US 50 recap
I’ve just returned from my summer road trip on US 50, traveling from Kansas to California. It was great!
I pretty much knew what to expect on the Kansas section – lots of small towns and getting more wide open as I ventured west. Colorado was interesting. The eastern part was similar to western Kansas, and as I headed even more west it became really scenic through the mountains. Utah felt like it started earning its name of “Loneliest Road in America”. Very desolate and beautiful. Nevada certainly lived up to the “Loneliest Road in America” name. Probably my favorite part of the trip. And California was scenic for about 50 miles and then started getting into the gridlock of suburban Sacramento (where the trip ended).
I had a lot of fun and went to as many places as I could along the way. Hopefully I did a good job of documenting the trip – we’ll find out soon as I’ll start editing film this week.
I recorded 20 videos on the trip and plan to start releasing them beginning August 10th every Thursday and Sunday. I posted pictures on Instagram and Facebook during the trip, and it was fun interacting with a bunch of people throughout. I even met a “fan” in Nevada, and he included me in a YouTube video he did!
Good times! Can’t wait until my next road trip!
July YouTube recap
While I was on the road for half the month, Travel with a Wiseguy on YouTube kept rolling on. July was a very good month. It was probably the 3rd best month in the history of the channel all things considered.
There were nearly 1,000 new subscribers and 300,000 views during July. This brings the grand total to over 16k subscribers and … drumroll please … 3 MILLION views! Wow! Thank you all so much!
125k of the views (over 40%) in July were for the 10 Smallest Towns in Texas. That video has now gone over 300k views in total. It appears to have slowed down in the past week, so we’ll see if it has any more legs in the future. The top two all-time videos are now from Texas and have a combined 650k views. I guess everything is bigger in Texas :)
The other thing that I’ve noticed is that since my library of videos is now over 200, there are more views in general even if there isn’t a “popular” video at the time. For July the daily average was around 10,000 views, and while 4,000 of that was one video (Texas), that means 6,000 were from the other 200 videos combined, none of which were going “viral”. It’s very interesting because even videos from 2-3 years ago are still getting 50-100 views a day. All of that adds up. It helps more people find the channel and continues the upward trend of subscribers and views. The YouTube algorithm is fascinating and appears to be working with Travel with a Wiseguy.
Upcoming travels
I have no idea haha.
The only thing I have planned is a family vacation to Florida at Christmas.
I assume I will take several more trips between now and then, but for now school will be starting in a couple weeks and I need to be in Wichita. I also have all those videos to edit, which will last me until the middle of October!
Upcoming August video releases (for the diehards)
I always like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have read this far :)
Here’s what I have coming up on the channel …
Thu, Aug 3 – Dade County, Missouri, Part 2
Sun,
Aug 6 – Behind the scenes of my Arkansas trip in June
Thu,
Aug 10 – US 50 drone video
Sun,
Aug 13 – US 50 Eastern Kansas
Thu,
Aug 17 – Kansas Ghost Towns – Le Loup, Homewood, Agricola
Sun,
Aug 20 – US 50 Western Kansas
Thu,
Aug 24 – Coolidge, Kansas and Cousin Eddie
Sun,
Aug 27 – US 50 Eastern Colorado
Thu,
Aug 31 – Leadville, Colorado
Then I will continue with more US 50 videos of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California.
Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!
