A strange thing started happening over the last month or so that I wasn’t expecting. I put a quick video edit of the trip I took with Bennett to pick up his Hudson on my YouTube channel, which has historically been very quiet. I use it mainly just as a place to park random videos to be embedded on the weblog or a random forum post. I shared the link with Bennett, Bennett shared it with some friends of his, and it wound up getting about 5,500 views and the channel gained about 20 subscribers in two months. That led to more comments and likes on the Travelall video updates I’ve posted. So I went in to YouTube’s backend and cleaned up the channel, added some categories, and created new title cards for all of those videos.

I don’t know what the end goal is here; I don’t intend to quit the day job and pursue a career as a YouTube creator, as exhausting as that sounds. But I think I’m going to put a little more time into the production of each video to see what kind of traction I can get. Would a sponsorship be nice to have? I wouldn’t turn it down.

Another interesting realization came when I glanced at the initial walkaround videos I shot when I first got the truck. I can’t believe how lousy the thing looked when it first arrived. The paint was garbage, the interior was a horror show, and without a grille it looked like a drunk hobo passed out in the driveway. It’s come a long way. Each time I go outside and cringe at the condition of the front fenders I have to remember how much worse everything looked in March, and how much I’ve done to it since then. I think I’m going to do a before and after 1-year progress video to really compare how far we’ve come.