An honest assessment about having a small YouTube channel and how much I've made

my small organic gardening channel is Almost 2 years old I've been monetized for about 4 months now so the question is has it been worth it what's the future of my channel how much time does it take to upload about one video per week I'm semi-retired should it be taking up this much time all I have IID when I first started my YouTube channel I really wanted it to replace my part-time job I only work about 15 hours a week so that seemed to be a reasonable thing to expect a YouTube channel to do I

uploaded over a hundred videos before I finally got one that put me over the edge into monetization I'm very thankful for the money that I've made from Google AdSense and that's how you make money directly from YouTube are you curious about how did I get monetized how much time did it take well it took about 15 or 16 months and then I had a video that took off it's now at over 700,000 views if it had not been for that one video I still would not be monetized you see I had the subscribers but I

didn't have the viewing hours and even today if it wasn't for that one good video I probably wouldn't even qualify to get a paycheck every month now I've spent a lot of time looking around at other uh YouTubers and they're channels and I've done a lot of digging and the one thing I find very frequently is that same thing happens to other people who finally got monetized you get one video that does really really well and then it puts you over the top and it kind of puts you out there more often as the months

have gone by I do notice that YouTube is still not really suggesting my videos to viewers if you subscribed thank you so much I do get a lot of uh return viewers and I hope that my videos have been helpful for you I got a piece of advice very early on in my Youtube Adventure from Ariel from fth and I do watch every single video she puts out I find her videos very informative and also interesting she suggested to me that if I'm going to have a YouTube channel it needs to be something that you

love doing and now that almost two years have gone by I see the value of that advice if I didn't love gardening and I didn't love sharing what I know with you I would have given up you see there's a lot of work that goes into it for every video that's on my YouTube channel which is somewhere around 120 or 25 there's at least 10 hours of work that goes into it so I'm dedicating a day a day and a half to filming and uh editing my videos that's taking up quite a bit of my

time honestly so if it wasn't something I was already doing or something that I really love love doing or a passion of mine and that is to share with you how to grow your own food organically I probably would have folded up this channel a long time ago so I want to be really really honest with you about some thoughts that I have about if you're going to start a YouTube channel or if you already have one and maybe you're just comparing or maybe you're discouraged that's the best piece of ad advice I can give

you if you want to know how much money I've made I don't mind sharing that with you so over the course of four months I've made about $2,100 I am very thankful for that but it does not replace my part-time job and it's not consistent in fact as the months go by I make less and less money you know when I first got that great big boost I started really hounding myself how do I keep up that pace how do I keep the momentum going and I did have a couple other videos that did quite

well I have one that's around 73,000 and another one that's about 38,000 views and then the rest they may be at best a couple of thousand most of them don't even make a th views I think I'm doing a good job I always want to improve but I think it's the subject matter and for me at this stage in the game it's really hard for me to do research and come up with a subject matter that's really hot that day right at that moment because I'm doing this seasonally I'm I'm doing videos as I garden

and I live in subtropical Florida so apparently some of the things that I'm doing right now they don't have any rence for you if you're closing up your garden for the winter so I try to just do my best appeal to my audience and thank you for being my audience if you've subscribed the analytics show me that most of you are 50 years old and older and I don't know if you can see my gray hair but I am a senior citizen and yes I am still gardening and I love it I think there's a

lot of benefit to Growing your own food and having that daily exercise and going outside in the sunshine every day but the thing about YouTube is I will probably be backing off to about one video every other week at least for now you see there's other things that I really want to do I'm semi-retired this time of my life I need to start doing some of those things that I really enjoy doing besides organic gardening and that is at the top of my list I've picked up crocheting again so these little squares are eventually going

to be a sweater and I have a grandbaby on the way and I want to make a blanket for her and some booties and it's been requested for a little headband I might put a bow or a flower on it and I've rediscovered reading I read a lot and I've discovered some new Authors that I really want to read more of their work so I want to talk a few minutes about my own thoughts if you are considering investing into your YouTube Channel by investing I mean putting more money in than you're making I think

the best way to share how I feel about investing into your YouTube channel is my own experience when I had a website and even further back than that my own experience of working with direct sales you see the websites that make it and the people in direct sales that really make the money are few and far between I'm just being honest I don't want to kill your dream if you know that this is what you're to do keep going just make sure that you've got a really good balance in your life that's coming from a

68-year-old woman who's put a lot of effort into some things that really I shouldn't have put that much effort into it so what if you do want to invest into your YouTube channel I cringe I just cringe when I listen to someone who's going to tell me how to improve my YouTube channel and if I don't then I'm making a mistake and all that and then when you finally get to the end of their video well they're really wanting to sell you a course and I'm telling you that makes me angry you see I took

courses when I had my website I did everything it didn't help it is that one article or that one video that just finally shoots you over the top do your own research start looking at everyone else's videos so what I did is I'll see someone's video that looks like it got a lot of views and I look at those numbers and I'll go to their Channel and I'll start scrolling through all their videos and sure enough most of their videos aren't getting that many views and there'll be a few and sometimes they just seem to

be random they took off maybe two million views maybe a million maybe 500,000 but that seems to be what's keeping them going with my website I never did figure that out I finally decided that I was spending too much money a month for no return and I had been building it for about 3 years and nothing had come of it and I spent a lot of money on courses learning Pinterest learning how to build a website how to um make sure you had your keywords right I mean the list just went on and on and

on so you're going to see the same thing with the YouTube gurus that are telling you you got to do this you got to do that and if you listen to them long enough by about the fourth month they're saying the opposite so you know I think about them and their courses about the same way that I do now in retrospect about the courses that I took from my website so where does direct sales come into this well it's basically the same thing you can take courses that teach you how to do better I would

go to conventions and there went some of my profit I would invest in the courses that were offered there there went more of my profit I mean it just like you know if you're going to make a hundred bucks at night which this was 20 years ago so $100 that night would have in your at your show would have been good well by the time it's all said and done you reinvested 50% back into your your team your products your conventions your courses and it really wasn't that good of money and the sales pitch back

then was you just work one night and you've made your $100 well that's not true you have to then start collecting names that will uh have a show for you this was backed in I honestly don't know are there still home parties out there and then you had to start calling those people and then you had to put them on a rotation basis where you're spending one night a week calling people and setting up shows or sending out emails to your email group I mean it's really it's not all what it's cracked up to be

so what I'm trying to say is if you're looking for YouTube advice take the free advice that Ariel gave me and now I'm giving you make sure that it's something that you love doing and yes you can improve over the years you can make your thumbnails better you can make your opening lines better you can edit better all that just comes with doing it it's not all going to come in a course I don't want to discourage you if you want to have a YouTube channel do it I don't want to discourage you more if

you're in one of those times that you're discouraged with your YouTube channel here's the reason why I keep on keeping on with my YouTube channel even though I'm probably not going to publish as often 30 years ago we went to a church that most of us had a vegetable garden I was the only one that grew them organically but that was okay all of us canned vegetables we all had a simple life most of us were stay-at-home moms that is my lifestyle and I love that lifestyle I love being a wife I love being a

homemaker I loved raising my children and homeschooling them I loved it sadly that church fell apart for for various reasons and we all went our separate ways and with that went all my friendships of like-minded people we eventually landed in a church where we stayed for nearly 30 years and none of them grew their own food none of them canned their food they admired me that I did but I lost that sense of comrad ship I lost that sense of I belong here and I can share what I'm doing and we compare notes and all

of that that was gone all those years so when I started a YouTube channel here you are all these years of having a garden and I've learned so much and I just want to share what I've learned and you now are my community you now are the younger people if you're watching and you're younger than me I'm 68 I want to share with you what I've been doing especially if you have your own family especially if you're homeschooling I just want you to know that it's a good life to have if you're new to gardening

and that's not your lifestyle I want to include you too growing your food has so many rewards not just for your health but for your sense of well-being so I hope I've left you with an encouraging note do your research one of the AHA moments that I had was one fella that I watch his stuff every now and then he had one video that took off and it put him on the map later on he admitted that he had no intention of that becoming his focus on YouTube but that's what was making him money so

that's what he's doing and that's okay I would do the same if it was something I felt strongly about but as a result what he's done is started another YouTube channel with the stuff that he really wanted to do YouTube for in the first place who knows maybe that will happen to me but in the meantime thank you for stopping by my organic garden and I'll see you in the future videos