• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Experience having a YouTube channel

GorillaChilla

GorillaChilla

Member
Hello. Like a large portion of today's youth, I, like likely many of you have a YouTube channel. What has been your experience been making content? How often do you upload and what do you tend to make videos about? Basically let's have a general discussion about having a channel and the challenges or satisfaction you have making them.
 
I have 6 channels. I just like making videos. I've done that since the 80s. Some are about my truck, some about shooting and guns. my pets, or just bullshit.

I can't do it for money though. It ruins it for me. For me it's more like therapy.
 
I've been on YT since 2010. I don't have many subscribers by current standards— about 525 or so— but my goal isn't growth as much as it is to post stuff I like making.

My current project is a running series where I open sealed video games from the 1990s and 2000s, called Unsealed. Before opening the plastic, I usually share some history behind the game or some personal experiences that tie me to the game... then I take the scissors to the plastic wrap, remove the seal, and share what's inside. I've done more than 100 episodes so far, and it's been fun (albeit expensive, as I buy all of the sealed games I open).

I do some other videos in a smaller series called RePete (a play on my first name) where I just reminisce about a game, a series of games, or a random gaming-related trend from years past.

None of these are scripted, and none are professionally shot; I just use my aging laptop's 720p webcam and shoot in my office.

Whether 2 people or 200 people watch what I post, it's a nice chronicle of memories and gaming experiences that might be fun to revisit as my memory erodes due to upcoming old age. A few friends and some students at the school I work at watch (so I keep the videos family friendly).

It's all for fun. With YouTube's ever-changing rules— which often penalize smaller channels— I just post when I can and move on to the next one after about a week or so.
 
GorillaChilla said:
I know this feeling. I make videos that are the visual/audio equivalent to forum posts and fulfill a type of working through a thought.
Click to expand...
Because I just make videos for fun I use whatever music I want which means I am at the whims of the copyright system. Over the years it has come and gone as a pain in the ass. Right now it seems to be ok. A few videos here and there get blocked. Back during the 2nd wave of youtube before the great Google take over I had an ATV channel that was growing pretty big. 300k views for a video was normal. Now days 1000 views I consider it a success.
 
Last edited:
MetalAlien said:
I have 6 channels. I just like making videos. I've done that since the 80s. Some are about my truck, some about shooting and guns. my pets, or just bullshit.

I can't do it for money though. It ruins it for me. For me it's more like therapy.
Click to expand...

same here. I make videos for myself and if people like them so be it. They're all gaming related so far
 
I record gameplay and post it when I want to talk about said game. No commentary. That is it.
 
I have had many, many ideas for content over the years but never follow through because I don't have time/patience to follow through and all that editing , and i have a monotone irritating voice that after 30+ years has never improved that bores people in conversations including myself & i get exhausted talking in general and am also anti social/socially awkward with adhd & probably mild aspergers.

so when i do upload and I have a different username for everything because a lot of times names i use they get taken, well I only upload clips of games directly from my consoles

If I was to upload fulltime i'd probably Stick to a schedule but also it's a game of how to you get picked up by the algorithm too
 
Last edited:
I have a Youtube channel since like 2013 i believe. Originally the main reason why i begun a Youtube channel is because i wanted to upload gameplay footage of Resident Evil 6 Mercenaries modes. Slowly i begun to shift my channel content to upload videos of a virtual world that no longer works as the servers have been shutdown for a couple of years now. Ever since them i resumed to upload gameplay footage from various games (still do it to this day but quite rarely) the reason because my channel content shifted to a very niche audience. The content i upload is still gaming related and many of my videos have been included on various gaming websites articles from mainstream to small ones.

To be honest i enjoy the content i upload on my channel. Unfortunately since the content i upload is for a niche audience, most of the time i receive the huge view is when the video is related to a AAA game.
 
I just started doing YouTube videos around a month ago. I show people how to make sandwiches and its been pretty fun. I have like three subs but I don't upload as much because of having a full-time job but I like it for the most part.

Here is the first video I did
 
Joshmyersbv said:
I just started doing YouTube videos around a month ago. I show people how to make sandwiches and its been pretty fun. I have like three subs but I don't upload as much because of having a full-time job but I like it for the most part.

Here is the first video I did
Click to expand...


giphy.gif
 
ive got a channel, started it when i was in art school. i was making a lot of music videos for friends bands and my own. also uploaded a lot of animation and stuff. i remember one day a stop motion thing i did was mentioned in the New York Post so that was pretty dope. sad thing is, all my videos are mostly from the early days, so they are stuck in lower res. i guess i could upload the source videos but that would be a lot of work...

overall it's been nice. it's not monetized so i don't keep track of any of that stuff, and it's very low key. i'll post a song i recorded or some remix or some weird video art. i don't care about an audience, it's all stuff i like.

i've had a number of videos taken down for DMCA notices. one time i re-recorded the Beatles "She's Leaving Home" but with a chiptune backing track, and it was up for several years but eventually some lawyer found it and took it down. that's happened to a few things where i sample other people's music, so i really don't do much of that anymore.
 
Yeah I used to have a lets play channel, got a few hundred subs before closing it down drunkenly thinking it was stupid. Then people messaged me asking where it went, feels bad man - knowing (too late) you actually had fans who watched my stuff :(

Nowadays I make graphics and am trying to make a game. I try help peoples YouTube channels by making art, and accept any form of donation - even a food voucher. Sorry to advertise but I need the work/food. Maybe I can help your channel out? That goes for anyone who likes my work and maybe wants something similar done for your channel?

<3 All the best with your channels - remember, theres always someone out there who likes what you do, and would be sad to see you go, so strive onwards! <3
(here is some examples of Stream Layouts/Banners/Logos and Thumbnails)
 
I abandoned my channel after youtube realized I was too hard for these today snowflakes and cut me down. Now I'm deleting all the videos.
 
I decided to turn on advertising for the first time because people said youtube promotes videos that are advertised more. I put advertising on an old video of mine on the 8th. As you can see view count greatly increased which is in my opinion strong evidence that youtube does in fact promote videos with advertising more. Sad because I don't want to put annoying ads on my videos.
EKPMXHmVAAABJBz
 
Joshmyersbv said:
I just started doing YouTube videos around a month ago. I show people how to make sandwiches and its been pretty fun. I have like three subs but I don't upload as much because of having a full-time job but I like it for the most part.

Here is the first video I did
Click to expand...

You look so baked in the thumbnail
 
GorillaChilla said:
I decided to turn on advertising for the first time because people said youtube promotes videos that are advertised more. I put advertising on an old video of mine on the 8th. As you can see view count greatly increased which is in my opinion strong evidence that youtube does in fact promote videos with advertising more. Sad because I don't want to put annoying ads on my videos.
EKPMXHmVAAABJBz
Click to expand...
Yep if you had an old channel before google bought youtube you could easily get a video on the front page. Today youtube doesn't even have a front page. Now it's just a personalized suggested video list based on your cookies hoping to get you to the right ads.

There a re two youtubes now. The free hosting website that is quickly disappearing, and the ad driven corporate money train that you either join or get punished for not joining.
 
MetalAlien said:
Yep if you had an old channel before google bought youtube you could easily get a video on the front page. Today youtube doesn't even have a front page. Now it's just a personalized suggested video list based on your cookies hoping to get you to the right ads.

There a re two youtubes now. The free hosting website that is quickly disappearing, and the ad driven corporate money train that you either join or get punished for not joining.
Click to expand...
It sucks because some of us don't want youtube to be a career, just a place to upload fun stuff.
 
Thinking of starting a YT channel in the new year around my occupation / career of product management. It looks rather niche in that there's only 1 channel that posts consistently, and it's more to provide it's product management school students, links to previous on-site presentations.

I think the audience pool is in the mid 6 figure mark, looking at some existing singleton videos. With product management becoming a more popular career path (and no real college major around said career), and certain age groups looking at career transition options more, I think the interest pool will only continue to increase (modestly).

Also, I've gone through career transition, have been part of a PM team, managed my own product, managed an integration / solutions product, and software platform, as well as managed a team of PMs, I like to think I have a breadth of practical information most PMs probably lack.

What does GAF think? Was planning on 1 or 2 videos per month to start...
 
For some reason, I've always loved crowd reaction vids (especially the Twilight Princess reveal reaction, as an example), so when I started going to Blizzcons about 4 years ago, I decided to take a few crowd reaction vids. At the 2017 con, where they introduced WoW: BFA, I ended up taking a crowd vid that somewhat went viral and currently stands at 1.6 million views:



It was amazing to watch the vid blow up with views real-time, where accurate readings were a day or 2 behind since so many views were flooding in over a short period. This was before Youtube changed their policies where you didn't have to have 1k subscribers to actually monetize your videos...so needless to say I was making $200-$300 a month from youtube on this vid and a few others for a good bit. To this day, that vid still gains about 40k views each month.

Now that they've changed policies, I'm working up to gaining 1k subs to earn those ad checks again (currently sitting at 797 subs) as I continue to take more blizzcon reaction vids.

Yea they're cheap to make, I do literally zero editing on them to upload them super fast, and I put minimal effort on the channel, but it's a nice lil' side project to watch. Kind of like an ant farm I guess.

Also, help me hit that 1k sub mark :messenger_blowing_kiss: Please Sub
 
Last edited:
I've had a few channels over the years going back to at least 2013. The gaming channel was my largest at a few thousand subs. It didn't grow at all for a long, long time and then suddenly started to gain traction. Then out of the blue as I was finally getting 10's of thousands of views per video it suddenly stopped. No longer could you find my videos and my subscribers didn't get notifications on new videos in their feed. Youtube suggested starting a new channel when I finally (after a month or two) got a hold of someone. Tried to keep what little I had going but I dropped down to a average of 12 views per video and gave up 240+ videos in. Wasn't about to start over, and I was getting copyright strikes constantly from nobodies. Also I almost always used royalty free music, but some asshole would always claim it eventually and take the rights to my video even if it was barely distinguishable in the background.

Had a very small car channel back when I used to go out more in the car scene. Posted mostly videos of my and friends cars racing and stuff. This channel with a fraction of the views made more money than the gaming channel ever did. Turns out the gaming crowd was much more likely to have a ad blocker on than the car people I suppose.

The other one was a mostly for friends channel to post dumb stuff. Half of it wasn't public.

In all I think I only made around $150-200, but spent a good $300 on it over a few years.
 
I recently starte dto be more active in uploading video's for myself to store video's digitally to keep forever without the need to store it on drives and easy accessible. It's more for myself and if people want to react towards its a bonus. Basically for benchmarking PC hardware and extreme hard mode 100% optimized playthroughs of PC games etc. I already had the channel for more then a decade however and uploaded some game stuff towards it where i still get reactions towards from this day about games i forgot about is fun.

I also tend to find the limits of games and see how i can push the game to its limits, something i always automatically do when i play a game, and it for some reason attracts attention on traffic as people i guess like to see it.

A example, this troll blocks my route to the next area. How can i trick its AI to let me through way before i can actually go there.

I also have a twitch channel where i do playthrough and inform people about the game i play when they are on the fence about buying it or have questions about the game i play. It gives me something more to do then just playing the game. I also upload them to youtube sometimes whenever i feel like it. Also for myself really so i can rewatch some of what i played years down the route. Or can store tactics and ways on how i do things.

For example i did a honour mode 100% single char speedrun that took me 200-300 hours to optimize for divinity 2 while nobody did it yet. Now i have a full playthrough with a guide for myself to catch up on it if i ever want to return towards it and people can also see how i do it and optimize even further or discuss things about it.
 
Last edited:
I decided to make a let's play channel. Busy uploading Ori and the Blond Forest. Looking forward to the sequel.

I have zero experience but I must say it's rather fun. It's cool sharing your experiences.

www.youtube.com

Shably Plays

On a journey to try create let's plays that are entertaining and light-hearted. It is all about the fun and joy video games bring into our world. Mistakes wi...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com


I'll keep at it. Lots of great games coming this year. It's a nice project. If it gains traction it's a bonus.
 
I have 2 channels I maintain. One is for gaming and the other one for my shitty music.
I really don't have plans to go big because I think it's impossible to get big views in todays youtube climate.
I started looking at it from a different perspective. I focus on game reviews. I just like to make a review after I'm done with the game and have a video to remember the game.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqrZ1zwfB8Ok0PZp44I7ElQ
 
Last edited:
buizel said:
Yeah I used to have a lets play channel, got a few hundred subs before closing it down drunkenly thinking it was stupid. Then people messaged me asking where it went, feels bad man - knowing (too late) you actually had fans who watched my stuff :(

Nowadays I make graphics and am trying to make a game. I try help peoples YouTube channels by making art, and accept any form of donation - even a food voucher. Sorry to advertise but I need the work/food. Maybe I can help your channel out? That goes for anyone who likes my work and maybe wants something similar done for your channel?

<3 All the best with your channels - remember, theres always someone out there who likes what you do, and would be sad to see you go, so strive onwards! <3
(here is some examples of Stream Layouts/Banners/Logos and Thumbnails)
Click to expand...


BUMP

if anyone wants graffiix,im desperate fr money :3
 
Elektro_Demon said:
I really don't have plans to go big because I think it's impossible to get big views in todays youtube climate.
Click to expand...
If you follow the formula it helps. I'll use my channel as an example.

My channel I never ask for likes or subscribers. I generally don't talk to the camera and just show the trail ride in a fairly interesting way. I refuse any sponsorship even when offered. It's doing ok. I have about 2.5k subscribers and get 10k views on about one out of every 10 videos. Also I upload the videos very soon after we do the trail. Sometimes even the next day.

www.youtube.com

MetalGwar

www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

And then there are my buddies. Sorta of buddies anyway. See there are two kinds of trail riders. People that are just there to have fun and be outdoors with their friends, then there are these others guys we can't quite understand called Overlanders. Kinda hard to describe the difference. See they don't really let you join in unless you check all their boxes exactly. They don't encourage new guys to come along. They like to constantly remind you how eco friendly they are. They like to gang up on you or exclude you if you are too loud or don't fit their profile. Sound familiar?

Anyway, they also have a channel. They fully adopted sponsorship. love to ask you to like and subscribe, never use music that might remove monetization. Also they barely show the trail. Oh they will spend half the video talking about the "Overlanding" lifestyle, but then they just throw in some trail video near the end or something.

Those guy are playing the game and they are blowing up. 12k+ subscribers, getting invites from Nissan and so on... Oh yea, and it takes them MONTHS to post a trail ride. Their latest video was from a ride we did in friggen october!

www.youtube.com

Rogue Overland

Vehicle based outdoor reality channel featuring our overland adventures, gear reviews, and informational videos.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
Last edited:
MetalAlien said:
If you follow the formula it helps. I'll use my channel as an example.

My channel I never ask for likes or subscribers. I generally don't talk to the camera and just show the trail ride in a fairly interesting way. I refuse any sponsorship even when offered. It's doing ok. I have about 2.5k subscribers and get 10k views on about one out of every 10 videos. Also I upload the videos very soon after we do the trail. Sometimes even the next day.

www.youtube.com

MetalGwar

www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

And then there are my buddies. Sorta of buddies anyway. See there are two kinds of trail riders. People that are just there to have fun and be outdoors with their friends, then there are these others guys we can't quite understand called Overlanders. Kinda hard to describe the difference. See they don't really let you join in unless you check all their boxes exactly. They don't encourage new guys to come along. They like to constantly remind you how eco friendly they are. They like to gang up on you or exclude you if you are too loud or don't fit their profile. Sound familiar?

Anyway, they also have a channel. They fully adopted sponsorship. love to ask you to like and subscribe, never use music that might remove monetization. Also they barely show the trail. Oh they will spend half the video talking about the "Overlanding" lifestyle, but then they just throw in some trail video near the end or something.

Those guy are playing the game and they are blowing up. 12k+ subscribers, getting invites from Nissan and so on... Oh yea, and it takes them MONTHS to post a trail ride. There latest video was from a ride we did in friggen october!

www.youtube.com

Rogue Overland

Vehicle based outdoor reality channel featuring our overland adventures, gear reviews, and informational videos.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
Click to expand...
I never knew climbing hills, mountains with cars is a thing.
You got yourself a new subscriber.
 
Elektro_Demon said:
I never knew climbing hills, mountains with cars is a thing.
You got yourself a new subscriber.
Click to expand...
Ha, where do you live Demon? You guys don't go off road? I'm in the process of moving and my job is killing me I don't post much right now so there isn't much new stuff to see. I'll be back to posting as soon as I get this all worked out.
 
MetalAlien said:
Ha, where do you live Demon? You guys don't go off road? I'm in the process of moving and my job is killing me I don't post much right now so there isn't much new stuff to see. I'll be back to posting as soon as I get this all worked out.
Click to expand...
Nah that isn't really a common thing in Europe.
I drive a cruiser bike on the road and I have one of those small 50cc scooters that I use for the woods.
The thing is, scooters aren't designed for the woods. That's the whole point. They're cheap and me and my buddy are really into wood scooter driving.
We already destroyed like 6 of those things, lol.
 
Elektro_Demon said:
Nah that isn't really a common thing in Europe.
I drive a cruiser bike on the road and I have one of those small 50cc scooters that I use for the woods.
The thing is, scooters aren't designed for the woods. That's the whole point. They're cheap and me and my buddy are really into wood scooter driving.
We already destroyed like 6 of those things, lol.
Click to expand...
That's what you should make a channel about!
 
I started doing this in past years. It has been really funny and a very good job.

It's insane how a fiber is good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

YouTube Down?
10
209
AJUMP23 replied
Random YouTube Searches
12
490
falconhoof replied
I just had a magical experience in the bathroom.
27
328
poppabk replied
Babylon 5 free on YouTube now.
18
323
SomeNorseGuy replied
Youtube AI slop game maker
4
414
StueyDuck replied
Top Bottom