Now, there is one more reason I'm starting to enjoy Drupal 8, embedding YouTube videos in articles now are super easy, thanks to the simple and neat Drupal module - Video Embed Field
In this article, I will guide you through how to configure Drupal 8 built-in CKEDITOR to work with this module.
For another interesting YouTube module for use in Drupal views…
At the end of April 2021 (April 27) I started another interesting challenge in which was looking to publish at least one YouTube video a day for 30 days and double up my YouTube subscriber count!
In this article, I'm going to share details of how it all went.
Despite I have a semi-active YouTube page since 2014, and I've published there more than 20 videos over the years, the total subscriber count at the start of this experiment was very humble - 14. I've never been active or trying to market my YouTube channel, but now I decided to see - could I grow my channel by posting brief videos about stock investing, options trading, and so on.
In the past, several blog readers and friends have asked/suggested I start my YouTube channel about stock and crypto investing.
As I don't have a very good understanding of how YouTube actually works, I decided to experiment and publish at least a video per day (about stock investing) and see how can I grow an audience and is this what I really need.
To keep this experiment low cost and very very simple all the video recording is done using my Samsung Galaxy A51 phone, for some videos, there is done little editing in Adobe Premiere Pro,
Reinis Fischer YouTube channel
I quickly realized besides good quality content I need to make eye-catching thumbnails to attract more eyeballs, also it seems I'm starting to understand that subscriber count doesn't mean much, the views mean more, and this is awesome, as I'm a person very well known on SEO for a blog and I have this feeling I will be able to attract some views.
After the first couple of videos, I still decided I need some professional editing and looked to hire a video editor.
Got 3 responses, an Arab guy who had no experience asked USD 80 per 5 min editing, a Canadian guy without experience offered to do some test editing for free, but then asked how much I'm willing to pay, and when I replied I have about $150-200/mo budget, never actually come back to me, and a Russian girl, who agreed to take work, we started with $10 per video which I agreed to increase for $15 for after the first 3 videos and discuss possibly paying $20 in the future.
I had an idea hiring a professional photographer for YouTube thumbnails, but then I found I can make them myself
Reinis Fischer YouTube channel
Also, I created a few playlists:
- Investing with covered calls
- Generate income with credit spreads
- Stock picking
- Dividend income
After first 10 days of this challenge I had more than 10 videos uploaded an +9 new subscribers. It felt awesome seeing subscriber count grow. Also it feel awesome some of my videos hitting 50+ views in a day ot two.
In the middle of this challenge I decided to add some videos about crypto investments too, some simple buy and hold ideas, like dollar cost averaging for a year. Also it seemed that it works better if I'm doing editing myself, maybe it doesn't look so beautiful, when edited by a professional but I felt I'm loosing a lot of time when dealing with editor, like the most views got video which were put online just briefly after recording, because they were done just shortly a trade.
Unfortunately after day 20 I stopped publishing more video content, as life happened.
But I must admit the results are still awesome. Despite I was not able to double subscriber count in 30 days (I was missing just two), subscribers were growing, comments were coming and also some of the most popular videos got 200+ views. Which is not a lot, but in the past I was lucky having 10+ views.
If there is lesson to learn - yes, YouTube is the right place for your videos. It probably wont happen overnight, but with time and determination you can build a sold audience and spread your word.
Now, I will take some time to analyze data I was able to gather (views, content) - and most probably I will be back with another YouTube challenfe very soon (how about getting 50 subsribers?)
Not to miss an important update, please subscribe to my YouTube channel here.
