“Feeding the Beast” while “Chasing What you Love!”

After a rather sizeable channel bump in December, and some modest growth in January, I’ve been reflecting a lot on what “Feeding the Beast” is like for YouTubers, including myself. I’ve talked with some folks who are new to YouTube content creation and some are more seasoned. And at the end of the day, to keep momentum going on your YouTube channel, you need to keep feeding the beast that is YouTube.

What does it mean to feed the beast? Here are my thoughts:

  • Release content regularly
  • Increase content quality as your channel grows
  • Interact with the audience (For me, this is my favorite part, so it is not really a chore for me)
  • Find ways to have content promoted with keywords, catchy thumbnails, and other methods to get the algorithm’s attention

So, in other words, what started out as a “hey, let me make the occasional video” can quickly turn into an obsession, where you can ultimately develop some anxiety about “how your channel is doing.”

Fortunately, for me, this is just a hobby so the stakes are low. This does, however, bring me to my next topic: “Chasing What you Love.”

You see, as I have gotten into this, I’ve had to evaluate what it means to chase what I love. What does it mean? Well, here’s how I have defined it:

  • Don’t let channel growth, audience demands, or negative comments get in the way of your love of the hobby
  • Don’t do things just “for the sake of doing it” to help your channel grow if they are things you don’t enjoy doing!!!
  • Don’t feel forced to have a release cadence (If people drop off because they are not happy with the cadence, so be it)
  • Don’t spend time making videos when you don’t feel like doing it. See first and third bullets 🙂
  • Do take time to meet new people in the hobby, form friendships, and help each other out, either through constructive support, collabs, or through helping channels even smaller than yours get some momentum!
  • Generally speaking, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with your channel!

As they say, all things in moderation. And to my second bullet above, don’t do things just to keep an image if you don’t enjoy it. My motivations are helping people learn new things with a little bit of entertainment and the interactions I have with my new friends found through the medium. But I am guilty of many of the other things you see on the list, and, even in my infancy as a YouTuber, it has not served me well.

So, please, if you are new to this or old to this, take that step back and evaluate. Yes.. you can both feed the beast and love it along the way. If not, make a change, and make it TODAY… it will both be good for your and for your audience, that’s my belief.

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