Hallo, Deutschlerner. I just wanted to thank you for an awesome 2018 and tell you a bit about my plans for the future. Almost 20,000 new people have subscribed to this channel this year and the videos on this channel have gained almost a million total views.
While I think that is pretty cool, I don’t like being numbers oriented. If you watch a lot of YouTubers, you will know that there is a lot of disdain for how YouTube works with small creators or more accurately, how they don’t really seem to care about the smaller YouTubers. You see people complaining about the downfall of YouTube and how difficult it is to be a YouTuber nowadays or to make a living from YouTube. I get it. I feel that way sometimes, too. I spent more time in 2018 looking at YouTube analytics than I probably did writing video scripts and that’s saying something.
Over the past few weeks I have started to wean myself off of YouTube analytics. It has done wonders for my self-confidence and has freed up extra time, too. That’s how I decided how I’m going to start 2019. I’m just going to make videos and answer YouTube comments. I don’t care how many views a video gets. I don’t care if I gain more subscribers. I don’t care if I make any money off of YouTube. I have a real job. I don’t need this YouTube channel to sustain me or to support my family. I started this channel to help my own students learn German and now the goal is to teach as many people as possible. I want to get back to the basics and I don’t need analytics for that.
Instead of focusing on the numbers, I am going to focus on people in 2019. I will be doing this in a variety of different ways. First and foremost, I think I have been pretty good about answering almost every comment that is written under my videos. I will continue to do this, as I think you should have a place to practice your German skills and the comment section under a German learning video is a great place for that. YouTube claims to be a social network, but the only way it can be social is if we socialize. The comments is one of the only places to do this, although they have recently added YouTube’s version of SnapChat’s stories feature. If I can find the time, I might start using this and see how it goes. Let me know in the comments if you have even heard of this feature or if you know of any channels using it with any success.
Next I plan on getting back into the habit of doing more livestreams. I think it is a good way to connect with you all on a more personal level and it gives my channel members a chance to use those custom emojis and badges that I spent so much time creating. If you don’t know what that is, it is YouTube’s version of Patreon. You pay $5 per month and I give you access to the script for every video. You also get access to custom emoji and a badge that displays next to your name when you comment in the live chat on a live video. There are a few people who have signed up for this and I would like to give them more of an opportunity to use the perks I send them.
In another way to get back to working with people more than numbers, I will be working with other YouTubers more often. You may have noticed I had Katja from Deutsch für Euch and Trixi from Don’t Trust the Rabbit in my Intermediate series already. I plan on including other people in future episodes where Rainer meets his coworkers or goes out to a club or bar with friends. The trick with doing something like this is that you have to write the script in such a way that the YouTubers I include can record their half without being in the same room as me, as most of the people I want to include won’t be in the USA for this.
I would also like to do more videos like the tschechisches Streichholzschächtelchen video or the O Tannenbaum video in which I get a bunch of YouTubers to come together to create one awesome video. I’ve done this a few times, but I think we need to bring our community together more and this is one way to do this.
You may have seen Dominik’s video about the state of YouTube and its community. I think he makes some good points in that video and I think we can help to fix some of those issues, if we, as YouTube teachers work together. I know it can be difficult, as we all have our own projects to work on, but there has to be a way for us to collaborate more and interact with our audiences more.
If you saw any of my videos about my last trip to Germany, you might have surmised that I started a German exchange program at my school. This means that I will now be going to Germany every other year. My next trip will be in June of 2020 and I would like to see if I can get more German YouTubers together in one place to talk. I don’t even necessarily want to make videos at this gathering. I just want to get people together. This could be a simple joint meet-and-greet or a dinner. On my last trip I had a chance to meet up with Katja from Deutsch für Euch, Dana from Wanted Adventure, Michael from smarterGerman, Peter from LanguageSheep and Anja from Learn German with Anja. I missed Rewboss, as we ended up being in the same city a day or two apart from each other, but couldn’t get our schedules to match and Easy German didn’t get my email in time for them to meet up in Berlin. My goal is to start planning for this well in advanced so we all have time to make arrangements to be in the same place at the same time. We have a year and a half, so we should be able to make this happen. Let me know in the comments who I should contact and make sure I get on the list for this next gathering.
What would you like to see from this channel in 2019? Is there a video topic or video style you would like to see? Anything in particular that you are hoping will happen on this channel? Let me know in the comments.
That’s all I have for today. Again, I want to thank you for making 2018 a fantastic year and wish you frohe Weihnachten, frohe Festtage und ein glückliches Neues Jahr. Bis zum nächsten Jahr. Tschüss.
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