My YouTube Journey, PART 1

Towards the end of August, I decided to take a road trip with my dog Rocky. Rocky the ROAD DOG I call him now. We headed out for Wyoming just before the Labor Day weekend. I knew I’d get busy with pet sitting over Labor Day so thought it would be nice to get away for a week before the busy time. 

I have taken solo road trips in the past, but never with a dog, so rather than worry about motels or hotels along the way and whether or not they would let me bring Rocky, I decided to turn my Honda HR-V into a temporary camper. THIS got me interested in videos on YouTube about people camping in SUVs and even people converting their vans and truck campers. There were TONS of great ideas and as I watched more and more videos, I thought it would be fun to start a YouTube channel myself and start out by posting videos from our road trip, and then the more I formulated the idea, the more I wanted to do a dog-themed channel. So we loaded up the Honda…and we took our trip… Rocky the Road Dog and Darin the Dog Guy. 

We only had one week and we wanted to see as much as possible so we didn’t waste a lot of time. We headed North and West out of Missouri and across the Southern end of Nebraska… headed for Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Teton area. Along the way we posted videos on TikTok from rest areas or truck stops. The first night we ended up pulling into a campsite somewhere in Nebraska and found a place to park for the night. We took a nice relaxing walk around a pond and had some dinner. I had packed food and water for both of us and took things that wouldn’t need to be frozen, and the cooler I brought was holding up well for my pre-made sandwiches and drinks. 

For Rocky I brought dog food that didn’t need to be refrigerated. We were already having a great time. There weren’t many people at the campsite, so it was peaceful. Early the next morning we took off and headed towards Wyoming. We found a campsite just south of Yellowstone and it was gorgeous. We set up camp, which was basically just opening the hatchback, putting up my lawn chair and straightening out the couch cushions and blankets and pillow I had put together to serve as our bed in the back of the Honda. We took a hike and found a really cool waterfall. It was getting dark so I knew we’d want to check it out again in the morning. You can watch the video HERE. I’ll write another blog all about our trip, but we ended up seeing Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore and Devil’s Tower on our trip. We camped out at a KOA and even stayed overnight in a WalMart parking lot. What an adventure. Watch for the full story of our trip in another blog post.

Once we got back home I started working on the YouTube channel. I researched and watched other YouTubers for tips and tricks. I started teaching myself how to edit videos and build cover pages and thumbnails using some suggested software. I realized that most of the videos I took on the trip were vertical, as I’d been posting on TikTok where the videos are vertical, but on YouTube, most videos are horizontal. SO, I started filming dog walks and other things with the phone turned sideways and started posting videos. At first I would just film an entire dog walk and talk about the dogs and give breed information WHILE I walked the dogs… which turned out to be an informative idea, but the videos were basically just watching the backside of a couple of dogs… LOL   I finally started figuring out how to splice in other shots, including close up pictures of the dogs faces, and action shots of them playing or wrestling in the yard, rather than just their butts as I walked behind. I learned to add graphics, and even a little background music. So the videos got better and of course it was more fun to do them now that I could personalize them a bit. 

So what next? Well, I had to start getting subscribers. I had these videos, and wanted them to be seen, so it was time to attract an audience. Luckily, I own a pet sitting and dog walking business, so all I had to do was tell people I was putting videos up featuring their dogs and boom, I had instant viewers. I also posted the videos on my Facebook page, and shared links to my Twitter, as well as my TikTok followers. Slowly I started getting some views and some subscribers. The more videos I put out, the more people I started to contact and I would text and Email clients and friends to let them know about my channel. It started to take off a little bit and I kept adding more and more videos.  

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO: My path to 100 Subscribers and 50 Published Videos.