After a year of dedication and hard work, I said goodbye to YouTube.
Everyone who has ever tried to build a small business and survive on thier own knows how difficult and disheartening that can be.
Contrary to common belief, modern times with social media, algorithms and all technology wonders do not make things easier. Theoretically, this means it is easier to reach wider audience, find that sliver of market where the things you make fit just right. If only…
In practice, this also means that the competition is tougher than ever, fighting for the very same fragment of audience. Not just that; the algorithm pain and nightmare is real.
Being a small craft workshop with very limited finantial resources and marketing knowledge, I had decided to follow advice of many experienced instructors online.
The approach they teach is simple. If you cannot pay for professional services, gradually build your brand through social media presence yorself. Pick a platform, as you will not be able to cever everything yourself and maintain quality. Be consistent. Offer some good quality content, let people know about you. Listen to your audience.
And that is what I did. I decided to focus on YouTube. Given the nature of my craft, and the practicalty of video instructions, that made the most sense.
From hope and dedicaton to cold shower
For about I year, I was building my channel from the ground up. I was posting new long-form tutorials every week, once or twice a week. My goal was to focus on quality, reather then to do hyperposting every day.
Everything was going well. As expected, there were some fluctuations along the way, but owerall, my channel was growing slowly and steadily.
Until it wasn’t! I had 1000 subscribers, over 1000 views and 20 hours watch time per day when, sometime around December 25th, 2025, YouTube completely cut me off. It was like they flipped the switch, and said “That’s it, you are done”.
Aftermath
Since then, my channel has been having around 15 views per day, and essentially no watch hours.
If I post something, it gets shown to no one! I am not sure it even appears in the feed of my subscribers.
For some time, I believed I have inadvertently violated some of the YT rules, but without any kind of notification, I didn’t know which rules.
Soon after that, ater some research, I reallized the same has happend to many other channels as well. Reason? Algorithm, they say!
Lesson learned?
All platforms with such agressive and frequent algorithm changes cannot be trusted. Allocating too much of your time and effort to them puts you at risk and their mercy.
If you are going to focus on building a digital presence, do it on your own terms, using your own resources and realestate. For me, that is this very site.
It is going to be harder, and much slower, especially if you don’t have much of financial resources available, but you will be in full control.
Going forward, I will still publish some content on YouTube, but only with the purpose of supporting content on my website or to clarify written patterns.
The same stands for every other social network or platform. Make it support what you do and don’t let it become your priority.
The conclusion is that, as always in life, we can only count on ourselves.
That is something we all know, but I apparently needed a year of wasted effort to remember that and empirically confirm it.
We learn, we grow, we move on.
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