What I've learned from my first year on YouTube

Apr 1

A little over a year ago I decided to start a YouTube channel for the Bamby Media brand.

Not because we were searching for more clients, chasing extra revenue or I as the founder was interested in becoming a full-time content creator.

Our mission was simple:

Build a YouTube channel that serves as our live testing ground - a place where we could experiment, fail, and succeed with content strategies before implementing them for our clients' channels.

We needed to be the guinea pigs for strategies we wanted our clients to try.

That is what landed me on YouTube creating content once a week.

Over the last 12 months, I have learned many lessons that I felt would be valuable for the aspiring YouTuber to take into consideration.

So here they are for you.

You’re welcome.

The Consistency Myth

Here's the truth: yes, consistency matters, but not at the cost of quality. When our team at Bamby Media got slammed with client work last December, I took a break from YouTube. The sky didn't fall. The algorithm didn't blacklist me. Yes, I saw a little decrease in viewership over that period, but it wasn’t anywhere near as significant as I thought it was going to be.

It’s different to taking a break from podcasting because YouTube is so much more “search” based. A person comes to YouTube normally with a question in mind. They find your content even if it’s months (or even years old). Having a consistent release schedule on YouTube doesn’t seem to matter anywhere near as much.

For podcasters, it’s important to keep releasing within the schedule so that your listeners don’t go off and find someone else. Yes - I believe it’s that shallow. If you disappear for too long on a podcasting platform, your listener sometimes struggles to find/remember you again.

YouTube favours evergreen and thus, consistency is not as important.

Production Quality vs. Reality

Even with professional equipment and years of audio expertise, not every video hits the mark. Some of my technically "perfect" videos barely got traction, while a quick tutorial about DSP settings for the Rode PodMic exploded (20k views and counting). The lesson? Your audience cares more about solving their problems than probably anything else. If you can actively solve more problems for your target audience, you’ll gain more views and create a more engaged community.

The Engagement Game

While we’re on the topic of engagement, this is one area of YouTube that I wasn’t expecting to blow up quite so much. Unlike podcasting, where listeners rarely reach out, YouTube viewers will tell you exactly what they think - whether you asked or not. This immediate feedback loop is gold for product development and service refinement. I truly value the comments that we receive on our videos and often use these comments to plan upcoming content.

I’ve also found it valuable to ask for feedback/comments/opinions during the video. This encourages the viewer to craft a response and add to the conversation. They feel like they’re a part of the channel too, and everybody wins. Even the negative comments are valuable and help you refine your message.

Revenue Reality Check

It took pretty much 365 days to reach monetisation status on YouTube, and I know for a lot of content creators, it takes a lot longer. Don’t let this dishearten you and for the love of God, don’t let it be your focus.

If you’re curious as to how much we made from that first month of monetisation through AdSense - it was about AU$115. Honestly, that was still more than I thought and I was pleasantly surprised with how fun it felt to achieve that milestone.

But don't wait for AdSense. From day one, I leveraged our channel to drive consultations and podcast production services. Your expertise has value - monetise it from the start through. You can do that through consultation services, product offerings, partnerships, affiliates…we have had success in all of these areas.

At some stage, I might do a full break-down on the ways we monetise via YouTube outside of Adsense. If you’d like me to do that - let me know in the comments of this article.

Systems That Scale

Running a production agency taught me this: without systems, you'll burn out. My YouTube workflow mirrors our podcast production process and when we decided to start the channel, we immediately treated ourselves like a client.

Our client production workflow is extremely process driven. We have deep systems, checklists, schedules, spreadsheets and many staff members all contributing to each episode. Our YouTube channel needed to operate with the same amount of rigor as our client work. That has ensured that we’re always delivering exceptional content and (mostly) on time.

Obsessing Over Subscribers

In my experience, I don’t believe subscribers are a metric worth caring too much about. Yes, it’s nice to be able to say, “I have 10k subs” but the way the algorithm works these days often means those subscribers aren’t even seeing a lot of your content. If you think about your own YouTube consumption - are you actively consuming the content you’ve subscribed to from the creators you follow?

With so much competition for attention, what matters more is whether you can hook a viewer with a great title, keep them on your content for more than 30 seconds and what conversion rate you receive from those watching. Are they clicking through to something that you have on offer (even if that’s a freebie). These metrics actually impact your business growth and a strong call to action will always win.

YouTube As A Business Tool

YouTube isn't just another content platform - it's a business tool. I believe that for founders trying to build their personal brands, there really is no better place than YouTube (and an audio podcast obviously). If you’re delivering high-quality, valuable content for your niche, YouTube has the ability to make a big difference to the success of your business over a relatively short space of time.

If you're considering starting a YouTube channel, particularly in the podcast or production space, stop overthinking it. Use your existing expertise, focus on solving real problems, and build it like the business asset it is.

Transcript:

Brianna: [00:00:00] So I've been YouTubing now for about. 12 months. It's been really exciting and so I thought I would do my take on what it's been like to be on YouTube for the last 12 months. I see these videos all the time, sharing their wins, sharing how much money they've made and all that sort of stuff. We're gonna go into a little bit of that today, but mostly I want to encourage you the new fresh YouTuber to start
immediately, and to keep going. For context hey, I'm Brianna. I am the head honcho of a podcast and video production agency here in Australia, Bamby Media. We produce podcasts and video podcasts for people all over the world, every day. It is amazing, and I've been doing it for about a decade, about 12 months ago, I was like, right, I gotta get on YouTube because I am helping others, our team, help others with [00:01:00] YouTube.
And we didn't have a channel of our own. So we couldn't kind of test things in the way that I wanted to test them without stuffing up some other client's channel you know. I wanted to be able to try things and it be for a channel of our own. I was also really interested to see how long it would take us to get to that monetization status. To get to that 4,000 watch hours and a thousand subscribers.
As it turns out, it took about 12 months. At time of recording, we are sitting at 1,210 subscribers. We get about 14,000 views. In 28 days, we have a watch time in hours of around 673, and we're looking at around 118, 120 ish subscribers, uh, in the 28 day cycle as well.
Early days still, that gives you a benchmark. And then for our first ever month of monetization, we came in at [00:02:00] $114 and 86 cents. That's what that looks like, uh, right now. And oh my gosh, that first like couple of dollars was like, what the hell is like, this is so cool. I feel like it's free money and it's definitely not free money and we're gonna go into that.
There's a lot of production behind it. But it felt so cool to be like, ah, this is what it feels like when you have something monetized on YouTube. It's a very different experience to podcasting, to audio only. I thought that was really cool. So I'm gonna give you a bunch of things that I've learned so that hopefully it will help you maybe not do some of those things or just further accentuate the need to relax and to release the outcome as well.
Number one, consistency is key. Okay, everyone says that, but breaks are also fine. Yeah, it's good to get on a schedule where you are releasing every week and it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, things are coming [00:03:00] out. But also like if you need to take a couple of weeks, it's not gonna be the end of the world. I think, because these days it's less about your subscriber count.
It's more algorithm based than it used to be. Having a couple of weeks off, just chill. That's okay. Like take a break. Over December, we had to do a forced break and I really didn't want to, I wasn't planning on taking a break. The stuff that we had planned, I. And had batch, we couldn't actually edit because we had this big project full in our lap just before December, and it meant that everything that we were doing for bamby media, like our own channel, had to wait because there was a bunch of client work that we needed to get done, like asap.
So I had a break and I had a little break in August, and I had a little break in June. I think I missed a week or two, like whatever. It didn't really make that big of a difference in the long run. Maybe it delayed the monetization by a couple of weeks. Okay. [00:04:00] It's fine. Just chill. Take a break if you need to.
Everything will be fine. I. Number two is not every upload is gonna be a banger, and this is fine. This is good. This is part of it. In fact, I think I got a bit lucky here because we are already a podcast and video production company because we already do videos for other people. I had the unfair advantage like Ali Abdal talks about, so that the quality of what I was delivering from day one was very different from someone else's day One that doesn't have all that background.
I didn't expect that our videos were gonna go like pop off really quickly, but more of them trended well than not. But not everyone is a banger and something that you think is gonna go well, I might not go well. It really depends on what your viewer is actually searching for. In those early days until you kind of establish what people are most likely to be searching for[00:05:00]
you're gonna have a heap of videos and maybe they won't go super well, but eventually you'll find your thing. That's where the consistency plays in, because you won't find it immediately probably, but you will find it. And for us, uh, part of the YouTube channel for me was really wanting to showcase all my knowledge in audio production.
I know so much like it's a baffling amount of things that I know about audio production. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. Maybe I don't look old enough to be doing this for 20 years, but I have, and if I do, shut up. I wanted to showcase that and one of my first loves is actually microphones like I did an audio production degree.
I know a lot about sound, I know a lot about voices. I know a lot about what makes it rich, what makes the tone good? What's eq? What's compression? How do we play with these things to make the, uh, like the juicy, beautiful sound? I wanted [00:06:00] to do that and compare and review from the get go. And it just so happened that for us, that has been something that lots of people search for.
Lots of people wanna know the same things I do. When they're trying to find a microphone they don't wanna just hear a review of that microphone, although that helps. But they wanna compare it to something else. They wanna see the verses. They wanna feel and hear the differences between them. So I got lucky sort of in that fairly early on
I had a video that I was like, ah, yeah, see people really want this. I'm gonna do more of this 'cause I also want to do this. The trap that you may fall into is like when a video goes well, when it's like a banger, then you'll be like, oh, people love this, so I'm gonna do way more of this. And it's like, yeah, but do you want to do way more of that?
Like is that part of your strategy or are you now just playing into what everyone else is telling you that you should be doing content on. There's this balance of like, you have to love it. You have to find it [00:07:00] fun and enjoyable. You have to wanna make content about it. And the listener, the watcher, the viewer also needs to search for those things.
So not every episode, not every video is gonna be a banger. That's totally fine. Just produce the content that you wanna produce. Over time, you'll see what buckets they fall into and what you're gonna get most traction out of. Numero tres is the YouTube community. Oh my God, I love you guys. I love you guys so much.
You are so much more engaged. Then the podcasting listener is from an audio perspective, when someone puts you in their ears, they will listen to you probably for the length of the episode. That would be 20, it could be 30 minutes, it could be three hours. If you're Joe Rogan and you, you know, wanna go for three hours. That's engagement.
You can't get that kind of engagement anywhere else. But do they give you any feedback? Most [00:08:00] of the time, no. They put you in their ears and then they're like, oh yeah, this is sweet. I'm having such a great time. You'll never hear from them and it's kind of sad 'cause you want to. On Spotify now they have comments and that's getting a little bit more traction with like actually having comments on the things.
But on YouTube, the community's so much better. You can see that people are watching. Yeah, they're not watching for as long. But they leave comments and they go, love what you're doing. Keep going. Hey, you deserve to have more subscribers, or, I don't agree with this.
I think it should be this. Or, you didn't test this right? Your microphone was in the wrong, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It's cool to have people engaging with you to building a community that you can actually see.
Hurry. Number four a b testing thumbnails is great in theory. Like I loved when it came in, but also it was like, oh, now we have to create two thumbnails. Come on. So it is great in [00:09:00] theory, but depending on how much time you have. If you are the diary of a CEO and you have like a bunch of people creating thumbnails and testing them all on Facebook ads, that's awesome.
But for us here at Bamby Media, and I'm sure for a lot of you as well, it's like I've got a team of five people. We're also producing client work every day, all day. This is not all that we are doing testing like a bunch of different thumbnails. I like the idea of it, but we haven't really put it into practice too much.
We've done it a couple of times, but it's just, it's adding more workload to an already huge workload. Number five is titles matter. Duh. Flipping everyone tells you that, and it's true. If you get your title wrong, your video's probably gonna tank. You can change your title though at any time. Just change it.
If it's not working, you're not getting the downloads, the SEO's not there. Like people aren't searching for that thing. Change it. Just change it. It's not a big deal. No one's gonna notice and then see how it goes after that. [00:10:00] Number six. Tools like Vid IQ or YouTube Buddy are awesome. I use Vid iq. I don't use it for all our episodes, but I pop in there and it helps me get over the hurdle sometimes of like, okay, what are people actually searching for?
Uh, am I hitting that mark? Especially if I've got like a new piece of kit with this particular piece of kit. What are people searching for? And so then I'll make sure that I'm hitting that in the video that I then plan to do. So whatever it is that you are looking at potentially doing an episode on Vid IQ is really good at making sure that you're doing the right spin on whatever that is to get the best outcome out of it.
Number seven, consuming is an important part of your growth. Now, I hate social media. I, I really don't like it, like traditional, you know, TikTok and flip on Instagram and Facebook and just like doom scrolling. I hate it. I don't know if you're the same, but I really hate it. It's [00:11:00] just so soul destroying.
But with YouTube it's different. With YouTube and I mean, I know they have YouTube shorts, but I certainly feel like for the growth of my channel, I need to make sure that I'm consuming also on YouTube so that I can see not what my competitors are doing like I don't, I don't feel like there's a competition here on YouTube.
I think that there's space for everybody and everybody's unique, but I like to keep up to date with how people are producing. Like what other people are editing how they're putting things together. What kind of graphics are people using? What kind of shots are people creating, getting inspiration from other people I find to be so satisfying, and it's definitely a, a big part of the actual growth here is to make sure that I'm consuming enough to understand what's working on YouTube and what's not working on YouTube.
Number eight, scripting [00:12:00] is good. Not a script. If you've got a teleprompter and you're just reading from a script, I don't think that's as good as having like some dot points, having an idea of what you're gonna say and then just talking. And you'll probably suck at it to begin with, but over time you'll just get better at it.
It's so much more engaging. It's so much more like appealing to the person that's watching you. I feel like I'm actually having a conversation with you. I've got some things that I wanna say. I've got some dot points, some numbers, some things written down, but I haven't scripted the whole thing. It feels much more natural doing it this way, and I hope that you feel the same way when you're watching and listening to me as well.
Number nine, the videos that pop off. As in do really well can often be surprising. So I watched a video a while back that, uh, Sean Kall did on Think Media. This is a great channel. I, you know, watched their, a lot of their videos before I started a [00:13:00] YouTube channel. I. Something he said really stuck with me.
He says, you gotta find your hammer in a nail content. He showed a video where there's this YouTube video of someone literally hammering a nail into a piece of drywall. Like that's the whole video. It's like, here's a nail, here's the wall, banging it in. Right? This video's got like millions of views. That video is, is a banger in the, in the truest sense of the word.
And I was like, what? Like, are you actually serious? This? Who needs this information? Lots of people need that information. That, that was like a, a, a real eye opener for me where I just went, ah, like, you don't have to be super sophisticated. You don't have to be, you know, the most polished thing. You don't have to know.
Way more than everybody else. You just need to find the things that people really search for, that people really wanna know about [00:14:00] and then deliver on that thing. We did this video where it was, uh, I think I was reviewing the road pod mic. And I was saying how good it was and the applications for it, USB versus XLR.
It was a great video. Good. One of our earlier ones, a few people said in the comments of that video, yeah, but how do I set up my DSP settings for it? I was like, oh, okay. That seems pretty like simple. Like I thought it was simple, but I'm gonna do a video on it because clearly there's people that really don't understand this like.
This should be something that I do a video on and it wasn't for me to be like, cool, this is gonna get a bunch of views. It was just like, this feels like something that needs to be delivered to the community. The audience needs this. So I did this video. It was really detailed on how to set up your DSP settings for the Road Pod mic.
Super boring title. Yeah, it's just a walkthrough and this video has got almost 20,000 views. I certainly did not expect that from this video. [00:15:00] That's the thing, right? Is that take knowledge of what your viewer is actually asking about, like questioning and make sure you, that you deliver on that like. If enough people are asking for something, it's probably a good idea for you to do a video on that thing.
So that video is, is still going great, and I get a lot of like, thank you, hooray. You know, I, I, this is the thing I needed. That's awesome. So that was surprising and pretty cool. Number 10, it must be joyful. So for me, this is huge. I, as you can probably tell, I'm. All about the joy. Everything I do in my life when I commit to something and it's gonna be long term like a job, you know, when I set up Bambi Media, a child, like having children, you know, things like, although that's certainly not joyful all the time, I need it to be joyful.
And so with the YouTube channel as well, that [00:16:00] was non-negotiable. I had to have joy. Coming into this experience, I had to feel like I was in a place where I could connect with you and find happiness for you and myself as well. That's key. You must find the joy. If it's not joyful and it becomes monotonous and boring and you just hate it, and you're so sick of it and you're burned out, you're probably doing the wrong thing.
Number 11, you need a good system. Systems and processes are my favorite thing in the world now. Unfair advantage again, from my point of view here, because we have a podcast and video production company, we already have systems and processes in place because we already produce shows for other people on repeat every day, every week.
We already know exactly what is involved and the steps that need to happen, the checklists that need to be done in order to get [00:17:00] this thing out the door in time by the deadline. So when I decided to start a YouTube channel, I use those same systems and processes. Put myself forward as a client. So we have like on our Trello board, the Pump Up Your Pod podcast is now in there with all our other clients, and then we have check boxes for all the things that need to be done for that podcast, for that video YouTube channel, the same way as we have for every other client.
If you have systems and processes that can be followed, then you are much more likely to. Keep that kind of hamster wheel going. Keep your consistency going because you have things that you need to tick off all the time and that you have deadlines that you can adhere to, knowing that you'll be able to get those things done because you've systemized.
And it also means that you can outsource so that you are not left doing everything that you have other people in your team or maybe you're outsourcing to someone like us. 'cause there's a lot of stuff that you need to do to have a thriving [00:18:00] channel. And so the systems and processes have been key. Number 12, track your revenue from day one.
So I know I said, you know, we didn't get monetized until 365 days in, but that doesn't mean we didn't make money off of YouTube almost immediately. So what I did was I created a spreadsheet where I, uh, listed out any. Thing that we got any like question, any consult tracked, all that to then go quickly over time, what actual revenue is the YouTube channel bringing in?
That's not from ads, that's not from the, you know, Google AdSense And I was very surprised very quickly as to. The money that we could generate from having a YouTube channel without it having to be monetized at all. That only works if you have something that someone can actually purchase. So from [00:19:00] day one, if you are trying to promote something like, you know, Bammy Media and our services and consults and affiliates and all that from day one, you need to have some things in place that people can so easily, like it's frictionless.
Just go, yes, I'm gonna buy that. Yes, I'm gonna book in that consult. I can't wait to give this person money because they're giving me so much value. And that's the feedback that I get, is like when someone books in for one of our consults and it's one of the first things they say is like, I've been consuming your content and I really love it.
Like I've got a lot out of this and I'm so happy to be giving you money right now to help me. Like just please help me. You know? So. Track your revenue from day one, have a little bit of a spreadsheet and just see. Just see what happens. See what comes in, because if you're waiting for AdSense to kick in, it might be a while.
Have some services, some products, some sort of offering. [00:20:00] Maybe it's like a downloadable that makes you money if you want it to be making you money. My last one is I don't think you need to be worried so much about how many subscribers you have. It seems to be less of a thing, like subscribers are fine and good and I, it's like I'm so excited when I get more subscribers, but it's less about the subscribers 'cause I feel like they're not being served your content anyway.
So much. When I'm looking into the back end of our YouTube channel, most of the people that watch our channel are not subscribers. I think it's something obscene, like 85. I, I don't know. It's like it's a big percentage of people aren't subscribed. And that makes sense to me because of the content that I'm delivering.
I'm delivering content where it's talking about two microphones competing those microphones, or it's software that I'm reviewing, or it's like DSP settings, as I said, or there's quick tips for podcasting and for podcasters, we're doing things [00:21:00] around like descrip and like editing, podcast editing. You wouldn't necessarily subscribe to that channel.
I mean, if you do, I mean, if you like this, please subscribe, but I'm saying like, don't let it overwhelm you being like, why don't I have more subscribers? You'll get there. You'll get there. Just focus on the quality content and you'll still get views. If your content is good, if your quality is good, if what you are like talking about are things that people are actually interested in and searching for, you're gonna get views.
It's gonna turn into things that you don't expect. It's gonna change your life. It really will change your life. Don't be so hung up on how many subscribers do I have? I think that that's less of a thing. Enjoy the process. You will get there. Enjoy the ride. That's it for me today. I hope you've enjoyed this.
If you have. You know all the things to do. I don't even need to prompt you. You may not have even got to the end, but if [00:22:00] you did, thanks so much for being here all the way to the end. I hope you have a lovely day.