Third Time's a Charm (Maybe)

October 11, 2012. That's when I started my YouTube channel. I'd watched my share of videos and figured I could give it a go. I had a little background in video, a Nikon D300s with video capabilities, and more confidence than sense. Let's do it.

It stalled after a few months. I forgot all about it.

The channel went through more identities than I can count. I renamed it GuamPhotographer and posted model showcases. Nothing. It sat there collecting dust for years. Every now and then I'd poke at it, upload something, lose interest, disappear again.

Thirteen years later — early 2025 — I decided to give it one last shot. I renamed it The Traveling Photog because I was traveling constantly and thought maybe people would care about that. I watched more videos than I made — how-to's, editing tutorials, channel growth strategies. I studied the thing I was trying to do.

It grew. Slowly. Twenty subscribers became a hundred, and that felt like something. I kept going. It climbed to around 1,900 and then just... stopped. Flatlined. I was uploading but nothing was moving.

Then a few weeks ago, something shifted. I’m still not entirely sure what. Maybe it was the AI help I started using for titles, descriptions, and thumbnails. Maybe it was timing. Maybe the algorithm just decided it was my turn.

But when I posted a behind-the-scenes video of a portrait session with Seraphina, it hit. Not viral—but big for me. That video climbed past 40,000 views and brought in a significant jump in subscribers.

Follow-up videos with Lesly and Ash showed me it wasn’t a one-off. They didn’t hit the same numbers, but they performed well enough to confirm something was working.

More recently, newer uploads have been mixed. Some are holding, some are slower out of the gate. Which tells me this isn’t something I’ve figured out yet—it’s something I’m still learning in real time.

And I'm still in doubt.

I don't know if I should put all my eggs in this basket yet. But I'm following the formula — same bright yellow thumbnail text, "behind the scenes," AI-assisted titles and descriptions, SEO optimization. I have two videos set to drop on upcoming Fridays and another one I'm working on that'll be in the can soon.

I'm hoping the third time's a charm. But I'm not going to take a breath until maybe after the tenth video. Then I might try something different — put up a travel piece and see if people stick around for that.

I don't know. We'll see.