I feel like the world wants me to fail. Between the lack of positives on YouTube and the way people act on social media I don’t feel like there are a lot of positives moving forward. It could just be that I just look at the negatives. It could be more. I almost want it to be more. If it is more then there is something that I can grab and say get rid of this and things will improve. Unfortunately there has never been more. I have always just been in the dark. I have been in a consistent state of not knowing how to improve. In some respects I’m comfortable in the dark. not knowing what the issue is means I don’t have to fix it. Considering we are only in March I shouldn’t feel like giving up. I should be at a point where I am hopeful for the future. We have only just began the year. Why do I feel this way?
It’s year 4. I have been creating videos for YouTube for 4 years. Time can fly fast. While I have made considerable improvements and growth, I do not think I am where I should be. What can I do to change this? I have no idea. and sometimes its hard living with that. Being in a consistent state of creation and not knowing how my content will be received is hard. Every day I am split between the choice of creating and improving content or promoting content. Its hard to find a strong balance. The more I pull to one side the more I feel I should be doing the other.
I struggle with feeling like my content is good enough. Between filming editing and promotion via social media, it takes hours to make and release content. In turn no one cares. I watch my videos endlessly to seek out ways to improve them. Everything from the way I film and edit to the way I promote my content is taken into consideration for improvement. I honestly feel like no one cares because what I am doing is producing trash. I see what I do every day. I see what others do every day. I don’t see people putting value into what I do. this makes me feel like I did a bad job. Or I am doing a bad job overall. That in turn makes it hard for me to put worth into my content.
Would people care if I stop? Some would. Some wouldn’t. Some of my fiends would try to get me to continue. Some of the people I know including some of my family would be happy if I quit. I consider quitting failing. At least in this way. If I quit because I failed that’s one thing. I do not think that I have failed yet though. I think I am going through a rough patch. At least emotionally. I think that the number of people who want to see me fail is increasing. I think that my competition is growing. I don’t feel like my audience is growing. I feel like there is just not a lot of positives right now.
How close am I to failing. That really depends on what your definition of failure is. You could look at what I have done as a failure. You could say I failed just because other people have had larger amounts of success in the same area/field. There is a bar for success especially in the YouTube world. I am currently undeath that bar. Yet I continue. I am currently pushing through what should be my failure. Despite the world telling me I have failed and wanting me to quit, I continue.
What has motivated me to continue up to this point is the small things. Analytical changes mainly. Things like subscribers, views and watch time. Things that motivate a lot of people in this field. However I do not think I can continue to use analytics as my motivation. The reason for this being is that I shouldn’t care if other people care. In my entire time doing this I have never been able to not care about if other people care. There is evidence of that in my first YouTube video’s description. I don’t want to be at a point were I am only making content other people care about. I also don’t want to completely ignore what other people have to say. I think that some people will have good feedback and ideas I should listen too. I value my audience and want to listen to what they have to say. Good, bad, whatever.
Where did I think I would be at this point. Initially when I launched my first video, I thought that within a year I would have at least a thousand subscribers and average about the same for views per video. That didn’t happen. I knew within a month of releasing that first video that that was going to be an unrealistic goal. So I then turned to my content. I worked on just improving that and then hoping that that would lead to audience growth. During that period of refocus I changed my goals to trying to improve as a DJ (which I did) and try to get gigs and shows and move into that direction. After that period I realized that nothing is going to fall into my lap. If I want this to work out I need to go out there and work for it. I expanded what content I was doing on YouTube and other opportunities arose, so pushing to become a successful DJ went to the side. Not that I still don’t ant to. When I started the All For Our City videos, I didn’t imagine that they would be as big as they have become. Right now those videos and content created around those videos are the main thing I work on. We I started doing those videos it was during the time when I was expanding what content I was doing for YouTube. After making a few of those videos I realized that I could be successful and build content around them. When I decided to create a channel dedicated to those videos, I set a goal for 100 subscribers and about the same for views. Now that I am in my second year with that channel and my fourth on YouTube I recognize that my goals are always changing and evolving. That’s not a bad thing that’s just how it is.
Where do I want to be in the future? I have ideas. I am at a point where I need to turn those ideas into plans. Then plans into actions. Ultimately, I want to get to the point were YouTube is my fulltime job. A job that can pay enough for me to live off of. Then grow that into a business. A small business but one that has offices and a studio. What I am thinking is something similar in style to the YouTube Space. At this point that’s a long way off. While it is something that I want to do its not something I’m pushing to immediately accomplish. I currently have to small of an audience. I also am not seeing growth at a rate that would give me hope for that anytime soon.
What are some positives? I’ve been really negative up to this point. I want to get out of that by thinking of some positives that have happened recently. First one is at least I can still film. besides considering giving up, quitting, and untimely failing, I have been in situations in the past where I could not physically film. I have had camera malfunctions and other technical issues when filming the All For Our City videos. Almost every video series I make I have some kind of technical issue at some point. Each one of those times has been a learning point. Which creates an opportunity for me to grow as a content creator. Another positive is that I have had a slight growth in subscriber count on the Zac Plays soccer channel. I have also gotten a lot of positive feedback for the new content I have created. I am doing ok on Instagram. I was growing my following on there, then it became stagnate then almost over night I lost half my followers. I never reached 100 followers. I came close though. It can be upsetting to see that happen but I have a better group of followers now. I am also back to the point were I am growing again on there.
What happened in February? I feel like I accomplished a lot. I don’t actually think I did though. I still haven’t posted anything on my main channel since Halloween. Which was something I thought I would have changed at this point. I wrapped up the GoPro soccer videos. For now. I do want to bring those back. I don’t know when I will be able to though. I released the first All For Our City video of 2019. That video as well as the promos did really well. Despite February having the bulk of the current All For Our City podcast episodes, I’m still establishing what it is. I am now 6 episodes in and I still want to make changes and think that it can be better. Everything went up in February on the Zac Plays soccer channel too. Watch time, views, subscribers. I expected an increase compared to January because of the San Jose All For Our City video. The increase however is more then I thought it would be. I think one thing that helped create this increase was putting promo and preview videos on social media. There is a direct correlation between how well I promote my videos social media and how well they do on YouTube.
In January I had a list of things I wanted to do before February. This included creating videos, doing more on social media and overall more content creation. We have to start off with what I first talked about in that blog. DJing. I said that I wanted to bring back Friday music videos. That hasn’t happened yet but it is something that I’m currently working on. Those will start up again as soon as next week. Other things I mentioned were live mixes and SoundCloud mixes. I still want to do those its just going to take time. I don’t have anywhere to do live mixes right now. I also have other issues with SoundCloud. I will talk about that in a future blog post. I do think that both of those can be accomplished by the end of this year. For Zac Plays soccer I think that I have accomplished most of what I have set out too. I have released the All For Our City Podcast. I am working on FIFA19 videos. Those will be released starting this upcoming week. I haven’t gone to any way games yet, but when I do there will be travel vlog style videos. The first one of those videos should be released around the brigades trip to Fresno. As far as filming a documentary goes, I am not confident enough in my filming and editing skills to do one around Reno 1868 FC. I will more then likely be doing one around the Battle Born Brigade doing a tifo. The other idea I had regarding that would be to do one around Reno’s rivalry with Sacramento. I think the amount of blogs that I have coming out right now is good . I want to do them more frequently to drive more traffic to my website. I do not however, want them to interfere with content creation. I did some research recently and found that blogs can help with video promotion as well as audience engagement. So it is definitely something that I will be doing.
What is coming in March? The Friday music videos should be returning. More blog posts. Already I have started that by putting up the All For Our City Podcast notes. I am going to continue that for each future episode moving forward. Other blog posts I am considering doing include a Reno 1868 FC post match blog, a USL championship blog, and posting blogs that discuss more about my videos. FIFA19 videos and livestreams are on there way. With the USL season starting up There will be a lot more All For Our City related content. That includes the All For Our City videos, promos, Live Postgame videos, and travel vlogs. That also means a lot more original content for social media. March is definitely worth looking forward too.
The last thing I want to go over in this blog is something that I have been working on since the end of the 2019 Reno 1868 FC season. I want to do live pregame videos. Almost like a pregame show you would see on tv. I did do some pregame live videos via Facebook last year. I am going to continue the live postgame videos following games. With the pregame videos I was working on collaborating with some people I knew. I still want this to collaborate with these people. I think that there are some creative people in the group that I do want to work with. However I am not to sure that the people who I have been collaborating with on this project want to do it as much as I do. One person has already left the project due to creative differences between me and that person. This has been one of the most challenging projects to get off the ground that I have worked on. My mindset has changed since the start of trying to get this project off the ground and even more so now that one person has left the project. This project has been delayed once and at least one person that I am working with want to delay it even further. My mindset at this point is that if I want this project to get off the ground I am going to have to start doing taking on more responsibility. Meaning that I have to start doing things in a manner which I ask what people think after I do something rather than before I do something. I think that that would be best with this project moving forward. An issue I will run into by doing that is that I might have to do a pregame show by myself. I don’t want to do that and that’s why I really want this to be a collaborative project. It might be stepping on some peoples toes a little bit but at this point I think its the best option I have if I want to get this project off the ground.
Zac Electrifly 