As I posted in the Wins discussions, my channel blew up during my recent trip to Taiwan. I posted a dozen videos during my 3 weeks there and my views and watch time hours put me way over the top and led to me getting monetized. The big key for me putting Chinese captions on my videos. I gained well over a thousand more subscribers during that time, the vast majority from Taiwan. All of that is great...but now what? How do I hang on to them and keep the momentum going? It's a great niche to have, but obviously a little harder to maintain now that I'm back in the states. We do have a large Asian community in my area and there are videos I can certainly do, but it'll definitely be a task to do it weekly (ideally). I've already booked another trip to go back for a week in March with my son, but that's a long way away. I'm open to any ideas you guys might have. Thanks!

My poll question is, do you prefer walk and talk videos, especially if you see the place the video is about or just hearing the information either not there, or on location but not inside talking about the place and its history. Of course, a personal story included for each option. Thanks 🙏 in advance.

It's been a crazy few weeks for me. I just returned from vacation in Taiwan where I cranked out 13 videos while there in less than 3 weeks. I knew I wanted to make videos about my trip there and a YouTube friend of mine who lives there part time suggested I put Chinese captions on the videos. Boy, did that pay off. I recorded my first video at my airport 3 hours before the flight titled "See You Soon, Taiwan". It was a simple, no edit video...only 2 1/2 minutes long. I quickly added captions (thanks Chat GPT) and uploaded it before the flight. To my shock, I had several thousand views by the time I landed 16 hours later. That one has over 7k views right now. Well, I continued to put our more and more videos...all of them have over 1k views and my best, talking about possibly retiring in Taiwan, has over 17k views. I went into the trip with about 1,100 subscribers or so. That has since doubled. And my watch hours dramatically increased to just over 4k today! Going into the trip I had less than 2k. The feeling has been unreal. I have several more Taiwan related videos I'm going to put out now that I'm back home. That's going to be a tough niche to keep going though. I have another trip booked there in the spring so I will put more out then. I just wanted to let you guys know that you never know when your time will come, just keep plugging along and sometimes think outside the box. Or maybe book a trip to Taiwan!

Shortly after I started my YouTube channel, I came to this group. I joined in the first week that the group was set up by Alexa. That was September 18, 2024. I am grateful to Alexa and all of the members of this group for your input and encouragement. If I can do this at 80 years old, you can do this at an age.

You guys! I am pretty darn excited! You hear "It only takes one video" all the time and you want to believe it…. Well, I just had one. My channel is tiny, I mean the most views I have gotten is maybe 30-40 views in 2-3 days. My most viewed video had about 60 views and is 6 months old. Then I started posting regular (1-2 videos per week) about 4-5 weeks ago. Still crickets. I would get about 40 views. Where in the world was this algorithim I kept hearing about? Then…Last night about 6pm I posted my latest video. I immediately realized it was acting a little different than my usual posts. It got like 50 views in the first hour. Wow! That's more than most all of my other videos have gotten period. Now it has been 18 hours later and I am pushing at 2000 views, I have went from 50 subscribers to over 150 subscribers and have gained 70 watch time hours just from this video. So, I know it isn't millions of views, but for my little channel, it's huge! It also helps with the motivation! I was beginning to think that YouTube was mad at me for some reason! :) Now, I have no idea what to do next, but man, this content creation sure is fun, isn't it? https://youtu.be/PI3Kuc6KRn8?si=FOM8RnKC8GahFELX