#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.

[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.