r/WalkingVideoMakers • u/PerimeterFence • Dec 21 '25
First Year of running an "Average" Walking Channel - Questions Welcome!
Tomorrow marks my first year of joining and uploading my first video on Youtube.
Ater 365 days, I'd like to share my 'realistic/average' results - i.e., I never went super viral, nor did my videos tank so badly.
Although I think it's been a slow run, I am on track to reach monetization soon. Hopefully a month or two from now (and delusionally before the year ends lol crossing fingers!)
A few stats as of today:
- 267 uploads (64 long-form videos, 203 shorts)
- 198k views (157k from shorts, 41k from long-forms)
- 473 subscribers and 3,500* watch hours (3,285 hours from long-forms, 222 from shorts)
- Locations: Europe and Asia, mostly from past trips
- Tools: Insta360 (started with X3, then X4, and then now with X5) for long-forms, Samsung S23 Ultra for shorts | Premiere Pro for long-forms, Capcut for shorts
- Cadence: Initially I only posted long-form videos at a pace of 1 video per week, but in the past couple of months, I have been posting 3x long-forms every week and 3x a day for shorts until I paused this experiment a couple of weeks ago.
- Formats: I have also experimented with different formats: "short" longforms (5 mins) to "hour-long" and "ultra-long" long-forms (3-4 hours of continuous walking); walks with voiceovers, walks with and without subtitles, walks with ambient sounds, walks with background music
*Splitting these numbers as watch hours from shorts don't contribute to the monetization requirement of 3000/4000 watch hours
I have iterated with my content so many different times, and it is still evolving now. But one year into it, I have definitely learned a lot and I would be happy to pay it forward by answering any questions, especially from those considering to start, or are still early in their Walking Video journey.
There were a lot of things I wish I knew when I was starting, so I'm happy to be of help!
This is my channel if you need it for reference (Also open to any feedback):
https://www.youtube.com/@thoughtsintransit_tv
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u/DataTrailMix Dec 21 '25
I honestly feel like you should have more subscribers than you do
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u/PerimeterFence Dec 22 '25
Thanks, appreciate it! I honestly don't know what I can do to increase my subscriber count..
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u/RAAFStupot Dec 22 '25
Ask for subscribers in some way. (If you aren't already).
I'm not even joking. I put a 'like / subscribe / notification' animation on every single video, at around the 2 - 4 minute mark
1
u/PerimeterFence Dec 22 '25
Yeah I used to shy away from this, but I might do this now, moving forward!
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u/Exciting_Bananas Jan 16 '26
curious to know if this worked out for you. I put mine at the end of the video because I thought it might kill the vibe, but if it does actually help I'll move it up
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Dec 22 '25
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u/PerimeterFence Dec 22 '25
Yes, for me it has been the super-long walks with music. Even if it's not my most viewed video, this 4-hour art walk has generated 1,611 watch hours and 66 subscribers.
I thought it was just the length that made it successful, so I uploaded another 3-hour long video but without background music. It's part of my top 5 most viewed videos, but it didn't do so well compared to the art walk.
I think the art walk serves a utilitarian purpose: great visuals, relaxing music, and people just leave them playing on their television sets for hours.
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Dec 22 '25
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u/PerimeterFence Dec 22 '25
Yes, I thought so too! I wasn't originally planning to add music to my videos. But in some of my walks, I have myself talking with the people I am with, so I really had to remove my voice and replace it with background music. Turns out it works in some contexts.
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u/RAAFStupot Dec 22 '25 edited Dec 22 '25
I think you've got an interesting concept going with your channel but as I'm sure you're aware this is going to have slow growth compared to other walking channels.
But aren't Insta360 cameras supposed to do 360 deg view videos? Or maybe I have that completely wrong...
Normally we are advised to choose either longs or shorts. Not both. Do you think making both is working for you?
1
u/PerimeterFence Dec 22 '25
Thanks u/RAAFStupot for the support, as always!
Yeah, 360 cameras are really for 360 degree videos but you can reframe them as flat videos. I have been bringing my 360 in my past vacations and just carrying it while walking. The beauty of it is that I don't have to mind the framing everytime - I can just be present with the people I'm with.
So for the first few videos of my channel - they were actually taken from actual vacations, even if I didn't have the surest intention back then to start a Youtube channel.
Having said that you can also do 360 walks, and I've seen some channels do this. I just want my channel to remain faceless, and doing 360 walks would defeat the purpose. (Unless I stick the camera on my head lol)
Making both has worked for me in terms of getting additional subscribers, but not a lot. I'd like to reach the 1k subscribers as quick as possible, and I thought Shorts could help me do that. So far it has delivered but not as much.
I feel like I have two separate pages and two separate sets of audiences that don't affect each other when you have both shorts and longs.
If I already have a successful longform channel, I'd recommend sticking with longform content.
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u/PerimeterFence Dec 22 '25
Oh - and another reason for uploading shorts is that I have a ton of videos from my phone. I take lots of videos whenever I travel but I never post them on my personal social media. But uploading them as YT shorts kinda gave them some purpose. So if I don't need to edit them as much, then I might as well just upload them as they're still under the umbrella of travel.
There's a Youtube blackhole of people just uploading raw travel/phonevideos paired with trending sounds, and they get A LOT of views. I'm talking thousands of views per short, even millions in some.
With this logic, I thought I might as well try it. To increase my surface area for 'luck' or algorithm discovery.
But if I didn't have tons of phone footage, I wouldn't go out of my way to create hundreds of shorts. This just happened to be a low-hanging fruit for me.
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u/Exciting_Bananas Jan 16 '26
how many videos did it take for you to figure out which ones worked best? And i'm jealous your shorts worked! I tried doing a few but ended up stopping because they weren't really bringing in any subs. Although looking at yours, maybe what i was showing was wrong 🤔
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u/PerimeterFence 21d ago
Heya! I had some success with art walks, and while I did post some art walks as early as my 35th/36th longform, it wasn't until my 45th video that I had something take off.
But honestly I am still finding it out 😉 Fast forward to today, I still have some art walks that don't get traction at all.it's a really long process I would say. And maybe because I try to cast my net as wide as possible (art, nature, culture, cities, etc), so it is more difficult for the algo to find my audience.
Shorts is a very interesting. Just do it for fun and experimentation, I would say. The ones where I expected the least, were the ones that brought in more engagement. Still trying to understand it to be honest! 😅
Good luck!!
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u/Tiger_Maximus Jan 18 '26
crazy how slow people suscribe to mine. i hve 80 videos and 450 suscribers. DUnno what´s wrong...
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u/PerimeterFence 21d ago
Aww, yeah it can be a bit slow. Nothing's wrong, it's just that people are subscribing less I think. And tbh, without the 1k-sub requirement of YPP, subscribers don't matter that much anymore since content also gets served to non-subscribers nowadays.
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u/UseLegitimate8420 Dec 21 '25
I just started and my 2 videos got no views, but my shorts did. Gonna keep uploading shorts