16 Years on YouTube — What I Finally Learned

🎉 16 Years on YouTube — What I Finally Learned

This week Youtube sent me a message on my channel reading:

“Happy anniversary! You’ve given the world 16 years of videos.”

Sixteen years that's crazy!!!!!

That number really made me stop and reflect on my Youtube journey, all the stops and starts, the mistakes, and the lessons learned.

🚧 The Long Road

I started my channel back in 2009 and did not know anything about YouTube and algorithms or anything like that. I just thought I would give it a go and see what happened. Over the years I created random videos and would upload them and wonder why my channel was not growing. There was no clear message and I posted haphazardly, so that did not help. The whole thing was a mess. It took me a whole 16 years to figure it all out and what I needed to do to fix it.

🌱 The Turning Point

Earlier this year in March, I decided that it was time to move on from this channel because nothing was working. My decision was to start over, create a brand new channel. So I started to unlist the videos I wanted to upload to the new channel. As I was unlisting these videos, I noticed that I was getting more views and even new subscribers. So I kept unlisting everything only leaving one group of videos that were getting the new views and subscribers and that was the turning point for me. My channel now had a clear message, a niche, (one that I was not expecting), but things kept growing so I leaned in by updated the thumbnails, learned Youtube SEO and created videos that aligned with the channel.

And here's what happened.............

🚀 Six Months of Growth.

****March 21st (2025), I was stuck at 800 subscribers for around 18 months or so.

****March 30th, I gained 200 new subscribers giving me the 1000 subscribers I needed

****April 2nd, I gained 4000 hours watch time meaning I could now apply for YouTube monetisation

**** I did not think my channel would get monetised so I did not apply straight away and waited until June, and within two hours Youtube accepted my application and I was monetised.

**** My channel now gets subscribers every single day (around 100 a week)

****This September, so far, I have over 3,600 subscribers and growing

****After 16 years of being stuck, the breakthrough came in just six months (March to Setember) when I decided to double down and take massive action.

The lesson I learned is get clear about your message, be consistent and persistent, and stay focused and the results will come, maybe not in the way you may expect, but may turn out even better than you expected, as in my case.

🎓The Message I Learned ?

What I learned on my Youtube Journey can be applied to any project or situation.

I joined WA in 2022 and to be honest I have had that same scattered approach. I plan to CHANGE that, I can CHANGE it and I will CHANGE it. I just have to make it a MUST and follow through.

I hope this has been useful for somebody. 🤗

🤝 Over to You

Have you ever felt stuck with a project eg. a youtube channel, blog or website?

And if you've already found your flow here at WA, what helped you push through?

Please share your insight, especially for those of us who are still finding our way here at WA.