Time to regroup.

I tried making weekly YouTube videos. I honestly thought that was the way to go. I’ve been making videos over the past few years, but very sporadically. So I thought that if I could get more serious, as Ali Abdaal puts it, by putting out videos out week after week, maybe I could gain enough traction to make it into more than a hobby.

Well, I tried my hardest to do that. To be honest, I’m only 7 weeks in. But for one thing, it’s just not the right time. I thought I could bleed out enough time in my schedule, and for a few weeks there I could, but then a whole lot of life happened and I had to prioritise other things. This meant I couldn’t keep up with the weekly videos.

And then there’s also the fact that rather than the schedule, it’s hard to maintain the quality of video over a long period of time. It’s possible that with trying to batch produce videos, I simultaneously subconsciously became lazier. I tried to reduce the amount of time I spent on making the videos (which is not a bad thing). However, because there is now less risk of wasting my time (because I can get the ideas out quicker), I sort of just went with what I had, even half-assed ideas.

I think the key is making sure, as much as possible, that your idea will work, but just as important, that it’s something in your wheelhouse, something that aligns with the identity you’re trying to build. Length is also important. I could probably still have succeeded had I chosen to do shorter videos instead, and next time around I think that’s what I’ll do.

The other part of this is that I had looked to my Substack backlog for ideas. Many of the articles performed well there, but I’ve since realised, for the most part, they don’t transfer easily to YouTube videos. I relied on those articles too much, thinking it would be very easy to turn them into videos. But I was wrong. There is definitely potential there, but it takes a lot more effort than I anticipated to make them into something viewable on YouTube.

In all, YouTube is much more than weekly uploads. Weekly uploads is a great idea, but you also need to take time to develop your ideas and have a catchy title and thumbnail, otherwise it’s just not worth it if you’re trying to gain traction.

So, for now, for videos at least, I’m taking a break and I’m going to regroup. Next time around I think I will aim for mainly shorter videos on one main point, a bit like Tom Scott. Something more manageable.

But also, I have that backlog of Substack articles that I think is great for something similar but different:

Podcasts! I wrote those articles to be read out loud anyway! Lots of lessons from this short experiment, I don’t think you can call it a complete failure. But here we are.

So yeah, YouTube became a chore, unfortunately. It is a lot of fun to make and edit videos, but I guess I put a bit too much pressure on myself to perform when I didn’t really need to. I need to focus on enjoying it more, and that means a more sustainable process is needed.