Five years ago, I started my YouTube channel for my cat Tommy, then called ‘Wholesome Tommy’. It was just a fun project on the side and I enjoyed experimenting with and learning how to edit videos. Tommy isn’t really an active cat though, so the channel would likely never grow much. But a year later, we got a second cat: Ricky! And Ricky is far more active, curious than Tommy. So I have a lot more videos to make. I re-named the channel to Backyard Cats, as the cats spent most of their time in our backyard in the Netherlands.
Although I maintain the Backyard Cats YouTube Channel as a diary of my life – through the eyes of my cats – of course it would be nice to see if people would like my cats and our adventures so much that they would subscribe, comment and come back to watch more. Who knows, maybe the Backyard Cats channel could be monetized one day. That would greatly help me to take care of my cats to say the least! Even if it would just make 20 bucks a month… I could get them a new scratch post, better quality food and new toys to try. Because as I’ve mentioned before, the cats do miss their backyard and sometimes appear bored. Ricky really started relying on me for entertainment and has started waking me up every night.
Tracking Milestones of the YouTube channel
Since starting the YouTube channel, I decided to track some important milestones: when the channel was born, certain amounts of subscribers, total amount of videos. But since August 2023, there hasn’t been a milestone update. I had 400 subscribers and I only reached 450 subscribers just now. Yeah. 50 subscribers of growth over such a long period of time is tough.
I’m grateful for it, honestly. We’re making progress, even if it’s just small steps. But if I think about the amount of time and effort I spend on each video – setting up, recording, sorting, editing, cutting and speeding through uninteresting parts, adding accommodating text and finding a fitting background music, plus writing unique and ‘optimized’ descriptions, adding hashtags and adding an additional blog post to spread some extra awareness of the Backyard Cats YouTube Channel – it of course doesn’t add up. The effort I put into my videos does not translate into results, unfortunately.
What makes it okay, is that it is an honest hobby. I genuinely enjoy making the videos. And that’s why I will continue to update the Backyard Cats YouTube channel.
What I certainly don’t want to do, is turn it into a video dump of my cats. I like to upload videos that I enjoy watching back. Like I said before, it’s like a diary of my life through my cats. We’ve been through a lot, and especially as long as we are not permanently settled down, we are still on an adventure. I like to reminisce by watching the videos.
I do plan on making more shorts, which I will also post on Instagram and TikTok. But my main videos, the ‘widescreen videos’, will have the most effort and care put into them.
I hope to reach a (bigger) audience that enjoys watching these videos of my cats as much as I do.
congratulations !
hope it becomes a massive channel one day
Thank you so much! That means a lot to me. <3