WHAT THE YEAR 2018 TAUGHT ME;

 

HOW I Got 6000 YOUTUBE SUBSCRIBERS IN 6 MONTHS

2017 ended in the most depressing and hopeless state for me. Around the middle of the year, precisely in June, I lost a job I thought was my breakthrough job and I passively started a YouTube Channel. I had heard that earning money from Google AdSense was easier on YouTube than on blog. After all, I had run my blog for 7 months before then and was still getting rejected by AdSense even though I got thousands of views on it. I knew I had an interesting personality so running a YouTube channel would not be a problem. 

Fast forward 6 months after that I got the shocker of my life!

YouTube adjusted their monetization requirements. I think they felt people like me, got paid money too easily, so they sent us a circular stating that before a channel could qualify to be monetized on their platform, it had to have 1000 subscribers and 240,000 watch minutes.

At this point I had barely 150 subscribers and 6000 watch minutes. After sending my channel link to my family and friends, I got 17 more subscribers and 420 extra watch minutes but even with that, I was still nowhere close to meeting the outrageous mark that YouTube set.

To me, that was the end of my passion and my hope of making money. Life was crazy. I didn’t know what 2018 had in store for me and I was too depressed to find out.

On the 31^st of December, 2017, I dragged myself to church for the crossover service just to fulfil my family long ritual. This time around it was more of a ceremony than it was a crossover service for me. I thought I knew my faith and I didn’t need a pastor sugar coating words just to get me to scream, ‘Hallelujah’ loud enough until I lost my voice. Today wasn’t that day, so I just nodded to each prayer he dished out. Then a few minutes to 12:00 am, he said,

“It is a few minutes to a brand new year, now is the time to tell God exactly what you want the year to be for you.’

Those words sparked the tiniest hope on my inside and I just knelt down, placed my hand on my seat and my head on my hand and begged God to help me out. I didn’t say how because I didn’t know how. Truthfully, I didn’t know what I wanted exactly, all I knew was that I didn’t want to be this hopeless and broke for another year. 

As I said these words, I felt tears run down my eyes and then I heard the Pastor screaming,

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!”

What?! Already? Nothing felt new to me so I remained in that position until I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was my mother beckoning me to rise for a New Year hug. I was too tired to wipe the tears off my face, so when she saw it, she whispered in my ears as she hugged me tight,

‘He has heard you and it will be as you have told Him.”

Days after, I was back to my house, a really tiny room, big enough for only me to sleep, have my bath and work in.

I knew that my, ‘Relationship advise’ videos weren’t going to fetch me the number of subscribers and views I needed to make money on YouTube so I began to research on the various types of contents one could do on the platform. At this time, the Big Brother Naija double wahala show had just started and I watched the opening ceremony, where the housemates that made it into the house were announced.

One cool Friday evening, a friend of mine called me and we began to chat about the housemates and what I thought about each one of them. As I shared my opinions with her, she listened attentively and began to ask me questions about the housemates as though I knew them personally and that was when it hit me!

If I could talk to one person about a show we both watched and arouse this much interest in her, I could talk about the show on my channel to as many people as were willing to listen to me.

The more I thought about this, the crazy and exciting it felt to me so I rushed to Google to find out things about each one of the 20 housemates. At this time, the show was one week gone and YouTube channels way bigger than mine had already began to review it. This meant that I was late to the party and was almost not competent enough to pull it through.

Well as far as I knew, I needed to put out new content and I had no other option so I looked the doubt and fear in the eye and said, ‘It wouldn’t hurt nobody if I gave it a try. If it is a flop, then it is a flop.’. I mean my life was almost a flop and nobody had beaten me for that neither did anyone care. So I went on to record my first video. I titled it ‘Big Brother Naija2018 Contestant | They lied to us’ and posted it on my channel and something strange happened.

One thousand people weirdly found my opinion of the housemates interesting enough to watch the video after the first day I posted it. At the end of the week, the video had gotten five thousand views.

How? I mean how was this possible? I was late to the party; I wasn’t big enough; I didn’t even have up to 200 subscribers and I stuttered all through the video, so why were people watching it? This has to be the craziest thing I have ever experienced, I thought to myself.

And in that crazy mode, I recorded the second video and the third and then I went on and on. The more I posted, the higher the views I got and guess what, my subscribers were growing as well. By February, 2018, I had gotten way more than 500,000 watch minutes and 2000 subscribers!

People began to leave me encouraging messages in the comment section, some would give me areas of the show they would like me to talk about in my next videos. Gradually, I started to grow a community and in April, my channel got monetized. When I got the monetization mail, I called my Mum, boyfriend, brothers, sister and any other person who had ever told me not to give up. 

After the Big Brother Naija show, I was lost as to what next to do. I researched on what next I could do as a YouTuber. While researching, I found that a Social Media influencer is any who has a large audience and is able to encourage and/or sell a particular lifestyle, product, service or interest to her audience. With that, I could work in a number industries, from Finance to Fashion, Travel, Food, you name it.

I was intrigued by this and that was how I started to make lifestyle contents on my social media platforms. I blogged about Food, Fashion, Movies and any other area I found interesting. I started to show my audience different places around Nigeria where they were sure to enjoy good meals. In other to accurately direct them, I had to have a taste the food. 

As of the last day of December, 2018, I had eaten well over 50 new and sophisticated meals in exquisite restaurants, gotten above 6000 subscribers and 1.4 million watch minutes on my YouTube channel and grown over 8000 interesting and connected Instagram audience … CRAZY!

Now, what has 2018 taught me?

• ·         Never be afraid to do crazy things.
• ·         No matter how hopeless the situation is or how faithless you think you are, ask God for help.
• ·         When you are doing something and you seem stuck, Google is always there to guide you. 
• ·         It is never too late to start anything.
• ·         Never be afraid to change anything – Content, Career, Habit, Behavior, Friends… Anything. 
• ·         Doubt and fear is very normal. What you need to do is do it even with the doubt and fear.
• ·         Always be happy and hopeful because life has a lot of twists and turns and our duty is to enjoy the ride.

Welcome to 2019, where all our dreams will come true by the grace of God and hard work on our path. This year, I hope to travel a lot, showcase good fashion brands, make a movie, shoot my series, vlog about my day to day life, stay happy and connected to God. I pray that God blesses us and the works of our hands and that He leads us to do great things this year, 2019. HAPPY NEW YEAR LOVE.

I hope this write up was as helpful as I wanted it to be and feel free to share what 2018 taught you in the comment section, I’d love to know. Mwahhh.

……….Talk2urHommie……….