The Not-So-Glamorous Story of How My YouTube Channel Blew Up

Comments: 1

Wanted to tell ya a quick story.

It’s about the one defining moment when my YouTube channel blew up. And really launch-padded my music career.

Well… not exactly millions of views or anything. But in my little world of Oshkosh Wisconsin it felt like it. It was really exciting to me at the time.

Actually, before I tell you what happened, I have to tell you honest-truth (and not-so-glamorous) start my YouTube channel.

I’d got the idea to start a YouTube channel way back in 2012. I rode my bike over to Best Buy and bought a cheap $50 flip-cam and borrowed an old tripod from a friend and headed down to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh practice rooms.

The first piano video I ever uploaded was the song “Lollipop” by Lil Wayne (yes, you’re reading that correctly!). I thought it sounded so cool to take a gangsta-rap song and play it on piano (it’s still up, you can watch the video here!).

It literally took me 2 months to learn…

…and on top of that when I recorded it it took me 27 takes before I finally played it perfectly start to finish.

I’m not exaggerating…

And then I realized I hadn’t hit record on the camera… and had to do another 6 takes to get it right… ?

But it didn’t matter, I was excited. THIS was the video that was going to BLOW ME UP!

Ya know, it’d go viral and then some big record label head would say “WOW we need to sign this guy ASAP!!!”

I uploaded it at 11:30 at night and went to bed dreaming of my success.

Woke up at like 6 in the morning.

My brain: “Yo this video is BLOWING UP you probably have at least a million views on it! Go check!!”

The Stone-Cold Reality: 7 views…

Seven.

…

Then my Mom calls me a few hours later “Wow Zach I loved your YouTube video!! I just watched it like 5 times in a row!”

I did the math. Other than me and my mom I literally had one single gosh-darn view…

LOL

But if there’s one thing my Dad taught me, it’s that ya don’t quit (I have an interesting story about THAT as well… it involves my twin older brothers and a wrestling match, I’ll tell ya about it sometime 🙂

So for the next 2 years I uploaded a new video. Every. Single. Week.

82 videos later and guess what… NONE of them blew up.

Not a single one.

Then on video #83 everything changed…

Taylor Swift just released her 1989 album and I was listening to it on repeat.

(I’m a huge T Swift fan btw… don’t hate my guy friends give me enough crap about it already 😉

So after lunch, like usual, I brought the old-trusty flip cam down to the piano rooms and had my friend record me. This time did it in one take 😀

The next morning I opened up my email.

Huh?

I rubbed my eyes.

What I was seeing must be wrong…

My entire Gmail inbox was FILLED with YouTube comments and subscribers.

Must be some sort of weird glitch. Stupid computer. Refresh.

Nope not a glitch…

Then page 2… page 3… ALL filled to the brim with comments and subscribers.

Woah.

Suddenly my phone rings. It’s 8:30 AM. It’s my friend Chaz.

“Duuuude! Your new video is BLOWING UP!”

I went to YouTube and he was right.

Over 10,000 views in a DAY. It felt crazzzy.

My Mom called me an hour later (she’s my biggest fan… love ya Mom!). When I went to class that day everyone was talking about it. People I didn’t even really know that well were coming up to me and asking me about the video.

I checked my Facebook and my friends were raving. One friend back from high school even posted “I knew this guy before he was famous!”

I felt like a friggin’ celebrity.

I mean, lets put this in perspective. it was literally only 10,000 views. But 2015 in a small town it feels like its blowing up.

And man I gotta say, even though I’ve had videos blow up since then, I still haven’t felt as cool as that first time one of my videos did well.

And it made those gosh-darn 3 years all worth it.

The subscribers and followers (btw are we friends on Instagram? If not, follow me on Facebook or Instagram @zachevansmusic 🙂 I got from that video made it that much easier to get traction on future videos, and it was the start to the rest of my music career.

The video’s still up by the way, you can watch it here.

Hope ya enjoyed the story. And if there’s something in your life you worked really hard on and almost gave up, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I bet there are a lot of folks out there who’ve given up on something not knowing that success was just around the corner.

And those folks could use a story or two to help them stay inspired.

See ya in the next one,

-Zach

One Comment