I decided to start my own YouTube channel very spontaneously in May 2019. I was already working on my two Facebook sites (The Ordinary Parent Community & The Side Hustle Journey), blogging on my two websites (www.theordinarymom.com and www.thesidehustlejourney), had already started my Tee Spring business at www.ordinaryisthenewawesome.com, thinking about writing an e-book and then I listened to the following podcast:
I hadn’t thought of diving into YouTube but then I decided that maybe starting a YouTube channel could complement the rest of my portfolio that I had created. I also thought of how my kids sit around and watch YouTube and if I’m in the kitchen (which I am a lot), I have to listen to it. I realized I could at least make something as entertaining as the next guy or girl and it would be a good learning. Using the philosophy of “you don’t have to be the best just be better than average” I thought I’d try it and see what happens.
I did some research and watched:
I listened to the The Blog Millionare’s 17 tips on YouTube Seo and found it really helpful (I can’t find a link to the podcast so here’s a link to his website-
https://theblogmillionaire.com/)
Then I listened to the Video Creators Podcast. This episode had some religious undertones and didn’t resonate with me. I can’t find the link to the podcast but here’s his website- https://videocreators.com/
I kept search on Apple podcasts and was surprised how few podcasts seem to be about how to start or grow your YouTube channel (which may mean there is a side hustle opportunity there). I finally found Erika Viera’s YouTube Power Hour. I listened to 2 podcasts and really liked her. She has female guests who tell about how they grew their YouTube Channel. I later looked her up and saw that her tag line is “#1 destination for women creatives and business owners looking to expand their reach online using YouTube.” No wonder why she resonated with me. In what is a very male dominated space of YouTube, there was a woman trying to help other women. My passions are much more in line with empowering women than about creating a YouTube channel and I liked listening to her podcasts and hear how she was helping other women. Check out her good work at http://erikavieira.net/.
Since we have no real talents and I don’t want to film our family in our everyday lives, I decided to create campy, how to videos about ordinary things (also perfect for The Ordinary Mom theme).
We wanted to do film “How to” videos for ordinary things in life so my kids and I brainstormed and came up with the following list:
- How to pump up a bike tire
- How to play the card game trash
- How to play four square
- How to jump rope
- How to have your kids clean their room
- How to walk your dog
- How to make coffee
- How to make a great grilled cheese
- How to pull out a tooth
- How to juggle
- How to do burpees
- How to do a pull up
We also were going to keep the mistakes and put them as bloopers at the end (i.e. the dog walking on the set, messing up our lines etc).
We started to film so intros and outro.
Intro:
- Me pulling up in the car in our driving and then rolling down the window
- “Hi. I’m Julie, The Ordinary Mom. Thanks for tuning in to our channel. I’m excited for you to watch the following video. Remember that life is hard. Embrace Ordinary. Ordinary is the new Awesome. If you like what you see, please like or subscribe to the channel to join The Ordinary Mom family. Remember to watch until the end to watch the bloopers.”
Outro:
- Me in the middle of cooking a meal and looking up and saying,
- “Oh, hi there. I hope you liked what you saw. If you want to know more about The Ordinary Mom, go to www.theordinarymom.com. Stay till the end to see the bloopers and please click subscribe or like to this channel if you learned anything or were entertained. I’m Julie, The Ordinary Mom. Thanks for joining our family on this journey. Love you bunches”
Here is how I actually created the channel:
- Went to YouTube
- Looked at the top right to make sure you are under the correct gmail log in (if not, click it once and “switch accounts” to change it to the preferred email)
- I scrolled down on the left and clicked “settings”
- Under “Your account”, I clicked on “Create a new channel”
- It asked me for my Brand Account Name so I put “The Ordinary Mom”
- It created the following channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmpVg_29-t5PGgeONBxiTDA?guided_help_flow=3
- I added a description from www.theordinarymom.com website and customized it for YouTube
I uploaded a picture of my Ordinary is the new Awesome thumbnail but The Ordinary Mom channel art I already had as too big. I went on Fiverr and placed an order with someone I had used before and really liked, Adri, to take one of my The Ordinary Mom files and fit it to the YouTube requirement of minimum of 2048 x 1152. Adri can be found at:
https://www.fiverr.com/adripoggetti?source=Order+page+seller+link
She resized my artwork and then I uploaded the artwork to my new channel of:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmpVg_29-t5PGgeONBxiTDA?disable_polymer=true
I looked at my website www.theordinarymom.com and took from text from there and tweated it for this site for the about section.
“Life is hard. Embrace ordinary. Ordinary is the new awesome. I created this channel to spend quality time with my kids to create campy and entertaining “How to” videos to answer ordinary questions. We are just an ordinary family having lots of fun doing this and we hope you like the videos. If you do, please like the videos and subscribe to join The Ordinary Mom family. You can also check me out at http://www.theordinarymom.com and www.thesidehustlejourney.com.”
My kids and I also started filming. It was significant to me because it was the day before my birthday so I told the kids that I wanted to do this before my birthday. My 12 year old son wanted to be the videographer and editor as he’s really into films and filmmaking and my 9 and 7 year old daughters wanted to come up with ideas and be in the videos. We only had about 45 to film this day so we started filming “How to play trash” (a card game) but with all of the starts and stops we didn’t finish.
My goal was to get enough footage for 2 videos and have my son edit it over the next week. He was using his iphone to film and so the quality was not great. We decided we needed better equipment than a iphone so my son and I ordered the following bundle from Amazon:
Canon T6 EOS Rebel DSLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II and EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Lens and SanDisk Memory Cards 16GB 2 Pack Plus Triple Battery Accessory Bundle
To order it click here:
(FYI- this is an affiliate link and I may get paid if you order from here)
We finished filming the girls playing cards in “How to play trash” and then my 7 year old and filmed “How to make a grilled cheese”. I don’t want to spend all day filming so I said I wanted to do it in one take. My 7 year old did the introduction, most of the talking and most of the cooking and was amazing and we did it in one take. I also filmed the intro and extro because I’m hoping to have a generic intro and extro for at least the first bunch of videos. I heard a podcast that said you want people to stay to the end so I was going to have bloopers or Behind the Scenes at the end i.e. me drinking coffee while the girls are filming the card playing scene or my son standing on the dining table trying to get the best shot.
In early August, my son edited our first video and we uploaded it to the channel. By this time, I decided that I would only make this a private channel since it had our kids and that my wife wasn’t thrilled with having them on YouTube. I realized at this point that I had learned what I wanted to learn but didn’t want to continue to do this so I just stopped and haven’t done anything else with it. I look at it as fun I had with my kids last summer but I decided it was not a side hustle that I want to invest my time and money in. I hope you learned a little something from this and, if you launch a YouTube channel, that you love it and keep on doing it. For me it was a learning and I’m always trying to learn new things but I’m going to put my energy on the following parts of my side hustles: writing/blogging, creating a safe, honest parent community and empowering girls and women. Good luck to any future YouTube stars.
