#6 Ill-timed Disaster

Everything was going smoothly for a while. My girlfriend was able to edit two videos for my variety weekend, but a lot was going on in her life and I needed to cut some of my content from an emergency backlog recorded during a stream I had in December. I was finding a decent balance between work and releasing videos. Unfortunately that would not be the case for long.
Wednesday night, two weeks ago, I was working on a social media assignment to turn in when I suddenly heard a loud clunk come from inside of my computer. I saved my progress immediately and turned off my computer to inspect the problem. I had never anticipated this as an issue, but my motherboard had broken and my heatsink had fallen off of it. It is a good thing I turned my computer off quickly because that event could have fried my computer for good. I know someone who fixes computers and had previously worked on mine, so I texted him my issue hoping for a response.
Luckily, he was awake and offered to take a look at it if I was able to bring it to him. Considering I needed the files from my computer to turn in my assignments, I took him up on the offer. Once I was there, he concluded that my motherboard was broken and needed to be replaced and I brought up that I was looking to upgrade the motherboard and other components once my summer semester was over anyways. We talked about options and then I told him what upgrades I wanted, retrieved the files I needed to turn in my assignment before midnight, and left my computer with him to fix. The most unfortunate part of leaving my computer with him, besides having to miss over a week of video uploads, was being severely hindered in doing my school work and letting all of my groups for class projects down. Thankfully, they were all very understanding, but I hate to leave them with my responsibilities, even though this was out of my control.
I got my computer back after a week and had to reinstall all the programs that I frequently use. It is now a much more powerful machine and will make recording videos with higher quality and editing a much smoother process. Sadly, I lost a lot of files from my SSD card because the repair technician didn't back-up my drive to save the files before formatting it. He told me after that he always creates a back-up image and doesn't know why he didn't that time or even ask. It hurts, but what is done is done and we move forward. I will need to take another week off of releasing videos to make up for the lost time on my school assignments and get ready for the end of the semester that is looming ahead.

#5 My biggest temporary obstacle

I created my video release schedule with my summer semester's classes in mind. I know taking five classes over the summer is no small task, but I hoped that I would still be able to set aside a few hours each week to record my videos, engage with the gaming communities, create unique thumbnails, and upload my videos. Once I saw the work being required by some of my classes, I was definitely worried that it may interfere with my videos. School is my top priority and will remain that way, but it is very unfortunate to see a chance that my YouTube channel could suffer because of it. As it stands, I have four group projects that will require massive amounts of time and work put into them in order to get a desirable grade. Past the group projects, there is no shortage of homework, other small assignments, quizzes, essays, and exams. One of my classes, Applications Development, requires copious amounts of codes and programs to be written each week, with deadlines every other day. That is my most daunting class on my calendar, but each class requires its fair amount of work. Before classes got into the full swing, I tried to record 4-5 videos ahead of their release so that I would have time to adjust to the new schedule. Although I had planned to have easy weekday uploads to allow for school, I had not anticipated how much work might be required during the weekends. While my normal weekday uploads for my Binding of Isaac series are easy, my variety uploads require much more work. Because of this, I am worried I won't be able to stay on top of my release schedule, especially as the deadlines for all of the group projects get nearer. My girlfriend had expressed interest in helping me edit my videos which would relieve me of a lot of the stress of trying to enhance my videos before their release. The only issue is that she would need to use my computer for editing. So that means anytime she is editing, I can't work on school unless I am watching a lecture from my phone. The other issue is that because she is learning, I need to help teach her or troubleshoot for her when issues arise, which takes away some focus from my classes. However, once she learns how to work with Premiere Pro and get used to the normal issues that arise, she could be a huge help in saving me time and helping to grow my channel further.

#4 Building off my pre-existing videos

With my first week of uploads out of the way, I needed to start preparing more original content to meet the release schedule I had set for myself. My normal weekday content was simple enough to record, I just needed to make sure I had set aside a few hours each week for recording. I also needed to set aside another hour or so for creating thumbnails from the template I had made and uploading with all the information required. The one factor I needed to be cautious of was my weekend variety uploads. Each variety upload will require a fresh thumbnail to be made, which could take hours depending on what I decide to do for it. Each of these uploads will also require me to do some research each week about which tags will be the most effective for my videos' search engine optimizations. I also would like to do some harder editing on my variety videos to give them a more upbeat vibe than my normal gameplay commentaries have. The first variety weekend upload I decided to do was for the game, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker on the Nintendo Switch. This was a game that my girlfriend had bought me for Christmas because I had expressed interest in it. It is a Mario spin-off game where you traverse different levels and solve puzzles on a 3 dimensional cube that you manipulate with the controls. I recorded my episodes in advance, spent about an hour in Photoshop to create a new thumbnail, and then I looked for new groups on Facebook to join and promote my videos through. The groups for Nintendo fans are plentiful, but only a few allow self-promotion, so you have to carefully check each group's rules. Once I found the communities, I was ready to upload my first variety content videos, all I had to do was upload them and set the tags and information. The groups were very friendly and welcoming, but I only managed to find a few people to give my videos a chance. As long as I am able to get any views on my videos, I am happy. I try to keep a positive mindset that anything can grow in time, and any small step is still a step forward. I don't hold high expectations because I don't believe I am entitled to anything, but I do hope that one day I can build a community through my videos and find a way to make a living doing what I love to do.

#3 Managing my first week of uploads

As soon as the first video of my main series went live on YouTube, I rushed to Facebook to share a status alerting my friends that I had started a gaming channel. My next step was to check the multiple groups on facebook that I had joined for networking with other gamers. I posted the video into each one of them and asked for any feedback to help structure my content in the future. I also made sure to try and engage with the community on posts other than mine so that I would not be what they refer to as a "link dropper." I wouldn't want to become a link dropper in the first place as it just feels disingenuous and that's not how I want to be or have others perceive me as. I had a decent enough response to the posts, though the groups are crowded with many link droppers and click-baited conversations that fill the feed. My next step was to look towards reddit and see if there were communities I could engage with there. After searching for an hour, I wasn't able to find a decent subreddit to join that contained similar creators and fostered growth. All of the pages I found were essentially pages with no interaction, just links being posted constantly.

My next step was to structure certain aspects about my videos that I had not considered until my video was publicly available. This included setting my language on my videos, optimizing an ending screen with my subscription button and link to another video, listing the game in the video information, creating links to content in the description of the videos, and establishing playlists. Once all of this was done, I looked for certain tools to help optimize my time when posting videos. This search led me to find an application called TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy is a fantastic tool that does many useful things for creators. It allows you to create lists for your tags instead of having to manually input them one by one as well as provides insight to search engine optimization and keywords that are used less often to give your video a way to stand out in searches. It has many analytics tools that show how your channel or any channel on YouTube performs by channel and by video. You can find how many views they have, the average watch time of the video, how often their videos show up in the average search for similar content, how often their tags appear in the video title or description, how often the channel or video was shared on facebook, twitter, and reddit, as well as giving a checklist of if the video has a high resolution thumbnail and which social media platforms it has been shared on. Hopefully this application will shorten the time it takes to post a video and I will be able to use its insights to further grow my channel.

#2 Getting my first video ready for publishing

I received my commissioned avatar from my friend and instantly jumped into branding my YouTube and Facebook pages. I spent some time looking up optimized picture dimensions for the social media platforms I planned to use and then went to Photoshop to begin creating banners and profile images.  My first log of videos that I had planned to work through were all from the same game which has a large cult following. Taking this knowledge, my girlfriend and I looked into multiple Facebook and Reddit groups to network with that contained members with similar tastes or were also looking to start and grow a gaming channel on YouTube. The groups look like traps where most members drop links to their channels without engaging with the community, but there may be some methods to encourage engagement with those members. My next step was looking into SEO for videos in the same category as my videos. I decided to use leading members of the community as an example for which tags to use and follower the format of the game title plus defining qualities for the type of video it was. YouTube normally hides this information, but I found an article through google that detailed how to use Google Chrome's inspect feature to discover which tags are used on a specific page.
Once I had figured out my methods for networking and defining my uploads, it was time to actually upload my videos. I decided my first week would be heavier in releases than others. I wanted to start off strong, so I uploaded 10 of the videos I had prepared and scheduled a video to be released every day for the first full week starting with Monday and then I would switch to a normal release schedule of one video every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This schedule was catered towards allowing myself days off for school work that I will have in the upcoming summer and fall semesters. I did some research on what time to release videos for the best effect, but most of the tips only apply to channels with an established audience. Because I was just starting and I didn't have an established audience, I decided that 1PM eastern standard time would work fine until my channel grew. It is a time that works well for most of the US population, which I assume will be my main base of viewership.

#1 Establishing my channel

During this unique time with COVID-19 being a very hot topic that is shaping how we live and how we will proceed for the future, it has been an opportunity where hobbies and interests should be pursued. I have always wanted to create a YouTube channel for posting video game videos and decided recently to dive head first into it with my work and social time being freed up tremendously. I initially went ahead and recorded about 5 videos for the channel that I would eventually upload. I waited to post them primarily because I had an old account that was hacked that I had been trying to recover for years and wanted to give recovery one last try. YouTube support is essentially nonexistent with no lines of contact for help. The only form of support is the community forum where other members can try and help you with your problems, but no YouTube staff actually peruses the forum. After a couple weeks with no response to the issue, I decided to move on from the account that I had built back in 2006 and start a new one from scratch. This is a move I probably should have made years ago when I first started to build my channel as a creator when it was hacked, but I was too sentimental and was worried about starting over.
One of the things I wanted to remain the same with starting the new channel was my name. I have used the same online name ever since I was 10 years old and I couldn't think of anything I would want to change it to with it being so established. I am now hoping that I can get my original account that was hacked banned so that I can reclaim the original URL. Until then, I have commissioned art from a friend to serve as my avatar and profile image and to give myself a visual identity outside of my videos. I have also created a release schedule for my videos and prerecorded some content so that I can be ahead of my release deadlines. My main goal with the channel is to reach the requirement for becoming a YouTube Partner which requires 1,000 subscriptions from users on the platform and 4,000 watch hours (total time spent by anyone on your videos). This will be a tough milestone because neither of those requirements are a small feat, but I hope with consistent marketing with my friends and other gaming communities that it can be achieved.