Good morning friends! ☀️
It’s weird to think we have nearly finished the second month of 2024. I hope everyone’s resolutions are going well!
Mine are so-so, but I am making progress in the right direction which is the main thing!
I want to discuss something a bit different this week.
Today marks six months since I uploaded my first YouTube video on August 26th, 2023. Since then, I have uploaded 41 videos, and gained 2.7k subscribers and 71k views! It has been an awesome and challenging experience so far, and I want to share some key lessons I learned along the way. Hopefully, this may help anyone who is thinking of starting a channel!
Consistency Over Everything — You have to upload frequently, no discussion about it. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, but most creators get good by creating videos on a periodic cadence. Quantity trumps quality and ultimately breeds quality as a by-product.
1% Improvements — As the book Atomic Habits (affiliate link) says, small incremental has an unimaginable compounding effect. Do one thing better in every video and you will make progress. Don’t try to do everything at once, as it will probably overwhelm you.
If Something Isn’t Working, Change It — There is a tweet I like from Tintin Smith, a YouTube producer from Ali Abdaal, where he said “If you've been trying the same thing on your YouTube channel for ~10 videos and nothing is happening, you need to do something different.” Try not to get stuck in the sunken cost fallacy and explore other areas.
Prioritise T&T - I know it’s a cliche, but the title and thumbnail are what make people click on your video, and it’s what you should prioritize. Mine were terrible at the start, and I like to think are getting slightly better now.
Find Joy In The Craft — Making videos is fun, so find the joy in creating them. You can optimize certain things but don’t over-optimize everything. It's meant to be a creative outlet.
These first six months have been amazing, I have learned so much and developed many skills. Who knows what the next six months hold?
What’s Been Cooking 🥘
Some tasty stories this week:
Nvidia Value At $2tn — The GPU and chip manufacturer Nvidia is now valued at more than $2 trillion, making it the fourth most valuable publicly traded company.
X & Midjourney Partnership — Elon Musk has hinted at a potential collaboration between X and the AI image generator Midjourney.
Google Open Source LLM — Google has released an open-source family of Large Language Models (LLMs) called Gemma.
Weekly Favourites ❤️
✏️ Article — You’re Underutilizing Mac Dock (Five Amazing Tricks!). Who knew that the dock on a Mac has so much customisability? I particularly like the magnification, allows me to get more screen real estate.
🎬 YouTube — Understand ChatGPT Better Than 99% of People. Even though many people use ChatGPT, few know exactly how it works. This video is a great explanation of what is happening under the hood.
🎬 YouTube — Oliur Online. Not sure if I have linked this channel before, but I really like the aesthetics of Ollie’s video, not to mention the valuable content he provides.
(PS: Some links are affiliate links that I get a kickback from with no extra cost to you 😎)