Starting a Skateboarding Channel and Making Money From It

My friend has been skateboarding for around 20 years and has hundreds of videos on IG and TikTok. So, I came up with an idea: why not make money with them? He has no videos on YouTube, so that's the way to go.

The videos are short clips of tricks—not top quality, but not bad either.

We don't have any specific niche right now. I think we should just upload a bunch of YouTube Shorts featuring the most popular clips. Maybe later, we can produce compilations and other content.

I think skateboarding is quite a profitable niche since skateboarders always need new equipment. The engagement rate could also be good because skateboarders tend to watch a lot of trick videos.

Since we already have the most important thing—enough content—it’s a no-brainer that we’ll succeed sooner or later. Of course, we’ll try to invest in quality later by buying a better video camera and producing actual videos, maybe even some documentaries, etc.

What do you think? Can you give advice on how to grow this kind of channel to 10k subscribers as soon as possible? That’s the goal because once we hit that, we can start making some serious money.

Published 20 videos on YouTube and only 5 followers. In the beginning videos were low quality, meaning no HD. I started to upscale them and I can see difference, getting more views and interactions. Good thing was also that by upcsaling them I can republish them because algorithms can't recognize duplicate content, or I hope so.

Youtube grows slower than I thought. I publish also on tiktok, it sucks, only 1 follower and only 100-200 views per video. Instagram rocks. I have now 20 followers and getting more engagement with uspcaled 4k videos.

Biggest thing I have learned that titles and hashtags are waste of time. They pick randomly what show to people. I still have no idea how it works. Some video that is crap IMO and then BOOOM. And otherwise. Also, THUMBNAILS SUCKS. Or at least in this niche. In the beginning I tried to make cool thumbnails, adding Tony Hawk with silly face because thumbnail gurus says I have to do that. Bullshit. Skate communities said fuck off and I stopped doing that at all. Just captured frame from video and I can say they work better. I can't find any article or video that says thumbnails are waste of time. 120% of people says thumbnails are like more important than oxygen. Well, my stats says opposite. Fuck it!


So, I am not youtube guru yet. Teaching this kind of stuff are scam. Just learn basics. Just put some basic hashtags and write some description no matter what kind of. Overdoing these things will turn youtube enemy. Consistency matters. Also, timing is bs too. Just put videos there and that's it. There are no specific time when people are online, they are there 100%. Stupidest idea ever. Just free extra job to make your life harder.

I have been published one video per day (and scheduled videos week ahead). Everrythng is growing slow and steady. No need to overthing, I will keep doing this, trying to improve things little by little and just wait when it happens. And of course being excited when some video gets viral and then sky is limit.

How to find TOTAL engagement rate of instagram posts? I can't understand why it is so fucking difficult. I found something from IG analytics but it is definitely bs. All stats were wrong. I tried different "engagement calculator" sites. Few of them says my engagement rate is 30% which is CRAZY. But some of them gives different number. One advice was by calculating stats of all posts, no way James Bond. That's why I am looking for easier way cz I don't want to do that.

Engagement rate is more important than follower amount, and you need to prove that if you want to sell shoutouts and sponsored posts. So why the hell you can't find it easily?

So, I am publishing my friend's content. But my big vision is to make this to operate 100% automatic by outsourcing. I planned to make money by selling shoutouts, sponsored posts etc. Of course I will consider affiliate marketing, patreon, launching skateboarding dropshipping store whatsoever. We'll see