My YouTube Rules
YouTube... WITH SPEEED!
Back in March I radically changed how I do YouTube.
Originally I started doing YouTube as Code Career Genius and I was trying to do all the common YouTube tropes to build up a channel (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE FOR THE ALGORITHM! OMG!!!!). Then I got burned out and killed that channel.
I still enjoyed making videos, so I went back to having my own little channel where I did random stuff. Even still, I felt hobbled by trying to fit in with what everyone else does with YouTube. The temptation to do things that I thought would grow the channel led me down the path of doing a bunch of extra nonsense I don’t enjoy.
So I made this list of rules about how I would do YouTube videos going forward. Here are my YouTube rules:
No custom thumbnails
Simple titles
Single sentence description
Same category for all videos
No tags
No playlists
No email/social media cross promotion
No affiliate links
No content repurposing
Only public vids available on channel. (delete the rest)
As you can tell, I cut out a ton of things that are “best practices” on YouTube. No custom thumbnails to grab your attention. Simple titles and description. No more begging for attention!
It’s just me making videos and hitting publish. Very simple and minimal, at least compared to everyone else on YouTube.
I also went back and ran all my existing published videos through this list. That meant cutting down a bunch of old content that I wouldn’t necessarily do again today. It gives my channel a certain aesthetic that is closer to old school YouTube than what you see in your feed today.
A big reason for these rules was to keep YouTube fun and sustainable for me. It also shortens the distance between an idea and hitting publish on a video.
The feeling I’m looking for now is to have a video idea, get it done, hit publish and walk away without having to worry about it again. It doesn’t matter if the video does well or not. Just make the thing and walk away.
This has also led to me changing up video formats and editing styles. There are certain types of videos I’m not going to make because the production effort is too high to get what I want. For example, my tutorials are much shorter and simpler now. Something like 2-3 minutes vs 20-30 minutes. Kind of like snacks vs full meals.
It’s so much easier to get an idea across when it’s small and simple.
And that’s what it’s become for me. It’s like telling a good joke. Give it just enough setup that you can deliver the punchline.
I had to cut out so much of the setup for me to get to the punchline of my ideas for YouTube.
There is still more work for me to do before I feel 100% dialed in on the YouTube side of becoming “One Take Brian” in that space, but it’s so much closer than it was at the start of the year.
-Brian