My YouTube channel hit 15,000!

Hi!  This is a quick post to thank everyone who is subscribed to my YouTube channel and / or blog!

My YouTube channel hit a major milestone of 15,000 subscribers!   

I had promised that once the channel reached this goal, I would offer to help up to 5 artists with their pyrography projects.  I say up to 5, because if only one person asks for help, then I’ll be helping just that one person.   

The artists will be selected using a YouTube random comment picker.  If you would like to be considered, then you will need to leave a comment on the YouTube video.  Here’s a link to that video:  https://youtu.be/OSAvRwJHJLc 

You can also click on the video thumbnail to view the video.   

You have until December 6th to leave a comment. 

On December 7th I will announce the selected artists.   

Assuming everyone sends me promptly sends me a photo of their artwork, I should have the resulting video ready in 4-5 days.   

All of the artwork critiques will be contained in one video that will be public to anyone who wants to view them on YouTube.

A little about my website.

You might be wondering how many blog subscribers I have.  You know, I can’t tell you.  A year or two ago there was some security update, and my subscriber count never changed from 3,648 after that.   When I researched how to fix this, and contacted the help desk.  I was given a list of things to try to fix it.  I decided it was more work than I was willing to do for something that isn’t all that important to me. 

Plus, I know that people can subscribe to my blog via the WordPress directly.  That number doesn’t show up on my website stats page.  Instead I have to log into a special WordPress account to view it.  Since I only log into that account if there is a problem, I don’t have a clue how many subscribers there are in WordPress directly.    

Given my lackadaisical attitude towards sub counts, you might wonder why I care about my YouTube channel subs?   Quite simply put it’s all about the ad revenue.

Hopefully you’ve noticed that I do not have any advertising on my website.   None.  Zippo.

One thing that drives me nuts is how some sites have so many ads that it interferes with reading the article.  Some popup ad will appear in the middle of the paragraph, or a video box opens up and starts playing.  I hate it!   I have left websites because of the excessive ads.  

When I set up my website I vowed I would never do that!  

What I didn’t know back then was that websites aren’t free.   At first it wasn’t bad because I only had to pay for my name and hosting.   Over the years, my site has gotten bigger.  I now have over 200 blogs and numerous photos on each one. 

Some of the blogs have a very high internet search ranking, and with that came a number of less desirables who leave spam and others who try to hack into my site.

To help keep things secure, I decided to get a SSL certification.   This is a security certificates that provides the https verses http designation.   I also bought a security package that offers site help, offsite backups, spam filters, virus scans, etc.   Once it’s all said and done it costs me about $400 a year to have this website.  I’m happy to say that my YouTube channel pays for that and a little extra. 

If you’re not familiar, YouTube has a few of options when it comes to ads.  I have turned all of them off except an ad that plays at the beginning of the video.  This ad is supposed to be something you can click out of after 4 seconds.  With this most basic ad set up, I’m getting around $100 a month in ad revenue.  I get a little more in the winter, and a little less in the summer.    Yes, my Elon Musk wealth is rather enviable.  🙂 

In all seriousness, the ad revenue is more than enough to pay for the website, and for that I’m very happy!   

That is why I celebrate sub count achievements I reach on YouTube.   Or as Paul Harvey use to say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

Thank you again for subscribing to my site and/or YouTube channel!  I really appreciate it.

Brenda

November 28, 2022

Want to subscribe? 

• Click on the “Leave a Comment” field at the end of any post (blog) and a subscribe option will appear.
• Put something in the comment field (if you put “test” or “just subscribing” I won’t make your comment public)
• Fill in the sections for your email address and name, and then click on the “notify me of new posts via email.”
• You will get a confirmation email from WordPress confirming you want to subscribe.
• Click on the confirm button in that email and you’re done.

Please note that I do not send out emails.   If you have a WordPress account there is a way to subscribe within the WordPress system, but I cannot provide specifics on how it works as I don’t know.