The Weekly Dirt is a weekly review show of various metal detecting YouTube channels that airs every Sunday.
I have a YouTube channel, Adventures In Dirt, and for those of you with YouTube channels, you know how hard it is to constantly come up with content worthy of putting out there on your channel. I try to get out and dig once a week, usually on the weekends, when my time allows but as you know, you don’t always find the large cents, half pennies, or roman danarii. Most the time you have a ton of fun digging up all kinds of scrap and other items that, well, you feel aren’t that deserving of putting on film.
I would like my YouTube channel to grow and I think I have a pretty good grasp on the basics of how the current algorithm works so I know that to be selected higher by YouTube for recommended videos, which is the number one source for views, those channels posting more often, more frequently, get a higher position as far as YouTube is concerned. I have figured that posting weekly is the minimum.
How do you post weekly if you aren’t finding much on your once a week digs? I guess I could put out other videos of commentary, research, etc but for those of you that do this, you also know how much time editing can take if you put some effort into it. I love editing, but I’m still learning my program( Premier Pro ) and can easily lose 4-5 hours editing one video. If I am just playing to learn new techniques, new features, new edits, I can lose the weekend if I’m not careful. This doesn’t lend itself to being able to churn out videos quickly, multiple times a week.
I came up with the idea for “The Weekly Dirt” after noticing how many videos I watch during the week from some of the various metal detecting channels that I subscribe to myself. I thought putting together a review series of some of these channels with their great finds would not only help expose these channels to a wider audience but also give me something weekly to produce and post on my channel.
Every week I will pay attention to the channels I subscribe to and note interesting finds, or happenings from these channels. I will then screen grab clips from these channels and edit them together in one review show, The Weekly Dirt, that I will post on Sundays. I thought I could also do announcements of the various giveaways some channels do or other events that come up in the metal detecting world that I become aware of. There always seems to be something going on.
Good idea I thought but first I have to get permission from these channels and knowing how much work goes into creating this content, I didn’t know how that would be received. I mean these are their babies, their creations. Why would they give me, a relative stranger, permission to cut them up and use them for my series. One one hand, it would give them and their channel more exposure with no effort on their part, on the other hand, could they trust me to use their clips in good faith and show their content in a good light.
I got my answer shortly after reaching out to some of the channels for that first episode of The Weekly Dirt. They were very gracious in giving me permission. Since then I have received other permissions for all the clips I use and I will honor them and their decision by never betraying the trust they have showed in me in allowing me to capture some of their content. After all, that series is about promoting channels and some of their interesting finds.
I have a number of these under my belt now and I’ve learned a few things. Because of the timeline of releasing a new episode every Sunday and the format I have chosen to use for the show, my cutoff is the previous Saturday thru the current Friday. I can pick from those videos released during that time and still be able to capture the clips, shoot the backing video, and edit the whole thing together by the end of day on Sunday. If something comes up the Saturday before the Sunday release, it will have to wait until the following Sunday’s episode. I may switch some things up in regards to the format to allow me to shoot backing videos throughout the week from different outdoor locations but we shall see how that pans out.
I hope you have a chance to give a look at this new series and hope you enjoy it as much as I do putting it together. Please feel free to help me get the word out and share it on some of your social media and always feel free to drop me a line to let me know of new channels I should be checking out, new features I should be adding, changes you would like to see, things you don’t care for, things you like, etc. One person suggested I add more sex appeal into the series so I volunteered to wear a wig but I don’t think that is what he had in mind so you are all safe for the moment. Nobody wants to see that, believe me.
