Around May 27th, I received this notification from VidIQ, about reaching 12k subscribers on Youtube and I was super excited to share it, but I wanted to wait a little bit until I had reached a little over 12k before celebrating. Would suck if I announced it and then a few people decided to unsubscribe for whatever reason and it dipped me back under 12k. Thankfully that didn't happen.
I didn't see this happening at all. Because on March 20th, I called it quits. After being frustrated with getting little to no views on content I was working hard on, it felt like I was talking to the wall. I reached out to YouTube support about this and some YouTube "experts" for help. YouTube support told me I was essentially "shadowbanned" without actually saying it. I was able to get information that a whole flood of people marked my channel as "spam" all within a few days a few years ago. I know where that came from, and it's not worth getting into here. Please don't ask. Anyhow, this flagging causes YouTube to hide the channel content from recommendations and subscribers. I asked YouTube to review my channel to remove any flags and while they said they would do a review, there were no promises. With that knowledge I decided it was time to pack it in. I put up a video saying I was done.
The video itself got me over 1000 views, which annoyed me that this video out of all videos scored views for me. Shrug, I guess it happens. BUT the silver lining out of that was people who weren't seeing me (ones that were subscribed and those who didn't know I was still doing videos) saw it over time. These people then started messaging me... one here or there at first and then more and more people started messaging me and emailing as they found out. Asking me to reconsider and continue to do videos on AD&D and D&D in general. They really enjoyed that content and perspective I brought to the "table".
I got with my cousin Marie, who is an SEO expert, and we devised a plan. I was sitting at 11,391 and losing subs fast as I dropped the video about returning on April 27th. Which did decently for a channel that announced its death and had no activity. This was a good sign that MAYBE YouTube fixed the flags. I buckled down and devised a 7-video series of topics for D&D that would focus on AD&D and D&D in general. Marie showed me how to read YouTube data, what to look for in that data, and how to adjust my videos so YouTube would pick up my videos and show them to folks. It worked for the most part as my videos were now grabbing 500 to over 9k views with lots of engagement.
I'd like to thank her, those who wrote in and those that supported me by watching, liking, and commenting on the videos. Youtube and podcasting has always been a hobby of mine and I will say I never claimed to be an expert in anything I produce, I am just one guy speaking about his experience in a subject I enjoy. My goal is and always has been, "Sparking ideas" in my viewers/listeners. I've said that for years, even in the early days on Roll For Initiative Podcast, I said that.
Thank you!
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