That’s right folks. It’s taken over a decade of hard work, but the Solid Signal YouTube Channel now sits at 10,000 subscribers! It hit that landmark about two weeks ago with a sudden rush of subscribers in the middle of March. (Chances are that had something to do with DIRECTV’s satellite problems around that time.)
But, I wanted to take the time to reflect back on the history of the channel and why I’m so glad to report 10,000 subs when other channels have millions.
Our YouTube channel circa 2012, and now
I took over our YouTube channel in 2012 when there were a grand total of two videos on it. Specifically, this one and this one. Those videos received a total of about 8,000 views in the four years between the time they were posted and the time I took over. Today, the Solid Signal YouTube channel has seen over 4.6 million views, with the top video getting over 300,000 views. There are over 1,100 videos on the channel, with all sorts of topics of general interest. Those are pretty big numbers considering that we don’t have a full-time video producer. It’s all stuff produced in people’s spare time.
10k subs? Who cares?
If I look at a top tech blogger like Marques Brownlee, he’s got about 18.7 million subscribers. Even an antenna video maker like Tyler the Antenna Man has about 300,000. So where do I get off crowing about my lowly 10,000 subscribers? I don’t make any excuses. First of all it’s great to celebrate any achievement and this is certainly an achievement. Second, as I said, the YouTube channel has been a part-time endeavor all these years. And, unlike those (very esteemed) tech bloggers, it isn’t the real focus. Our YouTube channel is like this blog. It exists to support Solid Signal and Signal Connect. We don’t put any effort into attracting subscribers at all other than me occasionally saying “like and subscribe.” Videos that get monetized tend to get a lot of views on their own, and our videos aren’t monetized at all. So every one of those 10,000 people is someone who chose to support the channel on their own. And that makes each subscriber a lot more valuable in my opinion.
So it’s true that our YouTube channel isn’t going to be competing with any young influencers posting makeup tutorials. But the way I figure it, every single person who watches a video did so hoping to learn something. Hopefully I was able to teach them something. If I can say that I was able to teach something to someone 4.6 million times, that’s really something I can be proud of and it’s pretty humbling. If I say that 10,000 people over the years have seen enough benefit to push the subscribe button, that’s amazing to me. That’s more people than read the local newspaper where I live, and about the total adult population of the town where I grew up. It may not be 18 million, but when you look at it that way it’s something.
Very grateful to you, our readers
This is a great opportunity to tell you, the Solid Signal Blog reader, how grateful I am that you’re choosing to read this blog and watch these videos. It really is humbling, and it’s been my pleasure to offer up this content over the last 12ish years. I hope you’ll keep reading and watching!
