YouTube Won’t last

7 Lessons From 7 Yrs Running An Outdoors Channel

This blog post is based on a video published on my YouTube Channel:

It’s been 7 days since my last upload. In fact I’ve been posting a video on here on average every 7 days for the last 7 years and in this post I’ve got 7 things that I didn’t expect to learn when I started doing this 7 years ago and yes one of them is how I think there’s a good chance I won’t be able to do this for another 7 years, maybe even not in 2 years.

Here are the titles of the 7 lessons.

1. It’s Good To Talk To Strangers

2. Say Goodbye To All Your Friends

3. The YouTube Difficulty Paradox

4. My Old Self Is Judging me

5. Money Money Money No No No

6. The Pen Is Mightier Than The Pixel

7. Nothing Lasts Forever

1. It’s Good To Talk To Strangers

I have made more new friends through doing YouTube than anything else in my life.

It’s really difficult making friends as an adult, especially if you hate everyone you work with and you don’t want to join a church, a gym or a cult. Those last two are somewhat interchangeable.

But when you start a YouTube channel, suddenly you are connecting with all the weirdos who have the same weird interests as you.

Sometimes they will message you, occasionally a conversation might happen and that might turn into an actual friendship.

I’m not a lonely person but I have seen people who would otherwise be kinda isolated, make friends through making videos on YouTube and their lives have been enriched as a result.

It’s kinda cool.

My wife still thinks it’s weird though when I say “I’m off to the woods to camp with some stranger I met on the internet”.

You sometimes make temporary friends too. One night I was camping near a lake and an hour after dark a man appeared out of the gloom, he recognised me from YouTube, and then claimed he was supposed to be camping with his friends but they hadn’t shown up.

I felt bad for him and said he was welcome to camp and chat. He didn’t chat loads but he did spend a while sitting in the dark sharpening a stick with a massive knife.

I slept with an axe under my pillow that night. But thankfully I woke up not at all murdered.

The downside of this has been loosing one of those new friends unexpectedly about a year ago.

Life is beautiful.

But life is fragile.

2. Say Goodbye To All Your Friends

YouTube is something that can absorb as much attention as you can throw at it and because you can think about it 24/7. I quite often dream about making videos.

I was writing this script at 11:45pm last night.

It runs the risk of taking away time from other relationships with family, other friends or just taking away the time you spend on other responsibilities.

So if there’s something or someone or some peoples in your life, make sure and protect that relationship or that commitment. They matter a lot more than your YouTube channel.

That's why I tend to do my trips during the week and I protect as much as possible my Saturdays and Sundays.

Sometimes because of the big numbers involved, even 1000 people watching is a big number. If can make it feel more vital than it is. So be careful

3. The YouTube Difficulty Paradox

YouTube is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult job I’ve had in my life. It’s also the most fun and most stressful. It's given me the most freedom but at times its also made me feel trapped.

My previous jobs have included working in the advertising industry, working at a tech start up, working in retail, I was a part time butcher and a spent one summer as a child allegedly helping on a farm, although all I remember was riding the automatic manure sweeper up and down the cow shed. Ironic considering my more recent connections to cow manure.

I worked this out.

The chances of being able to make a living from a new business venture is about 1 in 5. The chances of being able to make a living on YouTube is about 1 in 1000.

That failed tech start up that I worked at for 2 years had a 100x better chance at success than my channel.

I had no idea how much work this would be and continues to be.

I spent 6 years spending about 20hours per week on something that didn’t make any significant money and required me to sacrifice a lot of time for other things.

But.

I enjoyed making those videos and that’s what’s different. It was a hobby for a long time, gave me an excuse to do new things.

Eventually that paid off last summer and I went fulltime at the start of this year.

Today. While YouTube still causes me a lot of stresses and headaches. A lot of time a lot of work a lot of second guessing myself.

I’m getting to make what I want, do the thing I want to do and tell stories and share adventures using the filmmaking skills I love to use.

So I hate the saying “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day I your life”.

If you find a job you love, you will pour yourself wholesale into it. You will become the job and that's not always a good thing.

So be very wary of the job you love so much you could do all the time. What's it costing you elsewhere.

That said.

I Hugely value work life balance and this year I’m cutting down the number of videos I’m making from 4 per month to 2-3 per month.

Hopefully leading to higher quality videos too.

4. My Old Self Is Judging me

YouTube changes how you feel about yourself in Good and bad ways. I’ve found it’s increased my confidence, but at the same time I’m a lot more aware of how I look. I had a problem with this tooth for a while, half it broke off.

I looked kinda like a hillbilly for a bit. Most of the time I forgot about it. Until I had to edit a video and then it was all I could see.

And it then made me feel more uncomfortable when I was out and about.

I’ve also had the questionable pleasure to watch myself age over the last 7 years. I really don’t like watching my older videos, because it makes me aware of just how much life is racing past.

But that’s good in a way too. Thinking about your inevitable end helps focus the mind, makes you not want to waste time. Makes you ask the big questions in life, why are we here, does God exist, is there more than this?

Should I consider using Just For Men to cover up those greys in my beard?

5. Money Money Money No No No

If your YouTube channel grows. People will start to want things from you. Sometimes those things are good, like advice. I like to help when I can.

Although it’s tricky when some people frequently treat you kinda like a personal shopping assistant. One person doing that is fine, but when it's several people several times a day...

Brands might start contacting you offering you money to promote something for them. Sometimes that’s good. It’s near impossible to make a living from YouTube without sponsors.

But I’ve said yes too much in the past and found myself tied up in making videos about products or trapped by schedules.

Currently being offered 1 year...

So turn down most of what you are offered. Pick things you find genuinely interesting, do your research first and always ask for more money.

Remember they need you more than you need them.

6. The Pen Is Mightier Than The Pixel

Doing YouTube made me a better writer, made me read more and made me better at research. Most of my videos have some kind of script. At the very least, just bullet points. Or like this one an entire 2000 word script written verbatim.

Writing scripts for videos teaches you how to craft and organise the structure of a video. It helps with planning & scheduling and it helps you to to shoot effienctly which speeds up the edit.

30 minutes spent writing down an outline and some bullet points for a video can save you hours later on.

Some of my best videos have also come from ideas I’ve gotten from reading books.

So read widely and spend more time writing

7. Nothing Lasts Forever

Finally nothing lasts forever. History teaches us that. There was a time before YouTube and there will be a time after.

And there have been several change recently which make me concerned that doing this channel as a job might only have a couple of years left.

Audience Habits Are Changing

Short form video is on the rise and it does seem to be lowering long form views. That might continue. Although my hope is that people will burn out on short form and look for something more substantial. You can only eat sweets for so long before you spew your guts up and just crave a big plate of salted and buttered boiled potatoes.

The Next Generation

Most teenagers today, probably about 90% prefer TikTok to Youtube. They might keep those habits as they grow up. TikTok has now got long form vertical video, which might feed the longform needs of the next generation, meaning that YouTube viewership is going to drop as older YouTube viewers kick the bucket and and not replaced by younger viewers.

Now thats something that probably won’t affect me, but more longterm.

Competition Is Increasing.

Every year there are more and more people starting outdoor channels and there are only so many ideas. So it’s increasingly hard to stand out among the noise. You can say personalities stand out. There are a lot of interesting people out there. As views get spread over a larger number of channels, eventually that could mean views are not high enough to attract sponsors or make much from ad revenue.

The Rise Of AI

Ai is multiplying all the above. It’s letting people churn out more and more addictive short form content that reduces longform views. ChatBots can be used to write scripts, and create eye catching thumbnails. It won’t be long before we start to see longform AI generated outdoor videos. Perhaps exploring places that no one has ever seen before, because they have been created by an AI. Or even just creating people, who seems totally real out having a fun adventure.

How long will it be before you can type “Create a 20minute outdoor adventure video in the style of Stephen J Reid exploring an abandoned quarry full of robots”

Old viewers will know what’s real, but new ones won’t be able to tell the difference.

AI will make it possible for people to create a following based on creativity but with zero talent. AI makes everyone special.

And when everyone is special, no one is.

My Hope

Now my hope is this won’t happen.

My hope is people will get sick of junk content and go back to longer videos.

My Hope is there will be enough people watching for everyone.

My hope is that people will seek out and value content made by real people.

Television didn’t kill books.

Cars didn’t kill the bicycle.

Things change. That’s a given. But we never know where the dust will settle.

That’s why while I hope I’ll be doing this for another 7 years, I’m preparing for it only being another 2.

And I’m ok about that if it’s what happens. This has been great.

And I’ve never really felt in control of my life anyway. I feel like in some ways it’s just all kind of happened to me. The good and the bad.

Maybe helps I’m a Christian and I believe that ultimately there’s someone who has my best interests at heart even if I don’t understand why sometimes.

I find that helps.