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Florin Pop
Florin Pop

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at florin-pop.com

My first week on YouTube

I’ve been dreaming for years to start creating YouTube videos and it finally happened! 😍

Last week I had the courage to create my first YouTube video - and it was an amazing experience!

In this article I’m going to tell you all the ins and outs of my first week as a YouTuber (as I guess I am one now, right? 😆

My Drive

I love creating things. I’ve created hundreds of small to medium sized projects/apps over the years (you can find a lot of them on CodePen). I even created the #100Days100Projects challenge because of my passion for building things. I wanted to push myself to the limit.

Followed right after my passion for building stuff is my passion for helping others learn how to build stuff too (you can call it teaching if you want). This is one of the reasons why I created my blog. (It’s all about us learning and building stuff at the end of the day 😆)

So there you have me: creating, teaching via articles... so the next logical step would be: me teaching/showing via video, right? 😄

And that’s what I did. 👍

The struggle

It was hard to make the first step as I’ve been struggling to fight my “perfectionism syndrome” (if that’s a thing) because of my fear of being judged.

“Booo.. what iss with this piece of ... 🦄?”

“You are the worst!”... and stuff like that (which was probably just in my mind anyways).

But then I watched this YouTube video which said: Build 100 crappy YouTube videos (Like Mr Beast and PewDiePie Did!) and it changed my perspective at 180 degrees.

.my-perspective {
    transform: rotateY(180deg);
}

(a lil' bit of CSS, shall we? ) 🤪

So… the first video doesn’t have to be perfect (and it probably won’t ever be perfect), buuut… who cares? It’s not about perfection. It’s about progress.

Be better today than you were yesterday. As simple as that!

This idea wasn’t just doable for me, but it also removed all the anxiety I had and it gave me the required push to start. 💪

The Beginning

Ok... so I had my drive up and running, but now what? 😅

I watched a billion videos but I never thought: “Hmm… I wonder how they made this video 🤔”... So I had to learn what it takes to create a video from 0 to hero.

One good thing about all of this was the fact that I’ve been doing some Live Streaming over on Twitch so I had a tiny bit of experience with recording my screen and my voice (although it was faaaar from being even decent 😆).

So I basically just had to record myself while I’m coding and explaining what I’m doing in the process. Simple, right?

Wrooong… 👎

Apparently it’s much harder to code and talk at the same time while you’re thinking about the fact that this video will go up on the internet and everyone will be able to see what you’re doing wrong. Not only once, but over and over again. 😅

Long story short… I spent the ENTIRE DAY recording and I ended up with a 4 minute long video 😂.

There were a TON of: ummms, uuupsies, typing errors, hard breading, forgetting my thoughts and all the things that you don’t usually see in a YouTube video, so I had to crop it out!

And here comes another skill which I had to learn: Video editing 🎥.

I spent a good amount of time asking around other YouTubers what they’re using to edit their videos and I ended up downloading DaVinci Resolve. Why? Well, it was free (1) and I found a nice introductory video about it (2). But mostly because (1). 😂

Oh yeah… and there is also the audio…

I don’t have a “fancy” microphone yet so I had to use my iPhones headphones, which obviously doesn’t sound very well, but… I found this interesting article and I made it sound much better. It’ll work until I’m going to get one of those “fancy” microphones (should arrive in 1-2 weeks 👍).

First video - feedback

So after my first video was recorded, edited and uploaded to YouTube I went ahead and posted it on Social Media.

For the record... I started my day tweeting that I’m going to make my first YouTube video that day, so I gave myself no chance of giving up. I had to do it and apparently this was a good idea as I ended up making the video after all.

I kept tweeting along the way (“I recorded it”... “I’m editing it”... etc) and in the end when I actually tweeted the link to the video I was AMAZED by the huge support I got from my twitter followers! (I love you guys so much! 💜)

In the first 2-3 hours I got 100 subscribers (which was amazing) and then, the next day: 300 subs. 😱

And there were also the comments… so supportive! 💜

We have a wonderful, supportive community of developers across the entire world!

Future plans

There are things I want to improve on my future videos, but for now I'm focusing on:

  • better audio (by buying a "fancy" microphone)
  • background sound
  • better screen recording + maybe add camera to make it more personal (let me know if that's something you'd like to see or you don't care about my face showing up in the video 😂)
  • having an intro and an outro

But I believe that the most important thing is: quality content. So that's my main focus.

Takeaways

If there would be something I wish you guys learn from this blog post that would be:

If you are planning to do something for a long time… just START doing it!

Don’t plan too much. Don’t stress too much about it. Just DO IT!

Yes. It won’t be perfect. But it will be something and the last time I checked: 1 out of 100 (100 being perfection) is bigger than 0 (nothing).

It won’t be perfect, but you’ll learn a lot in the process and at the end of the day that's important. Be a better version of yourself, little by little.

I wish you all the best on your journey (whichever that is)! 😃

P.S. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel by clicking here.

Top comments (20)

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davehoran profile image
Dave Horan

Getting started is always the hard part. it will never be perfect, but post it ANYWAY. You're off to a great start. After you do this for awhile, you will look back at your old videos and see how far you've come. This is a great thing for you, but also for others who have wanted to share what they have learned, but were too afraid to get started. Well done.

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

This is why I shared my experience. I know that out there are a lot of "scared" people like I was and all they need is a little push, so I gave it to them (as it was given to me 😊)

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pavelloz profile image
Paweł Kowalski • Edited

It was hard to make the first step as I’ve been struggling to fight my “perfectionism syndrome” (if that’s a thing) because of my fear of being judged.

Hehe, we are all the same :))

Highly recommend howtoegghead.com - free resources on how to improve your screencast game :)

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szhabolcs profile image
Nagy Szabolcs

I'm entirely amazed by this article alone to be honest. 😮
I laughed way more on your jokes than I expected it 😂.
It was just so great reading about you overcoming your problems, and doing something this amazing!

I'm looking forward to your other articles!

Tot așa mai departe! A, și mult noroc cu canalul de Youtube! 😄

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

I’m glad that it was useful for you! ☺️

Multumesc frumos! 😃

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areknawo profile image
Arek Nawo

Interesting, I wish you success with your channel! I’ve also started my own over a week ago, but I’ve got only ~30 subscribers. Can you give me any feedback/advice?

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

Well... I got a good following on Twitter, and that helped me get the ball rolling.

But I’d say you should keep going!

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el_alien profile image
Eduardo Alvarez

Hi thanks for the post, Im actually planning to do a channel really soon, im starting with text articles to practice script writting. So your post is actually encouraging!

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

I’m glad it helps! 😊

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boobo94 profile image
Bogdan Alexandru Militaru

Good luck. I wait for your second video :D

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

I have 3 videos already. Check them out on my channel 😃

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boobo94 profile image
Bogdan Alexandru Militaru

Interesting.. thanks for feedback

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bettercodingacademy profile image
Better Coding Academy

But I believe that the most important thing is: quality content. So that's my main focus.

Love this! Will be following your journey 🙌

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

Thank you Lucas!

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datmt profile image
Mạnh Đạt

Nearly 500 subs already! Congrats!

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

Thank you!

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codenutt profile image
Jared

Wow, killing it! Ive had my channel for a year and have 18 subs lol That twitter following you got must have helped quite a bit. Congrats!

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florinpop17 profile image
Florin Pop

It helped a lot indeed! 😃

Thank you!

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dpashutskii profile image
Dmitrii Pashutskii

Congrats, man! I've spent on YouTube almost a year and it was pleasure experience in a lot of ways.
Probably gonna return on UT in a couple of hours with coding as well.