In this vlog, the creator (Speaker A) announces that the traditional YouTube model they have relied on for over a decade is no longer viable. They present data showing a 25% drop in views and a loss of about 1,000 subscribers in the past three months, and compare their decline to that of other long‑standing homestead vloggers. Five root causes are identified: (1) massive content saturation across YouTube, podcasts, books and other platforms; (2) the "TikTokification" of social media, where attention‑based recommendation replaces follower‑based feeds; (3) shifts in viewing devices—from desktop to mobile to TV—changing audience expectations for video length and format; (4) the creator’s own homestead having reached a stable, less‑dramatic stage, making daily vlogging less compelling; and (5) personal burnout from maintaining a high‑frequency vlog schedule. The speaker proposes a pivot toward fewer, higher‑quality, story‑driven videos, outlining a concrete storytelling framework: a single compelling narrative, irresistible title and thumbnail, strong hook, sustained engagement, and a satisfying payoff. They reference advice from a YouTube coach and peers (Morgan Gold, Jessica Sowards) who also advocate quality over quantity, and use the Kodak analogy to illustrate the danger of clinging to a successful but outdated model. The creator plans to experiment with a reduced posting cadence (aiming for 1‑3 videos per week, possibly more in spring/summer), solicit audience feedback, and commit to “burying” the old approach while moving forward with intentional, entrepreneurial content creation.
Chapters
5 and a half years later, we walked out of this church. Have you ever heard of this story? Sadly, YouTube as I know it, as you know it, it's dying, or it's dead. As sad and hard as that is, we gotta bury it. This is something I've done for a long time. I've actually known it for a while. I felt it in my heart probably at least a year. I've made made changes in the past but just couldn't stick with it. Just afraid and just hesitant because I love the way it's been. I've loved it so much. Writing is on the wall, especially in this— hey guys, they will literally bite the hand that feeds them. Hey, hey, YouTube's implemented some pretty big changes the last 3 months that have affected us significantly. Let me show you what Hopefully we have enough eggs to show you this. Oh yeah, we got plenty of eggs. I'm going to show you in eggs what's happening with our views on YouTube. First, get these— they're getting a lot better about laying in the nest box. Uh, let's say there's 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12— baker's dozen. We'll put that one aside. Just the last 3 months Overall views have been down 25%, just doing the same thing I've always done— vlog. Same thing I've done for 10 years. That means views— you all people, people with souls— is that that many? That much has dropped off in just 3 months. 1 or 2, if the eggs were— will, if you will, have dropped. If this were our egg production and it was dropping by 25% every 3 months, We would be screwed. And it's not just me. Vlogs are dying. Take for example Sam and Nia, the very people who initially inspired us to vlog. Fraction of the views they used to get. Also Charles Trippy, one of their original vloggers, I think daily vlogged for 10 years. Now it's like 2,000 views a video. My views lately are approaching what they were in even pre-Great American Farm Tour, or just after the Great— That's 2017-18. Hang with me, I want you guys to do this with me. We're gonna bury this as hard as it will be. Stay with me, stay with me. Just in this last month, we've lost 1,000 subscribers. That's a fraction of a mil— 1.1 million. Thank you all. I'm thankful for every single one. But we're losing subscribers. We're shrinking. We're not growing. We are growers. That is what we do. We grow things. We grow our sustenance. We grow our medicine. And we need to grow our business. And our business is this content creation business. Many ways we need to grow our ministry, our reach. This has become that. We've reached so many people for so many good things. And it's only natural that we want to grow and not shrink. It's what we want to do. If we keep doing what we've been doing, it's the definition of sanity. I'm bad for that. I'm so disciplined, I can keep doing something for far too long, and that's what's happening. I think there are, um, 4— no, 5. 5 reasons why is this happening. One, there is so much content out there. There are not only just the content on YouTube has gotten so much better and so much more quantity. We have streaming platforms, we have podcasts, we have books— remember those? We have memberships. And it just inside the homestead world There are— when we started out, Rebecca and I were the first to start vlogging, that style, uh, just follow us along kind of video on YouTube. That was 10 years ago. Now there are countless homesteading vlog channels. I can't even tell you how many there are. You guys want to work on top? The second thing is what we can call the TikTokification from social media. It's good and bad. What happened with TikTok and big success— am I backlit? Pretty backlit. The big success of TikTok and how they were different than other social media platforms is they only— their feed was based only on your interest. So they started giving you what you were interested in, not so much as what you were following. And that has gone across the whole platform of all social media. And of course there's good and bad of it. Just in everything there's a blessing and a curse. But with that, that's kind of what we do. We just— here's what we're doing, but follow along. And so with the death of the follower and the rise of the attention, I can't just, uh, just come along with me and do all these different things and we'll see what happens. Because— and you guys are being— you have to be more careful with your time. I'm careful with my time. You want to be really intentional about intentional— what's that word— intentional about what you're watching. You want to know what you're getting into. I don't know if I'll be able to get all these sweet potatoes in here. I got to get these up because it's going to be, uh, these have cured. It's going to be like, uh, it's going to be 27 degrees tonight. The third thing is when we started, everybody was watching on their computers, so that's a different kind of vibe. And then people started watching more and more on their phones, and now believe it or not, most people are watching YouTube on their TVs. And so think about what's happening. It's a good thing and it's a bad thing, right? People, families are getting together and watching together. Perhaps you're looking at YouTube for entertainment. You're going to want a— well, you know what you're going to want? You're going to want TV. Remember in the '90s, some of you, when there were TV shows? Those were 22 minutes plus 8 minutes of ad. There's 22 minutes. Notice what's working on YouTube now. About 20 minutes. But it's not the 22-minute everyday show. Unless I'm of course, The Price is Right. Didn't that come on today? Or Wheel of Fortune? Jeopardy? Maybe that's what I should be doing. Maybe I'm just the everyday reality TV show. But it's— as much as I want it to work, it's not. It's not working. Maybe I will find a way to make it work. Maybe I will find a way to just tell one story in one day and just rest that it's not all spectacular. That leads me to this: there's not always something exciting happening on the homestead. And that's the truth of homesteading. It's, it's very monotonous, so it's quite the challenge to make something fresh and new every day. But what's happening here is we've sort of arrived. We've got our— we've got down to milking our own cow. We've milked every day for— since 2018, so we're going on 7 years. We're down with our pigs. We've got our systems established for our chickens. Our garden is as big as it's ever going to be. Chiefly, our kids are growing up. Jonah and Josiah are milking the cow. I'm not even really needed out there anymore. So we're in this like middle, midlife change that's going on. We've arrived on the farm. Sure, there's always more to do, and but I'm always— I'm not always involved, so I end up with some of the work of— we're doing bone broth a lot. Like, how much can I show that in a day? And I would say the fifth reason, or the fifth thing, is perhaps I'm burnt out. I don't know if this is going to be any easier, making more special videos, even though they're less frequently, it's still— I think it might even be more work. So perhaps we're burnt out on the daily, just the what's the content, what's going on. Maybe I can get to a space one day. Maybe we'll try it in December. We'll do a Vlogmas or something. We'll give you 12 Days of Christmas or something, and I'll try to just pick one story because I won't jump on my head. Should we get into that? Yeah, I think, I think we should get into that. This one-story concept and what we're gonna do about, about this. We might not be able to do this up here because of this wind. We can try. Anyway, we gotta bury this thing. What are we gonna do about this? We're gonna do what other successful YouTubers have done. It means less is more. So quality is now winning over quantity in the new attention social media realm. Create special videos that you won't want to miss. You can't resist clicking on the title. Videos like, "I didn't eat food for 40 days." That kind of thing. I even hired a YouTube coach about a year and a half ago. I guess we were living in the cabin and he was saying, "Yeah, quality over quantity. Even if you go down to 3 videos a week, it's better." And that's what I did at the time. And we did do better, but I just— I don't know. I just chickened out. I couldn't hold on to it for the long term. I'm just familiar with this 5 to even 6 to 7 days a week vlog that made us, that got us this success, that, that got us here, that got us out of diving in the dumpsters and living on food assistance and renting out our spare bedroom. It got us out of that. And I realized what got us out of that isn't going to get us there. But that's hard because it did work for so long. And my fellow YouTubers agree. I mean, we— I was— I had a mastermind with Morgan Gold and Jessica Sowards, and they were— yeah, quality over quantity these days. That's where, that's where things are going. And I just spilled my heart out to them, and they heard it, and they're fulfilling some of the same things. And it's just hard as it is to believe, that's the reality. Time out, time out. It's just, it's just too much.
It's just too much.
I know what's gonna work. I can identify it in 5 or 6 points. Can y'all still hear me for this wind? Number 1, it has to be one bigger story. Now it doesn't have to be gigantic. It could be like my garlic story that we posted on Thursday. We just planted garlic, but it was enough for a show. And it was one story. Two, if you don't have an irresistible title and thumbnail, nobody's gonna click, nobody's gonna be inspired, nobody's gonna learn, nobody's gonna grow. Three, you gotta hook. You gotta hook right in the beginning. That I need to work on. Need to hook y'all continually through the story. In other words, you need reason to keep watching. Right now, hopefully I've hooked you with this shovel and with this camera. Am I really gonna bury this thing? I've gotten a little off my notes, so I don't know how many points are there. The next point we have is you need a good payoff. I'll be honest, sometimes it's run out of energy by the end of the day of vlog. I've just kind of forgotten about it, and then it's a real quick, oh, this is what we did. Oh yeah, happy day. A good story has a happy ending, and we're alive at the end of the day. That's happy. But you A good story has a good payoff. YouTube, you all, we're not gonna call it the algorithm because the logarithm is people. YouTube's just getting better at serving you all what you actually want to see, and you want payoff. Here's one more. What is it? I lost my notes. I lost my notes. I can't believe I forgot this last week. I'm gonna need the notes anyway for the rest of the show. Hold on.
That's it.
As frequent as possible. Thinking 3 days a week, that might be too much. I don't know, it might be too little. If we have things going on, which we will more in the spring and summer, then maybe it makes sense to make 5 videos. But right now in the winter, put a little more thought, put a little more story and scripting into these things and post 1, 2. My goal would be 3. It's stressing me out because I'm not homesteading right now. I'm used to just documenting what we're doing on the homestead. I'm not making this up, I'm not creating. This is documenting what's really going on in our lives right now, which is neat. I want to like this. It's just I'm 47 years old now. I guess I'm having a hard time with change. I've even done some of this this year, and we've done well. Even cut back on frequency. Remember when I posted the pantry surprise for my wife Rebecca? Yeah, I was doing 3 times a week. They were more intentional, and that video and others like it did well. It's going to take time. This is risk. I'm scared. This is entrepreneurship. You're along for the ride. Let me know if there's any kind of content you would like to see. But I think this is fitting. Out of nowhere, Jessica Soward texts me this post she saw about this issue, change. I think it might be fitting. Eulogy. And this is from Joshua Heath Scott. Successful creators and innovators often get stuck maintaining what made them successful. Kodak invented digital photography but buried it to protect film sales. They had the path but were afraid to take it. It almost killed them. The next version of you and your work will threaten the current one. Do it anyway. You've already done what you've already done. It's over. Admit it. Make what's next. Staying there is simply insecurity dressed up as safety. It'll be uncomfortable. It'll be more work. People will be unhappy with your choices. People will disconnect. People will join you. People will love it. All of this is true. All of it. You get to move on. You don't have to stay in the rut because the rut is still seeming succeedingly successful. Don't be Kodak. Don't stay somewhere that keeps you from risking what needs to be risked.
