Six video update
A few weeks ago, I wrote about publishing my first YouTube video. In that article, I included my reasoning and what I hoped to gain from it.
My goal is to upload twelve videos, that get an average of twelve views, and get to twelve subscribers.
Last night, I uploaded my sixth video, Set Breakpoints In The Chrome DevTools, which puts me at the half-way mark.
I wanted to share some of the lessons that I learned making and publishing videos 2-6.
Lessons learned
Recording gets easier
For me, it doesn’t feel natural to sit and talk to myself in front of the computer. But with practice, I found myself getting more comfortable.
There is a long way to go, but it is encouraging to see growth after making six videos.
Keep it rolling
By keeping a continous recording, I am able to fix mistakes as they come and edit them out later. If anything sounds weird as I say it, I just take a break, and then try the line again.
This is far easier than trying to get a good “take” of the whole video. I found that a 3-4 minute video would come from 10-12 minutes of continous recording.
Editing gets easier
I don’t think I could say that I like iMovie, but I’m getting used to the interface and the steps that I need to go through to edit my videos.
The biggest frustration that remains is the slider for audio volume (no input?) and the tendency to export the source video instead of the editted version (why is that possible?).
That being said, I think iMovie will be sufficient for the time being.
Equipment matters
I started off using a $50 microphone from Amazon. It worked, but the audio quality wasn’t great and it didn’t provide any control over the recording.
I traded that in for a Blue Yeti Nano, and the improvement has been noticeable. I’m still getting into the swing of things, but having the right tools makes a difference.
Very few views
Since that initial video, I have averaged 1.2 views per video and gained 2 subscribers (one of whom is my wife). This is lower than I expected, but good to know.
I want to stress again that gaining views and subscribers is not by end game. Including those two measurements in the goal was an attempt to gauge the utility.
This may be aided by more promotion on my end, but with everything going on in the world that didn’t seem the most helpful thing to do.
Once I publish my twelfth video, I want to take a deeper dive into the performance of each video to see what I can glean going forward.
Until then, happy watching!