#i hope youtube finally lets me upload 3 minute shorts because i don't think i can sum up my feelings on this in a minute

[rayofspades]

gonna be honest; don't know how i feel about this one.

[smalife1234]

I first want to say that I do love putting a new year in the weekly smiles!

And secondly please enjoy the read! I love you all and I am super grateful for all y'all's support 💞

Now on to weekly smiles

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What made me smile this week?

Monday, 12/30/24 - today we kept editing our vlogs and videos until the new year tomorrow we're supposed to upload! So I'm getting prepared for that and I'm pretty excited for the video because so far it looks pretty good and is going pretty well. Today was a very chill day. Today we just chilled and then we watched several videos and honestly chilled on gun idle which we rediscovered! And so far it's been keeping us content LOL I've been on the game Blacksmith way more often and have made lots of progress which I'm very proud of! Today was a chill and lazy day lol so we don't have much input!

Tuesday, 12/31/24 - today is 1 day before the new year! I am so excited for this year to end but also it's close to my son's 1 year since passing away we miss him dearly and I find myself thinking of it more but it's good to be open about it so I have worked on the final touches of the newest YouTube video coming out today but we had decided to upload it on new years day! At 1:00Am as to chart the very first video in 2025! Around 8:00 Pm we got called to play games with the family before the new year! We had a great time until Dad and Mom got drunk and then Mom started getting all annoying and went to bed early again. We have no problem with her going to bed. It was just out of nowhere and typically that means something is wrong! So we were confused but we let her sleep we called out sister mack to tell her everything that was going on because we were worried about Mom shortly Mom woke up and she had written a note saying don't bother happy new year and we were worried at this point shortly after that literally minutes later mom had woke up again and went outside with a blanket we had followed her out there to see what was wrong she didn't reply to us and was mad because we cared?? The parents ended up having a large fight there was crying and then we poured all the alcohol down the drain and then went to macks house for the night, the cute part of it all was Gizmo had balled up on my pillow and it was so adorable then Around 5Am smudge had joined me behind my back I got some sleep but not lot's of it and then we went home around 7Am and then when we got home and the parents were casually watching TV and if nothing happened. But we were ok for the rest of the day and just tried to avoid the parents most of the day. The rest of the day we just tried to enjoy and today made me smile.

Wednesday, 1/1/25 - it's now officially the new year. I want to say we had the most epic time but we didn't… and currently, we're trying to enjoy it the best we can. We have been playing games most of today and we've just been laughing at some funny moments! We had fun playing games and we didn't really do much. We apologize for this short entry but yes it has been a tough time these past day and a half and has been almost absolutely miserable… But we're making the best out of everything we could do. Happy New Year to you all. I hope your new year is going way better than ours.

Thursday, 1/2/25 - today we had a way better day our mom was still in a mood and was still slightly bitchy (sorry for the language) but we did enjoy this day way better I got a new leg mate in my chair which has been beneficial they had thought that blood polling to my limp legs all day wasn't the greatest so we decided to change and it gives less risk to my feet being less swollen! It is a good thing we had a good day of listening to Instagram audios and having a funny time talking about weird things lol thankfully today was easier than the past two days! Which is always a good thing today made me smile.

Friday, 1/3/25 - today was pretty chill. We found out about a new Earth game today and we've been playing it for a while now and have been making great progress. We've been watching so many videos of a Quadriplegics channel and we've been enjoying her videos! We've been talking about catheters and talking about very funny things LOL 🤣! Especially Emmie lol we've been having a fun time today and thankfully today was super chill again super sorry for the short entry. I've just been burnt out! I've honestly been trying to enjoy the “break” but as of currently I've uploaded 6 videos and 5 podcasts and working on the 7th videos all since December 20th which is insane! I've missed the last weekly smiles so I'm working on that! It's just so exhausting to constantly keep up with these ridiculously long ALS post-the-festive Holiday episodes, the constant four-day chemo rounds, and my wife's anniversary! It's been very hectic and I'm just waiting for it to slow down which Will hopefully come soon! But it's almost over the entire break which for me is honestly crazy! On how much of this break that I've been working… I'm super grateful for everyone's support! And today made me smile!

Saturday, 1/4/25 - today is almost the last day of our break. Today we had a pretty chill morning, we laughed, and then shortly I started my 73rd round of chemotherapy! If I'm being honest, the 70's are not doing me well… I started filming the horrific video that you all will see at 10:50 tonight which is crazy. It was honestly such a crazy video! But I've been writing the last weekly smiles and thankfully got it out and I've been writing descriptions for videos that are lacking a description but thankfully I got some of those done! And I've been working for almost 5 hours straight today which to me is honestly baffling but I'm almost done!!! Yes, freedom lol but I've been chilling and typing my entire heart out! Today has been good. It's just been very busy but today made me smile!

Sunday, 1/5/25 - today it's our brother's birthday! His big 21st we wish him a good happy birthday sadly we didn't get any footage but we did have a fun time watching him open his presents, he got a cool Transformers video game and he got vodka and blue and red liquid to make optimus prime shots I doubt he'll drink any lol but it was cool to see! He hung out most of the day with his girlfriend Nancy we mainly out the majority of the day doing the typical laundry and just chilling out for a few we helped organize moms shoes for a bit (not really an entire hour had gone by) but we got it done and then we actually had a chill day lol I filmed some content for autism and disabilities and worked on some more YouTube things like an upcoming thumbnail and things! Shortly after we heard that we had a 2-hour delay tomorrow! Which is pretty exciting! It's good to know that we get some time off of our school day! And this week which is a good thing! I am super sorry for the absence recently of the weekly smiles especially last week's but I do hope that being on time with this one will make up for the last one! 🫣But I am super grateful for you all! And lastly the most important Question of the week!?

What made you smile this week?

Img desc #1: doc is seen in a professionally shot photo she is on a bridge and smiling beside someone else while wearing a dark blue long-sleeved shirt colored jeans and brown shoes not seen in the photo.

Img desc #2: doc is seen looking annoyed near plants she is sitting in her old electric wheelchair while wearing a grey short-sleeved shirt and dark grey shorts.

Img desc #3: doc and Emmie are seen smiling together near a bunch of food Doc seen on the left is seen smiling while wearing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt saying the words in white text "Tumblr" and brown shorts Emmie is seen smiling on the right side of the image is seen in a grey hoodie with her arms crossed both of them are smiling.

Img desc #4: smudge their cat seen at Mack's house on the couch behind Matthews's back balled up. He is a Siamese cat

[topicprinter]

Some Infos:Always liked making money growing up like selling chocolate bars in school and so on. Tried lots of things so far like multiple T-Shirt selling attempts, affiliate websites and that kind of stuff. Never made much money besides a few good weeks of flipping mainly drop shipped on amazon or fulfilled by amazon but I discontinued due to time/scaleability but I will explain that at the end for people who are interested. Funny enough while I focused on youtube my few months old March by Amazon account finally made my first sale. Sold 3 of the same shirt all others got taken down due to no sales.Youtube Background:Started youtube super early when most people didn't know what it was. Had a channel with over a 1000 subscribers back when it was a big deal lmao. Had the opportunity to be one of the first youtube partners in my country but parents looked at me like I am crazy and of course didn't sign for me so yeah would have probably made them some good money considering how much it paid back then. Fast forward lots of projects, copyright issues and youtube updates later I had lots of channels mostly alone some with others but never made money or got successful. I blame some of it on my parents and some on all the things youtube would take years to accept in out country like uploading thumbnails I mean wtf.Anyways I created the channel of this case study around 3 years ago in hopes of launching a big projects thats still in the works and fits the content so yay. Uploaded a ton of videos on there to try stuff out and ended up deleting everything. At one point I had over 100 short videos uploaded and planned with finished descriptions and everything but scraped the whole idea after a few releases. Will explain why down below. So 8 months ago or so I uploaded the first video I wouldn't delete later. Posted it here and there and it got 30k views Then 3 months ago after some trail and error I uploaded the next video which was the same thing only over an hour long with much more information and everything. It took days of work just in researching and days to edit. Should have counted the hours but I just came home everyday and worked on it for a few hours for over two weeks I think. Tried send traffic from the older video and did my best with reddit and so on. The work paid off lots of people thanked me for the effort and worked its way up to 100k views which got me really excited. Still one of my better videos now sitting around 300k. Since then I uploaded over 25 videos.Stats:Subscribers 2k+ Views 3M+ Videos 25+Had 25 inactive subs from experimenting then took for ever to grow to 50 from there around 1 a day for a while until the spike of the 100k video that gave me +100 subscribers in a day. At some point it finally started growing constantly and had some good spikes in the third month.Income:Month 1: 90 Month 2: 290 Month 3: 1400Started while the whole YouTube Add boycott was going on and at some point between the end of month 1 & the middle of month 2 (not exactly sure analytics are very inaccurate n youtube for small channels and for example estimated income was accurate the first time in the third month) my income dropped to 0 for weeks not sure how much money I lost. Overall I heard income is good 30% down since then so I broke $1000+ a month while every freaking youtuber cried for money and started donation accounts.Estimated Month 4: 1200 Had several really good performing videos last month and it will be hard topping that this month unless my next video will proof me wrong but I am sure I will get a new record in month 5 since almost every video makes constant money in addition to the spike in the first week or two of the upload and its really starting to ad up. Also got some good videos planed.Subscribers:Now 3M views and only 2k subscribers seems like a really bad conversion rate but YouTube is confusing in that sense. The more subscribers and views you get the easier it is to get them. Getting to 100 almost feels impossible at first then 1000 seems doable but takes for ever and then it actually starts growing and around 10.000 is the sweet spot where you finally made it. People start commenting about how big you are gonna get and how glad they are that they are here before the hype. Its like once you get more subscriber people actually take you serious even though the content was always just as good like when people wait in line just because the line is so long and that means the food must be good.Video Upload Amount:When starting out focus on nothing but quality videos. Otherwise people find your channel with 100s of videos and no subscribers or views and are overwhelmed with where to start watching. They also see the bad stats and assume your content must suck. I could go a lot more in depth if you are interested but for example look at gamers or vloggers with 100s of episodes and no views and if you klick on lets say episode 257 its just some random dude filming him self eating or silently running trough a dessert in Minecraft and within a minute you klick on a recommended video or leave youtube. But if someone finds your channel and you have 10 videos but all are amazing the viewer it tempted to subscribe since he likes the content but ran out of material to watch. Thats the main reason why I rather upload a few times maybe even just once a week but get share worthy high quality content with 100k views then daily uploads which would help in seo terms but are just not doable for most people if you keep the quality. Also daylight uploads are much more effective if you wait until you have a subscribers base thats waiting and actively asking for it.Thumbnails:Thumbnails are everything they must be easy to understand like one clear picture of something explaining the video. Random example if you make a video about cows you use a clear picture of a cow or a glass of milk. Don't use text for 99% or your thumbnails because its not eye catching, you already have the title for that and its hard to read since on mobile for example the time stamp at the right corner covers usually the last few digits so yeah. I know some successful channels always use text but they are either really god at making them or are already successful enough for other rains then their thumbnails.Video length:I found that 3 minute videos get really well shared but longer content is more impressive, helps with watch time, pays more and people have more time to go to the comment section and stuff. Two of my best videos are over an hour long. Also youtube favors over 10 min videos since adds before after the video.Description box:I still play around with it but I try to make a catching and seo friendly first sentence and I often advertise my others videos. I also try to rephrase the title and add additional informations.Tags:My main tags that bring viewers are really simple ones but longer ones usually and really well on youtube.Annotations:I don't use it since soon gone.Cards:New version of annotations. Mobile friendly. I don't use them on all my videos since I put a lot of effort in them and I don't want to dissect the viewer with popping up cards or asking for likes or anything.End Cards:Use them on all my videos and its nice to send some traffic to other videos but regarding the analytics only a few % of views come from them so its debatable how important they are. I always fit them in with music of the video and stuff so its more engaging and people don't mind it.Making additional money:At first I didn't do anything like affiliate links since I don't want my subscribers to think I just made the channel for money. Lately I placed some links in the description without mentioning it in the video in any form and still got some clicks but no sales. One of those links was to my Merch shirt but also no sales. Will definitely redo my designs and think about fitting products for the affiliate links and add them back in at some point. Maybe I will do a Teespring campaign for special videos or something but like I said its more important to grow the channel then to make some extra cash and risking to make the growth harder.Competitors and Stolen Videos:People already re uploading my videos without giving credit. Left comments on the ones I found and claimed copyright on some. Youtube took them down within a few days.Copyright and Age Restrictions:Had one video flagged for non advertising friendly (yt update since ad boycott) but dispute got accepted within a few hours I think. Had someone threaten to sue me for using a few seconds of material in my longest video. I offered links in the description, in the video and end cards but apparently some people rather fight then get free advertisement all over a several hundred thousand views video. Literally seconds out of an hour. Deleted the clips with the youtube editor without taking it down so kept all the stats. Recent video got copyrighted for the same thing I used in a different video which didn't get copyrighted. Did some research and found out its probably a scam youtube network and I claimed a dispute but no answer yet. Luckily I didn't release it yet but no Idea how they can flag my private video without owning the content but I have to figure that out. Ended up deleting it and uploading it again later without problems.Water Marks:I don't really use one like some people where its always in the corner or something but I place it here and there if that makes sense. Only really big ones protect against stealing it fairly well but I think they suck for the viewers. My videos are supposed to be like movies and do you want to have a giant Warner Brothers Water Mark when watching a movie? Small ones can be ok if they are well made but they get covered by the peoples water marks who steal the videos so they won't help. Depending on the content they can make it seem professional and so on but anyways moving on.All about the Money?I always enjoyed making videos way before I made a cent with it and still do so its confusing because I still somehow feel like I would lie if I say I don't do it for the money. I mean additional 1000 a month is huge for me so its definitely a factor. Its a hobby that makes money so I would be stupid to not do it. I don't know.Goals:Keep income at constant $1000+ Make $2000+ within a month. Start using my website in combination with my videos. Reach 10.000 Subscribers Get enough videos pre made and planed. Get the few low performing videos above 10.000 views. Find more good copyright free music. Keep improving editing. Figure out the best way to deal with re uploads.The Amazon FBA & Drop Shipping Bonus Story:I always sold stuff I no longer used or could randomly get really cheap in person or on ebay. At some point started using amazon. Much later I started using FBA and I was basically exploiting a market which was extremely low completion on amazon. After the first good week I already got a spike in competitors and by now it went from thousands of percent margins close to nothing. One of my best sellers sometimes cost me $3 and I sold it it for $40 and for a while I sold several of those a say so that was exciting. I typed in the main keyword in to amazon, sorted all items by highest price first and listed every single product from over 100 amazon pages. Did all of it without any plugins or tools besides something that could grab the ean number by clicking on the product forgot the name. Main reasons why I stopped was several things. First competitors became a problem because some where undercutting prices insanely like dropping the $40 bestseller to $7 so yeah. (Funny thing it was a collectors niche so selling them that cheap is just stupid because you cant just order lots of them like you could with alibaba stuff.) Second the site I mainly used to buy and drop ship everything was huge but I still created price spikes with my best sellers so I could run out any time. Third my country doesn't have its own Amazon domain like .com so we don't have FBA shipping discounts and other things which would help immensely since international shipping depending on the amazon fertility gets expensive. Fourth it was extremely time consuming I mean if I edit a video for a few hours plus respond to people and stuff it also take a while but the video can make 100s or even thousands of dollars and keeps making profit and getting views every day and the growth of the channel pays of immensely over time. Feels much more useful then researching and listing products all day and connately fight competitors with pricing and all that stuff. Overall it was still extremely worth it since I learned a lot and had a ton of fun making significant money online for the first time while being kinda broke that time. I will definitely come out with my own products at some point and chances are high I will use FBA to distribute them.TLDR: Started focusing on youtube and made $1000+ while add boycott was going on and everyone was crying for donations and acted like the world would end. Reached 3M vies and 2K subscribers. Had experience but learned a lot.