I'm so sick of putting time and energy into shorts on YouTube, TikTok, reels on Instagram, and uploading the same video to Facebook reels and Twitter only to see I basically wasted my time. On average, view times are only a few seconds and rarely is a lasting connection made. These short videos are great for platforms to make money on ad revenue while cutting out the creator almost completely (except on YouTube's new partner terms) while the vast majority of creators get almost nothing in return except useless followers that have to be reached through the algorithm again and fade away nearly instantly in most cases.
The same creative energy would yield a much higher return on long format videos on my YouTube channels at https://www.youtube.com/jerrybanfield and in my free online courses at https://www.jerrybanfield.com/ where viewers tend to come back repeatedly and stick with me for a long time. While certainly short videos are a huge opportunity for a few creators, the key is to know thyself. I hate the short videos and it is time to stop trying.
What's annoying is that I'm sure at some point I will get the idea that I should try again. This is probably the fifth time I have "quit" with the short videos. Maybe it is like drinking where if I try to quit enough times, I eventually actually do it. I am sober more than eight years now and it took going to Alcoholics Anonymous to finally get sobriety to stick. I'm hoping this post about quitting shorts helps me be accountable to you to finally cross it off of "what could I do today" as a possibility and just stick to the formats that I already know work best for me: 10 to 20 minute YouTube videos and 5 to 10 minute lectures in online courses.
In the space I'm making from quitting these videos, I am trying a bit of blogging again given I want to send an email each day; I might as well publish the same post on a blog. If you want some more of these, I trust you will let me know and I will see you again.
Love,
Jerry Banfield