When you feel like giving it up.

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TerryByte

TerryByte

I've Got It
I know the feeling. Trust me, I know. You feel like your channel isn't growing. You refresh your dashboard stupidly to check if there's a change in your view/subscriber count. You get up in the morning, check your dashboard first thing, and don't see a notification. It puts you down. You look at your youtube idols, people who are successful. You might have friends who started youtube channels and are growing faster than yours. Jealousy and envy builds. You feel as if your videos that you worked hard on, put hours into filming, editting, scripting, reshooting and even photoshopping the thumbnails, are being swept under the carpet. The first few times, you used it as fuel to keep on going, so that one day you will make that video that will skyrocket your channel, but that fuel dries up quickly, and you're burnt out. Real life is catching up. And that's when you want to give up.

I won't say 'do it for the love of doing it.' That's cliche and in all honesty, it's lying to yourself. Of course you need to love what you do, and you have to enjoy making videos. However, if no one watches what you put so much passion into, it's impossible to ignore. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying, or they don't care enough.

So if you're on the verge of giving up, what do I suggest? Look at your subscriber base. Be honest with yourself if you earned those subscribers and not made some silly 'sub4sub.' Remember that 1 subscriber is one person. One. Whole. Person. A person who found enjoyment in your videos. A person who laughed at your jokes. A person who was entertained by your stories. A person who was moved by your dramatic short film. A person who was helped by your tips.

Visualise the amount of people who repeatedly came back for your content. Use your living room as an example. If you have 27 subscribers, you have a whole living room of people who come back to your content. If you have 100 subscribers, you filled 2 buses worth of people! 500? A school hall! They all in some way or another, are supporting your content. They want to see more. And not just more. They want to see you improve. They want each video to be better than the last, and by subscribing, they TRUST you to do that.

'But I only have 3 subscribers! That's barely anything!' I hear some of you cry. No it's not. That's three people who enjoy your videos. They all have their separate lives, personalities and interests. Three people who like your content is better than zero, is it not?

Youtube is flooded with all sorts of videos, we know that. A lot of it can be crap, we know that. So when people watch your video, and subscribe, they trust you to rise above that mediocrity. And also remember, some people don't have a youtube account. But they might just return to your channel fortnightly, weekly or even daily! They believe you can do it. They know you can do it!

Don't disappoint the people who trust and support you just because 'you give up'. That's not cool dude.
 
Let me play the Devil's advocate role here, even though in half an hour I got to leave the PC: yes, they might have some people as subscriber, but what if the average watch time is a minute in a, I don't know, 5 minutes video? They are still doing videos that basically nobody watch, why even trying?
 
TerryByte said:
I know the feeling. Trust me, I know. You feel like your channel isn't growing. You refresh your dashboard stupidly to check if there's a change in your view/subscriber count. You get up in the morning, check your dashboard first thing, and don't see a notification. It puts you down. You look at your youtube idols, people who are successful. You might have friends who started youtube channels and are growing faster than yours. Jealousy and envy builds. You feel as if your videos that you worked hard on, put hours into filming, editting, scripting, reshooting and even photoshopping the thumbnails, are being swept under the carpet. The first few times, you used it as fuel to keep on going, so that one day you will make that video that will skyrocket your channel, but that fuel dries up quickly, and you're burnt out. Real life is catching up. And that's when you want to give up.

I won't say 'do it for the love of doing it.' That's cliche and in all honesty, it's lying to yourself. Of course you need to love what you do, and you have to enjoy making videos. However, if no one watches what you put so much passion into, it's impossible to ignore. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying, or they don't care enough.

So if you're on the verge of giving up, what do I suggest? Look at your subscriber base. Be honest with yourself if you earned those subscribers and not made some silly 'sub4sub.' Remember that 1 subscriber is one person. One. Whole. Person. A person who found enjoyment in your videos. A person who laughed at your jokes. A person who was entertained by your stories. A person who was moved by your dramatic short film. A person who was helped by your tips.

Visualise the amount of people who repeatedly came back for your content. Use your living room as an example. If you have 27 subscribers, you have a whole living room of people who come back to your content. If you have 100 subscribers, you filled 2 buses worth of people! 500? A school hall! They all in some way or another, are supporting your content. They want to see more. And not just more. They want to see you improve. They want each video to be better than the last, and by subscribing, they TRUST you to do that.

'But I only have 3 subscribers! That's barely anything!' I hear some of you cry. No it's not. That's three people who enjoy your videos. They all have their separate lives, personalities and interests. Three people who like your content is better than zero, is it not?

Youtube is flooded with all sorts of videos, we know that. A lot of it can be crap, we know that. So when people watch your video, and subscribe, they trust you to rise above that mediocrity. And also remember, some people don't have a youtube account. But they might just return to your channel fortnightly, weekly or even daily! They believe you can do it. They know you can do it!

Don't disappoint the people who trust and support you just because 'you give up'. That's not cool dude.
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Ah, it's good to see things from this perspective! There are different approaches to handle disappointments and this is one of them :) . Don't look at what you don't have; look at the things you do have.
 
TerryByte said:
I won't say 'do it for the love of doing it.' That's cliche and in all honesty, it's lying to yourself. Of course you need to love what you do, and you have to enjoy making videos. However, if no one watches what you put so much passion into, it's impossible to ignore. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying, or they don't care enough.
Click to expand...
This is the cold, hard, and very uncomfortable truth.
 
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Funny, I've had YouTube since 2006 and right up to 2011 it was growing quite nicely until I was hitting 80k on most videos. Then I thought it would be a good idea to delete those videos and since that day I've watched my channel shrivel up and limp through the cold, dark, everchanging internet. I still produce, I still upload, but I have been stuck at 81 subscribers for nearly 4 years and if I hit 50 views on a video I feel super amazing awesome!!

Give up? Like many creatives, you wouldn't know how too. Having observed, learnt, and taken on what many channels have be doing you've been working on building up a consistent and reliable fanbase. By staying true to yourself and your product you can chip away at the stone of triumph.

The best way to eat an elephant is in bite size chunks

Life is like a roundabout - you may spend ages waiting to go, but before you know it your time will come. (In the UK roundabouts are a road thing... do you get them elsewhere?)
 
One thing I learned to do is: Never give up.
Imagine if you'll do a video like " stopping doing videos "....
there will be hundreds of people that will be sad, 1000 subscribers? There will be 1000 peolpe who will want you back...
Maybe you meant something to them?
 
This is, omf. I can't Haha
I was so unmotivated, felt so bad, because I had this thing where I wanted people to ask me questions for my next vlog, but no one asked me anything which put me down so much, but thanks to your post it really made my day :)
Thanks.
 
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