So you want 100,000 subscribers…
Our 100,000-subscriber YouTube award arrived in the post, and I was ridiculously pleased. It was also reflective as hell. When I shared it in July 2021, I could see my camera in it while thanking everyone who’d watched my silly videos. Now I had to find somewhere to put it, preferably without breaking it.
The milestone gave me a reason to talk about what I’d learned from making Adventures and Naps. Some of those lessons had been difficult. I’d nearly quit because of nasty comments, and I knew I couldn’t keep up a daily upload schedule. I’d also reached this point with a fairly simple filming setup.
I wanted a record of life in England
I started because I wanted a creative outlet and a digital journal, a time capsule of my experience as a foreigner living in the UK. Making videos seemed worth trying. Wanting to be YouTube famous wasn’t the reason, and it wasn’t a reason I encouraged for starting a channel.
The topic mattered to me, too. I could have picked something I thought was more popular, such as Minecraft, but it wasn’t something I cared about. I wanted to make videos about a subject I actually enjoyed. My feeling was that viewers could often tell when someone was choosing a controversial topic just to get attention.
One Tuesday video was enough
Very early on, I chose Tuesdays at 3pm local time in England as my upload slot. I liked the idea that people knew when to expect a video. By the time I shared these lessons, I thought I’d missed that deadline only three or four times over the years, mainly because of family emergencies. My family came first.
That didn’t mean I could comfortably make more YouTube videos. Some people posted several times a week or even daily, but I knew I couldn’t do that. One YouTube video a week was manageable. Alongside it, I was making a full-length Patreon video every Saturday, and that amount of work felt reasonable.
People asking for more videos were being kind, but I didn’t think I could sustain another weekly upload. I expected to burn out quickly and end up making nothing. I enjoyed this as a hobby, so a schedule I could keep was more useful to me than taking on too much.
The comments had nearly made me stop
When I first started posting regularly, people called me names and told me to go back where I’d come from. There were death threats and comments about my body, voice, words and opinions. It hurt. I wondered why I was bothering to make light-hearted videos when this was what came back.
I decided to carry on because I enjoyed making content, and worked on my own confidence. That took time, and I described it as a work in progress. I was proud of what I made and of meeting my deadlines. By July 2021, when another hateful message arrived, I could delete it and stop thinking about the sender.
Comparing my channel with other people’s wasn’t helpful either. I knew there were other expat channels I thought were better than mine. That was okay. I was doing my own thing because I enjoyed it, and making work I was proud of. I didn’t need to turn it into a competition.
My setup was still simple
Most of my videos used one camera on an Amazon Basics tripod. I was sitting in a dining chair, using the kitchen lights, without fancy lighting or reflective boards. I’d only recently bought a second, GoPro-type camera with support from Patreon, and thought of it as a bonus.
Until very recently, I’d edited all my videos in iMovie because I didn’t want to spend much on an editing program. I was pleased to have reached 100,000 subscribers with that setup. I hadn’t won many awards in my life, and now I wanted to walk around the flat to find a place for this one. Or perhaps hold it a little longer.
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