme with a similar thumbnail, other photographers notice this and do the same with their thumbnails and content and we are now in a situation where the consumer only gets shown that type of video. Some of them by the way don’t even feature the content promised on the thumbnail. At least, not a lot sometimes.

So why don’t I play the game and do gear reviews, have thumbnails of me stroking my camera and come up with intriguing titles that make me out to be some kind of photographic messiah who you will learn from, all tied up in an intriguing question in order to get more views and subscribers, which was my aim to start with?

Well the answer is quite simple I think. I do admit to producing thumbnails similar to this. This weeks video is a case in point. It will be interesting to see how it does. But the truth is I produce photographs and videos of the things I like, not aimed at a particular YouTube market. I’m not interested in doing gear reviews. I like new gear don’t get me wrong and I talk about the gear I’m using on the channel but my videos are about having fun photographing the landscape. That’s what I enjoy doing. If I start producing videos for the sole purpose of getting views I will be in danger of not enjoying producing them. As a commercial photographer some years ago, producing photos to a brief to fulfil a clients vision was not anywhere as satisfying as producing photos that I wanted to take. The same will happen to me on YouTube if I go down this route.

So what will happen?

First of all I doubt YouTube will change what it does. The catchy thumbnails will still get produced, consumers will still click on them and therefore there will be an increase in them. The big guys will continue getting bigger as long as they keep feeding YouTube and their public what they want.

And I will continue producing videos that I enjoy producing. I am lucky as I don’t need to earn a living from this so I have the luxury of doing that. As Garry says, ‘don’t produce videos for views (substitute photographs for likes on your favourite social media platform) produce videos for the fun you have. Viewers will find you.’ I think they will but it’s certainly taking longer than I thought.

In a nutshell YouTube does not really care much for small new creators, it’s only interested in traffic and I guess that’s the best way for it to run its business. It would be nice though if it could suggest a few new faces on peoples feeds every so often and maybe lower the monetisation qualification as it is snubbing out creativity, which it says it’s the champion of. If you need to earn some money producing great content, which will benefit YouTube in the long run, you need supporting through the tough early years. At the moment its not doing that.

You can help of course by watching videos of people who are new to you, just to give them a chance and maybe subscribe to them, it costs nothing but makes such a difference.

Talking of which YouTube also make it incredibly difficult for people to subscribe. Depending on the device you are watching on it can involve quite a few clicks to get there and this is not helpful if subscribers are what you are being judged on. This must be easy to sort out, come on YouTube!

And as for people who unsubscribe! Is that for real or is it part of the YouTube mystery? I can’t think why anyone would go to the trouble of unsubscribing to a channel but it seems to happen a lot. If you know why this happens, or you have a theory I’d love to hear it. I suppose it could just be that my videos are rubbish! But I disagree actually!

So what do you think? Leave comments below or on the video coming out on Sunday. Oh and ‘like and subscribe!’