I need to stay consistent with tracking the data I am looking to optimize. I need to do it every month. So here we are! As of October 1st, 2020, I had about 91,000 Subscribers.

Over the month, here are my subscriber metrics

As you can see, I gained over 2500 subscribers from watching my videos, about a little less than 100 a day. In totality, I actually gained over 2600 subscribers, but I lost some from watching videos, too. I have absolutely no idea why I lost subscribers while they were watching a video. The second most popular way people subscribed to me was by going to my channel and choosing to follow me that way. I only got 30 subscribers from the little clicky thing in my videos. That is too low. 30 is only 1 a day.

The next thing I care about is traffic source. I’ve had some luck with a few Dollar Tree videos going viral and I’ve gotten a lot of suggested video traffic off that, but suggested video traffic is VERY dependent upon things that I cannot change or plan for. At least with search traffic, I am able to leverage the massive power of unsynchronized crowds. The most popular traffic route is browse traffic, which is mostly views from the home page, about 75% subscribers and 25% non-subscribers. What I want to do is continue or increase suggested views, and dramatically increase YouTube search views. I also want to begin driving more traffic from WBKUltra.com and, by extension, search engines like Google.

The second thing I am looking to optimize on my channel is how much money I am making. In October 2020, my YouTube channel made $4042.44 in adsense revenue. That is how much I will get deposited in my bank account around the third week in November. I am pleased with this number because it more than accounts for all my living expenses and allows me to take all the money I make from other revenue sources and re-invest. I would consider my channel mid-tier. Not huge, but something that took some work. My goal for 2020 was to hit 100,000 subscribers and I think that I’m probably going to be just short, but that’s fine because subscribers are far less important than I previously had thought they were. Really, what I should have always been trying to optimize for was revenue and views, not subscribers, although those are certainly related in many aspects.

This all looks pretty interesting, but not surprising. Of course, the the videos that get more views, generally earn more money, but what I think stands out as an outlier is 6 videos down- a livestream I did that only has gotten around 3500 views BUT made $200. This can be accounted to view time. My livestreams have a shit ton of ads in them (auto-placed by youtube, don’t get mad at me) and what I’ve noticed people doing is marathon streaming them while they list. This is amazing. Not only am I finding something that helps provide value to people’s workflow (if only as a related voice that can break up the monotony), I am getting paid for it too- basically $69 CPM!!!

Whatever is going on with that video I need more of it.

When I broke down the metrics on the views for that video, it wasn’t that interesting, most of the views coming from suggested videos– these suggested videos specifically being videos I have already posted. The competitive person in me wants to be winning views away from other channels, not cannibalizing my own, but I will take success where I can get it.

As I look through the rest of my YouTube analytics data for the month of October, a few things become clear to me

• I need to diversify the content that drives suggested views from OTHER channels
• I need to post more videos later in the week (monday and tuesday are my worst performing days, while Thursday between 6-9PM seems to be my best, although I’ve been in a habit of posting videos on Thursday evening lately so that might have something to do with it)
• I need to get more organic search traffic/referral traffic to my channel in the “how to make money” niche.

To accomplish this, I will be making lists! Check back next month to see what I tried and if it worked!