Touching Base - Youtube - Blogging - Monetising

Wow February already! how did that happen? This year seems to have started with such a whirlwind, and I have hardly had chance to sit and recap and organise things.

Regulars readers might have noticed my slight silence over the past couple of weeks, I didn't even manage to post up a Silent Sunday last week, which is a shame, as I haven't missed many of them over the lifetime of my blog, and I didn't even post about Jakes birthday - I am now a mother of an 11 year old and it doesn't really seem possible, maybe I'm in denial (if I don't blog it can I pretend it didn't happen?)

So what has been happening? (Other than spending 4 days last week feeling REALLY poorly, which is the reason for the absent Silent Sunday!) There has also been some more exciting, less sickly things.

Just after Christmas I was nosing around online, like I spend most of my days, and I happened to stumble across a article about a young girl who had made some make up tutorials on youtube and had managed to build up a bit of an income, it interested me enough to pop over to youtube to take a look at her channel. (the articles here if you fancy a look)

It intrigued me because I also have a youtube channel, although I am terribly  neglectful of it, and to be honest have spent very little time and effort on the videos that are there. A few months ago when I last checked I was surprised to see that my videos had attracted a few hundred thousand views. (555,000 back in April 2012 when I last checked)

So upon visiting youtube to see the channel in the article, which had just shy of 2 million views, I decided I should sign into my own channel and take a look how it was doing, I had noticed the option to turn on adverts several months ago, but I dismissed it because I was never sure if the income would ever amount to much.

However I was gobsmacked to see the view count rocketing over 2.5 million for my videos, meaning I had had more views than the channel in the article, I then pondered what had I missed out on by NOT adding the ads all those months ago.

So with the gentle shove from Hannah - A New Addition, I added the ads to my youtube. this was a fairly straight forward process, which I wish I had done years ago. And I sat back being rather sceptical thinking that maybe I would see a few pounds in their after a few months, but how wrong was I!

The very next day I had an email in my inbox telling me to verify my adsence address and bank details as I had hit the payment bracket  to update these details, I was shocked and signed into my account to see over £10 sitting there already. I did as it asked and a week later I had a fully verified account and over £60 in the account, now 3 weeks later I have over £220 clocked up!

I was abit overwhelmed by this, having been so unsure about the revenue you can make using adsence, and was eager to know more, so I took to google+ and decided to go and try to find some info, I found a really great community with some helpful people in it, I joined, and joined in a few discussion, and am trying to find some spare time to put things into practise.

I wanted to share my experience so I offered to join in with IzziWizzi playfest on blogging, if your not familiar with IzziWizzi kids then take a look at my video below, and come over to join in on Twitter or facebook, there are lots of great bloggers there sharing advice.



As you can see I'm not a natural behind a camera, I am somewhat unnatural behind it, infact I'd say I am totally useless, and most of my videos include the same unplanned errmming and aarring because I never think to plan and read from a script! But  I do want to improve my videos so I am going to try to experiment abit more with some hints and tips I have picked up the past couple of weeks and hope to make them less cringe worthy, and if you have a youtube account, even if you think your videos aren't that great, do look out for the monetise option, and add it when it appears!

On other news, somewhere along my travels round the interweb, I managed to attract the attention of a SEO who needed a hand with some graphic design, and we hooked up on Google+  and struck a deal which I hope continues with exciting things in the future.

You may remember this post I wrote at the start of January, pondering what the year would bring, the last couple of weeks  have far surpassed my expectations and I feel like I am the start of a new journey with my blog, but am not really sure which direction it will take yet. I don't know if I should take a minute to sit back and plan, or just carry on like I always do.. I guess I will just keep on carrying on, and holding on tight!