From 0 to 1000 YouTube Subscribers in 9 months
I’m a bit of a photography nerd and I’ve learnt a lot about the craft over the years. Especially when it comes to vintage film cameras and making epic portraits and headshots.
My YouTube channel is a bit of an experiment. I wanted to document my own education (in the form of studying renaissance artists, techniques and other useful things for portraits like body language), and share what I’ve learnt with others. Here’s the story so far…
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Why YouTube?
YouTube helps me get my name out there, show my work to a wide audience and share the knowledge I’ve gained. It also acts as a FAQ for my portrait sitters. Rather than explain my retouching methods haphazardly, I can simply point them to my video about it.
A very nice benefit is that learning is consolidated when you try to internalize and summarize an idea or technique for an audience. I pay more attention to a book I’m reading if I know I need to relay that information later. In that sense, making videos helps me out as much as my viewers.
Making videos
It was pretty easy to start - I have most of the equipment I need as a photographer. The only additions I bought were a continuous light (Litemons 200bi) and a voice recorder with lapel mic (the zoom H1). I use my backup camera (a Canon 6D mark2) as a video camera and film in 1080p. I use Davinci Resolve for video editing. Its a steep learning curve, but I get faster with every video.
I started with a video on how to treat digital scans of negatives, and I’m experimenting with tutorials and how-to videos, mixed with quirky videos on things like 3D stereoscopy and drone portraits.
1000 subscribers is significant because it is one of the thresholds to monetization. Along with getting 4000 watch-hours. Its quite a painful journey actually. When I was at 100 subscribers, I got some traction with a video about simplifying camera settings. Subscribers reached 350 a week later. And then….crickets. For months. And many low-view videos later, a video on the philosophy of photography as a hobby gained traction. This was my 33rd video. Over Christmas 2022 and the new year, the subscriber count went from 400 to more than 2000.
What’s next?
Knowing the YouTube ride is a turbulent one, I’m not expecting views to remain high from here. It will dip again as I experiment with various video ideas that may or may not gain traction. Coming up are videos on how to pick a your first film camera, and how you can use body language to signal the intent of a portrait.
The plan is to get to 100 videos in order to have meaningful statistics to study. Which types of videos perform well, which thumbnails get clicked on and what makes me happy as a photographer and a creator.
