dec 5, 2025 — jan 3, 2026
views: 375
watch hours: 0.7
subscribers: 1
average view duration: 0:27
impressions: 3,078
average click-through rate: 0.7%
top 3 in views
top 3 in watch hours
top 3 in avg. view duration
top 3 in CTR
jan 4, 2026 — feb 2, 2026
views: 233
watch hours: 16.5
subscribers: 2
average view duration: 4:16
impressions: 9,613
average click-through rate: 1.7%
top 3 in views
top 3 in watch hours
top 3 in avg. view duration
top 3 in CTR
my best guess
The first month had more views than the second — mostly because of Shorts. Whether Shorts actually have a meaningful impact on channel growth and discoverability is something I still need to figure out. Repurposing existing videos into Shorts could work as a way to show what the channel feels like — though I'm not sure yet whether to keep the subtitles in or leave them out. Excluding Shorts views, the actual view count nearly six-folded in the second month. Impressions tripled too. So things did grow — the problem is, I can't shake the feeling that this might be the ceiling.
The first month's one subscriber was me, by the way. CTR isn't great either. The videos with high CTR numbers just had low impressions — too few for the data to be statistically meaningful. I guess CTR comes down to thumbnails and titles, and I still haven't figured out what mine should look like. Matching the look of other work-with-me channels isn't really an option either — they already have what people click for.
From what I've seen, work-with-me channels generally share a few common strengths: an aspirational desk setup, clean mic quality, curated background music. None of those were realistic options for me, so I went with subtitles instead — a different angle, at least. I actually tried splitting the screen with a log on one side first, but it looked too dull. Subtitles felt more like a conversation — or the closest thing to one when you're working alone.
I'm not someone who usually gets lonely, but at some point, I started feeling it. I've been thinking about why, and my best guess is — there's no one to check my decisions with, no one to share the weight of getting things wrong, no one to even chat with between tasks. I thought maybe someone out there feels the same way, and if so — maybe we could be each other's coworkers, in some small sense. Someday I'd love for the comments section to be a place where people share how their day went.
Average view duration went from 0:27 to 4:16, and watch hours from 0.7 to 16.5 — with two subscribers. That means someone is spending their work hours with me. Thank you.
next month's delusions
The February writing challenge was a good idea in theory. In practice, filming two videos a day — and editing and uploading one of them the same day — was more pressure than I expected. But it did help with one thing: the friction of starting to write. That moment where you stare at a blank page and can't begin — that got easier. Good for me, but not necessarily good for the channel.
The problem is, more writing videos means more data, and the numbers aren't flattering. February's halfway through and the metrics are better than last month overall, but I don't think the titles or thumbnails are telling people what they're about to watch.
The titles — "writing — feb XX" — I like them. They look cohesive when you see them lined up, and as someone who's been writing for a while, they're the kind of thing I'd click on. Shocking — I can only think like me. And now that I'm writing this out — even if the title does pull someone in, they came because someone's writing, but there's no context about what's being written or why. The writing, morning, and read-with-me videos are meant to work as background in any context — that's why they don't have subtitles, unlike the work-with-me videos. So the obvious fix doesn't apply here. Maybe a compromise — a very short intro at the beginning to set the scene? But I'm not sure what that would even look like.
The writing challenge ends in February — I'll keep writing two hours a day until the end of the month, but starting today, I'm folding those sessions back into the regular work-with-me videos instead of filming them separately. If all I did that day was write, it goes up as a writing video. What I haven't figured out is whether to keep uploading three times a week or push for more. Uploading more means more editing pressure, and since I'm already filming almost every day, the gap between when a video is filmed and when it goes up would keep growing. I worry that gap might cost some of the immediacy.
After writing all of this, I asked Claude for advice. Between what it suggested and what I was already thinking, a few things seem worth trying — repurposing existing videos into Shorts with subtitles, adding a short text intro to writing videos to give some context, and not pushing past three uploads a week. I probably won't do all of it, but it's good to have options on the table.
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