Some other fun stats this year:
In total my videos have gained ~21k minutes of play time, from ~7200 unique views.
That's considerably lower than the traffic this website gets. Effectively If We Assume has been dormant (in the data-viz/exploration sense) for a couple years now. Note: I'm not abandoning this website, I'm just doing other projects like video right now! In its convalescence, ifweassume.com still gets a few hundred views a day on average (though much of it is automated/crawling)
If you focus on the blue (Views per Video), it's probably fair (or optimistic) to call this "flat" at 50-100 views per video with a few outliers.
If we look at the YouTube analytics of Total Channel Views per Week, it appears much flatter over time.
Conclusion: My YouTube Channel is growing very slowly...
And that's OK!
Would I love tons of views? Of course. When The United States of Starbucks or Airports of the World was getting press, it was great fun... but that was 6 years ago. I did weekly data exploration on If We Assume to feed my curiosity, learn, and engage with people. That's the exact same reason I'm continuing to make these YouTube videos.
Those blogging "successes" also taught me 3 important lessons:
- Hustle/SEO/multi-platform connections are fairly important for attention growth.
- Audience growth is usually not smooth, but rather impulsive due to "viral" content/events. Smash-hits are very important for growth.
- Don't make fun content on the internet as a side-gig and expect massive growth. Doing this because it's fun is the MOST important thing!
Here is a brief reflection on Year 1 of the Astro Vlog project, and the 4 most important sentences I wrote in 2018...
Oh yeah, and be sure to Subscribe.
