WHY I'M STEPPING BACK FROM YOUTUBE

Since the day and hour that I started uploading videos to YouTube, I have loved every minute of it. I loved learning how to use my camera to its full potential, I loved learning how to use Premiere Pro to make videos that I wanted to make with the footage that I took from my holidays; how to use music and slow-motion properly. I love watching those back and remembering the fun that my family and I had. I loved making dynamic intros to my makeup tutorials and I most certainly loved talking about books.

But it's not as much fun anymore.

Making videos for YouTube was never about getting views or subscribers. They were an added bonus. As the years passed and my subscriber count slowly grew, I would get the odd commenter on videos and I treasured interacting with those people. However, my videos started averaging out at 40 views. After five years of making and posting videos, I would've liked to have had more than that. With 460-odd subscribers, the view count was not reflective of that. The videos that earned the most views were book hauls - those simply are feasible to constantly do especially when no subscribers come from them. What is the point of being subscribed if you don't want to watch the videos? Subscriber count means very little in the grand scheme of things if the engagement is not there. 

In 2020, my average view count flattened out at 15-20 and even then, the average view time was less than five minutes. My videos are typically longer than 15 minutes. What does that say to me? It says that viewers tap out of my videos shortly after the intro. 

That's where my confidence started to take a dip. As much as I kept saying to myself that view count and subscriber count wasn't that important to me, it still hurt my feelings that apparently, nobody wanted to watch my videos and that they didn't want to watch them in their entirety. That's when my Anxiety started to chip away at my confidence. Was it the content? If it wasn't the content then was it me? What was it about me that made people click away from my videos? Was it my accent? Was it my face? Am I that unattractive that people don't want to watch my videos? Is my face too fat? Is my hair too broken? If not that then am I not articulate enough? Am I not reading the right books? I read books that interest me and I want to share those with people because they aren't talked about anywhere else. I see people start on YouTube and within the blink of an eye have thousands of subscribers. Within a handful of videos, they have a following. I've been uploading videos for the better part of 6 years and haven't even reached the 500 subscriber mark.

So, that's why I came to the conclusion that I have to step back from YouTube. I may not upload as often as I used to. I may upload a video every so often whenever the need strikes, i.e. travel diaries. I want to take this time to concentrate on this blog and make it what I truly want it to be. This blog was my happy place a few years ago. I would post anything that came to mind that I wanted to talk about. People still visit my 'Get the Look' posts

I'm going to focus on the blog. I'm still going to talk about books - hopefully in a more articulate way - but I also want to post artwork as I produce it and return to my fangirl roots. I want this to be the happy place of old and work on my photography skills while I'm at it. 

I'm not quitting YouTube at the moment, simply taking a step back and focusing on what will make me happy. The views may not be spectacular for the blog as I start to rebuild it, but at least it won't feel as personal as clicking away from my face.