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!