I've been a self-proclaimed "YouTuber" for just over a year.
My YouTube channel was officially created in November 2013, but it wasn't until the beginning of last year when I committed to shipping a new video every single week.
I stuck with it. And it has changed my life.
I've made a lot of mistakes over the past year. But the one thing I got right was consistency. Consistency is king. Consistency is what sets successful Creators apart from the ones that don't make it.
The problem is, most Creators don't stay consistent for long enough.
Today, I'm going to be showcasing what's possible when you double down and stick with it. I'll be going over some of my key metrics from the past 12 months and how things have dramatically changed.
Disclaimer: The only time I look at numbers is to compare against myself. Metrics are different for everyone, and everyone has a different definition of success.
Let's get started.
#1 - Luck won't fall into your lap. You have to make it yourself.
I don't believe in "getting lucky."
When a digital Creator gets "lucky" they usually have years of experience that led them to that lucky moment.
If you want more lucky moments, the trick is to set yourself up for them. That's exactly what I did.
Below is a graph of my lifetime subscriber growth on YouTube from 2013 to 2021.
What stands out to you?
Like I mentioned earlier, I created my channel at the end of 2013, but didn't commit to weekly consistency until the start of 2020. Look what happened right when I did that.
Exponential growth. I caught a lucky break.
On the outside, it's easy to judge my channel and say that I just got lucky with one of my videos going viral.
But here's how I see it:
Spent four years creating videos for fun and learning the skills
Spent two years gaining the courage to speak on camera and putting myself out there
Spent another year publishing videos more consistently, and a few months doing it every single week
One of my weekly videos happened to be published at the right time and exploded
The lesson here is to create opportunities for luck to happen. It won't fall into your lap on its own.
#2 - Believe in the impossible.
This sounds like something you'd read in a fortune cookie.
But take a look at the screenshot below:
Let's get one thing clear. If you told me a year ago that I would be earning $4,000+ on YouTube AdSense in the next 12 months, I literally would have never believed you.
And the best part? This is only one of my revenue streams. I earned thousands more outside of YouTube through affiliate and referral income.
This all looks exciting and cool. But to me, it's more than that. I learned an important lesson because of this.
Our biggest limiting factor is ourselves. If we tell ourselves something is impossible, then it will be. We'll only achieve what we set out for.
I'm grateful for not just the money I've earned, but for learning that I need to aim higher for myself. Only then will I actually achieve those results.
#3 - You're more interesting than you think.
Putting subscribers and revenue aside, there's another metric that I still can't believe.
Watch time.
YouTube watch time is quite literally the number of minutes people have watched my videos.
Views and subscribers look cool, but if people aren't actually watching your videos, then your watch time will suffer.
Here's my watch time graph for the past 12 months:
Let me paint a picture for you.
My videos have been watched for 22,300 hours straight. That equates to 929 days. Or the earth revolving around the sun two and a half times.
Before YouTube, I've always been critical about myself. I never thought of myself as an "interesting person." Who in the world would want to watch me talk on a YouTube video? This was one of the reasons I struggled with getting myself to talk on camera.
Like anything else, creating engaging content is a skill. I want to demonstrate this by showing one more related metric.
This is a graph of one of my older videos. The graph shows how long people watch the video, and where they click off or skip. And this is the graph for one of my latest videos:
In the first example, people stopped watching my video in under 60 seconds. Probably because it was boring or didn't meet their expectations.
In the second, on average people stuck around for more than 50%, which was almost five minutes.
When shipping content, the number one reason Creators quit is because nobody looks at their work.
Chances are when you start, your work is going to suck. That's the hard truth. It's not until you're a year into it when you start realizing all the things you were doing wrong.
People DO care about your work. But you need to make it interesting. And that only happens with practice.
**
I hope this post was helpful in the slightest way. I'm still learning myself, and have a long way to go.
If there's any metric that I didn't discuss that you're interested in, let me know, and I'd be happy to discuss.
Best, Maneetpaul Singh
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All my previous HEY World posts organized by category can be found here.
