This is a memorable one for me, because I want to talk about everything I'm frustrated with right now as a YouTuber and a Twitch live streamer. The whole purpose of doing this is so that I can take an honest inventory of myself. If you've ever struggled with self-sabotage the way I have, you know what I mean. Self-sabotage is when you screw yourself over. As Superman watching on Twitch put it, it's like every time you're hitting it big time, Jerry, you just quit, or you get banned, or something like that. In my experience, that pattern is almost always an indication of self-sabotage.
5,000 videos uploaded, 287 left
So here's what I'm not happy with right now. I'm frustrated that I've uploaded somewhere north of five thousand videos to YouTube. I've recorded over ten thousand videos. And right now, if you go look at my YouTube channel, there are 287 videos. That's because I've made at least ten different YouTube channels and I've deleted all of them except this original one and a live one that I'm also going to delete.
It really frustrates me that I'll tell you I'm a full-time YouTuber, and then you go back and look at my videos and think, how are you a full-time YouTuber? It doesn't look like it, because I deleted the vast majority of what I uploaded. I quit this channel a bunch of times. I got so frustrated with the views I was getting that I tried harder and harder. I made all these channels and tried to niche down. And then I put myself in a position where, if I didn't create crypto content on my crypto channel, hardly anybody watched my videos. Same with gaming. I was a professional gamer for a couple of years. I made over $100,000 in 2021 to play video games. But then I got tired of playing video games every day, and at least in my own mind, nobody cared if I did anything besides video games.
I'm frustrated that I've now been on YouTube for 14 years. If you go to my channel and click "more," you can see I joined May 31st, 2011. And the reason it doesn't look like 14 years of work is that I've self-sabotaged the whole way through.
Why I deleted hundreds of videos
So why did I delete all those videos from YouTube? A lot of the more recent ones were crypto videos that didn't have disclaimers, where I wasn't fully transparent about how much Internet Computer Protocol I'm holding. So I deleted hundreds and hundreds of crypto videos. I also deleted a lot of videos where I was really toxic, overly toxic toward other coins, saying they were going to zero. I deleted around 500 of those. And I deleted several thousand videos off my original channel because I didn't used to pay much attention to the terms and conditions, and I was overly afraid of getting caught.
Here's the thing, though. Out of the 3,000-plus videos I uploaded to my original channel, I had exactly one video that got flagged on the community guidelines. One. And I deleted everything for two reasons. First, I was pissed and angry. I was getting thousands of views a day on that channel, but I was disgusted by how few views most of my videos were getting. I was disgusted that YouTube had gone back and flagged a video I'd uploaded more than a year earlier. Second, I was pissed at myself, because I'd gone through updating the description, trying to maximize and squeeze out more views. No matter how many views I've been getting, I've consistently felt that it wasn't enough. Going forward, I intend to change that. However many views I'm getting is enough.
And yes, when people come through my channel and say, "oh, you must have used bots," that annoys me, because these were built organically. Technically, in the first couple of years of my channel, around 2011 and 2012, I tried using a tiny amount of bots on videos that have since been deleted, and it didn't work very well, so I didn't do it again. I did use YouTube ads to push videos, which then earned a lot of organic views, but I deleted all of those as well.
Watching other creators hurts
So on Twitch, do I think I deserve more than seven people watching? Am I frustrated that after all these videos there are five people watching on YouTube and seven on Twitch? Honestly, it's hard for me to even look at other creators sometimes. I did a video about BusyWorksBeats. I love BusyWorksBeats. I made a video saying how much I love what he does, and he was kind enough to share it to my channel. But it was hard to film that video. Because if I hadn't screwed myself over so many times, if I had just stuck with creating videos on my channel, if I had just focused, this is where I'd be too. I'd have a couple hundred million views. I'd have 6,000 videos up on YouTube. It was hard to even thank BusyWorksBeats for inspiring me, because I felt so miserable by comparison.
I've done the work he's done. He grinds incredibly hard, and he might have done a little bit more, but I've filmed over 5,000 videos. I've done over 1,000 live streams. I've deleted videos with 30-plus million views on them. And the first 30 million are the hardest to get. It's often much easier to keep getting views once you're rolling. So it's been hard for me to even thank and say nice things to other creators, because I feel so bad when I do. The voice in my head says, look how you've screwed up one thing after another. All you've done is make channels, get some traction, then delete them.
Hitting bottom on purpose
So I'm trying to hit bottom with this, to really feel how pissed off I am that I've put all this work into YouTube and 90-plus percent of it is gone. When I deleted thousands of videos off my original channel, probably 99-plus percent of them had no realistic potential of a policy violation. I was just mad. I could easily have gone in and tried to find the 1% that might be a problem under a worst-case scenario, but even that's ridiculous.
I also deleted those videos because I wanted a fresh start, and I was trying to niche my original channel down to music. It did not work. And I'm so grateful that YouTube has actually been putting the videos I've done on other subjects out to people, like my crypto videos. But yes, I'm furious that my crypto videos get far fewer views on this original channel than they did on the dedicated crypto channel I made. For two or three years I did all my crypto videos on a separate channel. I should have just done them all on one channel.
The same pattern, over and over
The benefit of all this is that I intend to make some real change, because I have been very successful online. I've made millions of dollars in sales and was a top 10 instructor out of tens of thousands on Udemy. And they banned me. Why? Because I ran my mouth and constantly criticized them. But I was also so obsessed with competition and getting above everybody else that I couldn't see much beyond Udemy. If I could go back and do it again, I'd relax on Udemy, pay more attention to YouTube, and experiment and play around a lot more. Instead, I got sucked into the identity of being a Udemy instructor who teaches courses, rather than being a content creator focused on free help. I was obsessed with making money and dominating Udemy. And then it all came down.
I had a similar experience in crypto with Dash and Steemit right afterward. Then I had a year or two of just self-sabotaging into oblivion, ruining the finances it had taken me five years to get into the best position of my whole life. I destroyed it within a year, because I felt like I didn't deserve anything. On YouTube, without putting a label on it, I was obsessed with trying to sell courses and make money instead of doing a good job for my viewers, instead of just helping however I could that day.
I'm really pissed that I didn't see how important YouTube was to all of this, that I just kept using YouTube as a platform to push people somewhere else. I didn't see that YouTube was treating me better than anywhere else. Then I got into Facebook gaming, and I boxed myself in just as hard there, because I was endlessly trying to optimize the algorithm. I posted other videos about other subjects on Facebook, but the algorithm did poorly on them, and I got so upset about that. Instead of thinking, hey, if a thousand people watch me do a live stream talking about aliens, that's great, it was never enough. I got so frustrated and so desperate for ideas to go viral on Facebook that I changed my race, and it worked, and then I got canceled. Then I deleted my whole Facebook page. I'm so disgusted with that. Then I started a new crypto channel and built it all up, and right when it was going great, I quit. Then I got it all up and going again, and then I deleted all the videos.
What I can and can't control
I don't want to do this again. I see exactly where I want to go, and BusyWorksBeats is exactly where I want to go. I want to have 6,000 videos on one single channel. The views I don't control. Where I've consistently gone wrong is focusing on things I can't control. I can't control the views I get. I can control the videos I upload, and I can control which channel I put them on. I can be considerate of my viewers and ask myself: is it easy for you if I scatter videos across eight different channels and tell you to buy a course on Udemy, follow on Facebook, follow on X, join my open chat, my Discord, my Telegram, and follow on Twitch? Or is it easier for you to find everything in one spot?
I'm frustrated that I've been so poor at collaborating with others that I've hogged all the attention I've gotten for myself. I've gotten so much attention, and I've just taken all of it. I've been frustrated with the money I've been making. Somebody hurt my feelings the other day by saying I should be ashamed of screwing around and doing nothing while taking money from my wife. And you know what? Yeah. I'm pissed that I told my wife just a couple of weeks ago that I wanted her to give me $22,000 she'd saved in our emergency fund from a loan she was being responsible with.
I'll be honest about where my head was at. I just wanted something that would let me stop living in fear every day, because my bank account was damn near zero. I didn't want to sell any of my crypto at the bottom, and at the same time I had things I wanted to buy: a new iPhone, a laptop, a new microphone. I should be self-sustaining by now. I've made videos for so long, and there are so many people who love my videos. It feels absolutely stupid that I'm out here in any given month not making enough money to avoid having to ask my wife for money. That's a hard thing to admit, but it's the truth.
You know what, though? It's a valuable lesson. I need to have a system set up that does two things at once. First, it lets you get on here with me. If you want to come on and share your opinion, I've made that easier than ever. It's $99, you get a 10-minute video, we hop on Zoom and talk, and I put the video up for you. In my experience that's an amazing deal, and I can realistically do 20 of those a week. That's 20 videos with other people every week.
Giving Credit to the People Who Inspired Me
The second thing is that I've been frustrated with myself for not shouting out the people who have helped me so much. Take Busyworks Beats, for example. Who knows how long he's followed me, but up until this last week he had no idea that he was an inspiration to me. He had no idea, because I'd never actually said anything. So I made a video for him. I've come to believe that telling people what they mean to you matters, and I'd been sitting on that for far too long.
I am really frustrated with where I've gotten to today. And you know what, though? At the same time, I'm really happy for where I'm at. Both of those things are true at once.
Returning to What Was Actually Fun
Superman left me a comment that stuck with me. He said these videos are gold, the exact unique type of videos that only come from Jerry, and that he felt the most enjoyment from my videos back in 2021 with the retro gaming. He said that was the best area and the best format, in his opinion. Looking back, one of the things that was working really well in 2021 was that there were a lot of days where I was simply having a lot of fun.
To me, that's incredibly important. Having fun is the whole point, and I know the key to me having fun. I need to keep it simple: just YouTube and Twitch, go live, record videos, and put them on one single YouTube channel and one single X profile. And don't pay attention to the views. That, to me, is the big takeaway. Stop sitting there in your analytics complaining that YouTube isn't doing enough for you. You do your part, and YouTube will do its part. It's done its part for me. Facebook did its part for me. All these platforms did enough for me.
So going forward, I'm choosing to focus on having fun and creating things that are meaningful, not just generic junk like so much of what I see on YouTube, but something heartfelt that's good for me to create, fun for me to make, or meaningful for me to put out into the world. That's my plan, and if you want to see more of how I think about coaching and creating, you can dig into my YouTube Coaching playlist. That's where I'm at, and I'll keep answering the questions as they come.