So it’s 2020, and I’ve started on my quest for the year: to make 100 youtube videos. My youtube channel is pretty old at this point – I created a youtube account back in 2005, when I was just 15 years old. My oldest video was uploaded 12 years ago in 2007, some live footage of my band playing at a local music festival. At the time of writing, I have a total of 343 subscribers, 30,000 views, and 136 videos uploaded – many of them old videos of me playing the guitar, a handful of videos of my cats, and a few “talking head” videos where I’m just talking into the camera. I haven’t had any “breakout hits” – most videos have somewhere between 10 and 100 views. Nothing particularly remarkable. Still, it’s a non-zero starting point. I have an audience of 17,000+ people on Twitter – I did a poll a couple of hours ago and I have 482 votes on it. I have 430+ subscribers to my Tinyletter mailing list, and 92 patrons on Patreon.
I’ve been wanting to make video content for a pretty long time. I had a bit of a false start in 2015 where I started with a series of vlogs, but I didn’t really keep up with the habit – I think primarily because it didn’t feel like anybody was watching, or that anybody cared. Those 11 or so videos still basically have 0 comments on them. The first of my latest 100 videos (which I’m tracking on Twitter) has 6 comments on it, which feels pretty lively. I’m reminded of when I first started blogging for a local audience and started getting comments from readers.
What I’m circling around is – I feel like I’ve done my homework, and that I have a lot of things that I want to say to a broader audience. I think my Twitter is proof that people are interested in what I have to say. So I’ve solved that sort of chicken-and-egg problem for myself of getting some people to care at least some of the time about some of what I’m saying. That’s great, congratulations Visa, well done. Now we get the opportunity to think about what’s next.
What IS next? I know that I want to do a bunch of book reviews, because every book already has a pre-existing audience of people who are interested in it, and would be curious to hear what someone has to say about it. That solves for discovery – there will be new people finding me through search on YouTube itself. I also want to do vlogs about my best Twitter threads. Eventually, the end goal is to do really beautiful, thoughtful youtube video essays that really push the medium to its limit. That means not just talking into the camera, but also using video footage, using visuals and so on. I kind of do this a little bit with twitter threads – some of my threads have videos in them, many have gifs and photos/pictures. Sometimes it feels like some of my threads should really be videos, so that I can better control the pace and presentation.
What else? My Twitter audience provides a great jumping-off point, but it shouldn’t entirely limit my imagination re: what is possible. I think I have a valuable perspective as a Singaporean with a global audience. Most people from Singapore who make videos seem to be focused on a Singaporean audience, talking about Singaporean issues. I don’t want to compete with them on that front, it doesn’t really interest me. Rather I want to fulfill a sort of “ambassador” role, helping friends from overseas understand Singapore better, and presenting the Singaporean’s perspective on the world better. I haven’t done videos about this yet, but I look forward to doing them. I think a part of me is nervous about making videos that aren’t good enough, aren’t well-edited, aren’t well-researched and so on. There’s something about the youtube format that makes me a bit nervous about publishing imperfect work.
But having written that down… eh, does it really matter? Even ContraPoints (who is kind of my gold standard at the moment) started out mostly talking to the screen, and didn’t get around to doing great visuals and great aesthetics until much later. She has 11,000+ patrons now, with a minimum of $2/mo, that’s at least $25,000/month. I respect and admire this! I think she’s doing amazing work as a beacon of clear, compassionate thinking. And I think the world needs more people doing that sort of work, and I’d like to do my own version of that sort of work. But it’s not realistic of me to expect to be making 2 hour videos with the production quality of someone who has $25k/mo resources.
So… I’m just going to make lots of short little videos for now. I think I should trust my instincts on this one. Publishing something small every day lets me clock “published video hours”, which is work that I can examine and study to get better. I’ve already noticed that watching my videos back (which can seem kinda narcissistic, I know – will make a video about that too) makes me feel like I have some ideas about what I can refine, refactor, improve.
I suppose in some ways this is a longwinded, convoluted way of saying… I’ve gotten a bit self-conscious about rambling so much in public, now that there’s more of an audience around me. But saying that out loud makes me think. I have decided that I’m completely happy to alienate my entire audience completely and start over from scratch if I have to. I could publish 5-10 videos a day and it would be too much for most people. That’s fine. I’m not doing this for most people. I’m doing this for me. And I think it’s helpful to be clear about that. I can always make the polished, “for public consumption” stuff later on. And I’ll do that.
Any last words/thoughts about becoming a youtuber? Publish lots of content. Book reviews. Twitter threads. Singapore stuff. Video essays that I have swirling around.