I am a YouTube failure that's right I am a YouTube failure over the last 365 days I've uploaded 31 videos of those videos 16 broke 100 views of those 16 only four broke 500 views and of those I only had one video that nearly reached 1,000 views none actually broke 1,000 views and I have 287 videos on this channel and 1,146 subscribers now I have recently gone through and privated a number of videos that are older where honestly they were not that good they did not get a lot of views kind of cleaned up the
channel a little bit so I don't have that many videos public but I have made 287 videos on my channel and only have you know a little over a th000 subscribers that's pretty bad literally what this tells me is that the channel is not going in a great Direction and honestly that something needs to shift something needs to change so I'm Brian Elliott a professional videographer and filmmaker and it's been my dream basically since YouTube came out to be a successful YouTuber I had channels that I previously made in middle school and high school that
I unfortunately deleted and maybe I could be so much further on in my journey if I had just kept those channels around but I didn't I made the choices that I made and you know even with this channel I've rebranded it many times it used to be the focus story films Channel which was my professional brand and then I shifted it over to Fearless film making and now it's just like Brian Elliott film making and I don't know if I'll Rebrand it again or not but so many times I've kind of rebranded reinvented tried to
Niche down tried to figure out what I was doing and things just didn't really work out and you know looking back I can understand why my channel has not been hugely successful on you know a number of reasons one it's a saturated Niche and I just so happen to be a white guy talking about cameras which is a very very common thing in this Niche so I don't really have that much unique about me in kind of on the face of it I'm just one of a bunch of other guys who own some cameras and
is talking about them on YouTube honestly like my presentation skills were not that good they really weren't like I was awful in my early videos and I've talked about that and discussed that in videos uh especially a recent video about how to get you know better presence on camera and what I've learned a as well as that just my content was all over the place like I was covering you know started covering the gh5 and the a73 and then the Blackmagic 4K and then the fx9 and then the fx3 and the fx30 and so I've
just sort of been all over the place you know it was like Panasonic and then it was black magic and then it was Sony and it's been Sony for a while but a lot of my initial audience was black magic focused and then I switched to Sony and you know some of my videos like literally are all over the place sometimes I'm reviewing gear sometimes I'm shooting a fashion video sometimes I'm shooting a short film sometimes I'm doing a BTS Like I don't really have like a focus on this channel Beyond videography and film making
and whatever I want to post sort of in that realm so like I can fully understand why somebody might not subscribe or stay subscribed to my channel because the content is just all over the place and I don't really have like something Central that is grounding my content or you know anything like that it's been such an experimental trying to different things and not really having a vision for what I'm doing for the last four years you know if I was a really really smart person I might give up but I am not I am
a tenacious person I am somebody who is going to continue to work at it until I find success you know that said you know the common definition of insanity that you often hear is like trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results and that means that things have to to change up here that means that I need to figure out what's gone wrong what's gone right what's working what's not working to push me towards my goals of getting monetized of growing of helping the community of building a filmm community here and you
know being able to make some portion of my income off of YouTube so I'm literally I'm basically looking at everything do I need Niche up do I need to Niche down do I need to Pivot my Niche do I need to focus on something else with this channel do I need to you know double down on the short films and get BTS for the short films do I need to double down on the gear talk do I need to double down on the more creative fashion and budoir films what do I need to double down
on to find that success to connect with my audience and to make an impact on them as well as create the kind of content that I love at this point I obviously don't have a ton of answers um but I will be documenting this journey I do plan to make more videos talking about this I'm not going to turn into like a YouTube tips Channel because I don't have the YouTube chips I don't have the success there's no reason anybody should listen to me on how to make a successful YouTube channel with how unsuccessful my
YouTube channel is compared to the amount of work that I have put into it and so rather than that I'm going to document this journey as well as making other videos as well as kind of figuring out how to Pivot but I think that's an interesting journey to go on because you know there's been a lot of failure there has been a lot of failure but that doesn't mean that there can't be success that doesn't mean that I can't shift how I do things that doesn't mean that I can't make this channel work because I
very much believe that I can I believe in myself if I didn't I'd just delete the channel again and disappear but it's going to require Focus it's going to require grit it's going to require me to probably step out of my comfort zone to experiment and I'm really really excited for that and to see what growth comes or what disaster comes but the truth is with the amount of views that I'm getting particularly on new videos like it really can't get much worse like it really can't uh you know unless I did something just horrible
and somehow got my channel banned from YouTube which is not going to happen because I don't create that kind of content but literally like it couldn't get much worse than getting like 15 views on a video when you've got over a th000 subscribers so only place I can go is up and I'm really excited for that journey I hope that you will consider going with me as I make this journey and I will catch you in the next video video
