— Daily Journal Entry 015 —
Ya know, I feel safe to say that I had a nack for a few things earlier in life that I just, one day, said, nah… I’m not going do that anymore… Can anyone say, “Quitter!”…
In all seriousness though, over ten years ago I started posting a handful of videos to YouTube that surprisingly did fairly well as far views go. I had no idea what I was doing and was only using YouTube because I wanted to post a video of me riding my new motorcycle on Facebook, but Facebook didn’t allow such large size videos, or I just had no way of getting it up there – don’t remember the exact problem, but I wound needing to provide a link / embed the video from YouTube. This one here:
I maintain: @Stepherino for older, less music-realted videos (even thought his video features my music)…
Before I wound up deleting that old channel, this vide wound up getting over 26,000 views. Now, one might say, “Well, that’s pretty good, but not a lot,” and you would be right. The point is, I didn’t try even one small little bit to ge those views – I didn’t care. But it just so happened that I posted a video of a highly searched item at the time., a 2009 bike during the year, 2009…
The video is not very good, maybe even horrible in retrospect, but I made it and even included my own original instrumental track on it (I no longer have that track either – so many lost files over the years…)…
I could’ve (wouldca, coulda, shoulda…) done a whole channel off just this bike, then leaned into other cycle-related stuff at some point, but, eeeh, who wants those kind of problems, right?…
I even got that coveted email from Google saying, “You might want to consider monetizing this video, its doing rather well.” Google doesn’t send these emails out anymore. Now you have to apply for monetization. Now, ads are placed on your videos whether you want them or not. If you’re approved for monetization (I’ve heard) you tend to have a little more control over where these ads are placed, but still, Google / YouTube has the ultimate authority.
As far as music goes, I put (another) video on YouTube for sharing on Facebook that shoed my playing some really simple open C slide blues. It only got about a 1000 views at the time, but it also managed to get a couple of decent comments from other musicians (I assumed they were musicians by the way they commented). Again, this is without trying, at all, to get “views.” The only views I was going for were from my friends on FB, which were “ok.” But in their defense, looking back, it was a really simple demonstration. Perhaps, I’ll post it again, sometime… Maybe I should put it on the Stepherino Channel…?…
Then, I deleted that channel and all my other social media – I even had a like from Donald Trump Junior on Instagram for a post of mine that featured a mini survival kit / bugout bag / pack. Of course, I can’t really prove this any longer… Apparently, he is quite the outdoorsy guy. I didn’t believe the like was real until I understood the whole “verified account” thing, and saw all of the outdoors / survival-related posts on his account (2015-16ish)…
Anywayzzzz – Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda…………….
Until Next Time,
Featured Image: A shot of me and a few friends from Fort Bragg, NC on a “Motorcycle Mentorship Ride” back in 2009-time frame… View on Flikr.
Note: These “Daily Journal Entries” are part of a mini blog within the main blog where I make every effort to publish a 250+ word post per day on top of the regular, longer posts. The idea is to just create a daily habit of publishing written content. And also, to try and become a better overall writer… We’ll see…
