 Today we're going to look back at the growth of the Film My Run YouTube channel and you're going to discover exactly how much money I've earned in 14 years of making running videos. I started filming my running exploits back in 2010 when I ran my very first 10K race. I filmed my first marathon in 2012 in Paris and then in 2014 I came up with the film My Run brand. Run it, film it, relive it with FilmMyRun.com. I started posting videos on my personal YouTube channel. I didn't even consider a dedicated Film My Run channel until over a year later. The Film My Run channel was eventually born almost exactly eight years ago. During the course of today's race I am launching FilmMyRun.com. I posted my first video on January 21st 2016 but even back then it was still just a hobby. I did it because I enjoyed it. I wasn't in the least bit concerned with subscriber numbers or how much money I could earn on YouTube. In the early days I used copyrighted music on my videos so they didn't earn any money anyway. And if I'm honest I was a little naive about the YouTube algorithm and I didn't put any effort into growing the channel. For six years I left the channel to grow by itself and in fact I went so far as to deliberately avoid asking people to subscribe because I felt it somehow undermined the channel's credibility. But at the same time I did want more subscribers and I did want to earn more money. Furthermore I could see other running YouTubers who started their channels after mine overtaking me and eventually earning a full time living from their running YouTube channels. I really don't know why it took me so long but eventually in 2022 I did decide consciously to make an effort to grow my channel and view it more as a business rather than a hobby. So let's see what those numbers look like in terms of growth of the channel over the last eight years and we'll start with subscribers. So since 2016 we've added around 2,000 subscribers per year until 2021 when we had a little dip because I had a little hiatus in the channel. But then 2022 back to normal another 2,500 subscribers and then last year we managed to add 4,000 subscribers to the user base bringing us to around 15,000 subs. My goal for 2024 is to try and get as close to 20,000 subscribers as possible by the end of the year so if you're not subscribed you know what to do I'd really appreciate it thank you so much. So let's see how that subscriber growth translates into video views over the course of the years. In 2016 we had 34,000 video views across the year and that grew year on year to 2020 where we had 370,000 video views but that did take quite a significant dip in 2021 as I mentioned we had a bit of a hiatus. I took on a huge video documentary project in the second half of 2021 and I didn't make a video for the film My Run channel for about 3 months because that documentary took so much of my time. If you're wondering the project was called 81 Yards A Backyard Story, the story of the world record backyard ultra in 2021. A shortened version of that called Going the Extra Yard won the best running video at the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival in 2022. So if you want to watch that video it is over on Vimeo I'll link that in the description below. Following the slowdown in 2021 we were back up to speed when I started to take things a bit more seriously in 2022 and we hit 400,000 video views and then last year we managed to hit 1 million video views for 2023 which is absolutely amazing I'm really stoked with that so thank you to everyone who helped to make that happen. So do I earn a living working full-time making YouTube videos? Well the answer to that is no. I do earn my full-time wage from running and creating running content but that all comes from a variety of different income streams but the YouTube ad revenue certainly helps and since I started to take it more seriously and look at the channel as more of a business thing rather than a hobby then things have started to move in the right direction. I've no idea how I managed to earn £7.19 from my YouTube endeavours in 2016 because I wasn't even monetised but there we go that's what's on the analytics £7.19 2016 rising to £85 in 2017 and then rising a little further to £354 for the year in 2018. In 2019 I made £680 and that rose again to £787 in 2020 because of my hiatus it dropped a bit to £780 in 2021 but remember this is for the entire year so £780 over a year really isn't very much at all. However this is where you start to realise that making money on YouTube is just like any other job you have to put in the time you have to put in the work you have to make the effort and you can see that when I've actually made an effort last year and the year before 2022 we managed to bring in £2,428 across the year and then that rose again in 2023 to £3,790. Now it's not enough to live on but it's certainly a contribution to the household funds it's not an insignificant amount. So that's how much a running YouTuber with 15,000 subscribers earns and with every intention of continuing and continuing to grow the channel hopefully 20,000 subscribers this time next year we'll see. Do please continue to watch we've got some great content coming up this year if you'd like to watch how other YouTubers have grown their channels over the years click this video link here because it's a really interesting video I hope you'll stick around with the channel loads more to come do please subscribe if you're not already subscribed and share this video with your friends and I will see you on the start line next time take care have a great week everyone bye bye