I posted documentaries on YouTube for 100 days — Transcript

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1. 0:00This summer, I spent 100 days building a
2. 0:03documentary YouTube channel because I
3. 0:05wanted to see if this would be a way to
4. 0:07earn an independent income. Now, after
5. 0:10working for over 500 hours on this
6. 0:12project, posting 14 videos, and
7. 0:14generating almost a million views, I'm
8. 0:17ready to share the results. So, let's
9. 0:19run through exactly what I did over the
10. 0:21100 days and whether this entire YouTube
11. 0:24documentary experiment was worth it.
12. 0:26Back in April this year, I was running
13. 0:29low on funds and I knew I had one of two
14. 0:31options. That would be either to sell
15. 0:33the flat, which I'm sitting in now, or
16. 0:36go out and get another job. But, before
17. 0:38I chose one of those decisions, I wanted
18. 0:40to try one final thing to see if I could
19. 0:43actually earn my own income by doing
20. 0:46stuff online. For many years, I'd had
21. 0:48this YouTube channel that originally I
22. 0:50used to share family holiday videos. And
23. 0:53over time, I had posted some videos
24. 0:55about things that interested me, but I'd
25. 0:57never taken the whole thing seriously. I
26. 1:00wanted to see what would happen if I
27. 1:02dedicated myself to this YouTube
28. 1:04channel. So, originally, I told myself
29. 1:06that I'm going to publish six new videos
30. 1:09to this channel before I either sell my
31. 1:12flat or get a job. That was the
32. 1:13experiment. At least, that was the first
33. 1:15iteration of it. And the kind of videos
34. 1:17that I decided to make were
35. 1:19documentaries because I'm interested in
36. 1:21history and I thought it would be a good
37. 1:23way for me to go down a rabbit hole,
38. 1:25learn about a topic, and then share it
39. 1:27online. But, my first question was
40. 1:29really what's my first video going to be
41. 1:32about? Now, I live on the south coast of
42. 1:35England in a town called Brighton and
43. 1:37there's quite a lot of history around
44. 1:38here. And the topic for my first video
45. 1:41was pretty much staring me in the face.
46. 1:43It's something I look at every day from
47. 1:45my window. And that's why I decided to
48. 1:48make a video called The Rise and Fall of
49. 1:50Britain's first pleasure pier. Now, this
50. 1:53video actually took me two and a half
51. 1:55weeks to make in elapsed time. I was
52. 1:58kind of working part-time on this,
53. 2:00reading books, looking for old photos,
54. 2:04making notes, and eventually writing a
55. 2:06script. I'll be honest, when I'd
56. 2:08finished editing all this together and
57. 2:10had made this thing, I was pretty
58. 2:11pleased with the result.
59. 2:13>> In this video, let's take a look at the
60. 2:15history of the West Pier, its origins,
61. 2:17its attractions, its slow decline, and
62. 2:20the years it was left abandoned.
63. 2:22>> But this wouldn't be the first time that
64. 2:25I'd made something that I liked, but
65. 2:27nobody else seemed interested. So, as I
66. 2:29uploaded that thing onto YouTube, I
67. 2:31tried to keep my expectations fairly
68. 2:33low. I immediately went to the library
69. 2:36and started researching another topic. I
70. 2:38wanted to keep the momentum going so
71. 2:41that I could reach my target of six
72. 2:43videos. I started making a video about
73. 2:45another historic feature of my local
74. 2:47area, this weird sea tram thing. The
75. 2:50details don't really matter. And as I
76. 2:52was making that, I saw my first video
77. 2:54start to take off. In the first day, it
78. 2:57only got 85 views, and I was a bit
79. 3:00disappointed. But after 1 month, it had
80. 3:02gained 76,000 views, which to me, to be
81. 3:06honest, was pretty crazy. My second
82. 3:09video took me 17 days to make, once
83. 3:11again, part-time. And I published it and
84. 3:14then started looking for my next idea.
85. 3:17Now, I'm not going to run you through
86. 3:18every single video I made during this
87. 3:20experiment, but I will tell you about
88. 3:22the second video I published. During the
89. 3:24first 30 days, I got 257,000
90. 3:28views. Definitely the most popular video
91. 3:31I have ever made. And at this point, I
92. 3:33thought I'd cracked YouTube. My ego went
93. 3:37I thought that whatever I was doing was
94. 3:39working. So, all I had to do was repeat
95. 3:41the same things. And that's exactly what
96. 3:44I thought I did for the next video. I
97. 3:46made another documentary about Victorian
98. 3:49bathing habits.
99. 3:51I thought I'd followed exactly the same
100. 3:53process as the other two, but the
101. 3:55outcome with this video was totally
102. 3:57different and after 1 month, it only
103. 4:00done 1.5 thousand views. After the first
104. 4:03two videos, I thought I was on some kind
105. 4:05of roll, so I was a bit surprised.
106. 4:08Still, 1.5 thousand views is way more
107. 4:11than many, many other videos that I'd
108. 4:13published on this channel before, so I
109. 4:15decided to keep going, but I needed to
110. 4:18make a change. The thing is, I was
111. 4:20spending around 17 days working on each
112. 4:23video and it felt like I was spending a
113. 4:25lot of time and effort on documentaries
114. 4:27that other people might not actually be
115. 4:29interested in. Now, I remembered that
116. 4:32when I'd worked a full-time job, I'd
117. 4:33never struggled that hard to focus on
118. 4:36something full-time. I just needed to
119. 4:38manufacture that same sense of urgency
120. 4:41that I got from having a boss, but on my
121. 4:43own. And this is where it got a little
122. 4:45bit weird, but I created a job contract
123. 4:48where the employer was my YouTube
124. 4:50channel and the employee was me. This
125. 4:53was a 3-week contract to create three
126. 4:56interesting, engaging videos and
127. 4:58importantly, one video must go live by
128. 5:015:00 p.m. each Friday. I would get 100%
129. 5:04share of any advertising revenue, but
130. 5:06the caveat was if I published a video
131. 5:09late, even by 1 minute, I would be
132. 5:11immediately fired and wouldn't receive
133. 5:13any money. So, yeah, I actually signed
134. 5:16this thing, put it on my wall and read
135. 5:18it regularly to remind myself that I was
136. 5:21now on the hook. The first week that I
137. 5:24followed this new regime was pretty
138. 5:26intense. On Wednesday and Thursday, I
139. 5:29started to get stressed because I knew I
140. 5:31had a deadline on Friday at 5:00 p.m.
141. 5:33and I had to stay up late on Thursday
142. 5:35night writing a script, which is
143. 5:37actually something that I'd never done
144. 5:39before, so something had definitely
145. 5:40changed. I used every single minute
146. 5:43available to me and I didn't publish my
147. 5:45video until 5:00 p.m. on the dot on
148. 5:47Friday. I kept publishing videos week
149. 5:50after week and gradually a kind of
150. 5:53system emerged, a template for building
151. 5:56my documentary videos that seemed to
152. 5:58work for me. And you'll find a link to
153. 6:00my exact template and how to adapt it to
154. 6:03your own videos in the description.
155. 6:05After that first contract, I made myself
156. 6:07another contract, this time for 4 weeks.
157. 6:10And after a few videos with low views, I
158. 6:13started to see some success again. The
159. 6:16most popular video being the rise and
160. 6:18fall of Britain's forgotten tallest
161. 6:20tower with 100,000 views, which once
162. 6:24again kind of blew my mind. Of course,
163. 6:27on YouTube you can earn advertising
164. 6:29revenue and the more views you get, the
165. 6:30more you earn. At the time, this was
166. 6:32fluctuating wildly for me based on
167. 6:34whether my previous video had been
168. 6:36successful or not, and I was earning
169. 6:38between 9 and 104 pounds per day. Not
170. 6:42exactly predictable, but I kept going
171. 6:44cuz I wanted to see where this
172. 6:45experiment would take me. And I'd
173. 6:47already published more than the six
174. 6:49videos that I'd initially told myself I
175. 6:51was going to. When I published my 10th
176. 6:54video, something surprising happened. I
177. 6:57had all these people in the comments
178. 6:59saying that my voice was AI generated,
179. 7:02it was a complete waste of time to watch
180. 7:03my video, and basically accusing me of
181. 7:05creating my entire video using AI. It
182. 7:08made me feel a bit annoyed that I'd put
183. 7:11in so much work and people were having
184. 7:14this reaction. The thing is, this video
185. 7:16still did pretty well with 44,000 views,
186. 7:20but the comments accusing me of using AI
187. 7:22made me reconsider my strategy. At this
188. 7:25point, I signed my third job contract
189. 7:28for another four videos, and I began
190. 7:30introducing some changes to make it more
191. 7:33obvious that there was an actual person
192. 7:35behind these videos. Now, rather than
193. 7:37sitting at home recording a voiceover
194. 7:40and putting photos over the top of it, I
195. 7:42decided to actually go to visit the
196. 7:44places that I was researching and make
197. 7:46something that was indisputably
198. 7:49One Friday in order to make a video
199. 7:51called Britain's first pier is also its
200. 7:54strangest, I took a trip to the Isle of
201. 7:57Wight. I knew exactly where I was going
202. 7:59and what I was filming. I just had to
203. 8:01set up the tripod and say my lines, but
204. 8:04there was something very fun about
205. 8:05visiting the places I was talking about
206. 8:07and there was something very stressful
207. 8:08because I had to get that whole video
208. 8:10done by 5:00 p.m. including sitting down
209. 8:13to edit it and upload it at a train
210. 8:16station.
211. 8:17>> It is 4:59, 1 minute to go.
212. 8:20My upload is going. 30 seconds left.
213. 8:24>> By the middle of September, I had
214. 8:26completed my third job contract. I had
215. 8:29uploaded 14 videos in total and although
216. 8:32part of me wanted to keep going, I was
217. 8:35forced to bring this experiment to a
218. 8:37close. To explain why, let's run through
219. 8:40the exact results I got from building a
220. 8:42documentary YouTube channel for 100
221. 8:45days. Before I begin, I should point out
222. 8:48that this period was more like 170 days.
223. 8:51But at the start, there was some time
224. 8:53when I was working part-time and some
225. 8:55days I wasn't working, so that's why I'm
226. 8:58calling it 100 days. Anyway, over these
227. 9:01few months, I published 14 videos which
228. 9:04generated 968,000
229. 9:07views. Four videos less than 10,000
230. 9:10views, seven videos 10 to 100,000 views
231. 9:13and three videos over 100,000 views. And
232. 9:17from that, my channel gained 3,800 new
233. 9:20subscribers. So now let's talk about the
234. 9:22money. I estimate that I worked about
235. 9:25560 hours, around a 40-hour week for
236. 9:28each of the 14 videos. During that
237. 9:31period, YouTube paid me 3,095
238. 9:34pounds for advertising revenue, which is
239. 9:37equivalent to £5.53
240. 9:40per hour. Like I mentioned before, there
241. 9:42were some days where I was earning
242. 9:44decent revenue, and I thought that as I
243. 9:47published more videos, I would have this
244. 9:48back catalog, and it would even out the
245. 9:50revenue, so it wasn't so up and down.
246. 9:53For me, that didn't really happen. I
247. 9:55didn't get as many returning viewers as
248. 9:57I thought I would. And pretty much as
249. 9:59soon as I stopped publishing, my views
250. 10:02dropped and my revenue dropped to what
251. 10:04is now 30 to 40 pence per day. My theory
252. 10:08is that 14 videos wasn't really enough
253. 10:10to build a recognition that I make this
254. 10:13kind of video that makes people want to
255. 10:14come back to watch again and again. If I
256. 10:17wanted to make this into a full-time
257. 10:19income, I would have to take it very
258. 10:21seriously and probably hire people to
259. 10:23help me out, so that I'm not rushing
260. 10:25around like a crazy person, and I can
261. 10:27just focus on the parts of the process
262. 10:29that I actually enjoy. Unfortunately, my
263. 10:32situation meant that I couldn't keep
264. 10:33this experiment going. The money I was
265. 10:36earning wasn't enough to sustain my
266. 10:37lifestyle. And as you can tell, I didn't
267. 10:40end up selling my flat. Instead, I got a
268. 10:43full-time job. But for me, that doesn't
269. 10:45mean that this experiment wasn't
270. 10:46worthwhile. Although I didn't get the
271. 10:49end result that I might have wished for,
272. 10:51I learned quite a lot, which I think is
273. 10:52going to help me in the future. So, what
274. 10:55did I learn from this process? Well, the
275. 10:57first thing was that I got a better idea
276. 10:59of what people are interested in when it
277. 11:01comes to documentaries, purely from the
278. 11:04fact that I published ones that people
279. 11:06didn't like, and then I published ones
280. 11:07that people did like, and I started to
281. 11:09see a pattern. Secondly, I realized that
282. 11:12after years struggling to motivate
283. 11:14myself to work on my own independent
284. 11:16projects, I figured out a way to do that
285. 11:19by writing these fake job contracts with
286. 11:22myself, and it ended up with me
287. 11:23publishing one video a week
288. 11:25consecutively for 11 weeks. What are my
289. 11:28plans with channel now? I still want to
290. 11:30make YouTube videos, but I can't spend
291. 11:3240 hours a week doing so. Do I still
292. 11:35think YouTube can be a decent monthly
293. 11:37income stream? The most I made in one
294. 11:39month was 1,054 pounds. It's very up and
295. 11:42down. You've got to love this platform
296. 11:44to make it work. So, let me know your
297. 11:47thoughts on my 100-day YouTube
298. 11:50experiment. Do you think it was a
299. 11:52massive waste of time, or do you think
300. 11:54these small experiments can help us
301. 11:56understand what kind of work we enjoy?
302. 11:59Thanks a lot for watching, and I'll see
303. 12:01you in the next one.