Changing course slightly to "Making money online in an awesome way"

I really figured that the way I felt about moving forward with my "online ambitions" after 6 months would be how I would move forward from now on. And then I changed course still.

The fact of the matter was that "it didn't quite feel right", and that's why kept on evaluating a while longer. And this is also most of the reason why I made a video this week, to explore how I feel about things, and also to "put the idea out there". 

So, moving forward, my goal will still be to make recurring revenue by the end of the year. The "how" has slightly changed towards "making money online in an awesome way".

Rephrasing the goal of this year gives me just a bit more air, and it allows me to lean in on the two big things that I enjoy in my free time: woodwork & writing. 

So, yes, I'm going back to writing fiction, and in this video I will explore my feelings, reasoning as to why now is the right time to jump back in.

6 months in 1 full day on yt / online fly-wheel

Part of me can't believe that it has already been 6 months since I started dedicating 1 full day to yt. To start: I hit my target of 300 watch hours (current score is 374). But over the last few weeks I was in a bit of a slump because I felt that I wasn't moving in the right direction. So that's why I haven't been uploading for the past two weeks.

This is most of the reason why I also paused the 2nd channel (currently all videos on that channel are private). But I did restart what I hadn't planned on doing for the next few years: I started going back to making it as a fiction author. 

I'm leaning in slowly, and it seems that a lot of the landscape has changed over the last 3 years: AI makes it easy to create images and visuals, the site Royal Road is also popular beyond fantasy, Tiktok has become way more than just dance videos, Reddit is open to targeted advertising, and on top of that: in the week that I slowly went back to writing, I came across the slow start of an accelerator for authors that will have their first cohort in June (which I plan to be a part of). 

So a lot has happened, and leaning back into writing is giving me a lot of ideas and inspiration moving forward. And it's also how I prefer to operate; I prefer to have "two big things going on", and on and off lean a bit "to the left or right". Over the years I have come to realize that it always comes down to these two things: writing and woodwork.

My current plan is to continue "Jelmer Builds Things", while also slowly working towards making it as an author of fiction. My plan is still to get monetized on yt by the end of this year, and also to start making money from my author activities around that time. I have enough ideas, but until I have worked them out, and tried them out, I will keep most of these to myself. 

So next update will be 8 months in, with the goal of having 600 watch hours, and by that time I will also be starting to get the flywheel in motion to make it as an author of fiction. 

is this failure?

 This morning I tried to make one of the hardest things that you can make with basic power tools: a wood ball. I tried it before, and didn't succeed. This morning, well, it went worse so I put up my tools and was ready to accept defeat. 

But then after a good break I realized that I can't let it define my day: I will have to get back at it and still go above and beyond to make this happen. This is not foolhardiness, but it's to make a point to myself: this day is to produce one good piece of content. And the failure in one aspect can be the creation of a success in another (if that makes sense). 

The vid will be up next week Friday (hope you're interested!).

btw this is what the wood looked like after I gave up in the morning:

4 months in 1 full day on yt

So it has been a busy stretch between the 2 month mark and now (4 months in). It has been quite a journey to get it all started, but that's also what keeps things interesting. So over the Christmas break I had time to do some deep reflections, which I had initially recorded as a 2nd channel video ---- until I realized yesterday that it makes no sense in pursuing a 2nd channel right now-----there were literally 0 views, so I pretty much took down the 2nd channel for now (more on that later). 

These are my take-aways 4 months in

- my goal was 150 watch-hours by January 1st. I hit 250, so that feels good. Next goal will be 300 by March 1st. This will lead to monetization by the end of the year at the latest.

- a weekly video has to be the priority, so my focus will have to be on shorter videos that I can produce in less than one day. And I will have to lean into what works.

- I will have to create a stock-pile of videos in case the yt-day falls through (sickness, vacations, or anything in between).

- for audio the YouTube Audio Library will be my go-to. It's free, and of better quality than I anticipated. I used pexels.com until December, and there were too many "copyright-flags" after uploading. So better to avoid all that for now.

- I will discontinue the 2nd channel for now. Its goal was to answer the question "who is this guy", but it didn't get much views and started taking up too much time. It really clicked yesterday, when I was preparing a 2nd channel video about the book "50th law" when I came across this note: "the public is never wrong. when people don’t respond to what you do, they are telling you something loud and clear."

this video is what I had in mind.

In the fall of '23 I pulled the plug of figuring out a good niche for yt, because it was obvious where I would get both views and in a niche that I actually enjoyed (woodwork + building stuff). So between the fall of '23 and the summer of '24 I did two things

1) I filmed all the projects that I could, so I could have a good momentum for the launch in August of '24.

2) I spent way too much time on strategy and "planning all the way to the end".

But it was during that time that I figured that my moat would be "me + content with my kids". But what I hadn't counted on was how hard it actually is to create content with kids, because if they are not totally in it----then it's not gonna work. 

So that's what makes me "extra proud" of the video that I made public yesterday. It's exactly what I had in mind when I started getting serious, and it's also extremely hard to pull off consistently. So that's what makes this special. And, I genuinely enjoyed the time that I spent making this with my son.

Reflection in between.

The main channel has slowed down a bit for two reasons:

1) Life has caught up a bit, and I haven't been able to move as fast with my "online effort" as I would like. (kids were sick a couple days, including three yt-days). 

2) I had one video that just didn't take off, so I started analyzing that against a video that did extremely well. So I took it down, went heavy on the edit for the next one. But it took more time. 

So over Christmas I will reflect more on "everything", but my current take is that I will have to concentrate on projects for the main channel that I can complete within one day. It will make it easier to not fall behind when I will not be able to do any work on the yt-day.

I am proud though of this next video on the 2nd channel. When I uploaded it I felt like it was a bit "extreme", but now looking at it once it's actually online----it's solid. 

2 months 1 full day dedicated to yt

 The end of October marked two months of dedicating one full day to yt. I wanted to document my feeling, so that's what I did in this video. Most of the feeling is that I feel good in the moment right now, and I expect that I will look back on all this a year from now----and then I will be like "why didn't I do this earlier?".