How I’ve hit 10k subs on my tech YouTube channel

From zero video skill / Endure the 2-year dark period / Make entertainment factors / The journey to find the Wabi-sabi style

Takuya Matsuyama

04 Aug 2021 — 8 min read

Hi, it’s Takuya from Japan. I’m building a Markdown note-taking app called Inkdrop alone. As a solo developer, I make content to attract potential customers. In December 2018, I started publishing videos on YouTube with zero video editing background, then I’ve recently hit 11k subscribers🎉 It took about two and half years. Thank you so much for all your support. My channel now sends people to my app’s website, which is great. It is about to become my main marketing channel.

I’d like to share my journey to accomplish the first 10K subscribers in this article. I guess it’d be helpful if you’re just starting out your tech channel!

TL;DR

It took 3 years after having a long dark period
During the dark period, try everything until YouTube like you
Do not make just a video version of your blog post
Ask yourself: Does your content really have to be in video format?
The journey to find the ‘Wabi-sabi’(侘寂) style
Ask yourself: Do you want to watch your videos as a viewer?
Is YouTube good for app marketing? — Yes

It took 3 years after having a long dark period

I’ve posted 45 videos so far. As anticipated, I had a very long dark period, where my channel has never got blowing up. A lot of YouTubers say that they also experienced that, and my case was not an exception. As you can see above, the number of views stayed low for 2 years and suddenly started increasing in 2021. How long you’ll have the dark period would depend on your channel activity, of course. I guess my growth is relatively slow because of the low post frequency and no collaborations with other YouTubers. In other words, you can grow it fast by posting high-quality videos as many as possible and having a lot of collaborations with famous YouTubers. But still, it’s inevitable to endure the hard time at least because there are already a lot of tech/dev YouTubers and you can no longer get the first-mover advantage now. Everyone talks about ‘how to learn JavaScript’, ‘how to prepare tech job interviews’, ‘a day in the life of a software engineer, ‘my morning routine’, blah, blah, blah. You need to create unique videos that are different from others — but how?

The dark period — Try everything until YouTube like you

During the dark period, I’ve had many try-and-errors to find my own channel character and direction that would attract fans. In the first place, I started my channel to attract my potential customers. That means that I should target the same type of people as my app — that is, software developers. I have some articles that have got many views on my blog, so I decided to take the same strategy on YouTube. I started talking about my life as a solo developer. Because telling your personal story is a great way to make your content unique and interesting. Here is the first video that I posted:

The quality was terrible. My English was hard to hear. I created it using Keynote and iMovie. Obviously, I had no video editing background. I’ve got only 147 views on the first day — They were my existing audience on Twitter and Medium. Good start, I thought. It’s generally 6,7 or 20 if you were lucky. It’s quite shocking because you’ve spent a long time to make the video. But you can be successful only if you kept posting. After posting a few videos about my career and skills, I’ve got the first hit:

It got only 45 views on the first day. But after 126 days, it suddenly got blowing up:

For some reason, YouTube started promoting it to other people. I guess that’s presumably because people enjoyed this video comparing to others. The audience retention unusually looked incredible:

It’s been 2 years though the video keeps being watched even now, which is amazing. This was a breakthrough for my channel. I learned a lot from this phenomenon.

Do not make just a video version of your blog post

Ask yourself: Does your content really have to be in video format?

I found that the videos that I just give a talk in front of a camera about my experience won’t get traction. That’s not only due to lack of my English skill but also because people especially don’t have a big reason to spend time watching them over other interesting channels. Of course, some people told me that they enjoy them. But something was missing — entertainment factors.

YouTube is an entertainment platform. You have to entertain people with your content there. I know some successful YouTubers posting videos that they just talk in front of a camera. But their talks are entertaining. The ways they talk, the ways they behave, the ways they look, the ways they live— a lot of things are enjoyable to watch in their videos. Besides, vloggers post very often so people can feel close like a friend. I didn’t have any of those strong points. Actually, my early content didn’t have to be in video format. It was just a video version of my blog post.

That’s why my workflow videos successfully drew attention from people. These must be in video format. It’s fun to watch how other developers actually code. The point is that I’m not a full-time YouTuber. It can be a strong point because I’m an active developer who has his own successful product (Inkdrop). On the other hand, full-time YouTubers are thinking of making videos every day. So, I can share practical tech tip content that other full-time YouTubers wouldn’t make. Here are the top 5 most viewed videos:

It looks like that’d be the right direction to go. But I thought I can make my channel more unique yet attractive.

The journey to find the ‘Wabi-sabi’(侘寂) style

How do you make your channel unique? Here is my strategy to discover my own differentiators:

Do not watch fellow developer YouTubers. Or, you’ll be similar to them.
Get inspirations from other genres.
Mix your existing skills and aesthetics like drawing, filming, music, literature, philosophy, anything.

Okay, it’s always easy to tell what to do. I’m going to talk about how I actually did and what is my differentiator.

Ask yourself: Do you want to watch your videos as a viewer?

In my solo development, I always make things that I want to use. Because I’m not alone, and there are always some people in the same boat. That’s why Inkdrop successfully got a lot of customers. In the same way, I wanted to create videos that I’d want to watch as a viewer. Marques Brownlee (a.k.a. MKBHD), one of the most successful tech YouTubers, told admirably in his interview:

It all started with trying to make what I would want to watch. I think that fundamental philosophy has carried itself through every decision I’ve made which has turned it into a brand and a vision moving forward. (…)

The question we always come back to is well as a viewer if I was subscribed.
What would I want to see? What would I want to enjoy? What would help me the most? And that sort of stayed our true north through the whole thing.

People like to see those who enjoying doing. I decided to make videos that I would love to watch again and again. Well, what would it be like? I asked myself the Marques’ questions. I checked my favorite channels and found that I love videos that are calm, beautiful, yet informative, like this cooking video by Ryoya Takashima:

And I love watching lifestyle vlogs, like 슛뚜sueddu:

What I love are their aesthetics and chill vibes. I thought it’d be interesting to make tech videos in their style. I wasn’t sure if it’s possible, but worth trying. Because I don’t know any developer YouTubers doing like this. I guess they are not interested in those type of content. By the way, I also found a tendency between American and Europian vs Asian vlogs, maybe due to their cultural backgrounds, which is interesting:

I found that I’d prefer the Asian’s third-person style. Based on those findings, I spent my app revenue to buy these camera gears piece by piece to try replicating their style:

I also bought Blackmagic’s DeckLink Quad HDMI Recorder to capture the camera input into my Mac Pro in real-time so that I can record my terminal screencast over the camera input:

Here is the result:

It worked way better than others! Amazing.

Besides, it was very fun to shoot and edit. His comment tells why it worked so well:

Maybe that’s thanks to the power of “wabi-sabi (侘び寂び)”? I don’t know :)

Is YouTube good for app marketing? — Yes

Is that worth doing for my app marketing? I think yes. My endeavor just started paying off at the moment. These days, a lot of people are watching YouTube to learn things from DIY to programming. YouTube is more personal than blog. If people find video content useful, they’ll check the account, then find the app. It’s way better than directly knowing the app via ads, because they already like its author. People like to know who made the app.

I’ve been publishing only one or two videos a month. Here is a part of the traffic sent from YouTube to my website:

As you can see, the number increases as the channel grows. So, I can say it’s surely working as a marketing channel for my app. Note that it’s not accurate because it’s impossible to track every traffic from YouTube. Most people watch videos on the YouTube app, which doesn’t provide the referrer information, unlike web browsers. I found a workaround to track the traffic via links embedded in the video descriptions. I added a video ID to the links like so:https://www.inkdrop.app/?utm_source=devaslife&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=vlog&utm_content=FW2X1CXrU1w

So it works as an ad link. Then, you can view the number of visitors for each video on Google Analytics:

Pretty neat. Now I can see this video is the most attractive content so far:

The 3-year journey was tough. But it’s just the beginning. The next goal is 100k subscribers! If you are struggling to grow your channel, ask yourself these questions: