When I started my first Youtube channel in 2018, I didn’t think I’d last long. Many years later, I can’t imagine not creating videos, sharing my journey and my knowledge. Today, I’ll tell you all about why I am not quitting and the future of my channel while dealing with a bunch of trash in the garden and continuing to demolish the garden shed.

When I told you that I was thinking about quitting YouTube, you all were so supportive that it just no longer was an option. So I had to look into–There’s so many cars! I’m giving up. I’ll tell you inside.

When I started my first Youtube channel in 2018, I didn’t think I’d last long. Many years later, I can’t imagine not creating videos, sharing my journey and my knowledge.

Okay, let’s try this again now that I’m inside and the cars can’t be this annoying. When I announced that I was thinking about quitting YouTube, you all were so supportive. And I know that I want to continue telling my story, but I didn’t like what YouTube, aka Google, was doing, so I was doubtful that it was worth all of it. But thanks to you, I found a solution.

But when I told you about my doubts, your support made me realize that I wasn’t imagining people caring. Some of you offered to follow me wherever I take this, and it means the world. Seriously.

For the past months, I’ve been degoogling my life. Not easy for a Youtuber. Degoogling means switching from large corporations like Google to smaller open-source and/or self-hosted services.

Don’t worry, we’ll start dealing with this overgrown mess of a garden next episode 😉

We quit our subscriptions for Netflix, Youtube Premium, Amazon Prime, Dropbox, and many more.

Hold on, I’ll quickly grab some eggs from the neighbor’s chickens under these watchful eyes.

In case you are new here: all this is trash left by the previous owners of the garden plot. I’m slowly dealing with driving it to the dump. The cracked rain barrels are going to the neighbor for feed. Where was I? Right.

My husband set up alternative services on our own servers, and slowly, we moved everything over. I digitized our CDs after we quit Spotify. I transfered all the data to new backup solutions. The headache remained my channel. And that after months of YT going downhill.

At the end of fall, I’d released a summary video of my first three months in this garden. Through that video, I made it past monetization, gained a lot of subscribers, and had two months with many views. But then winter and YT changes turned the trajectory upside down.

Instead of gaining subscribers, getting views (and ad revenue), things spiraled downward. I lost almost a thousand subscribers over the course of a few short weeks. Some of that was people who’d signed up for fast-paced three-month summaries. Some of it was people leaving YT. Some of it was YT cracking down on fake accounts.

It still made me want to give up. The only one making money with my videos was Google. I definitely wasn’t. I’ve made a little under 900 bucks total, almost all of it in the first weeks since monetization.

And to this day, way too many views come from people watching my barefoot video 008 for the wrong reasons. Don’t get me wrong: I am totally fine with those of you here who say it’s lovely when I show my feet. But some of the playlists which list the video…

But then I told you all about my doubts. And you showed me, in the most beautiful way possible, that my viewers were more than foot fetishists, bots, and fake accounts.

You showed me how much you care. Some of you even donated that day. I was overwhelmed to say the least. I can’t say this enough: I appreciate all of you! You are wonderful, and I love this little community.

Side note: despite my best efforts, the stuffing from this disgusting thing spread everywhere.

It took me forever to pick up the tiny pieces of plastic foam. Eugh! But one more round of trash was done, so I felt content–and in need of a bath.

The tulips came and went. I’m thinking what to plant above the bulbs for summer.

I also added goat herding to my achievements that day. She’s not supposed to be in my garden. Once she was safely returned to her sister (and a lunch break and trash drive later), I returned to the garden. There was still the matter of the second hut that was supposed to be water storage.

While I demolish the roof, let me tell you what I came up with for the future of this channel. There will also be a very short tutorial at the very end for the less tech-savvy.

My husband has set up PeerTube for me. It’s a self-hosted open-source alternative to Youtube. Instead of relying on Google and their whims, people upload there videos on many servers instead. There are no ads. None. There isn’t a system for them.

“At this point the entire roof is holding on by the actual outer sides and one beam. And that beam isn’t even attached to the side. So at any point this is gonna come down, but it’s not coming down.”

Shareholders have no power on Peertube, because there is no corporation behind it all.

I would love to pull the plug here on Youtube now, but not everyone will be able to follow me. Heck, I can’t even reach most of you. Of my more than 5,000 subscribers, only a couple hundred get shown my videos.

So, for the time being, probably until YT does something else really ridiculous, I’ll keep posting on both platforms.

I hope, one day, most of you will have moved to something like Peertube, away from Youtube. But for now, Youtube has a lot of power. If I remove my videos here, I won’t be able to reach my viewers. I’d keep the work and the cost but lose the benefit: my lovely little community. You guys! So, I have to compromise. I have to keep my channel here. I hate knowing Google will benefit most.

So long, and thanks for being here.

Note: There is a PeerTube tutorial at the end of the video. It didn’t make sense to include that here without visuals, so if you want to see the tutorial, check out the video version.