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Yeah; I have been trying to find ways to support my open source work and educational work over the past year, and I finally struck YouTube algorithm gold with a

Yeah; I have been trying to find ways to support my open source work and educational work over the past year, and I finally struck YouTube algorithm gold with a couple videos last month... but trying to replicate that success is hard. Sometimes I can spend days or more polishing a blog post or video and making it really good—and it falls flat. Other times I'll write up a post in an hour or so and it front pages on HN, gets traction on Reddit, etc. It seems more random than anything, though the fact that I've put in lots of hours on other content means I'm not starting from zero here. For GitHub sponsors, I didn't get any real traction until I explicitly started asking people to be a sponsor. I don't even have 'rewards' or anything... maybe that would help, maybe not. But it's still hard to get people to commit money to my cause, and I think the same skills are required for this that would be useful in nonprofits and charities soliciting donations.

dfee 6y ago
So just checked out one of your videos, and you seem to have a good process. I recently bought a mic and a nice webcam (March) to do recordings and live streams, but got hung up on recording processing, etc. Don’t know if it makes sense for you to do a meta video on that, or just share your thoughts on the OBS software and post processing, or if that’d be something worth reaching out to you on. Like you, I’m very engaged in OSS, so I’m happy you’re seeing success!
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  I wrote about it a bit earlier this year: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-i-livestream-obs-sony-a6000-and-cam-link https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-i-livestream-obs-... But I'm considering doing a little more in the realm of 'how its made' type videos, because you can do most of the things 'professional' video producers do on a budget, depending on how many nice things you want to do in a video.
syndacks 6y ago
Hey there -- I came across your blog a year or so ago via the Rpi Drupal stack. Cool stuff. I didn't realize you had such a large YouTube presence. I'm curious how you got started. You seem to be quite interested in Ansible so I imagine you just started there and it grew organically? FWIW -- I'm looking to start making YouTube videos on full-stack web development. I used to be a high school teacher before teaching myself programming well enough to do it professionally so I think I'd be pretty good at this topic/market (entry-mid level). I'm just not sure exactly where to start, how to make myself standout compared to others doing the same thing, etc. Maybe you've written a blog post on this topic before you could direct me to? Is entry level full-stack web dev too broad? Thanks in advance, keep up the good work!
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  There is a lot to it—sometimes it's just luck. I started live streaming one project pre-COVID. Then when lockdowns started, I used the experience I gained there to do my Ansible 101 series, and it kind of snowballed a bit from there. I also have a media production and communications background (from college / post-college days), which helps a lot, because even if the tech changes, the techniques don't. I started out doing video with a mini VHS camera that I put into an old Performa Mac through a TV capture card and I forget what NLE I used at that time. Then I jumped to MiniDV with some nice Canon SD equipment and got some good audio gear and worked from a G3/G4 with Final Cut Express for a while, before I stopped doing much video work for a decade. Skip forward a few years and now the whole world's 1080p minimum/4K often, and lighting and technique is way more important—but knowing the basics from back in the day means I can still make decent quality video with the equipment I have available.

dfee 6y ago

So just checked out one of your videos, and you seem to have a good process. I recently bought a mic and a nice webcam (March) to do recordings and live streams, but got hung up on recording processing, etc. Don’t know if it makes sense for you to do a meta video on that, or just share your thoughts on the OBS software and post processing, or if that’d be something worth reaching out to you on. Like you, I’m very engaged in OSS, so I’m happy you’re seeing success!

geerlingguy 6y ago
I wrote about it a bit earlier this year: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-i-livestream-obs-sony-a6000-and-cam-link https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-i-livestream-obs-... But I'm considering doing a little more in the realm of 'how its made' type videos, because you can do most of the things 'professional' video producers do on a budget, depending on how many nice things you want to do in a video.

syndacks 6y ago

Hey there -- I came across your blog a year or so ago via the Rpi Drupal stack. Cool stuff. I didn't realize you had such a large YouTube presence. I'm curious how you got started. You seem to be quite interested in Ansible so I imagine you just started there and it grew organically? FWIW -- I'm looking to start making YouTube videos on full-stack web development. I used to be a high school teacher before teaching myself programming well enough to do it professionally so I think I'd be pretty good at this topic/market (entry-mid level). I'm just not sure exactly where to start, how to make myself standout compared to others doing the same thing, etc. Maybe you've written a blog post on this topic before you could direct me to? Is entry level full-stack web dev too broad? Thanks in advance, keep up the good work!

geerlingguy 6y ago
There is a lot to it—sometimes it's just luck. I started live streaming one project pre-COVID. Then when lockdowns started, I used the experience I gained there to do my Ansible 101 series, and it kind of snowballed a bit from there. I also have a media production and communications background (from college / post-college days), which helps a lot, because even if the tech changes, the techniques don't. I started out doing video with a mini VHS camera that I put into an old Performa Mac through a TV capture card and I forget what NLE I used at that time. Then I jumped to MiniDV with some nice Canon SD equipment and got some good audio gear and worked from a G3/G4 with Final Cut Express for a while, before I stopped doing much video work for a decade. Skip forward a few years and now the whole world's 1080p minimum/4K often, and lighting and technique is way more important—but knowing the basics from back in the day means I can still make decent quality video with the equipment I have available.