November recap and looking ahead to a trip to Florida in December

NOVEMBER – IT’S GETTING COLD!

The weather has started to turn cooler in Wichita and that means two things for me: 1) the indoor track and field season is about to begin and 2) I’ll be heading out of town for the holidays. Before I talk about what’s going on in December, here’s a short recap of what I did this past month.

I had a very interesting day-trip down to Osage County, Oklahoma, where I went to all the historic and filming locations for the book/movie Killers of the Flower Moon. I had been to many of these places previously, but now that I’ve read the book and seen the movie it made more of an impact. I released a video of this trip as well as one of some ghost towns I saw the same day. That was certainly a great day of exploring!

At the end of the month, I spent several days in Texas a couple hundred miles west of Dallas exploring King County, Stonewall County, Dickens County, and Wise County (of course haha). I should have 6-7 videos coming out from that trip, and the first one will be of King County tomorrow (Sunday). I really enjoyed being down in Texas and found a lot of interesting places that I didn’t know much about.

Those are the only two times I was able to get out of Wichita this past month. December will be quite different!

It was an interesting month on the YouTube channel as well. The first half of the month was very successful, and then the past two weeks have not been as much so. As I’ve talked about previously, watching the analytics on YouTube is like looking at the stock market. Lots of ups and downs, and hopefully over time it generally goes up. Next month I’ll give a perspective of what the entire year looked like, but basically, I can say that the trend has generally been good, and November was another solid month.

The November stats on Travel with a Wiseguy were: 185k views and 572 subscribers.

That brings the grand total to: 3.8 million views, 18,895 subscribers.

For those of you who are really into the numbers, the top-5 viewed videos for the month of November were:

1. 10 Smallest Towns Arkansas – 28,884

2. 10 Smallest Towns Missouri – 24,994

3. 10 Smallest Towns Texas – 16,286

4. Zinc, Arkansas – 9,225

5. Route 66 Ghost Towns Missouri – 7,327

The all-time top viewed videos on the channel are:

1. 10 Smallest Towns Texas – 420,723

2. Loving County, Texas – 349,253

3. 10 Smallest Towns Missouri – 258,220

4. Route 66 Missouri Ghost Towns – 236,185

5. 10 Smallest Towns Oklahoma – 182,625

6. 10 Smallest Towns Kansas – 163,771

7. 10 Smallest Towns Arkansas – 106,122

8. 10 Smallest Towns Nebraska – 101,085

There have now been 8 videos cross the 100k view mark!

COMING UP IN DECEMBER

My coaching duties require me to be in Wichita for the first half of the month, but I plan to be on the road for most of the last half of December. I’m still working out the details, but the big picture is I’ll be driving from Kansas to Florida passing through Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and of course Florida.

When I did US 50 this summer, I received a lot of requests to do eastern half of the road, so I’m going to try and do the Missouri portion on my way to Florida (sorry Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia – maybe next year).

I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going to explore in Tennessee and Alabama. In Florida I’ll be finding the 10 smallest towns in the state and then documenting my drive all the way to Key West (where I’ll be spending Christmas with family).

The way I do this YouTube thing is to film a bunch of stuff all at once and then release it over the course of time. I am hoping to get 15-20 videos out of this trip from Kansas to Florida and then release them from January through the middle of March. From that point until June it’s pretty random because of my work schedule. I was able to continue doing two videos per week last year and I’m hopeful I can do it again this year. We’ll see! It’s a fun challenge!

UPCOMING DECEMBER RELEASES (for the diehards)

I like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have read this far :)

As always, this is a very tentative schedule, but here’s an idea of what I have coming up …

Sun, Dec 3 – King County, TX (3rd smallest populated county in the USA)

Thu, Dec 7 – small town, USA – Orlando, OK

Sun, Dec 10 – Behind the scenes in Iowa

Thu, Dec 14 – small town, USA – Spur, TX

Sun, Dec 17 – Dickens County, TX

Thu, Dec 21 – Kansas video TBA

Sun, Dec 24 – Wise County, TX, Ghost Towns

Thu, Dec 28 – small town, USA – Aspermont, TX

Sun, Dec 31 – Top Ghost Towns of 2023

Thu, Jan 4 – Looking head to 2024 (and I’ll have at least one very exciting update about the channel!)

These videos about the counties in Texas could be broken into two parts each, but I won’t know until I get into the editing process. I know King County will only be one video; we’ll see about the others!

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

 

Why I love October, and planning for multiple trips

October is always my favorite month of the year

There are several reasons why I love October, the least of which is because it’s my birthday month :) Living in Kansas, the weather is usually great in October. The end of the month brings one of my favorite holidays – Halloween. The leaves are changing colors. Athletically, football is in full swing, and basketball is starting up. And in recent years, I’ve had a lot of fun traveling at this time of the year.

Roseman Bridge, Madison County, Iowa

My big trip this past month was to Iowa, and I had a lot of fun! I will be releasing six videos from that trip. The main reason for that trip was to visit the 10 smallest towns in the state (which were awesome), but I also had a blast seeing many other places (see the future videos section at the end).

The YouTube channel has also had a really good month, and especially the past couple of weeks. Proof that the YouTube algorithm is a strange and complex thing, the video I posted “10 Smallest Towns in Arkansas” on July 2 has all of a sudden taken off. It would cruise along getting a couple hundred views a day and then in October it started getting a couple thousand views a day. This week it’s averaging around 6,000 views per day.

I don’t know why some videos take longer than others to find their audience. But I do know when I post a “10 Smallest Towns in <State>” video that it will eventually become popular. All six of them have so far (KS, OK, MO, TX, NE, AR). I’m guessing the Iowa video will too … someday.

Speaking of … “The 10 Smallest Towns in Texas” video hit 400,000 total views recently. This is the most viewed video on the channel. Will it reach half a million?

The October stats on Travel with a Wiseguy were: 227k views, 700 subscribers.

That brings the grand total to: 3.6 million views, 18,300 subscribers.

For those of you who are really into the numbers, the top-5 viewed videos for the month of October were:

1. 10 Smallest Towns Arkansas – 60,880

2. 10 Smallest Towns Texas – 52,385

3. 10 Smallest Towns Missouri – 12,588

4. Trail West Road – 4,807

5. Zinc, Arkansas – 4,775

As you can see, the top-2 videos had almost 50% of the total views the channel had for the month.

The all-time top viewed videos on the channel are:

1. 10 Smallest Towns Texas – 404,056

2. Loving County, Texas – 348,261

3. 10 Smallest Towns Missouri – 233,090

4. Route 66 Missouri Ghost Towns – 228,688

5. 10 Smallest Towns Oklahoma – 179,923

6. 10 Smallest Towns Kansas – 162,015

The Nebraska smallest towns video is also about to become the 7^th video to hit 100,000 views.

Planning for November and beyond

I’ve talked about this before, but in order to maintain a two video per week release schedule, I have to plan ahead. For example, I currently have 7 videos I’ve filmed and are in some stage of the editing process. Those 7 videos would take me through Thanksgiving, releasing two per week. A couple things I have to significantly plan for is having videos to release while I’m on vacation over the Christmas holiday, and then during the track and field season.

So, I will get out on the road a couple times this month to have enough videos to get me through the rest of 2023. And then I’ll be on the road filming for a couple weeks at Christmas-time to get a head start on the videos for 2024. The most difficult time for me is around April/May because I don’t have a lot of time to travel for YouTube because of the weekly track and field work and travels.

That being said, I am trying to go down to Oklahoma for a short trip on Sunday. I just saw the movie Killers of the Flower Moon and want to re-visit some of the places I previously did videos about last year.

Usually, I get on the road at Thanksgiving too. And I’m currently trying to figure out what I want to do then. I am leaning towards 3-4 day trip down to Texas. Last year I picked up a bunch of subscribers from Texas and have been wanting to go back – there are so many small towns in that state to find and explore.

A trip I’m looking forward to at the end of the year is spending Christmas in Key West, Florida, with some of my family members. I have no idea what I might film there, but it should be fun! I’m also considering driving there from Kansas and taking the ultimate scenic route over several days to get there. We’ll see, but that sounds like fun!

Upcoming November video releases (for the diehards)

I always like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have read this far :)

This is a very tentative schedule, and the last couple weeks will probably change once I get out and do some more filming, but here’s an idea of what I have coming up on the channel …

Thu, Nov 2 – small town, USA – Florence, KS

Sun, Nov 5 – The Bridges of Madison County, IA

Tue, Nov 7 – Bonus video of Winterset Park, IA

Thu, Nov 9 – Kent, KS, and the Scott Special

Sun, Nov 12 – TBA (possibly Killers of the Flower Moon locations video)

Thu, Nov 16 – Field of Dreams – Dyersville, IA

Sun, Nov 19 – 10 Smallest Towns in Iowa

Thu, Nov 23 – TBA (probably an Oklahoma ghost towns video)

Sun, Nov 26 – TBA – I might finally edit my Bolivia trip from 2019

Thu, Nov 30 – Iowa Ghost Towns Part 1 – Buckhorn, Rockville, Buddy Holly crash site

That last video of the month could also be about Texas … if I go there.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

 

Trying to figure out what works on YouTube

I’ve been doing YouTube videos for 3+ years and regularly try new things.

In 2020 and 2021 I released one video per week. The topics were very random. Sometimes I’d do a road trip. Other times I’d visit some ghost towns. Every once in a while, I did a drone video. Original fans of the channel remember the slushie reviews. I really didn’t know what I was doing, but I was having fun experimenting and having a goal of releasing one video per week.

For the first half of 2022 I released one bonus video per month that was drone related. I felt like I could do more but didn’t want to overextend myself considering I have a full-time job outside of YouTube.

Then late in the summer of 2022 I started releasing my Oregon Trail series. I realized I had so much footage that I needed to make two videos per state instead of one. I put out a poll on YouTube asking if people would like to see two videos per week or just one. The results were about 80% yes, so I decided to try it until the end of the series. It was more work, but I realized I could probably continue doing it after the Oregon Trail series, so I made a goal of two per week from that point on.

The spring was tough because my schedule always gets very hectic then, but I was able to accomplish the goal and the channel seemed to grow more by releasing more videos. I noticed more people generally watch videos on Sundays, so I experimented with putting what I thought would be more significant videos on Sunday. I assume everyone has more time to watch YouTube on the weekend than during the week.

As I am now coming to the end of my US 50 series, I’ve had another “thought” about how I want to do things into the future. Actually, I have A LOT of thoughts, but the main one is to try and make all my Sunday videos some sort of road trip. It’s been easy recently because that was the whole point of the US 50 series. If you’ve noticed every Sunday has been a new section of US 50 and then every Thursday has been a shorter video related to the most recent part of US 50 (ghost towns, national park, etc). I would like to try and continue this pattern. A road trip Sunday video could also be exploring a county, behind the scenes vlog, 10 smallest towns in a state, etc. Then Thursday would be a shorter video like Small Town, USA or ghost towns.

Believe it or not I’ve been chatting with my friend Curt about how to do THREE videos per week. That seems crazy right now (and it is). But that’s for a future blog because there’s no way I could even think about it until the summer of 2024.

September in review – finishing up the US 50 series

I released eight videos in September, all of which are about US 50 or were filmed during that trip. I’ve been happy with how these videos have been received by the viewers. The “road trip” videos about US 50 have been very consistent in how many views each has had, while the Thursday videos have been a little all over the place (as expected).

As the 4^th series of this type I’ve done, this has been the most successful initially. That’s not totally fair to the previous ones because there were far fewer subscribers, but this one has definitely gone well. I would be curious how my Route 66 videos would’ve done if I had released it now instead of at the beginning when I had about 100 followers!

The most popular video of September has been of the ghost town Cisco, Utah. I’m very glad because it was one of my favorite places I visited on the trip!

It was another very consistent month on the channel when looking at the analytics. I haven’t had a video go “viral” for a while, but the core audience is very good, and it feels like things are very stable on a daily basis in terms of viewership. I’m very appreciative! The 10 Smallest Towns in Texas video continues to get tons of views and is now the most popular video on the channel with over 350k views!

For the month, the channel had 160k views and just under 600 new subscribers. That brings the grand total to 3.4 million views and 17.6k subscribers!!!

Looking ahead to October

I didn’t mention it in the previous section, but I did a short day trip in Reno County, Kansas, to film a few things that’ll be coming up soon (see below). I’m also planning a trip to Iowa in a couple weeks to visit the 10 smallest towns in the state. I’ve not done all my research yet, so I don’t know where else I’ll be going, but one of the places I’m looking at is the Field of Dreams movie set in Dyersville, Iowa. I’m also considering doing another “behind-the-scenes” video like I did in Arkansas.

I’m not sure if I will make any other trips in October, but if I do, I’m assuming it would be more local in Kansas or Oklahoma.

On the channel, my US 50 series will be coming to an end. It was a lot of fun! And I’m looking forward to releasing some new videos that aren’t along US 50.

Upcoming October 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 …

Sun, Oct 1 (today) – US 50 Western Nevada

Thu, Oct 5 – Nevada Ghost Towns Part 2 – Virginia City, Gold Hill, Silver City

Sun, Oct 8 – US 50 California (end of road trip)

Thu, Oct 12 – Small Town, USA – Peabody, KS

Sun, Oct 15 – Random California Day Trip – Yolo to Santa Rosa

Thu, Oct 19 – The ghost town of Kent, Kansas, and the Scott Special

Sun, Oct 22 – Trails West Road – Reno County, KS

Thu, Oct 26 – The Nevada Northern Railroad – Ely, NV

Sun, Oct 29 – Halloween Special – Haunted Theorosa Bridge – Valley Center, KS

This may change after I get back from Iowa, but we’ll see what I end up doing there.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

 

Rolling out the US 50 road trip videos and being a homebody in August

August recap – school starts and rolling out the US 50 videos

I’ve had a busy past month, but being on the road hasn’t been part of it. After my long road trip in late July, I’ve pretty much been a homebody. School has started at Wichita State, and my full-time job as a track and field coach has kept me very busy! The beginning of the school year is filled with meetings, helping newcomers get oriented, and establishing a different routine after months of a more low-key summer.

Original US 50 in Eastern Kansas

On the YouTube front, I have begun publishing videos about my trip on US 50. This is the fourth long road trip I have documented, previously posting videos about Route 66 in 2020, US 89 in 2021, and The Oregon Trail in 2022. My experiences on these road trips generally have three parts. The first is planning, as I meticulously document each and every place along the path I would like to visit. This is done over several weeks leading up to departure. The 2^nd part is the actual trip. Obviously, I’m filming almost the entire time, but I also try to make sure and “enjoy” what I am doing. It can be easy to just focus on the filming part and forget the reason I’m out there in the first place. The 3^rd part is reliving the trip through the editing process. Before I started YouTube, I would’ve done the first two parts, but not the third. And going back and seeing where I went is always a lot of fun! There are so many places I already forgot I visited, and I’m thankful for documenting it in a way that I can always look back on and enjoy. The fact others seem to enjoy it is a bonus!

Before I talk about US 50 some more, going all the way back to the beginning of August, I released a ”behind-the-scenes” videos traveling all around Arkansas looking for the 10 smallest towns in the state. This was the first time I’ve ever done a video like this. There are many YouTubers who do vlogs in this style, but I’ve always tried to go a different way as I want the focus to be on where I’m going and not myself. And this video is basically me talking most of the time. I was pleasantly surprised the video has been well received, and while I don’t plan to do this often, I might try it out from time to time in the future. It was by far the longest video I’ve ever made (just over 69 minutes), so hopefully next time I can do it more efficiently.

Ok back to US 50. In previous years my “road trip” videos have not been the most popular or the least popular. But over time they seem to do well and continue to bring new viewers to the channel. I still get people commenting on my Route 66 videos from 2020, and my Oregon Trail videos have seemed to gain popularity as the months go by.

Cousin Eddie's in Coolidge, Kansas

The first few US 50 videos are doing better compared to those previous trips. One reason is obvious – there are more subscribers to the channel now than back then. But in looking at the stats on the backside of YouTube’s incredible analytics section, a higher percentage of people are watching these videos as soon as the video is released. That means the “core audience” of the channel seem to be excited to watch the latest video and are doing so in the first days it’s released.

This is really important to me because it gives confidence that I’m posting videos that the true fans of the channel enjoy. This channel has been growing slowly over the years, but I’m proud that it seems to be growing in an organic way. If you read the comments under each video, you’ll see dozens and dozens of the same people commenting each time with their thoughts. Many are very well educated on the subject matter and often teach me things about these areas I didn’t know! It feels like a small community of like-minded people that continues to grow little by little each week. Very cool.

For the month of August, the channel had 160k views, and 650 new subscribers. That brings the lifetime totals of the channel to 3.2 million views and 17k subscribers - thank you all so much!

Looking ahead to September

I just released my first video of September, which ends around halfway through my US 50 trip, so the rest of the month will mostly be videos in Utah and Nevada. In terms of US 50 being known as “The Loneliest Road in America” – this is what they’re talking about. The towns become fewer, and the wide open spaces become bigger! I’m excited to continue working on these videos during September.

Since I didn’t really go anywhere in August, I’m getting the itch to head out on the road again. I don’t have any plans yet, but I’ve thought about going to a few places that would be “small town, USA” subjects. I found some really good ones during the summer and would like to go back and revisit them in more detail. One of the drawbacks of the road trip being on a “schedule” is that you can’t stop and spend an entire day exploring a place you just found interesting all of a sudden.

I do have some tentative plans for October. I’m leaning towards going to Iowa in the middle of the month to find the 10 smallest towns in the state. I’ve looked at it geographically and it appears to be doable in the time frame I have available. More on that possibility next month!

Upcoming September 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 …

Sun, Sept 3 – US 50 Western Colorado

Thu, Sept 7 – Pioneer Museum in Gunnison, Colorado

Sun, Sept 10 – US 50 Eastern Utah

Thu, Sept 14 – Cisco, Utah, Ghost Town

Sun, Sept 17 – US 50 Western Utah

Thu, Sept 21 – Arches National Park & Utah State Route 128

Sun, Sept 24 – US 50 Eastern Nevada

Thu, Sept 28 – Nevada Ghost Towns Part 1 – Black Horse, Oseola, Hogum, Taylor, Ward

Then I will continue with more US 50 videos of Nevada and California.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

 

US 50 Road Trip Recap!

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 10^th 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 3^rd 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 next best video of the month was the 10 Smallest Towns in Arkansas approaching 10k views. This one hasn’t taken off like the other “10 Smallest” ones yet. But it appears to me that YouTube only pushes certain videos one at a time, so now that the Texas one is tapering off it will be interesting to see if the Arkansas one takes its place so to speak.

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!

Looking ahead to my summer road trip and recapping a crazy June!

June travel recap – getting the itch to get out and about

With the spring academic semester ending at the beginning of June, life has been a little less hectic lately. There’s still plenty of work to do around the office, so I’m keeping busy, but looking forward to my big trip later this month (see below).

In June, however, I did get out and explore a little. At the beginning of the month, I spent 2 days driving around the very desolate county of Comanche County, Kansas. I really enjoyed it and released 3 videos about the area. I did a little longer trip over to Arkansas for 4 days finding the smallest towns in the state, which I’m currently releasing this weekend. That was an interesting trip as I literally went to all 4 corners of the state to find these places. There were several parts of the state I had never been to, so that made it interesting. But I also battled some rain that put me behind schedule, as well as getting a flat tire on my final day! Besides filming the smallest towns and two other videos, I did a “behind the scenes” vlog that I might try to put together. We’ll see – I’m not always sure people want to watch stuff like that on my channel and often it feels self-serving.

Here in Wichita, I went over to the Old Cowtown Museum one Sunday and will be putting something together for that. And one day after work last week, I went down to Perry, OK, to explore my buddy Brent Kemnitz’ hometown. That will be a different kind of “small town, USA” video – should be interesting!

Overall, I made one 4-day trip, one 2-day trip, and a couple day trips.

June YouTube recap – Texas rolls on and my “racist” video hits a nerve!

It was a wild month of releasing videos. Overall, I published 9 regular videos and 4 shorts. And while there were some new videos that did well, the one that really got views was the 10 Smallest Towns in Texas that I released in February. Midway through June, this video started randomly getting thousands of views per day and had 67k views in June alone (mostly in the past 2 weeks). It’s quickly headed towards 200k views overall and will be interesting to see how long it will stay popular in the YouTube algorithm. I say keep it rolling Texas!

For recent videos, I released one that could be considered slightly controversial – Zinc, Arkansas. It’s home to the Grand Wizard of the KKK. I don’t do videos like this very often, so I had a lot of people view and make comments that aren’t regular viewers – even his granddaughter commented! Mostly it was received well, but a few local people thought I wasn’t fair in how I portrayed the town. They’ve been hit hard with the “most racist town in America” tag, and even though I didn’t accuse the town of that, a lot of people took it that way. It got a lot of views on the first day I released it and has been pretty steady since. I think it’ll probably end up being one of the more popular videos on the channel over time.

A video that has done surprisingly well is the one I did about the Chinese ghost town of Locke, CA. I don’t have a lot of fans from California, but after a couple weeks of not getting very many views, it started gaining traction and a lot of people from the Golden State started commenting. That’s a good sign because I have one more video from there to release, and I’ll be back there later in July. On the other hand, I released a video about Old Sacramento that did very poorly in comparison. But it wouldn’t surprise me for it to find a future audience as well. Fortunately for me, most of my videos aren’t time sensitive and videos can take off at any given time (Texas 10 smallest towns for example).

But overall, it was a very good month on the channel. Over 210k views and 963 new subscribers. That’s the best month on the channel since February, which was a big blip on the radar. Hopefully this momentum will continue into July!

Upcoming travels

I’ve got my big trip coming up in a couple weeks. However, first I’ve decided to take a couple days this weekend to explore Dade County, MO. It’s kind of a random trip, but I haven’t made any videos about Missouri lately and I know I have a lot of viewers from there wanting to see some new stuff. 2 of the 3 most popular videos on my channel are about Missouri. So, I decided to take this little trip and do a 2-part video like I’ve done about some counties in Kansas. I’m also planning a couple of small town, USA, videos.

Summer road trip – US 50 - Kansas to California

I’ve been talking about my “big trip” this summer for a while and now I’ve got some of the details figured out. I’ll be stopping in the middle to hang out with our coaching staff in Breckenridge, CO, so it won’t be a straight non-stop trip. I’m also planning some rest days to explore more in the area or to take a break if I need it.

This is a tentative itinerary. I have yet to book hotels. If anyone has any recommendations let me know!

July 12 – Leawood, KS to Newton, KS – staying at my home in Wichita that night

July 13 – Newton, KS to Garden City, KS

July 14 – Garden City, KS to Rocky Ford, CO

July 15 – Rocky Ford, CO to Salida, CO – then up to Breckenridge, CO

July 16-18 – Breckenridge, CO

July 19 – Breckenridge to Salida, CO to get back on US 50 then over to Grand Junction, CO

July 20 – Grand Junction CO to Salina, UT

July 21 – extra day in Salina, UT

July 22 – Salina, UT to Baker, NV

July 23 – Baker, NV to Eureka, NV

July 24 – extra day in Eureka, NV

July 25 – Eureka, NV to Fallon, NV

July 26 – Fallon, NV to South Lake Tahoe, CA

July 27 – extra day in Lake Tahoe

July 28 – South Lake Tahoe, CA to Sacramento, CA – end of US 50 trip

July 29 – Sacramento, CA to Santa Rosa, CA

July 30 – Flying back to Wichita, KS

My plan is to make 2 US 50 videos per state (KS, CO, UT, NV) and one for CA. I’ll also be filming ghost town videos and other historical sites along the way. I am planning to release these videos from early August until mid-October.

Upcoming video releases (for the diehards)

I like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have continued reading this far :)

Here’s what I have coming up on the channel …

Sun, July 2 – 10 Smallest Towns in Arkansas

Thu, July 6 – California Ghost Towns #2 – Coloma

Sun, July 9 – small town, USA – Perry, OK

Thu, July 13 – Old Cowtown Museum – Wichita, KS

Sun, July 16 – small town, USA – Greenfield, MO

Thu, July 20 – Arkansas Ghost Towns #4 – Eros, Bruno

Sun, July 23 – small town, USA – Lockwood, MO

Thu, July 27 – Dade County, MO, Part 1

Sun, July 30 – small town, USA – Greensburg, KS

Thu, Aug 3 – Dade County, MO, Part 2

Sun, Aug 6 – Behind-the-scenes of my Arkansas trip

Thu, Aug 10 – this will begin my US 50 series that will last until Oct 12

Like every month, I end up changing what I’ve planned, so we’ll see how this ends up.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

 

Winning back-to-back championships and "Summer Road Trip 2023"

May travel recap – track & field season comes to a close

In my real job, May was a very hectic and very memorable month. Our men’s track and field team at

Wichita State won back-to-back AAC Outdoor Championships, defeating the highly ranked and incredibly tough opponent Houston (coached by Carl Lewis). It came down to the final events and our guys pulled through for one of the most dramatic victories in my 25 year coaching career. It can take decades of coaching to have one moment like that, and I’ve been fortunate to have more than my share since I started coaching in 1998.

That championship took place in hot and muggy Tampa, Florida. I didn’t do any YouTube filming while I was there like I did 3 years ago, but I was able to get out to a couple other places in May. The weekend after going to Tampa, I took a short trip to Chase County, Kansas, where I filmed a small town, USA, video about beautiful Cottonwood Falls, and then the next day explored the rest of the county looking for ghost towns (2 videos coming up about that).

A few days later I was back on a plane headed to Sacramento, California, for the NCAA West Prelims. We were there for 6 days, and these meets have a lot of down time, so I took a couple early mornings to explore around the area. I released a ghost town video about the Chinese community of Locke last week, and I have two more videos I’ll be working on in the coming weeks.

My coaching for the year ended at the NCAA West Prelims. I still have plenty to do around the office, but I should be able to get out and travel much more in June and July.

May YouTube recap – bouncing back with help from The Oregon Trail

I had mentioned in previous blog posts that the previous couple of months have gone well, but not as well as December through February. The month of May, and in particular the last half of May, went considerably better and a few of the videos that were the most popular were somewhat unexpected.

The 8 videos I published in May did decent, with all of them getting between about 2,000 and 5,000 views. None of them were unbelievably popular though. The most popular video for the month was the 10 Smallest Towns in Texas. This video has done consistently well and continues to gain views even though it was released in February. It picked up over 18,000 views in May (over 120,000 views total).

While the Texas video has been doing well for months, the other videos that were popular in May were surprising. Last summer I published 10 videos about my trip on The Oregon Trail. They did ok when I put them out, but nothing that was much more than a normal video. For some reason they really took off this month with over 40,000 views. The Idaho part 1 video had over 15,000 by itself.

Maybe people are starting to look for summer road trip ideas? And it’s interesting that it was the Idaho video that did the best. YouTube is unpredictable.

As for the channel overall, May brought in around 150k total views and we picked up almost 800 new subscribers. This brings the lifetime totals to 2.55 million views and 14.4k subscribers!

Upcoming travels

I am going out to Comanche County, Kansas, this weekend in hopes of exploring several small towns and ghost towns. It’s the fourth smallest county by population in the state (1,689).

The following week I’m trying to venture over to Arkansas to find the 10 smallest towns in the state. Earlier this year I put out a poll on YouTube asking which state people would like to see the next version of the “10 Smallest Towns” and Arkansas won by a slim margin over Colorado. I’ve done some research and the towns are very spread out around the state. I think it’ll take 3 days to see them all. I’ll also try to find other ghost towns and interesting places along the way.

I’m not sure if/where I’ll go in the last couple weekends of the month. I’ve been wanting to go to Wichita’s Cowtown so maybe I’ll stay here for once haha.

Summer road trip – US 50

In my recent Q&A video, I announced I’ll be doing a summer road trip on US 50 from Kansas to California. US 50 actually goes all the way from the east coast to the west coast, but I don’t have time to do the whole thing this year – maybe I’ll complete it in the future. Fun fact, it goes just a few miles north of where I grew up in Ohio!

I’m planning for the US 50 road trip to be from July 12-29, although I’ll be taking a few days in the middle to stop in Breckenridge, Colorado, to hang out with our coaching staff. I’m hoping to explore some more places in Colorado while I’m there too. Last time I was there I made two videos including visiting the real South Park!

I will talk in more detail in next month’s blog about the US 50 trip. I’m very excited for it and have already started some early planning!

Upcoming June video releases (for the diehards)

I always like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have continued reading this far :)

Here’s what I have coming up on the channel …

Thu, Jun 1 – California Ghost Towns #1 – Locke & State Route 160

Sun, Jun 4 – small town, USA – Freedom, OK

Thu, Jun 8 – Chase County, KS, Ghost Towns #2 (#1 was released Feb ‘22)

Sun, Jun 11 – small town, USA – Coldwater, KS

Thu, Jun 15 – Chase County, KS, Ghost Towns #3

Sun, Jun 18 – Old Sacramento, CA

Thu, Jun 22 – Comanche County, KS, Ghost Towns

Sun, Jun 25 – Arkansas Top-10 Smallest Towns

Thu, Jun 29 – California Ghost Towns #2 – Coloma

Like every month, I end up changing what I post here, so we’ll see how this ends up. Some of it depends on what I find in Arkansas.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

200 videos, visiting Nowhere, and where will I be going this summer?

Send in your questions!

In a few weeks, I’ll be posting my 200th video on Travel with a Wiseguy, and I’ve decided to go ahead and do one of those Q&A’s. Last year, for my 100th video, I did highlights of the first 100, and I thought about doing the same for #100 through #200 but have decided to try the Q&A instead. I’m sure this won’t be the most popular video ever, but I do get lots of questions in the comments these days and if you send me some good ones, I’ll try my best to answer them in the least boring way possible :)

Send your questions to jwise@goshockers.com or on any of my social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).

April recap – keeping busy!

The busiest months of my full-time job as a track coach at Wichita State University are always April and May. So, I’m currently right in the middle of that hectic time. I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep up the pace of two videos per week on the channel, but I think I managed to get though the toughest part. The hardest thing was just getting enough content because I’m not able to do much personal travel between January and June. But I snuck away just enough to have the videos you’ve seen (or will see) lately.

As for how the channel did in April … well not great in comparison to previous months, but like I’ve said before that doesn’t bother me. The “core” audience for the channel continues to grow and I’m sure eventually it’ll hit another spike in views/subscribers/etc.

April 2023 was the 34th month of Travel with a Wiseguy on YouTube. The first 25 months were a period of very slow growth where the BEST month had 27k views and 200 subscribers for the entire month. The past 9 months have been when the channel has been at a different level. For example, last month (April) was only the 7th best of those previous 9 in terms of views with 120k and around 600 subscribers. These YouTube channels go up and down in phases, so the worst months right now are about 5 times better than the best months a year ago. And the good months are 5 times better than that!

So, at the end of April, we had over 13,600 subscribers and 2.4 million total views. That’s a far cry away from July 2022 when those numbers were just 2,100 subscribers and 325k views.

I’m looking forward to continuing this journey and seeing where May will lead in terms of both geography and analytics! (I love both :) )

Recent travels – upcoming travels

For my track and field coaching job, my April travel wasn’t too exciting as all I did was go to Lawrence, KS, twice (we hosted a couple of meets too). We also had a rare off weekend and I spent two days driving around western Oklahoma. I literally went to Nowhere, Oklahoma haha. I also took the long way home from Lawrence one of those weekends and explored around Wabaunsee County (just released that video this week).

I love visiting places like Nowhere. Even though it wasn't much of a community, it had an epic little tower and a great story as to how it got its name. The quirky nature of some of these places keep doing this channel so much fun. When I find out there is a place named something like Nowhere, I get excited just thinking about visiting - even if there is hardly anything there to see.

May will get a little more exciting as I’ll be going to Tampa, FL, for the American Athletic Conference Track & Field Championships next week. Two weeks later I’ll be in Sacramento, CA, for the NCAA Prelims. In between I’ll probably be on the road recruiting, but not sure where. Hopefully I can combine that with some small town exploring and adventure. I don’t plan to film any videos while in Florida or California – I’ll be focused on coaching.

Once June rolls around my coaching world slows down a bit. There are still some possibilities to travel for a meet or two, but mostly I’ll start doing more personal travel at that point.

Summer travel?

I’ve had a lot of people ask me where my big summer trip is going to be. I’ve only recently started thinking about it and I’ve got a couple ideas. I’m hoping next month I’ll be able to talk about it more as I’ve just had some initial thoughts. The track and field season is very time consuming and has dominated most of my mental and physical energy for the past several months. However, I’m definitely excited to get out on the open road this summer and I’m 90% confident it’ll be in the western half of the United States, with the exception of a possible trip to Ohio to see family and friends.

May video releases (for the diehards)

I always like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have continued reading this far!

Here’s what I have coming up on the channel …

Thu, May 4 – Kansas Ghost Towns #19 – Wabaunsee, Volland, Templin (released this week)

Sun, May 7 – small town, USA – Waynoka, OK

Thu, May 11 – Oklahoma Ghost Towns #9 – Avard, Hopeton, Capron

Sun, May 14 – Exploring Wamego, KS, including the OZ Museum

Thu, May 18 – Dead Woman’s Crossing – Weatherford, OK

Sun, May 21 – small town, USA – Jet, OK

Thu, May 25 – My 200th video – Q&A

Sun, May 28 – small town, USA – Freedom, OK

Last month I totally changed what I had posted here, so we’ll see how this ends up.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

 

Ups and downs of YouTube and trying to keep the pace!

I’m trying to do this on the first Sunday of each month as a recap of the previous month. So, if you enjoy reading these, you’ll know when to look for them!

March Recap – ups and downs of YouTube

After a February that was the best in the history of “Travel with a Wiseguy”, reality came crashing down in March haha. Views and subscribers in March were about a third of the previous month, which at first would seem bad, but actually is quite solid when put into a bigger perspective.

YouTube channels go in phases of growth and mine grew a lot in the past three months. In December, January, and February the channel basically doubled in subscribers and more than doubled in views. That’s not something that is sustainable forever and the March results are somewhat predictable. I’ve also read that this time of the year is less popular on YouTube as a whole compared to the summer and winter months.

I put out two videos about Linn County, and even though they weren't as popular as the previous ones I did about Greenwood County, I still received lots of nice messages from people who live there. So many of them thanked me for putting a spotlight on their small communities. For most of these small towns, it's the only presence on YouTube they may ever have. I'm proud to be the middle man to connect them with so many others who are learning about them for the first time.

In the month of March, there were still over 160,000 views and over 700 new subscribers, to bring the totals to 2.3 million and 13,100, respectively.

What will April bring? Stay tuned.

Recent travels

April is the busiest time of my year with coaching track at Wichita State. So, traveling for YouTube is pretty tough. However, at the beginning March, I was able to get out to western Kansas for a couple days and have released 2 of the 4 videos I filmed (Kansas’ Rocks! and Plains, KS). That was a fun few days – I always love exploring around that part of the state!

This past week I was in Austin, Texas, with our team for the Texas Relays. I wasn’t able to do any YouTube work, but it’s always fun to hang out in Austin. That city is growing like crazy! I went to In-n-Out Burger and Buc'ees while in Texas!

Other than that, I’ve been in Wichita trying to help people run fast :)

Trying to keep up the pace

Starting last summer my goal was to publish two videos per week. So far I’ve been able to do that, but the next two months will test me. I’ve filmed enough videos to get me through the month of April, but May could be difficult. Once I get to the end of May, my schedule opens up a bit and I’m able to get out to explore more frequently.

I definitely want to achieve this goal, so I might be getting creative to reach the finish line at the end of May. Would you be interested in a Q&A type video? I’ve never wanted this channel to be about me, but I’ve had a few people request this and I’d try to make it interesting (might even bring in my mentor Curt Rierson for some of his wisdom too).

Are there any other non-travel videos you would like to see?

For my 100th video, I did a highlight recap of the first 99. That was fun to look back. I could do the same for #200 and highlight videos 100-200 as it will be approaching in late May.

Having this goal has been a great way for me to continue thinking about new ways to make videos. It’s a very healthy way to force me to continue to be creative. Hopefully you have enjoyed it too!

April video releases (for the diehards)

I always like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have continued reading this far :)

Here’s what I have coming up on the channel (subject to change of course – it always does) …

Sun, Apr 2 – small town, USA – Plains, KS (released today)

Thu, Apr 6 – Texas Ghost Towns #4 – Grapetown, Oatmeal, Nameless

Sun, Apr 9 – The Dalton Gang Hideout – Meade, KS

Thu, Apr 13 – Arkansas Ghost Towns #3 – Monte Ne

Sun, Apr 16 – Greeley County – Least Populated County in Kansas

Thu, Apr 20 – NE Oklahoma Ghost Towns on or near Route 66

Sun, Apr 23 – The Largest Salt Flat in the World – Uyuni, Bolivia (filmed in 2019)

Thu, Apr 27 – Bolivian Train Graveyard (filmed in 2019)

Sun, Apr 30 – TBA

I’ve also started releasing YouTube Shorts on Tuesdays. Early returns are hit and miss, but I’ve only done two so far. I’ll report back next month to analyze how that’s going.

I may or may not work on those two videos from Bolivia. They would be interesting, but a departure from what I usually do. And this list will change up quickly if I’m able to get out and about in the next few weeks. I have an open weekend on April 22-23 so I’m hoping to do some filming then.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!

How the channel is growing and future trips to the least populated counties in the country

I’m trying to do this on the first Sunday of each month as a recap of the previous month. So, if you enjoy reading these, you’ll know when to look for them.

February Recap – the all-time best month yet!

In the previous blog, I was feeling pretty good about how December and January went, and then February came along and blew it out of the water. Even though there were only 28 days, the channel had 540k views and added over 2200 subscribers (both all-time bests).

I had kind of bragged how the “Loving County, TX” video was doing well at 30k views the first week. Then it skyrocketed to be the most viewed video on the channel and now sits at 321k. Wow! On top of that I released the “10 SmallestTowns in Texas”, and it has steadily chugged along to 60k views so far. I’m assuming it will continue to grow, because it kind of got lost behind the Loving County video for a while. Needless to say, I gained a lot more followers from Texas in February!

As a total accumulation, we’re now up to 12,450 subscribers and 2.1 million views. That’s crazy.

How the channel is growing

What I’ve noticed is that there is an increasing “foundation” of viewers as the subscriber count increases. This seems obvious but isn’t always the case on some channels. At this point it seems that whatever video I put up, it will immediately get at least 3000 views in the first day, and then from there it varies depending on how well it’s received. A few months ago, that foundational number of views was probably around 750-1000 in the first day.

The good news is that the channel seems to have some very dedicated followers who watch every time a new video is released, no matter what/where it’s about. The success of the video after that seems to be 1) geographical and 2) randomness.

For example, because I’ve done “10 Smallest Towns” videos in five states (KS, OK, MO, NE, TX), and all those videos are popular, I have a good number of subscribers from all those states because of those videos. So the geographical part I mentioned above means that if I release a video from one of those 5 states, it will probably do fairly well. If I release one from a state not on that list like Arkansas, it probably won’t do as well – as evidenced by the Feb 9 video about Rush, Arkansas, that only has about 2500 views so far.

The 2^nd reason for success (randomness) … I have no idea how to predict that. I did that Loving County video and thought it have an average reception, and it has become the most viewed video in the history of the channel. That totally surprised me.

Future trips

I’ve been super busy with my full-time job as a track coach at Wichita State, so I haven’t been able to do very much in the way of “YouTube” travel lately. Although I was able to sneak in a couple days in Oklahoma a few weeks ago. I’ve been thinking about the next “10 Smallest Towns” video so I put the question out to subscribers on YouTube to see what they thought. There were 438 votes, and the results were: Arkansas 33%, Colorado 24%, Arizona & Iowa 17%, Ohio 8%.

So, I guess I should start planning a trip to Arkansas haha. It makes a lot of sense, because I’ve already released two videos about Arkansas and plan to release a third one in April.

Actually, I’ve already looked at it. The 10 towns range from a population of 50 down to 20. They are pretty spread out and would require four days to visit them all. I doubt I will have four consecutive days free until the summer, unless I can get creative later this month and do it in two different weekend trips. I’d prefer to do it all at once, but I just don’t have the free time during track season. Stay tuned.

I do plan on doing some more local trips around Kansas that I can get “there and back” on a weekend.

Back to Loving County …

No, I’m not going to travel back to Loving County, Texas (the least populated county in the USA), although I would if I could so I could eat at The Stop. But the success of that video got me thinking … Would a series called “Least Populated County in (insert state here)” be interesting? I think it might be.

So, I looked it up and the least populated counties in KS and OK are Greeley County, KS (population 1,284) and Cimarron County, OK (population 2,296). Those are huge compared to Loving County’s population of 64, but I still think it would be interesting to explore and try to show others what those counties are like. I did something similar when I explored Greenwood County, KS, and released it in two parts, looking for all the ghost towns I could find. Those videos were well received and I’m planning to do the same for Linn County, KS, later this month.

What do you think?

March video releases (for the diehards)

I always like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have continued reading this far :)

Here’s what I have coming up on the channel (subject to change of course – it always does) …

Thu, Mar 2 – Trading Post, KS (released this past Thursday)

Sun, Mar 5 – small town, USA – Coldspring, TX (released today)

Thu, Mar 9 – Nebraska Ghost Towns #5 – Venus, Wee Town, Ames

Sun, Mar 12 – small town, USA – Oxford, KS

Thu, Mar 16 – Kentucky Ghost Towns #3 – Wisdom, Knob Lick, Sulfur Well, Alone

Sun, Mar 19 – small town, USA – Arcadia, OK

Thu, Mar 23 – Linn County, KS, Ghost Towns Part 1

Sun, Mar 26 – TBA

Thu, Mar 30 – Linn County, KS, Ghost Towns Part 2

I think this is a pretty interesting list of videos. The Trading Post video was a lot of fun because I was able to get a tour from the local historian.

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!