I posted at least one or more videos to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and here’s what happened.

I’ve been a YouTuber for many years with a large following of around 135,000, however, I don’t have a plaque that tells me what a good job I’ve done growing my channel and I’m not monetized on that channel. But I met someone who had a new YouTube channel of less than a thousand followers and the next time I saw her, a couple months later, she had 300,000 subscribers and counting. She was also monetized and received her creator reward. I was shocked and intrigued so I thought I’d follow in her steps in an attempt to monetize my own, new YouTube page. The shift was subtle, but simple, go from wearing skimp clothing on land to being an underwater athlete and wearing appropriate swimwear for water. Although upon typing that out it sounds intense. Good thing I already like creating videos and being in the water. Here’s the first 60 days.
I reached the 1,000 subscriber threshold within the first 7 weeks and subscribers felt like they were coming easily, but watch hours were another thing. I’m close to 2,000 watch hours, but not there yet and when you look in the earn tab to see how many hours are qualified, it’s much lower, 841 and counting (minus the last 5–7 days PLUS because they roll in after the fact). Here’s what I’ve learned: despite YouTube saying they are promoting shorts, I’ve found that hasn’t always been the case for my work and some of the most watch hours have come from longer form, horizontal videos. So I re-adapted my posting pattern from one 10…