Here's What Happened After Posting 77 YouTube Videos In 31 Days

In January, I posted 77 videos and here we'll dive into my analytics and see what happened. I'll also share insights I learned along the way.

My Journey To Get YouTube Serious

This year, I've decided to take YouTube seriously and get monetized. I started January 2025 intending to publish 2 videos per day, but I ended up doing 2.5 per day.

I've been blogging regularly since 2014. My first YouTube video was one I wanted to embed in one of my blog posts in 2017. In May 2018, I did my first podcast episode experiment. In 2019, I published two more experimental podcast episodes.

I planned to launch the podcast in 2021, and I was waiting for software that would make podcasting incredibly easy. When Anchor showed up, now Spotify podcasting, it did just that and the pathway was paved.

And, then the pandemic hit and I decided to go all in since I had no idea how the crisis was going to affect my freelancing work. So. In 2020, I published 33 new long-form podcast episodes. One of those episodes led to my first paid speaking event about freelancing.

From 2021 through 2023, I published 61 more episodes of the Share Life podcast which I also published on YouTube.

In 2024, I published 36 videos, and this was the first time I began experimenting with podcast episode clips. In addition to these videos, I also began experimenting in 2024 with YouTube Shorts (and Reels on other channels).

But until the past few months, I had not understood YouTube nor had I taken it seriously. But, after diving in and discovering the platform, how it works, and how monetization is achieved, I realized getting monetized was one of the best ways I could make money from my content creation business.

And when that insight finally clicked, I decided to make it happen.

The Power of Clips

So, as part of my journey to the goal, I wanted to start with a volume of videos to see how much it would accelerate the process. As a podcaster, I've got over 100 episodes, all on YouTube. Out of necessity and feedback, I ended up creating and publishing clips in 2024 as part of my political activism.

One of my clips, at the end of 2024, became my second most-viewed video of all time with around 1,500 views. My most viewed video has 1,800 views but it was heavily promoted externally when published by the author. So, this new clip became the most viewed video based on YouTube promoting it.

That success opened up my eyes to recognize the value of my unpublished library of video clips; 500- 1,000 clips. Creating these clips should have been something I was doing from the beginning but since I didn't, now is the time to go back and find the quality evergreen clips from my episodes and publish them now.

And if you are not a podcaster, I'd recommend you consider creating clips of any of your video content that is over 10-15 minutes long, to see if you can get more watch hours and promote the longer version of your videos.

The Published Videos Numbers

So a large number of the videos in my first month of taking YouTube seriously are clips of these past episodes. But I also did some other video forms as well. So we have something to compare it with, here's the video type breakdown for 2024.

• 34 videos in 2024 published (excluding shorts)
  • 1 video speaking to the camera (fireside chat)
  • 12 clips
  • 8 blog readings (audio only)
  • 13 long-form podcast interviews

And here's a breakdown of the 77 videos for January 2025.

So, that's a total of 77 videos published in January 2025. That's more than twice what I published in 2024 and we're only one month into 2025.

For most of this past month, I published 2 videos per day, but on some days I posted batches of videos including 7 in one day on January 30th.

I don't yet have clarity on whether posting the same amount each day or as a batch is better, but I'm inclined to go with the batching on clips, specifically because they're already recorded as part of the podcast episode, and it's hard to know which will be most likely to get traction. In addition to batching podcast episode clips on a day, I'll schedule the full podcast episodes and YouTube-specific videos on their own days to see what type of result that generates. Maybe it doesn't matter.

YouTube Shorts

In 2024, I posted a large number of shorts (reels) on YouTube and this year I posted a handful at the beginning of the month. But, since they don't count towards watch hours, I'm ignoring them for now, although I do want to experiment with how I can leverage reels to get more watch hours on the long-form content as a way to reach monetization faster.

Thumbnails & Titles

Posting so many clips was great because the content was already done. I just had to go through the full episodes and find the good stuff to extract out. This volume helped me focus on getting better at titles and thumbnails. By doing so many in such a short period, I could test ideas and start to see what made more sense. It also allowed me to revive and shape a thumbnail process and styling approach. I'm leaning towards simpler and simpler as I go.

Milestone: 1,000 Channel Watch Hours

As part of my activity this month, I've hit over 1k watch hours on my YouTube channel. When I started the month, I was excited about this milestone because I thought it meant I was halfway to the goal, but unfortunately, the 1k watch hours have to be within the last 365 days so this milestone doesn't help me achieve my monetization goal directly.

With that said, I do wonder if the hours as a total amount of play time have any type of authority role in YouTube video promotions. With blogging, there are tipping points of getting Google traffic after creating a certain amount of content and getting a certain number of links. This created domain authority which gives new content much faster and broader reach. I wonder if this applies to YouTube channels.

As I produce more content and get more watch hours, will that mean YouTube is more likely to promote my videos? Let me know what you think.

YouTube Is Promoting My Videos

With that said, I've noticed how much more YouTube is pushing my videos since 2024. If you look at these graphs the browse and suggested videos impressions have shot up dramatically.

It's great that YouTube promotes content. As a blogger, there is some of that in SEO rankings, but it's not the same thing as being actively promoted to an active audience. That responsibility falls on the blogger primarily. As a YouTuber, and social media in some ways, the ecosystem is actively promoting on your behalf, and this is demonstrated in YouTube shorts most explicitly. That idea was what attracted me to pushing shorts and reels.

I didn't understand that YouTube promoted long-format videos. Now that I do, I'm much more motivated to get YouTube working for me. If I can put my content into a machine, and it will endlessly promote it, I will happily do that! And whatever I've done to build up to this point, it seems to have worked.

Watch Hours From 77 Videos

Let's dive into the numbers from this high volume of activity. Since 4K watch hours is the goal, I'm primarily focusing on this metric.

Let's rewind a bit so we can see how 2025 compares to the time that preceded it. Here are the total watch hours for all time, through the end of 2023.

My average monthly watch hours in 2023 was about 14 for a total of 167.6 watch hours in the year.

Here are the total watch hours for all time, through the end of 2024.

My average monthly watch hours in 2024 was about 20 hours per month for a total of 242 watch hours in the year.

Now, let's quickly run through the months before January 2025.

• August 2024 = 9.31 Watch Hours
• September = 17.32 Watch hours
• October = 24.51 Watch Hours
• November = 25.54 Watch Hours
• December = 39.99 Watch Hours

So the watch hours climb up, in big part due to my most popular clip, my second most popular video ever.

So, where did I land in 2025? How did it compare to my 2024 average? And the peak month of December that preceded it?

• 62.68 Watch Hours after posting 77 videos.

January 2025 was up over 20 watch hours from the prior month and it was triple the average for 2024. If I sustained that number, my watch hours would be triple for 2025, but not yet enough to reach the goal within a year.

At this pace, it would take me 63 months to get 4K watch hours, which is too slow to get monetized. But, I believe there will be compounding effects. So the work I've done in January will have some carry-over into February and beyond. I'll be watching for this as part of my next activity experiment.

Overall, the spike from August 2024 through January 2025 is incredible and I'm excited to see if I can top it again in February. Before we dive into that compounding effect, let's do a breakdown of the watch hours to see which of the 77 videos played a part.

Watch Hours By Video Type

• Podcast Episodes = 30.93 Watch hours = 0.836 Watch hours / Episode
• Clips = 25.35 watch hours = 0.4225 Watch hours / clip
• Talking To Camera Videos (Vlogs) = 4.96 Watch Hours = 0.45 watch hours / video
• Blog Readings = 10 minutes

So, how could this data translate into future activity?

The first key insight is that clips are the most worthwhile of my content creation time. Let's say it takes me 10 minutes per clip to create. That means I can generate 6 clips per hour of my time which means every hour of my time generates 2.535 watch hours in the same month. It's not a great number to hit the goal, but it is a good starting point. If these clips end up having a larger watch hour lifespan over time, then it'll only strengthen the case to make them.

Another thing worth noting is that I will run out of podcast episodes before I hit my goal with clips at this rate, so the well will eventually run dry of this low-hanging fruit option. But if I can build enough momentum perhaps I'll hit a tipping point that will cause exponential growth and then it'll give me enough traction to create other forms of content.

What about talking to the camera, videos? Let's say the average length to make one is 90 minutes, so that means 1 hour of my time equals 0.3 watch hours. That means I'd need 13,333 of these videos to get monetized. That is not going to be sustainable so I've got to figure out how to get more out of these types of videos. Ultimately, I'm going to need to level up on all fronts to hit the goal sustainably.

The data above about podcasts does take into account old episodes, but since I'm new to clips and vlogging, it does not take into account old versions of those, so I may discover the numbers vary once I'm several months into this and have data to look back on.

Now, let's explore old versus new content with the data I do have for full podcast episodes.

Watch Hours From Old Content

I believe YouTube will have a compounding effect on accruing monthly watch hours because of my growing library of videos. I suspect there'll be at least two effects.

The old content will reach new audiences. And once it does reach them, other relevant old content I've created will be promoted to them by YouTube. Since I'm creating a large spectrum of content on personal development, business growth, and leadership, I believe creating a volume of content will be more critical for my channel growth to ensure there is enough content across these categories to lead to meaningful engagement. Simply put, I'm going deep and wide with my channel content categories.

If my hypothesis is correct, we should see this in the data. While I know this to be the case broadly speaking, let's dive into the specifics of January 2025.

Out of the 62.68 watch hours from January, 15 hours are from content older than 3 months, and about 6 hours from recent content in the three months before January 2025. This is my evergreen watch time baseline. I'll be monitoring to see how that baseline evolves across time.

Since I have the data for podcasts, let's see how much of the watch hours are from old, new, and recent podcast episodes (3 months or younger).

• New podcast episodes = 14.844 watch hours
• Old podcast episodes = 10.72 watch hours
• Recent podcast episodes (from the prior quarter, not January 2025) = 6.38 watch hours

That means new podcast episodes account for less than half of my January 2025 podcast watch hours. That is a good sign for the evergreen baseline.

Clips or No Clips?

Let's break it down once more between episodes for which I made clips and episodes for which I did not make clips.

• Podcast Episode Watch Hours That Had Clips Made = 8.9073 = 1.78146 watch hours/podcast episode
• Podcast Episode Watch Hours With NO Clips Made = 22.0245 = 0.69 watch hours/podcast episode

So, not only are the clips worth it on their own, but it also looks clear that they boost the full episode viewings. This is good to know and another intentional experiment I'll be doing with Shorts in the future.

Let's do one more cross-section of the data. How does new versus old fare when we review old, recent, and new with and without clips?

• New Podcast Episodes With Clips = 3.9916 watch hours = 2 Watch hours per video
• New Podcast Episodes Without Clips = 10.852 watch hours = 2.713 watch hours per video

New episodes without clips seem to fare better, but keep in mind, my sample size is small.

Let's review old podcast episodes. Since I don't have any data for a recent comparison, I'm going to bundle recently published videos into old on the following analysis.

• Old Podcast Episodes With Clips = 4.92 watch hours = 1.64 watch hours per video
• Old Podcast Episodes Without Clips = 11.17 watch hours (5.34 recent) = 0.40 watch hours per video

So, with new podcast episodes, clips don't seem to make a difference in getting new watch hours, but with older podcast episodes, clips make a difference.

That makes me inclined to create clips for podcast episodes that are not brand new. Instead, it looks like a better move to wait at least a few months before creating the clips. As I get more data, this will be something worth exploring in more depth.

Subscriber Growth

At this stage, I wasn't expecting many new subscribers. I started at 68 at the beginning of the month and to my pleasant surprise, I've gained 17 subscribers! That's almost as many as I got in all of 2024! As of the time I outlined this analysis, I'm at 86 subscribers.

Since monetization requires 1,000 subscribers, it's nice to see my audience growing alongside the watch hours. If I start moving quickly towards the watch hours and subscribers are not keeping up, I'll make some adjustments to help move that needle on that front.

Externally Promoting Content

Historically, my mission was to create a ton of content, and then later, focus on the distribution and promotion of that content. This year, I'm making that pivot to intentionally promote the content I'm creating as part of my plan to generate income from content creation.

I've got my blog, my email marketing, and my social media channels. I've also got other promotion and distribution channels I'm experimenting with. So, I'll be working on building out this promotional machine as part of my video publishing efforts as a way to accelerate the growth process.

To what degree I can move the needle in February and the months to follow, is something I'll be working on and measuring.

Seeing YouTube Clearly: Getting Risky

I wish I knew what I now know about the YouTube opportunity before me. But, many of the things that have unfolded along my journey have been steps towards making it happen and taking the channel seriously. For example, my first video for YouTube, talking directly to the camera, was as a Republican for Harris last year. This was great for several reasons. First, it was a practice step toward creating these types of vlogging videos.

And second, if I can post a political video that will upset everyone in my tribe, and get the trolls out at full force, I've faced and overcome the fear required to do anything else here on this channel. By taking the biggest risk first,  all the others will pale in comparison.

Imperfection

I've also embraced this idea of making flawed videos. I posted videos that were not perfect or that had problems. But posting anyway, helps solidify things learned. If my lighting in a video is horrible, and I post it anyway, I'll work on improving the lighting. I've kept a video up with an audio issue on headphones as a reminder to never make that mistake again.

So, I'm leaning into the idea of making these flawed videos and letting the flaws direct how I improve. Another great example is end cards. I didn't realize how helpful they could be, so I created a 10-second video clip at the end of the videos, and I started rolling out these end cards on most new videos.

With my lighting figured out, I'm now ready to create a lot more business and personal vlogs for YouTube. So, the episode types may play an important factor as well, which I'll continue with my experiments.

Comparison

I'm excited about the progress I've made, especially as I compare it to the progress I made before this point.

When you do the comparison of your channel, don't focus on comparing your statistics with others. Compare it to the past version of your channel. That will help you see the progress you are making and the ways to improve along the way.

I've seen great growth in this video volume experiment. It may be fewer watch hours than others who've posted fewer videos and accomplished more, but I'm paving my path and it's going to look different than others. And I'm excited for the progress made so far.