 Hey everyone, how are you all doing on this fine day? Good to see you again, Jeff. Obviously, just in the stream. And yes, you're right. My sleep allocation is a little bit off today. So I am normally up at three o'clock, but I was up at one o'clock this morning for some reason. So I'm not quite sure why. And I was bed quite late last night as well. Late for me, that is. So I normally go to bed about eight o'clock, but I was about nine o'clock last night. So yes, really, having a late one. Great to see you, Valerie. I've got to say, I think that your submission for the Ecamm extravaganza at Christmas, definitely my favorite. They're all amazing, but that did make me laugh. So yeah, great to see you here. So I feel like, to be honest with you, I'm a little bit unprepared, even though I was up early, I ended up watching both of Doc's streams in the Ecamm group, or in the Ecamm channel rather. And hey, Marjorie, got two people here making it to the livestream for the first time. Great to see you as well. I know you get to, I get your comments on my video. So I really appreciate seeing you both here. So what are we doing today? Well, it's gonna be my regular update on my channel. And in case you haven't seen before, I always do an update on my progress towards my 365 videos in a year challenge that I sort of set myself. And I am slipping further and further behind, to be honest with you, but I intend to catch all of that up. I've been saying that for two or three months now, once it been. So what is the current tally? Let's just get it out of the way with, shall we? 185 videos, and it's day 239. So I've got like 50 something to do, 50 year four to catch up on. And it's my intention to try and catch up with these videos by the end of March, because the sort of the last day for me, for this 365 days, would be the 14th of May. I started on the 15th of May. I think I might have to just go back and check that actually. But yeah, it's gonna be a busy month, or a busy quarter, I should say, to catch up by the end of the March, because I've got to basically average a video and a half a day. So between now and then. And then hopefully April and the first half of May should be then smooth sailing at just a video a day. We'll see how that goes though. So yeah, it's been also the first full week of being monetized on YouTube as well. So what I thought I'd do in this video after I've got a couple of other things to cover off is just go through exactly what monetization looks like after a week. And then obviously I'll do a full rundown after a full complete month. But one thing people always talk about when they talk about monetization on YouTube is that, oh, don't expect too much. You know, you're not gonna, it's not gonna suddenly start rolling in when you hit a thousand subscribers. And I certainly never expected that and certainly never banked on it or planned on it either. But people don't often say exactly what that means in real terms, like how many views, how much do you make on ad revenue and things like that. So continuing the theme that I've been on since starting up this channel, which is basically it's all just one big experiment for me and sharing all of the findings with you all. Oh, hey Paul, I've just got to acknowledge Paul slipping in there, moderator extraordinaire, moderator to the stars. So not that I'm a star by any stretch, I wish. So yeah, I'm gonna share with you sort of the process as time goes on and as the subscriber count increases, as view count increases, what that looks like in real terms in terms of revenue from ads and things like that. And I'll be of course digging into the stats to see what sort of ads work, what the different placements and all that sort of stuff. So I'll be experimenting with that over time and sharing it all with you as well. Hey, Rich, great to see you as always. And just got to delete this one, one second. Where have I put my, hang on a minute, I've gone and done a little bit of a silly thing there. I've gone and put my YouTube comments behind my Econ window. That was a little bit silly, wasn't it? Thank you very much, Paul. Paul's dealt with it. So yes, where was I? What have I been doing this week? Well, apart from, apart from not many videos on YouTube, in fact, let me just get that embarrassment out of the way to show how far behind I am. Incidentally, the subs have gone up by around about 40. I think last week, although I was just, it was the day after I'd been officially sort of reached the thousand mark. I've basically, I think last week I was on 1,020, so there's been 42 new subscribers this week. So welcome, one and all. Thank you very much. It's appreciated and I'm glad you're finding something worth subscribing for. So yeah, I just remember back when I first started the channel, how slowly things crept up. And I was chatting with somebody who's just started their channel and they were talking about number of views and things like that and how it's, it can be a bit disheartening at times when you feel like nobody's watching and you're not getting the view count and things like that. But it's funny how it does just sort of start creeping up and then you just, it starts taking off a little bit. Not that these numbers are big, are they by any stretch, but it is just funny to sort of look back and think about how it was. My first live stream, whenever it was, 100, 239 days ago, was literally just to myself. And that was a very odd feeling. Just sitting doing a live stream with no subscribers. In fact, I had one because I had subscribed to myself so that I could look at it to check that it was actually coming through on the iPad. But yeah, that was quite weird, just sort of speaking to myself. Although I don't know why, because I actually do speak to myself quite a lot in any case, so there we go. So also this week, what have I done is let me get that out of the way. I have sorted out the lighting issue. It's still a work in progress. I've not finished by any stretch. But in this studio space, so I don't know if you remember last week, for anybody who watched, I had these acoustic panels that I've got on the back wall. I had two black ones on here and then these gray ones were on the side. So it kind of looked like I was just not letterboxed. It's the opposite of letterboxed, isn't it? But it just looked like two black stripes down the side, almost as if my camera was cropped. So I've swapped around the gray and black ones. In fact, let me just zoom out here. Let me come to this one. I will zoom out a little bit and you'll perhaps be able to see what I'm talking about. There we go. So those two that are on the extreme outside on the wall, those are black and then those ones are gray. So swapping the gray and the black one drowned means that it doesn't just look like black lines. But then what I've also done is put the little LED strip lights around them as well so that now they do sort of pop out from the wall. Still lots to do in this studio, not least sort out the cabling and hide that all out of the way. These strip lights were just, I forget how much they were now, 200 bar, which is about $8. It was $8 for sort of three meters of the little LED strips and then they've just got USB sticks on them, USB sockets, I should say, or plugs and then just one of these little remotes so you can just sort of change the color of them. So I can just sort of change to whatever color and or you can have them all flashing and things like that as well. But that's a little bit too busy for my liking. I could have a slow pulsing fade, something like that, but I was quite pleased with them really for the price. I don't know how long they're gonna last. They may be one of these things where they just sort of slowly start popping, but it was just something that I could get relatively quickly and easily. So I thought I'd just give them a whirl. I did make a bit of a miscalculation and having talked about before, some of the stuff that I do that's related to mathematics, algorithmic trading and all that sort of stuff, it is funny that I couldn't add up 60 plus 120 plus 60 plus 120. I was basically quite short on it. And so the three meters doesn't quite stretch all the way around. I should have really got a five meter roll and snipped them off, but there you go. I just added it up really quickly in my head and thought, oh yeah, three meters, that'll do. But no, it's 60 centimeter short for each one. Anyway, I can soon fix that, but it does actually look, I think, a lot better than it did. Certainly last week, I still got to work on the, getting the shelving unit for the back. So had a second thought about this last week, but then everyone jumped in the chat and said, no, definitely need something going on back there. My thing about not having shelves at the back was this actually works better for sort of zoom calls where you just want to have a sort of plain background. But what I've actually decided that I'm gonna do, because I do also, will still also be using my green screen sometimes. You probably can't actually see it now, but just a little bit in front of this, these boards to the side, the acoustic panels, I'm actually gonna get a roller with a proper, basically a plain gray background and then also a plain green background as well so that I can just get a sort of full background green screen or full background plain screen for when I don't want to have anything busy in the background. Because it can be quite distracting on zoom calls and things like that, if people have got loads of stuff going on in the background, I always feel like people are actually spending more time looking at the background than they are at you. Or maybe that's just the sort of things I'm talking about. Who knows, maybe I need to be a little bit more engaging. If only there was a course to tell people about how to be more engaging on zoom, eh? Nevermind. That is something else I've been working on this week, is my zoom masterclass. I, yeah, it was supposed to launch on the 1st of January, if you recall, and I pushed it back to next Monday, the 10th. I've still got a lot to do on it, to be honest with you. It is going to be quite a push to get it all together. Because I am doing all of this stuff, the YouTube and that sort of secondary to obviously my actual main primary work. So it always has to take, the other things always have to take precedence over this. So we will see, I will do my best though to get it all done over the weekend. Speaking of zoom, I am actually going to be on, let me see if I can get this up now. I'm going to be on the Speedify Live show, which is the show funnily enough by Speedify. So that is next Tuesday the 1st. So that will be Wednesday the second, sorry, Tuesday the 11th of the 1st for me. That'll be Wednesday for me though. And so that is where I am going to be going on their show to talk all about zoom. So I shall definitely have to have the zoom masterclass ready by then. So I can go on and talk about it and promote it as well. So Jeff is also just agreeing with me that the clutter can be distracting. And yeah, if you're waiting for my zoom course, then Kat Mulvihill also has a course that you can get right now. You don't have to wait. I do love Kat, she's great. She's got a really great style about it. So what else have I got to talk about? Well, I was going to talk about the monetization side of things and just sort of go through that. What I'm going to do as well is I will put up the my join link. So if anyone fancies jumping on for a chat about any of this, then feel free. The link is down below, take one tech.io slash join. Or if you are in the need of some new t-shirts or hats, then definitely check out my merch store as well. I've got to promote that a little bit more, but I'm actually waiting on a delivery of some of it because it's taking a little while to get to Thailand. So as soon as it's here though, you can bet I will be wearing my own merch. So let me have a little look. One second, let me get this up. There we go, this page. So here we are in the YouTube studio. And down on the, there's the monetization section down on the left hand side. And hey, Victor, great to see you here. So let's have a little look. Yes, we are all partners. We are all partners. They take their cut, obviously, but there we go. In fact, I'll talk about the cut that they take in a moment. So let's come and have a little look down. So as I say, the monetization stuff is down here in terms of the setup and all that sort of stuff. But if you actually want to look at the monetization of your videos, then that actually comes under the analytics section. So if we head over to the analytics, now what I always tend to do for these little live streams is I always switch over to live time just so that I can see what the total views is and all that sort of stuff. I generally check on this once a week before the live stream to just update those little figures that I stick up here. So it's always quite a nice little surprise to come and have a look. Sometimes it's a pleasant surprise. Sometimes it's not, but I don't sleep over them. And so here you can see basically the chart of the views, the chart of watch time. So it does sort of have different plateaus really. It's not like it's suddenly going like, as an exponential curve or anything like that. It kind of like dawdled around here, load view numbers for a little while. Then it jumped up and stayed fairly consistent, sort of day on day, reasonably consistent. And then we have this little spike up and then this whole sort of erratic area here is basically related to my erratic posting in the last quarter of last year where I was kind of, yeah, on and off with it. Or at least not posting consistently. Whereas all through here, I was basically a video a day all the way through here. And then here I was a video a day plus a load of shorts as well. And it's hard to say really, what caused my sort of views to suddenly jump up like that. Cause that is obviously a distinct sort of jump up. And then as I say, it's just sort of being up and down around here with that up and down with my consistency, basically. If you look at the watch time as well, that one was quite erratic because there was this week here where I was basically had one week where I only posted shorts. And so yeah, obviously they're a lot shorter, aren't they? Funnily enough, they're like a minute instead of my average is around about 25 minutes for my regular videos. So this is a bit erratic. So one of my sort of goals for the beginning of this year or for the first quarter is to get back to consistency. I've been saying this for months now, three or four months at least, that I do want to get back to being consistent with my posting. And by consistent, I don't mean just posting regularly. I mean posting actually a video a day or at least averaging a video a day throughout the week. So that is the goal for the end of this quarter. And obviously I've got to catch up one and a half videos a day between now and the end of March. We'll see, we'll see how that goes. That's certainly my goal though. Subscribers, they've actually just changed the way that this is displayed. So it actually, in fact, it says here, we have improved the data quality for subscription gain and loss sources. But basically that is now saying how many subscribers I've gained in that time, which is 1,100. But that means that at least 40 people have unsubscribed in that time, which is fine. I don't mind. You're welcome back any time. So that's that. But then here we've got this new one that has come up because obviously of the joining the YouTube Partner Program, I did a video all about that and sort of how you go through the process of actually getting onto it once you've reached your subscriber level. And in fact, I also covered that in the live stream last week. But here you can see in the week, the revenue basically, which is $30. Now bear in mind as well that some of that, in fact, not from the week, that is from all time, but it's basically for the past week. But that does include my last live stream. And in my last live stream, I got my first ever super sticker and super chats from the wonderful Mr. Paul Duncan and Mr. Rob Bulls as well, or Rob Values as we like to call him. And so that is where that came from. Now, let me just come into the revenue section on the top because this does break it down even more. And you can see actually December because it's working on YouTube time. So although my live stream last week was technically the first for me, on YouTube time it was at the end of December. So that came in at the end of December and it was around about $23 or something like that. So that is what I get out of it after YouTube has taken their cut off the top. So there was basically, like I say, I think it was 23 altogether. And so 17 is what I get out of that after the, in fact, no, let's come down here, it's 16. So a bit of that must have been ad revenue as well. So that's what I was talking about when I talk about YouTube taking their cut. Obviously from ads, then we don't know exactly the amount that YouTube charged for that. And so that's fair enough, I can't go into that. But what it does show is the different sources. So transactional revenue is from things like super chats, super stickers, stuff like that. And then down here, you've got ad revenue, which is $12, and then also YouTube premium revenue, which is $1.83. So that's anybody who's on YouTube premium, then although they don't see ads, the creators still do get something from that. I've got to say, I don't know why I didn't have YouTube premium earlier, but I only actually signed up for it, was it two months ago, three months ago, something like that. I don't know why I didn't do it earlier. It is such a time saver really to not have to watch ads. And especially when we're on the TV, like the kids are watching things, I was like, well, why am I putting my children through all of these ads? So yeah, I was totally sleeping on it. It's like $25 a month or something like that. But if I think like all of the non-skippable ads that I would have had to have sat through, it's definitely worth my time to not have to do it. So if you haven't checked out YouTube premium, definitely give it a look. So that is that. And then yeah, you can see the amount from super chat and super stickers. And then it also tells you the type of ads that the revenue has come from as well. So yes, thank you very much, Paul. Don't forget to hit that like, appreciate that. And oh, hey, Phil, just noticed you as well. Now that I look down at the comments, great to see you. And you just skipped my first ad, brilliant. I would love to get feedback, by the way, on how anybody is experiencing ads on my channel. Because I mentioned last week that when I came to sort of set all of this up, I basically just turned on everything and then it just went through and added like every single ad type to every single video. So I haven't actually yet gone in and done any sort of curation of that, making sure that there's the right sort of ads that they're not, well, where they're coming or anything like that. I haven't had time to actually get into that. So I'd be interested to know, like in the default settings, what the ads are coming across like on my videos because I don't wanna be overly aggressive with just videos, ads all over the place. And oh, another wise man, Paul, you have premiums and never see the ads. Well, that's great. But yeah, I don't wanna be, I don't want everything plastered with ads, especially I'm not a fan of non-skippable ads. I mean, obviously there's, in fact, let's have a little look, shall we? Here we can see. So skippable ads is 80% of the ad revenue, basically. Non-skippable video ads is 7% of the ad revenue. Bumper ads and display ads, 3% and 1.5. So bumper ads are the little ones that like, while you're watching the video, they come as a little strip over the top of the video. And then display ads are the ones that come on the side, I believe. So yeah, you can see that the majority of the ad revenue does come from the skippable ads. And I definitely prefer those, but I just need to go in and actually find out. I don't really know or haven't had the time to, haven't made the time to go in and fully understand exactly where all these things are coming. But once I've got the Zoom course off my agenda, then I'm gonna really sort of dig into this. And I may just leave it all actually for a full month because then we'll get to see, and I'll obviously share with you my findings of how this all plays out over a month. And then we'll get to see, looking back over the previous month, how, what were the number of views, all that sort of stuff, and where the different ad revenue sources were coming from because I wanted to share all of this information and knowledge with you all as well. You can see here top earnings by video as well, which is quite interesting. This one here is the live stream from last week, so 16.55, 54, so that includes those super chats. But then these ones down here are basically just regular videos. And if you click on see more, then we should be able to see a bit of a breakdown. And you'll be able to see really, I mean, I'm a total stats geek. I love these sorts of things just out of interest really. So yeah, seeing all of the different videos, which ones have the highest revenue, obviously you can see it over time as well. So as this goes on, I'll really be able to drill in and find out which ones are working. And it even shows the sort of breakdown of YouTube premium revenue monetized playbacks, estimated ad revenue playback based on a cost per million. So in fact, that should tell us then, that's basically telling us the advertising, the advertising revenue total. And then that would be what is coming out of that to me. So there we'd be able to work out the, actually the YouTube amount, I think I'll have to dig into this a little bit more though. So yeah, Victor, they do take a cut from the Super Chat. So that was what I was mentioning. I know that the Super Chats that I got last week, whoopsie daisy, where have I gone? So that 1626 is basically what is left out of $23. So there was about, so it was $20 something and $3, so it was $23 and there's 16 left. So they basically took $7 out of that more or less. So that's basically what they're taking as a cut. We can work that one out. So yeah, I am actually just really, really looking forward to having another statistic to look at because as I say, I am a bit of a stats geek. Let's have another little look at this. In fact, let's go and have a look at, if I go into the monetization. Yes, they do, don't they? But it's, I suppose it's part of the price you pay for being on their infrastructure. They've also got memberships as well. So that's something that if I go into the monetization section, then here basically, whoops, that's the wrong one. Go into this one. So this is the overview of all the monetization stuff. There's some information in here, some videos and stuff like that. And then here, there's also membership. So I haven't enabled that, but you can enable memberships so that enables people to just subscribe to your paid membership on your channel. You can see why people do use things like Buy Me a Coffee though, because they're the obviously, the amount that you receive out of any payments that go through Buy Me a Coffee is definitely a lot more favorable. However, you just don't have the immediate sort of ease for people to do it. So people can make super chats just directly, they're watching you, they can just press the button. Whereas obviously, if you were directing people to Buy Me a Coffee, like I do always have my Buy Me a Coffee link in the bottom corner of this, popped up just on cue, bottom corner of this live stream and I do mention it in some of my videos. But yeah, people have to actually go away to go and do that. So it's, I suppose, the sort of price you pay for the ease and for being on their platform. And so yeah, about the memberships as well, I'm not sure about the memberships. I will have to dig into it and I'll report back. I haven't, like I say, haven't done anything with memberships yet because it's literally just been available to me and I'd have to think about what I was gonna do because obviously need to give some additional value. I did think about some of the things that I was talking about doing in terms of additional courses and stuff like that this year. That might be something that I could do through memberships. So obviously I've got my Zoom course, which is completely separate that I'm doing on a different, that I'm building out in ClickFunnels basically. But then one of the things that I want to do this year is do my sort of full ECAM live course, then also do a full productivity course and things like that. And that might be something that I could do as subscriptions in YouTube because then it just gives people immediate access to it. So I might play around with something like that, but I just have to think about how to do that and making sure that if somebody's signing up to a subscription of that nature, that they're getting value. But then I do also have subscriptions on my Bamiya coffee, so I'm still figuring it out. I'll let you know. But I would like to try it just because, like I say, this whole channel is really an experiment for me and sharing the experiment with you all as well. So yeah, we'll have to see about that. So, well, it's interesting to see and learn how it works, but I wouldn't want to try to live off just YouTube at any time soon. Well, there's a couple of points you're making there really, so the first one is being totally reliant on YouTube for the monetization is one thing, so having memberships in YouTube, you are kind of like all in then on the platform and obviously whatever cut that they're taking as well. So there is that, and then I was gonna make another point then, but I've just completely forgotten the point I was gonna make. Oh, and then obviously, yeah, so wouldn't want to live off just YouTube. The point of me sort of sharing these monetization stats and stuff like that with you is because I always heard people say, or once you get monetized, don't expect big things and stuff like that, but it's totally relative, isn't it? What's a lot of money to some people might not be a lot to others, but it might really help some people out. I mean, certainly I'm not gonna be able to live off what this is appearing to be giving, but on the other hand though, it is covering at least some of the expenses, isn't it? So it's every little helps, and so as the channel grows, I will keep sharing this information so that you can sort of see what to expect for yourself based on, obviously, I'll share the numbers and everything, and so everything all comes together, doesn't it really? How many viewers you've got and things like that and the sort of ads that have been run, so the experiment continues. So let's have a little look. So, yeah, oh yeah, mentioned that one. Yeah, so that's the thing really, is it's a bit like sales funnels, the whole point of sales funnels is you're taking people through a structured process, and at every point you're trying to make it easy for them to just make that little, take that action that you want them to take, and so certainly having the super chats and stuff like that just makes it a lot easier for people to do it, so there's definitely some advantage. I certainly wouldn't be saying to them, oh, can you turn it off, please, because I'm not happy with the percentage you're taking. I'd rather have 60 or 70% of something than potentially zero because somebody hasn't bothered to go out of the environment to go to a different platform. So there's that. I've always felt so intimidated by Excel, I think one by you would be accessible for me. Do you know what, when I started this channel, so the point of it was, in case you weren't aware, that take one tech was all because I was trying to practice making videos in one take because I needed to make course material and videos and things like that for some other stuff that I do. And so the YouTube channel was basically my way to sort of practice getting better at doing this and this is obviously a live stream, but all of my other videos I just do in one take. And I wanted to learn to do that better so that I could eliminate the editing because I hate editing and I'm not good at it. Or at least I haven't taken the time to learn how to get good at it. So that was the sort of point of starting the channel. And although it is a sort of general tech channel and I ended up focusing a lot on Stream Deck and Ecamm, although that wasn't the intention originally, it was just gonna be, I'm gonna start a YouTube channel about tech and then in doing so, I'll be sort of practicing doing stuff in one take. It ended up becoming a really heavily focused channel on Ecamm Live and Stream Deck because those were the two new tools that I was using to do it with. Doc mentioned earlier on in his stream that I found out about Ecamm by watching MacBreak Weekly when Doc was on it. And that is true because I had been trying to use OBS and I said in the stream that I'd basically pulled out all of my hair using OBS. And then just at the critical moment, I saw Doc on MacBreak Weekly talking about Ecamm Live. So I thought, oh, let me give that a go and never look back really. So because that came just at the time when I was starting the channel, it was something that I was using and learning and getting really into and was really enthusiastic about. And so that's why the majority of my videos to date, by far the vast majority of being either Ecamm Live or Stream Deck. Whereas the initial thought was that it was gonna be sort of productivity and stuff like that. However, my original idea for the channel before all of that was that I was gonna do an Excel channel because I am a total Excel geek and I've been using it for decades. As long as I've been able to use a computer almost, I've been using Excel and it's various predecessors and incarnations and that. And I use it so heavily in work as well that it's kind of like the environment that I live in almost from a work point of view because lots of, yeah. In fact, in all the different roles I've had in life, there's always been sort of Excel there. So at the moment, doing lots of stuff with trading and developing algorithms and things like that. And so there's lots of heavy Excel work there and using Power Query. I'm linking Excel using Power Query into SQL servers and just doing lots of amazing stuff. Excel is such an underused application by 99% of users. It's just phenomenal. And it's like, I sort of bitch about Microsoft from time to time, especially being a Mac user. We like to do that, don't we? But Excel is just an awesome app and it is probably after Ecam, of course, the one app that I could not be without. So yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned about the Excel course because it is something that I'd plan to do. The reason why I haven't gone into doing Excel on this channel though, certainly as just regular videos, is because it is such a deep subject and there's so many different things that I'd like to do. It is almost like a completely, well, it is totally a separate channel in itself. So, but I could potentially think about doing like an Excel course. That might be something that might be separate to the channel like behind a paywall or something like that. But yeah, if I start getting into Excel tutorials, that is like another 2,000 tutorials that I would have on my list. There's a great woman who does the tutorials for this, that if there's anything I don't know about Excel, let me just find her name because she's just absolutely brilliant. And if there's anything that I don't know how to do in Excel, she's got the answer. So I'll just find her channel because it is wonderful. I can always forget the name though. Let me have a little look. You may have seen if you've searched for Excel, then you may have seen her channel. Oh, he's completely slipping my mind now. And then obviously the second that I want to find it, here we go, this is the one. Whoops, Daisy. Here we go, her name. In fact, let me just bring it up. I can even share this screen, can't I? Silly me. Here we go, let me take this down. Take this comment down. So this is basically if there's anything that you need to know about Excel, she has got the answer. She's gone up from everything from beginner all the way through to advanced. In fact, let me just drop this in the chat as well, just for anybody who's interested since we've got some Excel funds in. There you go. It's just awesome channel. She's got a really great sort of presence and way of explaining things about her. It's just absolutely fantastic. Oh, hello, Mr. Tom. It's not great to see you here. We're just talking about Excel. So yeah, I'll have to figure out how to sort of work some Excel stuff in, but like I say, it is a channel in itself. So for the time being, I'm just rather than including it on mine, I'm just directing people to Laila's. She's just absolutely great. Yeah, so highly recommend her stuff. You can see that she's quite popular as well for this sort of stuff. 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube and yeah, her videos are regularly like actually way more than that because I find that a lot of people watch Excel videos because they just want to figure out how to do something and then they haven't subscribed. In fact, I haven't yet subscribed on this channel. I'm on one of my other channels as a subscriber but yeah, people often just dip in to find out something about a particular way to create a formula or something like that. So it's quite common with her videos that she's got 1.4 million subscribers but then some of them are 4.3 million views, that sort of stuff. So yeah, but she's absolutely, absolutely fantastic. Oh, that's brilliant. I've got the punmeister himself, Excel lent. You know, you've made it when Tom Buck drops in and drops in a pun on your stream. So let's have a little look where I'm up to. So we've covered that one off the Excel course. Yes, we'll see about that. The whoopsie daisy. Brother Phil, any whoopsie daisy, I have to get off, I meant to change their scenes there. Any brilliant person would use the YouTube revenue to pay for other marketing expenses and intend to make money in other ways. Yeah, I sort of agree. Yeah, until you reach a certain level, then yeah, it's sort of like I say, every little helps but it can go towards other sources. Well, I'm with you on that as well. I'm Phil, so I'm there with you. We've still got a little way to go on there. OBS is work, I've been using it a lot before finding ECAM. Yeah, so the thing about it was, the actual real reason why I quit OBS, it is definitely not as intuitive as ECAM. There is something very Mac-like about ECAM that you just don't get with OBS. It's obviously open source cross-platform. So the thing about cross-platform things is they often end up being the worst of both platforms. So there is always that. But it is really versatile. You can do a load with OBS. The actual reason why I was pulling my hair out, literally, what the couple of strands I had left was that I found that it wasn't able to work on the slow laptop that I was using. So it wasn't actually OBS' fault in, in fact, the reason why I ended up switching to ECAM or looking for that alternative. And it was because the computer that I was trying to run it on basically was struggling to keep up with it and what I was trying to do with it. And yet when I tried ECAM, it worked flawlessly even on an old computer. And I've since upgraded and everything from that, but that was actually the thing that sort of tipped over from me is it wouldn't work on my older machine. So yeah, that's why I came to the ECAM side of things instead. And oh, thank you very much, Marjorie. That's very kind of you. I still haven't actually got my little widget set up. I need to get my widget set up so that any super stickers and super chats come up. But that's much appreciated. And that's going to go straight into my coffee fund, which is what funds the channel. So yeah. No, it was OBS' fault. They're ram hogs in the code. Yeah, well, there is that as well. I was just trying to be tactful and polite because the other thing about OBS is, you know, it is free as well, isn't it? So people can achieve quite a lot with that free software. So I never want to sort of forget that as well. I was just trying to be polite, but yeah, ECAM all the way. I don't know what ECAM put in their software though. I'm sure there's some, I'm sure they've found some way to lace it with drugs or something like that so that we keep coming back for more because it's just got a really sort of captivating quality for me at least, that I just, it's just a really nice app that I love to use. Hey, Deena, great to see you here as well. So yeah, the ECAM all the way. I suppose I should actually just say if you weren't aware, I use ECAM Live to make all of my videos and it is a Mac application that allows you to make videos, live videos or live recorded videos on the fly in one take, which is what this channel is all about. And if you want to get your free trial, then head over to takeonetech.io slash ECAM and start making videos now. There we go, that was my little segue into my little sales spot. I don't normally like doing those, but somebody mentioned that I should try and at least squeeze them in. And since I was on the live stream on the ECAM group earlier for the affiliates, then definitely should mention at least my affiliate link, shouldn't I? I've got to work on the sales technique though. Me too. The thing about ECAM as well is the community. I mean, it's a bit of a cliche really. I did a video that I kind of regretted making actually. It was one of the, I can't remember when I made it, but it was a, I felt like afterwards that it was a bit sort of click baity. And I didn't mean it to be. It was something that I had a thought and it was genuine, but the title of it was the best hidden feature of ECAM. And the best hidden feature of ECAM for me was the community. It was something I didn't expect when I started using it. And I kind of regretted ever making that title because I thought like, it's gonna be something that people are gonna click on thinking they're gonna find out some real hidden feature when it's the community. So I felt a bit bad about that afterwards to be honest, but it is true. And it is the sentiment that I wanted to get across at the time that the community is so wonderful. And I still cannot believe that it is a community around a software package. It's quite phenomenal really. I don't know of any other particular piece of software that has such a welcoming supportive community as ECAM. So yeah, I'm full of admiration for, well, I don't wanna say the community manager because that's Doc Rock, isn't it? Don't wanna big him up too much, but he's done an amazing job. And certainly the others and the ECAM team and everything like that. And although, I mean, I'm technically a moderator, but I still don't class myself as, you know, I'm not responsible for the environment that people have created there, like Katie and Caleb and Doc and all those people. And of course, moderated to the stars, Mr. Paul Duncan as well. But yeah, they just do such an awesome job. And I'm just pleased to even be a part of it all. So yeah, definitely happy about everything going on in the community. So yeah, that is where I'm up to really with my channel stuff. And I will, as I say, that was all a bit of a segue away from the monetization section. So I will keep sharing that. Was there anything that I missed out? Let me just look, because I went off on a random tangent there. So yeah, you would see the memberships in there. No, that's where we're up to, wasn't it? Memberships. And this is where all the super chats will be listed. And so that is that. I will, as I say, just keep sharing this all with you so you can see what to expect. The other thing is, if you do go into any particular video as well, my numbers are all obviously very low. But if you go into any of these particular videos, then you will also see the monetization in there as well. You can also toggle it on and off here as well. So that'll tell you the sort of type of ads that are running and you can flick those on and off. So it's good to see actually this one doesn't have any of these overlay ads or the sponsored cards. I'm not a fan of those at all when I'm watching the videos and I see these sorts of things on them. It just sort of gets in the way of the content for me. So I'm glad that those aren't on by default because as I say, I haven't done anything to this. I haven't gone in and adjusted these. I haven't adjusted ad positions and stuff like that. Although there is some here before video, during video and after video. So those are all toggled on. Like I say, I'm just gonna leave this all for a month and then we'll come back and we'll have another sort of debrief and see where we're up to. And that is about it for the monetization. I think you can see, look, my videos here of quite a few and far between January the 5th, December the 31st or a couple on December. There was a few over vlogmas, but I basically failed to do a video every day in December. Hey, Kevin, great to see you here popping in. And let me just have a little look at if I come down here and I go down right to the beginning. Let's go down to the beginning just to sort of see what my consistency was like because some people laugh when I talk about I'm trying to get back to being consistent because they still see me putting out two or three videos a week, but it's all relative, isn't it? Can I get right down to the bottom? They should take me to the bottom. In fact, oh, there's another hang on a minute. There in a minute. I'm sure there's a quick way to do this. In fact, yeah, there we go. That's what I should have just done. Should have just sorted by date, shouldn't I? Ah, silly, silly Billy. There we go. So this is what my channel was like in the beginning. May the 16th, May the 17th, May the 18th, May the 19th, May the 20th, two on May the 20th, in fact. So that is kind of what I was doing before and that is where I'm trying to get back to is getting back to posting at least a video a week. In fact, I think when I was up to day 30, I'd already done 45 videos or something like that. So I did actually get up ahead of myself in the beginning and then it's really just the last quarter of last year, just so busy with some other business stuff outside of YouTube, because YouTube's always just my two hours in the morning and so anything that sort of encroaches on that just sort of basically eats into my YouTube time. So I've just lost so many days the last quarter with just having other work stuff to do and then over Christmas as well. It was a bit of a write-off really for content creation. So anyway, that seems like me making more excuses, doesn't it? So yeah, I am indeed making excuses. So that is all for my channel update and to be honest with you, it's gonna be a bit of a short one today because I am a little bit light on things. I feel like I'm a little bit discombobulated, there's a word, isn't it? From getting up a bit too early. So say, yeah, apart from my appearance on a Speedify live next week. Oh, hang on a minute, let's have a little look. Over 2,000 followers, 3,000 watch time. Oh, that's cool. So it's just the watch time then that you need to get up and a few live streams will help that. You do tend to get a little bit more watch time on the live streams or depending on how long they are, but my live streams are, I think the average, I haven't worked out the average recently, but the average was around about an hour and a half or an hour and 45, something like that. So obviously those are longer than my regular videos. So at the time that I got monetized last week, it was 1,000 subscribers, but I was at 6,500 watch hours or something like that. And that is in part due to, well, I suppose it's in part due to the volume of videos getting up to that point, but also down to the live streams, which sort of helped to bump that up. But yeah, can't be long now. So congratulations on getting that number of subscribers though. That's excellent going. Indeed, congratulations indeed. So I've got to get back to my shorts as well. This is something else that I do want to incorporate going forward. This is part of the consistency thing that I've been talking about for reaching by the end of March is a regular video a day, but also a shorter day. The shorts, there's no excuse not for me not doing the shorts because I film them in exactly the same way as I do my regular videos, which is one take. So I'll just use Ecamm, got a vertical video set up for Ecamm. So I just record the videos 30 seconds to a minute, and no editing, there's no excuse for me to just be able to queue up a whole load of those. And the ones that I have done, I've basically did a whole load of videos about Zoom just recently. I intended to keep doing those, but then I just again didn't make the time for it. And then I made some other ones that were general sort of similar to my YouTube channel, but I've only probably sat down and actually made videos in maybe for shorts in maybe three stints, something like that. So it's not like, although there's been quite a lot of them, I've just done them all in one go basically. So yeah, I definitely need to just try and work that into my schedule where I just create, I could even just do like a month's worth of shorts basically in one sitting. The way that I do them, which is basically a minute at a time and just record 30 of them. So 30 minutes, let's quadruple that show. We two hours to add a little bit of time in between each one to just sort of get things set up. But yeah. So it actually does. Yeah, the live streams on YouTube do as far as I can make out, count towards that watch time. But yeah, I know it's something that a lot of people recommend. I know Doc recommends it as well. So I understand that it does actually count and certainly it's counted towards my total watch time as well. But by the way, hello, Sid. I'm just reading your comment. Hello and welcome to the live stream. I love a little look about that though, but I'm pretty sure that the live streams do actually count because it's one of these little things that people say, oh, if you haven't quite got your watch time up, then live streams are a good way to add to that. But yeah, well, I'll do some research and let you know what I find as well. Hey, David, great to see you here as well. And hey, thank you very much. Yeah, the light behind the sound panels is basically just sort of little LED strip lights. So they're really low cost and we'll see how long they last for. I'm glad they're not, there's no sort of flicker or anything like that because obviously when you buy cheap lights, then you never know how they're gonna work out. Hey, Carly, nice to see you here as well. So yeah, but the lights, you're pretty much limited to this selection of colors. But yeah, it's pretty good really. And I'm quite pleased as well, although there are basically four individual drivers. So I did get four of these little remotes. Actually, one of them does work for all of them and it's pretty good and pretty directional. So I can change light one at a time over that side and then that side separately. Whoopsie-daisy, he says. And they're quite directionally sensitive, I suppose. So I can change them sort of separately from one another. Whoopsie-daisy, if I have to head to the right thing. This is where it all goes horribly wrong. And then you can also have them sort of cycling between different colors as well. So yeah, quite pleased about the way that that turned out, Kevin, because it's just helped those things to sort of pop off. I've still got plenty more to do with lighting. So the main lighting on the back wall, by the way, is, let me just take my little comment down so that you can see it, is basically two non-light pavo tubes. So I've just got those sort of behind me, one sort of blue, one purple, facing up against the wall. That is not gonna be the sort of end configuration of this. I am gonna do a little bit more and get them mounted properly at the moment. They're just on one of those lighting stands. So if I zoom out a little bit, there you go. Just on a regular stand like that behind me. Gotta get the shelves sorted out and give that a go. And yeah, try and get something a little bit more interesting going on in the background. I mean, just said, oh, there you go. I mean, just said how great those lights were. I couldn't get it to change back then. There we go. Blue and purple, just got that one to change. So yeah, there was only, like I say, eight dollars or something like that for the strip. And then these acoustic panels, they sort of got like a beveled edge. In fact, let me just show you one second. Here's one I made earlier. So this is the acoustic panels and all it is. I haven't even put a backing on it. I did actually intend to put a backing on this as well, but just didn't get round to it. So the panels though, I've got sort of like a, sorry, I'm stepping away from the microphone, I've got like a beveled edge on them or a chamfered edge as we like to say in the Apple community. So, and it was basically just the wood was already, already had that sort of chamfer on either side. And so then the actual acoustic insulation is just in the middle like that. And then all I've done is I've actually just got little hooks that are drilled into the wall or screwed into the wall. And then I've got some little screws on the back here and here, which just basically hook over the, so the sort of eyelet, if you like, is sort of horizontal. And then these little screws just hook into that. And then at the bottom, I've got some, whoopsie daisy, my headphone cable getting in the way. At the bottom, I've just got a couple of wood blocks. So basically the actual boards themselves or the acoustic panels rather, the insulation is two inches thick or the acoustic foam rather is two inches thick. It's not foam either. I'm using all the wrong terminology. The acoustic material is two inches thick and then they stand off the wall by two inches as well. So having the gap between the material and the wall also helps with the acoustics. I still haven't made the video yet about the sort of before and after. So I am gonna make a video with, where basically I take them all out. I've got some footage that I made during Vlogmas where I was sort of covering the progress of making all of these. But I'm gonna do one where basically I take them all out and show you what the acoustics are like. Not using this microphone, but using actually another little one that I've got that I can plug into my iPad. So you can hear what it sounds like before and what it sounds like with these in because it really is amazing the difference that it made to the acoustics in the room. All of these sort of echoes gone. This is still quite an empty room really. There's just my desk in here. Obviously some lights, but the rest of the room is still empty until I get all the other stuff in. But it doesn't sound like echoey like it did when I was first in it. So it has made a huge difference. So the reason why I was taking these off though, off the wall was because it's got this sort of bevelled edge all I've done with those LED strips is I've actually just sort of stuck them along the backside bevel so that it is actually pointing out onto the wall. You might notice that in... Where is it? This corner that you can see the light is going between the two panels. Whereas in this corner, there is actually kind of like a little column that almost sticks out into that corner of the room slightly. So you don't actually see the light between them. So I've got to adjust that so that you can actually see the light down that side as well. But yeah, that is how I've got that light mounted. So thank you very much. Where was it, Kevin? It was Kevin's comment, wasn't it? Saying that, yeah. So that's what I've done with the light and that was something that I did this week. Still lots more to do with the lighting though. I've got to play around with a few things, get the shelves in and all of that sort of thing. Let me have a little look, catching up with the comments. Oh yeah, so that's about obviously watch time. Yeah, it has to be not an unlisted or private video. So the live streams do have to be ones that are public. Somebody said, or a lot of people have said, if you go back and edit a live stream, like you trim off the intro, that you lose all of the comments for that live stream, but then add somebody else who posted and showed a little screenshot of, it didn't actually lose the comments. It just basically had a negative time for any comments that came in before the new start point, if you see what I mean. I've never gone back and actually tried that, but that's completely unrelated. But it was just something that sprung to mind because I know a lot of people say about that. So I haven't actually tried that myself. The recorded live streams count, it doesn't count when we're live. Oh yeah, see what you mean? So once whilst you're live, but then the, do you mean people watching the replays? Is that as opposed to the people watching live? Not sure about that. Yeah, well, anyway, let me know what you find as well, Sid, because it would be great to know because by no means an expert, I'm just sharing what I've kind of figured out. So David, you did shorts for Vlogmas. I see, so you did them in that sort of block them as well. Yeah, I'll have to get back to my shorts. I literally just need to block out the time for it really to try and get them done. I do notice that they have made a difference to the channel though, like the times when I have had them on. I've talked about this before as well, but the demographics are totally different. So I suddenly get a lot of younger people watching my channel. I'm not bothered either way. Obviously if people are getting value from it, but it is interesting that you just see this sort of completely different demographic of people that are watching the shorts. But it's certainly, you know, it's another thing to help bring viewers in, I suppose, isn't it? Let's have a little look. Oh yeah, I hope you are feeling better, Carly. I know you sounded a lot better yesterday than certainly the week before having the dreaded Rona, as you called it. I still feel lucky to have escaped it so far, but I think it's just a matter of time really, isn't it, before everybody experiences it. We're quite lucky where we are though, because we're able to be quite remote. We don't have too many people around us as well, and we don't need to necessarily go out that much. So quite fortunate that way, but yeah, I hope you're feeling better and better every day. I'm just noticing, I do have to do something, this is gonna drive me mad, these cablings behind me, so I've gotta get something a little bit more permanent for that. So yeah, that might be something that I'll do over the next week. Maybe next week the cables will be all nicely hidden. I just basically threw those up to just test the lights. They came actually on, when was it, Wednesday or something like that, when I was supposed to be doing something else and then I just got a message saying your package is being delivered. So that was it then, that was a couple of hours of me setting up lights, so I didn't actually get to tidy the cables up, but I will have to do that. Righty-ho, I am pretty much done. Unless anybody's got any questions or anything like that related to anything I've talked about today, or about the channel or anything like that, or one last chance, if anybody's just funny, just hopping on for a chat, then always feel free. Ah, right, so you're saying that you lose your comments when you edit the live stream. That's what I'd always heard as well. I'd always heard that you lose the comments and then it was just, I forget where it was now, I forget what group it was in, where it was, somebody said, oh no, you just see a negative time zone, so I'm not sure. Still doing the Zoom classes. Well, yeah, the Zoom masterclass, I should definitely mention that. If you head over to zoommasterclass.com, you can get an early bird discount of 50% off. All you have to do is just register your interest because the course hasn't actually launched. And you can tell that I'm late, because in fact, even in the video on the site, I say that it's launching on the 1st of January, but then underneath you'll see now I've corrected it, delayed launch the 10th. So yeah, I just didn't quite finish it off, naughty boy. So I've got to get that all sorted out. But yeah, I am indeed still doing the Zoom class. It's basically, it's pre-recorded, so that's the time involved in it. It's not like the eCamp Academy where it's kind of like turn up for different sessions and things like that. It's sort of pre-recorded. So I'm just finishing off recording it. And yeah, that is still there and it will still be launching and I will be sending out an email about that to anyone who registers early. And that's all we need to do is just leave your name and email to register early. And then when it launches, you'll get a link to go through to an offer page where basically it's 50% off the regular price. And I haven't actually announced the regular price yet. That will also be in the video, just in case you're wondering. So I'm glad you're feeling better. Like I say, you did look so much better yesterday than the last time I saw where you know, obviously, yeah, battling through it. So I'm glad you're feeling a bit better though. Oh, bye Jeff, great for you to stop by. And I know it's late there. I always appreciate the UK people staying up to watch my stream because yeah, it's getting on to midnight there. So much appreciated and great to see you as always. So, oh, the cabling we're talking about there, Victor. Yeah, so what I'm gonna do is I am gonna run it to the cabling, to the corner, but I'm also, I've got some covering that I'm gonna put on it. So it will actually just be exactly the same color as the wall as well. So it will definitely be hidden. But yeah, I'll just do a little bit of a better job about rooting that. I wanna make it easy to take the panels on off as well. So I'm gonna, at the moment, it's kind of the cable runs to a USB socket behind the thing and then the USB plug from the lights plug into that. And I've got sort of two of them going into one. So I just need to need to it up a little bit. Yeah, so yeah, it's an ongoing project. That's the thing before I was lasted for so long in my little basement with just my 10 year old Canon. I'm still working on the Sony ZV-E10. I've got a couple of options for that now. So I think I'm gonna be able to get one of those sorted. Just being too busy focused on the other things to even take up any offers on that. So I've gotta get that sorted. But yeah, I just lasted for so long in my little studio before and there wasn't really much to it. It was just literally my camera, my computer, these, still these couple of lights. I'm gonna be upgrading my lights as well. I won't quite be going as big as Carly's light. I will never forget the day of putting up the big Lantern softbox for that in Doc's office hours. But yeah, I'll be getting something similar to that. So the Nan Lights, the 60 and the 200 is it. I can't remember exactly, but something like that. So I'll be replacing the lights that I've got at the moment. The lights that I've got at the moment, by the way, I've got just four light bulbs. So that's the level of sophistication that they are. If I wanna change the color tone, I change from daylight to warm white. If I wanna make it brighter or darker, I just add more lights or take more lights out. It's as simple as that. So yeah, I will be upgrading my lights as well. But that's the thing about getting into a new user server, a server, into a new studio space is I've got more things that I can potentially add into it. So I've gotta be aware of the gear acquisition syndrome. And we'll see how it goes though. But yeah, I've got a few things to do. I think I might finally bite the bullet and go down the Roadcaster Pro route as well. The blimp, yeah, it is massive, isn't it? I mean, it's brilliant. It was an amazing thing to watch. Yeah, mine won't be quite so big. They'll be the little baby ones. I can't remember the exact size, but I did actually see, where was it yesterday? I was chatting with somebody on there, another thing. And these are the little nun lights that are the small little ones. They're, I suppose, they're similar to the apertures. Let me have a look. I forget what they were even called now, but they did look quite good. Let me have a little look. Nun light is the little square ones that are more kind of like practical lights or things. And then they also had them in, where are they? They also had them in Amazon where you could buy a pair of them. Look at this. This is live gas. What are they called? Leto light, 5C, that's what they're called. There we go. These little ones that are like little practical lights, basically. Similar to the aperture ones that a lot of people use. The thing about getting, once you're in the ecosystem, is having the nun link app for nun light means that you can get all these things linked together. So I did a video, actually, about the setup of the nun light, pavo tubes that I'm using, and then how you can download the firmware and then use them with the app. I'm actually gonna use the, I've had a bit of issue with the app, to be honest, while we're talking about it. I've had a bit of issue with the app that sometimes they seem like they're not connected. So I can have the lights on, but then if I go out and then come back, sometimes it doesn't immediately connect. But you can also download now with Monterey because you can have iOS apps running on the Mac. You can actually have the nun link app running on the Mac as well, or rather instead. So what I think I'm gonna do is just actually basically set up all the lights on the nun link app, iOS app, but running on the Mac. And then I don't have to worry about it losing connection or stuff. It'll just always be connected. But I don't know if it was just me that was having that issue with connection, but it seemed like sometimes I'd come in and then they just, they weren't actually connected for me to make changes to them and all that sort of stuff. So there we go. Yeah, I wish I'd done a video screen capture at the time, to be honest. Although I suppose it'll be on the replays, won't it, somewhere? On the, on doctor replays. I should also say, shouldn't I really? That speaking of which, that if you want to join a community of like minded people, then not my community. Doc Rock's community. Head over to buymeacoffee.com slash docrock and join the drop squad and come and join in all the fun on a Saturday evening, I suppose for most people. For me, it's my Sunday morning treat. So definitely, yeah, definitely head over there and check that out. And yeah, we have lots of, lots of fun and games over there. So that is really it. This is probably about the third time that I've said that I'm going, but I think I am literally gonna go now because it's about the time that Dale wakes up. So I should probably go and see how he's getting on. Roadcaster Pro for the win. Roadcaster Pro is amazing. It's only a matter of time. All roads lead to roadcaster and SM7B, don't they really? So I'll probably, yeah, I probably will upgrade to that as well. I'll definitely try it out with the MV7 though, but I don't know what it is. It is total gas, isn't it, to upgrade from the MV7 to the SM7B. But yeah, I might, I don't want to go down a whole microphone trip, but it's interesting, isn't it? There's the Luit as well. It's all sorts. Too many to consider. I'll just take things one step at a time. Cool, I will catch you all tomorrow. Yes, it was amazing, that video. And thank you very much, Carly, and definitely see you tomorrow. See everyone else tomorrow. And that for me for today is it. You're not getting an SM7B anytime soon. What microphone do you use before I sign off? I'll be interesting to know what you use because obviously you're, you're a vocal expert. It would be interesting to know what mic you're using. Your streams, no, streamed your submissions for the Ecomics Travaganza were amazing too. I was saying to Valerie early about how hers was amazing and you were just in everyone's, weren't you? I mean, it was brilliant. The musical talents of the group were just fantastic. Yeah, really good. Oh, and Aileen as well. Aileen was brilliant. Everyone was brilliant. Such a talented group of people. Just waiting to see what mic David's using. Obviously you're a little bit, little bit more niche. You're on the MV7 as well. It is great, little mic, to be honest. I love, I mean, I bought it because of the, I'll use it over USB. So it is great. I'll find out from David what mic he's using a little bit later. No problem, Valerie. Well, thanks for stopping by and thanks for sticking with it as well. All the way through to the end. I'll find out from David a little bit later. Oh, you're using the MV7 as well, eh, David? Oh, that's really interesting. I totally missed that. I was totally looking at the other thing. And yes, Paul is an SM7B snob. You've got such a great voice, Paul. I've got to say, I never liked the sound of my own voice but you've got a really great voice and the SM7B, I think, really brings it out. So on that note, I will say goodbye to you all, definitely this time, and I will catch you all later. But thanks for all for stopping by and I will see you all very soon. Have an absolutely wonderful day, everyone. Catch you later.