feb 3, 2026 — mar 4, 2026
views: 589 (last month: 233)
watch hours: 49.5 (last month: 16.5)
subscribers: 5 (last month: 2)
average view duration: 6:41 (last month: 4:16)
impressions: 16,505 (last month: 9,613)
average click-through rate: 1.7% (last month: 1.7%)
top 3 in views
top 3 in watch hours
top 3 in avg. view duration
top 3 in CTR
my best guess
Shorts added some noise to the data — had I filtered them out and looked at long-form only, the numbers would probably tell a different story. But since shorts are part of the channel now, it made more sense to keep them in. Consistency and all that. Anyway, watch hours are up almost three times compared to last month, which is genuinely good news.
CTR is the same as last month though. And the videos with high CTR are the ones with barely any impressions, which pretty much confirms I still have no idea what I'm doing with thumbnails and titles. I tried a different approach starting with the video going up tomorrow — but I won't know if it worked until around this time next month.
The thunder storm and white noise videos have decent watch time, but the sample size is too small to read anything into it. There might just be people who really needed that kind of video around a certain time. And I still can't tell whether having subtitles helps or not. Though maybe that's just not something you can figure out at this stage.
Subscribers are up a lot compared to last month, but it's been over ten days now with nothing moving. Every time this happens, I get the feeling that I've hit my ceiling. It feels exactly like trying to lose weight.
next month's delusions
Alright, I'll be straight about this. I've been thinking about quitting YouTube a lot lately. It could just be a phase, but it's like digging a hole that goes nowhere, a waste of time and energy. And once that set in, the parts I used to look forward to like filming and editing started feeling less enjoyable. But thinking about it more, maybe YouTube isn't really the problem. My apps, YouTube, the writing, the upcoming move. Nothing feels like it's making any progress lately, and I'm just taking it out on the channel.
Watch hours are going up almost every day. And my goal is 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. (Some say less than 10% of channels ever get there. Others say it's closer to 3%.) I have no idea how many years it'll take — or whether it ever will. If there's something I want to get out of running this channel, it's learning how to keep going even when growth feels slow.
As much as I've been thinking about quitting, I don't think I'll quit before 100 videos. Not because I think something magical happens at 100. It's just that 100 videos is the point where I'd feel like I actually gave it a real shot. With what's already scheduled, I'm currently at 69. At three uploads a week, video 100 lands on May 26th. It'll probably come sooner than that.
Experimenting with thumbnails and subtitles feels less like an option and more like something I have to do. And as always, sustainability is something I can't stop thinking about — figuring out how to keep going without burning out before I get there. I've also been neglecting reading sessions lately and want to get back to them. Setting the YouTube side of things aside, less reading time is never good for me.
The last 48 hours have been the worst numbers I've seen. Ceilings don't break easy, and there's always a new floor waiting underneath. I guess that's just how it goes. Today was supposed to be a day off, and here I am writing this. I hope something good happens to me sometime.
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