Ask HN: Advice on starting a YouTube channel?
I used to be a full time dev / R&D engineer. Now I basically do the same thing on YouTube (youtube.com/stuffmadehere). The difference now is my R&D-ing is directed at early stage prototypes that I think are interesting / instructive, rather than what is best for an actual business, useful, or profitable.<p>Youtube is interesting because theres a constant source of numeric feedback on how you are doing (views / subscribers / watch time). Seeing these numbers change based on what you do can be incredibly addicting and it's very easy to accidentally connect your personal happiness to those numbers. This is great if they are going up, but if they aren't.... yeah. It's also easy to get into a situation where you lean into "what works" over and over until you find yourself doing stuff that you don't enjoy.<p>My advice would be to find a way to keep the numbers at arms length and focus on doing stuff that you enjoy. You definitely need the feedback of stats / comments / etc to get better, but you don't wan to check it 10 times a day. Personally when I launch a video I will check a few times to ensure I didn't screw up anything major, see if there is any useful feedback in comments, then I will check maybe the stats every week or two.