We’ve hit some major milestones on Travel with a Wiseguy recently …
When 2022 started, you wouldn’t have been able to convince me this would happen by the end of the year. Here’s how the first three years of the channel have grown in terms of video views:
2020 – 26k
2021
– 131k
2022
– 890k (and growing)
There’s
been a solid growth in the channel in the past month, so there’s a chance it
hits 1 million by the end of the year for 2022 alone. This blows me away.
7,000 subscribers
Similar to above, here are how the subscribers have grown by year:
2020 – 146
2021
– 955
2022
– 6,050
It appears that subscribers = views, or views = subscribers (or both).
100,000 views for one video
I’ve seen a lot of YouTube channels with less success have videos go “viral”, but not be able to repeat it or sustain consistent growth. As you can see from above, the growth of this channel was very slow for a couple years, and I never had a video go viral. What did happen, however, is several videos saw increased traffic in the past 6 months, and this week I had my first video top 100,000 views. What is interesting is how others are close behind …
Top-10 Smallest Towns in Kansas – 100,299 views
Top-10 Smallest Towns in Oklahoma – 95,533 views
Top-10 Smallest Towns in Missouri – 94,316 views
Other top videos are:
Route 66 Missouri Ghost Towns – 63,263 views
Top-10 Smallest Towns in Nebraska – 44,754 views (released 4 weeks ago)
small town, USA – Galena, Missouri – 32,428 views (released last week)
Greenwood County, KS, Ghost Towns Part 1 – 20,765 views (released 6 weeks ago)
There are 13 more videos that have received between 10k-20k views.
Obviously, the Top-10 videos are the most popular (I’ve written about this previously). What is interesting beyond that is the variety of videos next on the list. I have no idea why the video about the small town of Galena (population 455) has done so well. I expected it to be like all the other videos of that type, which have received between 2k-11k views. Whenever I think I have YouTube figured out, it surprises me once again.
With all that being said, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who continues to watch these little videos. It’s very humbling to look at these numbers!
Upcoming travel plans
This week I’m headed to Denver, Colorado, for the US Track & Field Coaches Convention. I’ll be out there with other members of the Wichita State staff to talk about our sport, attend a variety of coaching seminars, and watch the presentation of the Bowerman Awards (Track and Field’s version of the Heisman Trophy). I won’t be filming any videos while I’m in Colorado, unfortunately, but it will be good to hang out with my colleagues in the track and field world.
Once I get back home from Denver, I’ll be in Wichita for a few days before driving east to Ohio for Christmas. Of course, I plan to take the scenic route along the way. My plan is to exit Kansas in the southeast corner, traverse through the southern part of Missouri, and then explore around the south and eastern parts of Kentucky. I may even dip into Virginia for a stop in one special town before heading north to Ohio. I’ll be in Ohio for several days spending the holidays with family.
Just before the new year, I’ll be flying from Ohio down to Texas where I will be trying to visit the 10 smallest towns in the state. I’m hoping to make some other interesting videos about the Lonestar State while I’m there, but it’s a huge state and I’ll be doing a massive amount of driving to get to the 10 smallest towns. Then I’ll be heading back to Wichita in early January to get ready for the indoor track and field season.
If you want to know more exact whereabouts, follow me on Instagram where I often put photos and videos on my story of where I’m currently located. My Instagram account is travel_wiseguy.
Upcoming videos (for the diehards)
Here is my tentative video release schedule for the rest of 2022 …
Sun,
Dec 11 (today) – small town, USA – Fairfax, OK
Thu,
Dec 15 – East Calico, AR
Sun,
Dec 18 – small town, USA – Beaver City, NE
Tue,
Dec 20 – Gray Horse, OK – abandoned school (this is a short 3 minute bonus
video)
Thu,
Dec 22 – Oklahoma Ghost Towns #7 – Sumner, Webb City, Gray Horse
Sun,
Dec 25 – TBA (I’m hoping to film something next weekend in Kansas)
Thu,
Dec 29 – My favorite ghost towns of 2022 (and a few from 2021)
I’ve got 4 ghost town videos I filmed previously that I’m going to release after the new year from Nebraska, Arkansas, and Missouri. And I’m still holding onto some footage from my trip to Bolivia in 2019 that I might release at some point.
Other than that, I’ll be doing a lot of filming between now and early January to be released in the first 3 months of 2023. I’ve been able to keep up the pace of 2 videos per week since August, but it takes a little more planning as compared to when I was doing one per week.
This will be my last blog post of 2022, hopefully my next one will be filled with information about cool stuff I saw in these upcoming weeks! Until then … happy travels!
