50,000 people is double the population of the city in which I live. If you took the number of students who graduated from my high school and added it to everyone else who ever graduated from that school and multiplied it by 10, that number would still be smaller than the number of subscribers on my YouTube channel. According to Wikipedia "The term urbanized area denotes an urban area of 50,000 or more people." That means that my YouTube following would count as an urbanized area if we all lived in the same area. Holy cow! I can't believe that many people actually like me and my videos enough to subscribe to my channel.
Before I get into the other stuff I want to mention in this blog post, I want to say how humbling it is to have this many people who like and benefit from my work subscribe to my channel. I get comments on a daily basis from people who tell me that I saved their German grade or they didn't understand something until one of my videos cleared up their confusion. I am proud to be a part of the German Teacher YouTube Community. We each share ideas and collaborate with each other to make it possible for anyone in the world to learn German. Reaching 50,000 subscribers means a ton to me, but it means more that I get to connect with individuals around the world who want to learn or teach German.
When I started making videos in 2011, I had no ambitions of becoming a "YouTube Star". I just wanted to make some videos that my students would enjoy and would help them learn German. I didn't want to be famous, I didn't want to make a million dollars on YouTube, and I certainly didn't want to go viral. Absolutely none of that has changed in the past 7 years. I simply want to help others learn German. Now I'd like to take a walk down memory lane to see where I started.
I started my channel in January of 2011, but it took me until August of 2012 to get my first 100 subscribers. Just over a year later in October of 2013 I reached 1000 subscribers. It only took two more months to get the next 1000. In August of 2015 I crossed the first of what I consider to be huge milestones, 10,000 subscribers. Exactly one year later I made it to 20,000. Since August of 2017 I have been averaging over 1000 new subscribers each month. For a few years now I have been compiling and analyzing the data I get from YouTube analytics. The graph below that shows my running total of subscribers for each month shows how insane these numbers actually are.
Several of my first videos were just me using some stuffed animals to have a conversation and teach basic phrases. Those videos were awful for a long list of reasons. The wind in the background drowned out the sound of my voice. The camera I used was just whatever I had sitting around at the time, which was mostly used for taking pictures and didn't take great video. Worst of all, however, I didn't really proofread back then, so the videos were riddled with errors. They were so awful, in fact, that when I finally decided to get serious about making YouTube videos, I deleted almost all of them.
The oldest video that survived the purge of crappy videos when I started getting more serious about making videos is one that I made using a website called "Xtranormal". I didn't keep this video, because I thought it was great quality or anything. I kept it, because I liked the amount of sarcasm built into it and the German 3 students at my school are required to memorize "Der Erlkönig". Xtranormal is still a website where you can animate little stories and it is just as awful and terrifying as it was back then. For your enjoyment, I have embedded the video below.
The oldest video that actually shows my face (and my awful camera quality) is from February of 2012. It is simply me reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in German. I think it is a great example of why I deleted so many of my oldest videos. At 480p it is no wonder that it has just over 1,000 views and is over 6 years old. I did do a better quality version of the Pledge of Allegiance when I made a video about American Symbols of Freedom in celebration of Independence Day in 2017.
I would consider almost all of the videos I made before the first German with Puppets video in 2013 to be absolute garbage, but I don't think I should delete videos just because they are bad quality. I only delete videos if they are detrimental to the educational process. When I started the German with Puppets Series, it was the first time I started making videos with a real goal in mind. I wanted to cover all of the grammar topics in the two classes I teach (German 1 and German 2). Between July of 2013 and March of 2014 I uploaded 30 videos for my German 1 students and 19 for my German 2 students. As soon as I finished each of the puppet series, I started creating videos for the worksheets that my students had to complete that went with the puppets videos. I didn't finish those videos until March of 2015 and I used them as online assignments for my students until the end of last school year (2017-2018).
In between puppet videos and worksheet videos, I started uploading three kinds of videos on Mondays. Each Monday was a different category. The categories were Märchen, songs and resource reviews. The Märchen were a way for me to get back to using the puppets without having to write my own scripts. The script writing process takes a lot of effort and time. Märchen are easier videos to make, because I simply read a story that someone else wrote and animate it or use puppets to act it out.
The German songs were fun to make, but ultimately painful to watch. I can't carry a tune in a bucket and half of the time, I'm not even on beat. There is a really good reason I haven't made a song video in a while. I am trying to improve my video quality and me singing will never be good quality.
The last category of videos I made during this time is one that I would like to get back to some time in the future. Every 3 weeks, I would upload a review of a resource that you can use to learn German. Some of them I hated and some of them were really good. Some of them I still use to this day. I know there are a lot of newer apps and websites that people use and I would love to get back to reviewing them from a teacher's perspective.
On Wednesdays I uploaded German Learning Tips. The first several were legitimate tips like how to think in German or read more fluently, but then I transitioned to videos about various topics I felt like talking about. I am actually really disappointed in the way that the series turned out, because they stopped being actual tips after the 17th video. I still think that the videos are good, but calling them "German Learning Tips" is a bit disingenuous. I actually plan on incorporating tips for learning into my new videos coming up in September.
After the puppets videos and the worksheets videos were done I started doing other grammar videos on Fridays. I wanted to break German grammar down into smaller digestible videos. That's why I started a series called "3 Minuten Deutsch". It is still one of my most popular videos series. I don't consider the series to be "complete", but it is pretty extensive. I stopped making them after video #69, but I might get back to them at some point. I actually have several of the topics planned out, but I just haven't found the time to write the scripts and make the videos. I'll add that to the list of things I would like to get back to. That list is getting pretty long.
In January of 2017 I decided it was time to make a change. I had been making the same kinds of videos for almost two years and my style was starting to get stale. I decided to keep doing the 3 Minuten Deutsch Series, but I dedicated Mondays to the A1 and A2 levels and Fridays to the B1 and B2 levels. These two series have been insanely popular. I am very proud of the way they have turned out. I made a total of 50 episodes for the A1/A2 series and I plan to do four more videos in the B1/B2 series to make it have an even 50 as well.
As much as I really like the A1/A2 and B1/B2 series, I hated the fact that I didn't plan the entire series out from the start. Every video was basically just whatever I felt like making that week. Towards the end, I started making the Monday video and the Friday video have a similar theme, but it never really had the organization that I really wanted to. As a teacher, I couldn't let this lack of organization continue, so I started working on a way to change it all.
Towards the end of the school year it becomes more and more difficult to make videos. I am in charge of several things that all have to come together at the end of every school year. That's why several years I have chosen to take the entire month of May or June off from making videos. In years when I didn't take a break there were occasions when I couldn't make videos on certain days and I thought that was worse than making an announcement that I wouldn't be uploading videos between date A and date B.
This year I will be spending most of June in Germany, so I decided to take most of May off and all of June. Since I was already going to be taking that much time off from YouTube, I thought it was a great time to revamp what I saw as a terrible oversight about the A1/A2 and B1/B2 series. In September I will be starting two new series of A1/A2 videos and B1/B2 videos, but this time I will have a plan and an endgame. There will be a distinct beginning and end to both series and they will follow a curriculum that I am writing. You'll be able to download PDF files to go with the videos, which will include a worksheet and other materials. Those will all be available on Patreon and Teacher Pay Teachers.
The ultimate goal is to put all of these materials into an ebook and sell them on Amazon and iTunes. I plan on waiting until each of the series come to an end before making a finalized version of the materials as an ebook. Since the A1 and A2 parts of the series won't take as long as the B1 and B2 parts, I will have the first two done and online sooner with the B1 and B2 ebooks to follow at a later date.
So that's my YouTube journey so far. I can't wait to start the new series in September and I look forward to teaching more people German through YouTube. Next stop, 100,000 subscribers and the Silver Play Button!
Comments