I have now been on YouTube, making videos, for a year and a half. I wrote last year that I had my first "viral video", this somewhat ridiculous attempt: Crow Flying, which has continued to get daily viewing. But on the whole, in the last year, I stopped trying to make "art videos". Because they didn't seem to get any views. I also made only a few topical videos. Instead, the bread and butter of my channel has been travelogues, because that has been what has gotten me the best response. And it makes sense: people might be interested in a specific town that they want to learn more about, than they are interested in me noodling around with my Casio and the GIMP.
The YouTube algorithm is a mysterious thing. I did start to have a strategy: by making videos about specific towns and places, I hoped to get interest from people who wanted to visit, or move to, those places. And then by adding links in my videos to other videos, people might watch several videos, and the mysterious algorithm would decide my videos should be shown to more people...I looked at my trajectory and decided that sometime in February or so, I would hit the video that would get "put into the rotation", whatever that means. And it did:
North Eugene, Oregon
It started getting hits, 5-10 a day, almost immediately, without me trying to promote it on social media or anything like that. For some reason, this video of me walking along the Willamette River and then through the suburban streets of Eugene, Oregon was what viewers wanted. It is now, after less than a month up, my third-most watched video. I have posted one more since, of Depoe Bay, Oregon, seemingly a more interesting topic, and it isn't getting quite the result. There are still lots of more places for me to visit this spring, and it will be interesting to see if it starts generating more interest.
This isn't based on my desire to be a bigger internet celebrity, and to break into that sweet, sweet influencer gravy train. Which still seems a long way off: last year, in my writeup, I had 17 subscribers and 8 public watch hours. Currently, I have 36 and 86, respectively. To reach the minimum threshold of "monetization", I need to get 1000 and 4000. So still a long way from that!
There are two main reasons I make these videos. The first is that there are so many little details of our lives that are obvious to us now, but that will become more interesting and important as time goes on. If you take a video of a famous landmark, in 50 years people will look at that landmark and see nothing interesting in it...but the cars parked outside, and the clothes and hairstyles of people on the street will be fascinating. I have had a camera that can take good videos since 2012, and I look back at my times in Montana, Portland, Oregon, Chile, and Eureka, California and wish I would have had the idea to make videos of all those fascinating places. A prosaic video of the Valparaiso Metro would be something that, for informational and sentimental value, would be incredible to have right now. Even though I find my past well documented, some aspects of it are inaccessible, and sometimes the smallest bit of documentation will help me realize how different it felt to be immersed in a different time.
The other reason I like to document places I visit is that there is a lot of big picture theorizing about "What America is like". Rather than adding to that, I want to show, piece by piece, what America is like. Rather than talking about health care or education in the abstract, I want to show what it a small town looks like, and give a concrete picture to what employment, recreation, health care, education, and transportation looks like in a small town. I hope that doing so gives people a perspective of what life is like, free from stereotypes and bluster.
And while I am not here to shill---feel free to view and subscribe!