Let me start by saying that I love making videos for my viewers…but, with that being said, YouTube has made this experience more than challenging. If you’re thinking of starting a crafting channel on YouTube, and don’t have a big YouTuber in your pocket, who will recommend your videos frequently, my advice is to maybe reconsider. YouTube has changed their algorythms, and are not recommending videos on crafting, unless you have a ton of views on your last video. Additionally, they don’t recommend craft videos because they want viewers to watch a lot of videos in one sitting, and they assume viewers will watch a craft video and stop watching to make that project…Unless, of course, your last video had a ton of views, that seems to override all other changes.

Let me explain this another way. If you had 40,000 views on your most recent video, YouTube will put your next video on every crafter’s “next videos to watch” list. If your last video had 500 views, your next video may drop into obscurity.

Additionally, and this doesn’t affect many YouTubers, OK, just me…..If you are non-monetized, meaning you make no money from YouTube videos (like me), then YouTube doesn’t make money either, so why promote your videos….the answer is, they don’t. So unless your subscribers are asking to get notified of your most recent video, no one will know you have any videos to watch. I realize that YouTube is in this to make money, but can’t they make exceptions for people who just want to help others (like me,) but aren’t looking to make money from the experience? It’s disheartening to see my video views drop from several hundred with each new video, to less than two hundred and have no idea what I could be doing differently to get more views…

The reason I care about the number of views my videos receive, is because I want as many people with limited hand/wrist mobility to know they have a voice on YouTube. They can find videos on a wide variety of crafts that they should be able to master. The more views, the more people I’m helping, and that’s the reason I do this.

I’d love to have ideas on how to change the trajectory of my channel, but have no one to ask. And even if I did contact YouTube and had a live person to discuss this with, (which they don’t offer channels of my size,) I’m sure their answer would be to monetize.

If you watch Lindsay the frugal crafter’s videos, I’m sure you’ve noticed her videos have almost completely eliminated crafts to instead, focus on art. It’s no surprise why she’s making this change. Her income depends on the views she gets, and when YouTube changed their algorythm, her video ideas had to change with it. It’s sad to see this, since for many of us, Lindsay’s channel was the forerunner for a lot of crafty channels, including mine.

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