LLC: Feelings About the First 2 Months & 2025 Strategy

I have been working long hours every day since I left my corporate job. These hours haven’t produced much revenue so far, but the revenue I have produced in the first two months has been the most rewarding money I’ve ever earned. There is something beautiful about making money doing what I actually want to do. It’s far from sustainable. Maybe it can cover the matcha lattes I’ve loved this year. Or a few grocery store trips. But I initially set out to earn $1 outside of a corporate job, and I far exceeded that expectation. That’s got to count for something.  

What am I doing with the money? My plan is, 1. Putting it back into the business and if I succeed, 2. Saving money in case I have kids one day and they need to go to college.

I thought it might be fun to write about what I'm working on short-term and long-term. Also, I want to keep a record of how I feel right now about each part of what I'm working on and how I think I'll feel about it later. Especially because the list gets larger every few weeks. At some point soon, I need to focus my effort on one or two things, max.

YouTube (increase hours in 2025)

This is what I set out to do, with an interest in the future in editing videos more prolifically or even for a movie one day. As I learn more about movies, it feels more like something I might want to be a part of but only in a limited way. I wouldn't want that to take over my life. I would like to make one feature film some day. And editing YouTube is very very different, but it still gets me editing. I feel amazing when I'm editing videos, and often feel terrible when I'm not editing videos. There's something about the dance of mixing together videos and music and timing it, thinking of the colors that work and when, that keeps me interested. 

YouTube is pretty hard to do often, though. I think people can get burned out really easily. Sometimes pouring 10-50 hours into a short video that isn't commercial enough to get attention on the internet can be very disheartening. I feel okay about it. At first I obsessively checked my YouTube Studio app where they post statistics. After a while I stopped doing that so often and focused more on what my next video will be and used the app more to respond to comments.

I still remember when I first started last year. Most of the views were from myself. And a lot of videos resulted in zero comments or just one. Just one comment seemed like the most exciting thing in the world. Now I think I've met enough people on YouTube who genuinely like seeing the content and even feel comforted by it, which is a beautiful blessing. So I'm not as worried about the numbers now, but the numbers get you paid, so I am concerned.

I put a lot more effort into editing and writing my watch videos. If I can channel that level of intensity and effort into videos of other topics, I might be able to keep this a variety channel. I have to because there is no way for me to talk about watches in every video, anyway. I have never wanted to make a channel centered around one type of material object. My first and core goal has always been to just connect with people and show them I am there for them. And that can take on different forms.

I need to write slightly more commercial titles and create more commercial thumbnails, so I'm trying to find the balance where it feels like me and maybe it's a bit funny but it's still going to evoke enough curiosity for someone to click on it.

The last month or so I feel like I didn't put as much time into YouTube as I wanted, but I think it's my favorite thing. Going forward I need to make sure I spend at least half of each week on it. I just notice my happiness improve a lot when I'm creating videos.

I don't like being visually present in a lot of my video time, but my audience seems to prefer it. I think that's fair because otherwise it doesn't feel like they're hanging out with me. I've become more accepting of my face and my voice but it's taken time. I feel cringey when I see it everywhere on my channel, but I really don't get many views when my thumbnail doesn't include my face or when I don't use a lot of my face during the length of the video.

I know a lot of people who grow their presence online need to post on subreddits that allow self-promotion, niche places that would appreciate their content, wherever that may be. I haven't gotten to the point where I feel comfortable doing that, but I need to remember spending one day a week "marketing" myself is probably important. Maybe I can group that with responding to comments so I know I'm just being genuine and talking to people. But as I go about my life, I have found that I don't enjoy the "marketing" aspect of things at all.

Online Store (decrease hours in 2025)

I wanted to just make something beautiful for the YouTube channel instead of a merch store. I did. But I need to scale back on how much time I put into this. It doesn't make me happy to do every day, but I love to have a store. I have had a lot of fun packaging things up for happy customers. Now that it's running on its own and I just need to add the occasional item, I think I can scale back my hours on this. But on that marketing day of the week, I still need to send out emails to people.

I also created an Instagram for the store but I highly doubt I will put much time into it. I need to force myself to post there once a week, but I shouldn't feel any pressure to post more than that if I don’t enjoy Instagram.

eBay (decrease hours in 2025)

We have an eBay store selling things from our house. It isn't an official business thing at all. But I wanted to note it because it's really fun and much easier to run than the store. Because eBay is one big search engine and you can post auctions, inventory moves faster. The eBay fee is really high, unfortunately. I keep forgetting about that. So you need to hold onto your things for years to viably make money on them. Or you can post things at higher prices with a Make Offer option for the customer and just see what happens.

I enjoy cleaning old things or finding clean old things from Goodwill and random stores from around the South. It's just not a viable full-time job because of how slow things are. But I would like to get better at it or even have a real store on there one day.

Because it's not a very profitable path, I need to probably scale back on this too. If I can find items with higher margins, I can keep the hours I’m putting in now.

This blog! (increase hours in 2025)

Oh, I love blogging. I really miss it. This blog is from 2006 and it's a miracle it's still up. I have never been able to get ads running on it. Maybe one day. I'll try my best to keep it minimal if I do.

Twitch (occasional evenings)

This happens some evenings but it isn't my absolutely favorite thing in the world. I would rather play video games on a CRT and not be connected to the internet. Gaming has always been more of my time to relax than to be online. I wish I could stream more because it's really fun to talk to people live, but I have very little energy to do it on days when I’m talking to myself. I want to make sure I come back to this. Maybe when my YouTube is bigger and more people have questions I can answer live. The times I have streamed with people chatting (with me and also with each other) have been incredibly fun.

Approximate May 2025 Plan

So now I think I have a rough schedule. I never stick to schedules but this gives me a guideline.

Monday: Learning day for YouTube / Script writing or filming

Tuesday: Script writing or filming

Wednesday: Editing

Thursday: Editing

Friday: Marketing on Reddit?, blogging on Blogspot, style tips for store customers, Instagram photos on personal account or online store (Blogging is there because I need to put something that I actually like but it’ll happen throughout the week)

Saturday/Sunday: Rest or Editing

Listening: number one girl by ROSÉ