The Backside

What is going on behind the scenes?

Websites and youtube videos look pretty on the outside, but what does the other side look like?

New email address, check. New website domain, check, New video and newly learned editing skills, check... what next?

It seemed so simple... just a kiddy youtube channel right? Let's see though, what does it take to make a successful channel and blog? Well, lets hope we find out that we are on the right track!

One of Logan's motivating factors for making his youtube channel was monetizing it. Little did I know until tonight that you need 1000 subscribers just to start advertising and monetizing. Well, that is a beast of another nature now isn't it? Now if we need 1k subscribers, we need marketing! So, I explained to Logan again what marketing is and he asked if I could help him out... Of course I said YES, let's do it! So here I am at a quarter after 11 on a Saturday night doing website edits and blog posts. Hey, a Mom has to do what a Mom has to do right?!

So step one, was to take the videos. Step 2 was to edit them, now that step was a little more in depth. The first couple of video editors kept freezing and offered little in the feature department. I turned to my search engine to find an editor with some chops on a budget and came up with "Videopad." It was fairly easy to use and understand, but I have zero prior editing experience so it still took me a few hours of learning and fending off grubby toddler fingers to get it done. Now, I can't say its pretty... but it does seem to have a clear flow to it, and I managed and opening and closing graphic with music thanks to the help of Adobe Spark and www.Bensound.com . Lucky for Logan, Mom has a little bit of experience with photo editing, graphic design, and website design thanks to Mom and Dad's first business years ago called SharePak where we donated care packages purchasesd by people who cared for homeless youth in our community. It wasn't my first website rodeo, but again, this was a bit different from a site with a store and my limitations required it be free or cheap. Well, GoDaddy has never let me down before, so I figured they were worth a shot. Thankfully, I found a coupon code and secured a year long domain for Logan's site. www.LogansBattleBytes.com and for less than $2, it was certainly in the budget! Now, GoDaddy's site editor is great, and they'll let you try it free for a month, but after that month you have to pay up or lose your work. Granted, their pricing is very reasonable at about $5 a month but I mean... Mama is lookin for free here. So a search turned up www.Wix.com and not only are they free, but I am very impressed thus far! Honestly, I think it is easier to use and has more features than the pay sites I have used before. So now that we have a foundation going, we have to work on content and social media. For tonight though... this is plenty.