June 2013 Income and Youtube Channel Analytics

So, since publishing my first income report, it has become the 7th most popular piece of content on my site (in case you're wondering, my EVA module tutorial remains #1, followed by the tutorial listing page and the others are related to my Views series in some way). Anyways, seems like there is some interest in the topic so figure I'll keep it going.

Before sharing the June results, there are a couple things to note because June was an interesting month:

I took a vacation with my wife to St. Martin from May 30 to June 6 and didn't do any web work between May 30 and June 10 (including tutorials).
My site went down on 3 different occasions ranging from 1 day to 2 days at a time. This was INSANELY frustrating. Once was because the apache service stopped on my server while I was in St. Martin without internet access (it was $16/day so I didn't get it every day) and the others were due in part to Host Gator deciding to migrate my site to a new server. Won't get into the challenges here but may post about lessons learned when I have some time.
I got a lot of unexpected web work in June. A few clients ramped up their projects and I got the unexpected opportunity to work with Acquia to update the Flag Friend module. Still excited about that and hugely appreciative of Socketwench for putting them on to me and Katie for reaching out with the opportunity. The patch is 99% done and you can check it out here.
I only posted 2 video tutorials in June. This was disappointing but with the vacation and extra web work, I just didn't have the time to do more.

So that all said, I definitely have bigger plans in July. I'm starting to plan a number of different video tutorials series, trying to do a better job of coordinating materials across them, building from the ground up to create a foundation for new Drupal users and different threads they can follow to learn more. I'm really pumped about this and will be posting updates on my site as the materials develops. I'm also thinking about writing an e-book or two, time permitting, and need to get my email newsletter going again.

Make sure to check out come back to the site for updates.

June 2013 Income

Adsense (TWD.com and a small niche site) - $35.33, -$21.25 from May
Youtube Adsense (estimated) - $171.03 - +$5.39 from May
Tutorial sales on TWD.com - 7 tutorials bought, $117.94, -6 tutorials and -$104.71 from May
Host Gator affiliate sales - $50, +$50 from May

Total - $374.30, -$70.57 from June

Income Notes

I should mention, the Youtube adsense is estimated because YouTube doesn't confirm earnings until the middle of the month and I didn't want to wait that long for my report. Additionally, it's awesome to get a Host Gator affiliate sale. Despite my difficulties with them recently, their technical support is awesome and very responsive. I still recommend them as a host BUT they have changed their affiliate payout policy. Essentially, Host Gator don't pay out until you have $100 earned commissions (or 2 commissions) and if you don't earn a second within 180 days of the first, you lose that commission. That definitely sucks and I'm hoping someone out there needs hosting and clicks through my affiliate link.

With all that, it's a little disappoint to see my income slip but like I mentioned in the previous income report, not surprising. May was an awesome month and my best to date, "passive" income wise. And though my "passive" income slipped, I managed to take 12 days away from all work to relax and vacation while still earning a few hundred dollars. I also earned more through regular web development in May but that's bittersweet as that income comes in addition to a full time job unrelated to Drupal and my leisure time is obviously limited.

June YouTube Analytics

Total number of videos as of June 30, 2013 - 57, +2 more than May 30, 2013
Video Views - 24,236, -3,570 less than May
Estimated Minutes Watched - 154,485, -18,869 less than May
Likes - 203, -116 less than May
Dislikes - 2, even with May
Comments - 118, -66 less than May
Shares - 6, -10 less than May
Favorites Added - 24, -2 less than May
Subscribers - 260, -14 less than May

Youtube Notes

Damn. It sucks to see the analytics drop like this, no other way to put it. Having my website down for a few days definitely hurt my YouTube stats as I do get at least a couple hundred views a day from it. Combined with the fact that I didn't produce much in June, it's no surprise the stats went down. However, this is clearly motivating for July - wish I'd done the report sooner to be completely honest.

However, there are a few positives here:

Despite the drop, Subscribers remained relatively consistent. This is a huge plus for me as I'm trying to build a community around my videos so having people continue to subscribe to the Channel is great, a clear indication that people are still thirsty for Drupal knowledge.
While my newest video tutorials on the Heartbeat module haven't been overly popular, I've gotten a great positive response from them. While the most recent video tutorial has only been viewed 56 times, it has gotten the thumbs up 15 times. Almost 1 in 4 people has liked the video. That's awesome.

Asking people to leave a comment, give a video a thumbs up, or subscribe has proven successful. I've tested it by mentioning it at the beginning of a video, not mentioning it at all, mentioning it at the end of a video and just including text requesting it during the title screen.

Obviously not requesting it and requesting it at the end of a video has sucked, both terrible responses. When I didn't ask for this at the beginning of a video but included it in the title text, I got 3 thumbs up in 132 views but when I did ask for it explicitly at the beginning of a video, I got 15 likes on 56 views. Clearly there are other factors but explicitly asking the help has had a positive impact and I'll be sure to keep asking for the same help to promote the videos as YouTube takes viewer engagement into account when suggesting videos.

As I mentioned earlier, I have big plans for the next couple of months in terms of tutorial production so I can hopefully turn these analytics around for the July report.

Top 10 Videos

VIDEO

VIEWS

ESTIMATED MINUTES WATCHED

AVERAGE VIEW DURATION

Drupal 7 Views Module Tutorial 1 of 10: Getting Started with Views

2,531

15,047