Back in 2016, I decided that I was going to create my first online yoga course. It turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated.
I didn’t have a good camera to record with or a lapel mic, so I used a combination of my iPhone and voiceovers on GarageBand. I did an entire recording session, only to realize that my iPhone had stopped filming each video at the 7 minute mark and I had lost more than half my content. I found a solution – plugging my iPhone into my computer and filming using my iPhone directly onto my computer using QuickTime. That was all fine and dandy, except that I ended up having to load new software on my computer, which put my computer out of commission for an entire day (no joke, it took that long).
When I finally launched the course, I was mostly just relieved that it was out there. The production quality was amateur, but I had done it.
Going into creating my second course, I felt like I had learned a thing or 2! I had purchased a lapel mic, and I had a GoPro for filming on. Everything went A LOT more smoothly.
When I headed off to Asia last year, I also got this crazy idea to teach yoga on YouTube. It would be a great way for me to build a following online, as well as a great way for me to continue gaining teaching experience. I had a logo designed for my brand and everything!
When we were in Kuala Lumpur last October, I filmed for a couple of hours, recording a number of videos. A few weeks later, I sat down to edit them and realized that something had happened with the lapel mic and it hadn’t picked up any audio on any of the videos except the first one. I was left with one video.
I was pretty discouraged and put a halt on the project for a number of months, when I decided to go at it again. We were in Taiwan and I recorded 2 videos. I felt like if I had momentum going into the summer, I could record lots while I was home and really get my YouTube channel started.
Summer and came and went and I justified that I didn’t really have a good filming location in our place in Canada. That’s not entirely wrong, there wasn’t an obviously good space, although I’m sure I could make it work.
When I got to Mexico City a couple of weeks ago, I decided enough is enough. Ryan and I have a Canon E05 with an external microphone, which eliminates all of my previous complaints.
Within our first few weeks in Mexico, I filmed my first video and officially launched my YouTube channel, committing to putting out videos each Thursday.
Since then, I’ve received some great feedback, but I’ve also encountered a number of other roadblocks that have left me feeling frustrated and discouraged.
First of all, our camera only records 12 minutes before it automatically stops recording. Not the worst thing that could happen, but it means extra editing on my end and an extra annoyance. Second, my computer is getting kind of old and iMovie freezes constantly. Yesterday when I was editing my video, it restarted 3 times and I probably wasted an hour or two just getting it to load. This is probably a solution that a better software and a new computer would fix. Third, I’ve had issues getting my videos off of my SD cards and onto my computer. Last week, I spent way too many hours just waiting for the videos to actually load onto my computer so that I could export the video from iMovie. Then, today I uploaded a video where I used yoga massage balls in the video and YouTube marked my video as “inappropriate content”, which I’m still waiting for them to review.
It’s not enough to make me give up on this project, but it’s enough for me to question if this is worth my time and energy.
Right from the beginning, I expected creating online content to be easy. Doing our podcast has been relatively simple the entire time, and I thought it would be similar to that. Record, edit, export, upload, complete. But, it has been far from that. It has taught me:
- To be patient with myself, my computer, and technology in general
- Never to go into a project with the expectation that it will be easy
- Purchase good equipment right off the get go
- And to persevere, even when you feel like throwing your computer
If you would like to follow me along on YouTube, I would love your support. You can find my channel here!