Road to a Million Views

My unlikely YouTube journey to 1 million video views

A few days ago I received a nice little surprise in my YouTube Studio dashboard - my videos had reached a cumulative view count of 1,000,000 (1 million) views!

In this post, I want to share a bit of my journey and shed some light into the highs and lows I’ve experienced thus far in my YouTube journey.

The Beginning

Back in 2022, in one of the Discord servers I was a member of, people kept asking me to show them game replays. It was difficult and a real pain to send videos on Discord. So, I ended up, uploading them to YouTube and then sharing a link to it in the Discord server.

That was the start of my YouTube journey.

Taking YouTube Seriously

After seeing the number of interest in my game play videos, I decided to take things up a notch.

Instead of simply uploading raw game play videos to my personal account. I created a dedicated YouTube channel with proper branding and focus. The videos now go through a bit of post processing before getting published on YouTube.

I also started to promote my YouTube channel via the various social media platforms.

Haters Gonna Hate

This caught me totally off guard.

For some strange reason. People who were previously friendly and receptive of my original video uploads started to attack me. Because I wanted to build a YouTube channel sharing my gameplay videos.

This was the toughest period of my journey.

I didn’t have many subscribers. The only comments I received on my YouTube videos were from haters.

On Discord, people were ridiculing my videos, trashing them in every way imaginable.

Light at the end of the Tunnel

Thankfully, I had a couple of people from before the switch who continued to show me support and encouragement.

The other positive aspect that kept me going was I continued to acquire more subscribers amidst the barrage of hateful comments.

YouTube lowering their requirements to join the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to 500 subscribers was the last piece.

Turning Point

I wanted to officially call myself a YouTuber. And my criteria for this was to be a part of the YPP.

So, I set myself a target of 500 subscribers (the number needed to be a part of the YPP).

Before the lower subscriber requirement was rolled out for the region my account was located in. I reached the 1,000 subscriber mark and became a full YPP member.

The Rainbow After the Storm

As the saying goes: “you’ve got to put up with the rain, to see the rainbow”.

In the case of online and social media, you’ve got to deal with a constant raging storm. The things people say online and in social media are on a whole another level.

But once you get past the storm, you’ll find that the number of haters shrinks dramatically. They’re still there, but the number of encouraging and genuine comments far outnumber the hateful comments.

Paying it Forward

1 million views is a drop in the ocean for the big name YouTubers. However, for those just starting out, it can look like an impossible number to reach.

If I can reach it, so can you.

Ignore the naysayers and focus on adapting and improving your content based on genuine feedback.

The real fun is in the journey and not at its destination.

Good luck and have fun!

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.