Celebrating with numbers.

Talking about my video channel …….

Tonight I had a really nice little surprise when my total number of viewer/subscribers went from 499 subscribers to 500 for the first time. By the morning I suspect that the number will be below 500 again because people seem to come and go, still, it’s nice to see if only for a few hours.*

Now, my celebration is nothing like the ones held by our man Colin Furze…..who gets another million subscribers and to celebrate he lets off a few thousand fireworks in as dangerous a manner as possible……maybe I need a ‘safety’ tie and all will be well. So instead of blowing my micro budget on a couple of boxes of fireworks a la Furze I might take Jax out to our favorite cafe for a bacon buttie……how good am I ?

The other celebration this week is that I mostly finished 6 weeks of garden work in the rain and all I have left to do is the remainder of planting several hundred new bulbs for the spring……this place looks great for a few weeks in the spring but really beat up right now. The final small thrill also came this week in that I may now have a complete list of snagging jobs written up inside the shed door and not only that but many of them are now ticked off as being done.

Blog and video blog news.

I did say that I would try and work to a regular format with my video clips, my video structure really is shamelessly copied from a better YouTuber and I had hoped to hit the magic ‘thousand’ subscribers by Christmas because that’s the point where things change with YouTube. However I don’t think it’s going to happen now because we’ve only got 6 weeks to go and I don’t promote my work in any way so what happens just happens. It probably doesn’t help that I only write a post about once a month so my original written and photographed blog must feel a bit dormant.

I am though trying to make the slow transition from writing blogger to regular videographer but it’s slow and painful progress : while I seem to be able to write words in some sort of order I still feel it strange to ‘talk to the camera’ so if there’s one main element that doesn’t come across well it is the ‘me’ element. Because of where we live – just about hanging onto the tail end of a weak internet connection it takes forever to render and upload a video – even my short, 10 minute video segments take hours. Another problem, while i’m having a first world moan, is that I can write a few paragraphs of a post and then leave it for days but when it comes to making a video it seems to need continuity and that roughly translates to similar lighting, clothes and natural degree of scruffiness. I find video a lot harder too because I have to do everything that even a small film crew does…..that’s the ‘script’, the filming and the sound and then I have to go and be my own video editor and sound editor. The whole process of doing that last 14 minute video took me all day of running back and forth to the job to shoot joining clips and ‘B roll’ and then a couple of hours editing,

Some nice news this week is that I dropped in on the video channel from Troy and Pascale (formerly Free Range Sailing) …..who seem to be growing an entire homestead of animals and baby’s down there in upside downland…..anyway Troy’s news is that he has bought plans for a Pathfinder so best of luck with that . Troy says he likes the idea of a cuddy on the Pathfinder so here you go mate !

The whole other side of making a video blog is a bit like the same problem in writing new pieces in that i’m running out of content ideas because it’s that time of year when the work is winding down and it’s hard to make interesting the simple task work of adding more fittings. The good thing is that I seem to have had a small return of enthusiasm for the actual trips and voyages that I might make next year when I have a more complete boat to sail, motor and row around in. To be honest, one more video of doing small jobs and i’m kind-of done with type of content : the more video worthy content will only come with sea trials and my first proper trip out.

The funny thing is that when I came to check in with my viewing and subscriber numbers this morning the video view count had come off last night’s peak and yes…..at least one of the new subscribers had jumped ship so yes….back at 499 again.

Just out of curiosity I checked to see if I was anywhere near making the subscriber numbers and view time I would need that would allow me to monetize the channel and thus make a small income to go towards the camera set up I will need at sea. The good news is that i’m close on subscriber numbers but only achieving half of the view time that YouTube insist on. To make that work I would have to double my output and somehow persuade more people to watch more of each video and I don’t see that happening any time soon.

While I am here I feel I should say a few things about the internet and specifically about Youtube channels. I think that i’m just about up to the point where I need to switch the internet off and not come back to it for a few months – it’s that bad I feel. Only this month I also unsubscribed from at least a dozen channels and chopped my FB ‘Friends’ page down to people that I actually knew or had had conversations with in the previous year. I can’t quite put it in words yet but I feel that there is something wrong with the entire internet and once again, specifically with YouTube which is where I waste too much time.

Most of the time, I know before even watching a video clip, about current affairs say, what the presenter’s view is going to be and largely what most of them do is form an opinion and keep selling it over and over again. I find it increasingly hard to find channels that engage my interest ; I have for example stopped watching anything to do with sailing and in fact the main channels I have been watching have been to do with mining…..perhaps because I live next to a retired mine. Anyway….I find one channel, based down in mid Cornwall very interesting when it comes to the same kind of mines and mining as we have here and then I often take a look in on what’s going on in a former silver mine in Death Valley (California). Mostly what I do is watch to see how other amateur YouTuber’s like me present and film their own stuff – mostly because I am more acutely aware of the mistakes I continue to make.