The Beginning of my YouTube Journey - Inspired by James Jani

[sifix]

Title's quite self explanatory, but who are you how did it begin?

I'm a competitive strength athlete, nutrition enthusiast and student who's currently also pursuing a career in orthopaedic surgery. Like the title says, I was inspired by James Jani - particularly his video about his about money that eventually went viral. It wasn't long before I found myself invested in reading MJ's books.

Now I don't necessarily want to be retired early - I love working. It's partly why I wanted to pursue surgery. I get to entertain myself with a field I find interesting (physiology and healthcare), provide genuine value to patients I treat with the reward of being financially compensated. But I also just want to ensure I have the financial capabilities to buy myself freedom in the future to spend as much quality time with family as I can and retire my parents. This is never guaranteed no matter what career path I go down, so I want to diversify my income.

Great, So What's the Purpose of This?
To provide you all with a little inspiration if I succeed and a little comedy if I don't. I'll document my journey, the growth on my channel and share a bit about how this humble little project is turning out. That's all. Nothing too fancy.

So Will You Be Just as Transparent and 'Real' as James?
Well that's some tough competition if you ask me! However, at minimum I'll guarantee an update after each video is released, with details including channel growth, few things I've learnt and what I could've done better. At the end of the day I'm not James, I'm here to do my own thing and grow my own brand in a different field but another promise is, like James, I'll only stop posting here if I give the whole thing up.

How Far Have You Gotten?
Not very I'm afraid, but growth isn't linear. However, I'm focusing on the process and giving this a couple years. Optimize the process and the results are going to be what they're going to be, I can only control my work/effort, not my results. - to think otherwise would be entitled. I started this project the same DAY I watched James's video and same week whilst I was reading MJ's books. If I become famous one day, maybe some bloke will steal this from me - "Too many people ask for the dreams they wanted yesterday but won't even want to start working for them until tomorrow". You want results as quick as possible? Start as soon as possible, and so I did.

Now what specialized unit can I sell given my current skillset? Well, I've been lifting weights since I was 14, I'm going into an industry under healthcare and I think I do a reasonable job at interpreting new scientific research - properly, not like the media does to grab your eyeballs. So now the obvious choice was to make hopefully entertaining mini-documentaries on nutrition/health/well-being. The skills I needed for this, I would only get better at with time given my education pathway and if it turns out to be a huge flop, at least I'll have helped a handful of people change their lives and have something nice to slap on the resume.

All that said though, everyone's already up and running. Socials, channel and even the first video (might want to check it out if you've been wasting money on probiotic supplements):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_YxZxDisM


Goals?
Let's see if I can get enough people on my patreon for me to afford some copyright free music in 6 months. 100 subscribers by then won't be too shabby either. Aim here, is to post once a month on my channel with the main focus of putting out good information as well as gaining views and watch-time.

These might change a little as I move forward but you guys will to get to hear about it on here if they do

Closing Statements
That's pretty much all. Got questions? Feedback? Post it here.

 

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[sifix]

UPDATE NUMBER ONE

HOW THE FIRST VIDEO WENT
Views: 463
Comments: 7
Likes: 29

I'm happy with how this turned out, it's been 3 weeks since my last upload and my first video is closing up on 500 views. Not too bad considering I obviously started with 0.

The engagement I received has been pretty positive overall and it makes me feel happy knowing that there are people out there who have found this to be informative. Growth on these types of platforms is usually non-linear, so looking at the current audience retention statistics I have a feeling the first video might blow up once I acquire enough watch time through consistent uploads.

THE RELEASE OF THE SECOND VIDEO

View: https://youtu.be/6XjBwqDhk1U


This has just been published a few minutes ago and I think I've certainly improved on the thumbnail/title skills of this video. I've made this video knowing that it is unlikely to blow up - at least not immediately. I think it certainly has the potential to once I start acquiring enough absolute watch time.

This of course depends on how receptive the audience is to the editing techniques I've experimented with in this project. I feel as though the overall video essay format is not as concise as it could've been and the points were not exactly crystal clear so this could negatively impact audience retention, but only time will tell. If the outcome is negative like I suspect them I aim to remedy this in my next video.

SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS - The algorithm, CTR and other metrics going forward
Why I am NOT using searchable content...
I disagree with the idea of prioritizing searchable content. This is due to the fact that my channel is currently so small it will be impossible to compete with other videos using the search bar, I will be drowned out and pushed to the bottom of the page.

You could argue that I can solve this by picking a more 'niche' search, but the problem with that is very few people will be searching for that particular topic/content anyways so it's not really much better.

Why I don't care about views per video as much as some other people might...
My main strategy is to continue putting out content that has thumbnails which facilitates a high CTR and audience retention. Whether or not linear growth in views occurs is unimportant to me. The only metric I particularly care about is watch time - it indicates whether the content I'm putting out is in any way conducive to being pushed by the algorithm. Generally channels in my particular niche have a string or series of videos that fall in line with each other, encouraging the viewer to watch video after video.

As I plan to maintain integrity and intellectual transparency when presenting my information, I'm confident that this will build brand loyalty and give the audience a 'big picture perspective', which is an important skill for nutrition science. This will make all other videos on my channel more palatable, likely improving audience retention and increasing the likelihood of the algorithm picking up on my videos.

But if you get low views doesn't it mean there's no market for it...
Well, I know there is a market for the type of content. People have found success in doing this niche well, there are videos out there like this with upwards of 10 million views. However, with this type of content a high upload frequency is not very achievable so then demand will always be higher than the supply. There are many channels putting out misinformation (and in a less entertaining format). This misinformation can be attacked to gain traction.

So the question is not whether or not there is a gap in the market for these type of videos, but rather "how can I find a way to expose myself to the gap?". This will likely be a matter of maintaining patient and protracted effort for the next year or so.

 

[Itizn]

I've seen a few of James vids, mostly in snippets, he makes enticing content for sure.

The one you're referencing about money, I only skimmed through as I'm under the impression he isn't incredibly rich, therefore I didn't want to give him my time in that subject. The way I feel about it is, why hear from someone who isn't at the top 1% speak about a club he has no membership of?

Anyway, all the best with your channel, maybe yours could be added to the list @Andy Black has for YT growth.

 

[sifix]

I've seen a few of James vids, mostly in snippets, he makes enticing content for sure.

The one you're referencing about money, I only skimmed through as I'm under the impression he isn't incredibly rich, therefore I didn't want to give him my time in that subject. The way I feel about it is, why hear from someone who isn't at the top 1% speak about a club he has no membership of?

Anyway, all the best with your channel, maybe yours could be added to the list @Andy Black has for YT growth.

I think there's some certainly merit in wanting to only learn from people who 'walk the walk'. After all, "success leaves clues", but emphasis on clues. Not "success leaves 100% accurate answers that will work for you".

He's a 19 year old who's made almost 200k USD from his channel, within a year of starting from absolutely nothing. The video shares many of the concepts covered by MJ in his books (we are on his forum after all). It covers logically sound entrepreneurial principles such as identifying a problem/gap in the market and finding a scalable + monetizable solution to address it.

The strategies he's discussed regarding are also discussed by Ali Abdaal, who within a few years of starting, has made over a million dollars last year from his youtube platform. So there are certainly people who do what James says to do (I'm not saying they heard it from James, I just mean that they are principles which are shared).

I think another way of looking at this is how there are so many fitness models who sell sham supplements and give pathetically inaccurate information on nutrition, fitness and weight loss - yet have impressive physiques. Are they 'successful' in that particular area? Yes. However, they succeed despite their poor strategies, not because of them.

 

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[Andy Black]

Anyway, all the best with your channel, maybe yours could be added to the list @Andy Black has for YT growth.

Yes, good luck.

Added to the master thread.