I learned so much from so many woodworkers on YouTube. My learning experience was as much about managing a YouTube channel as it was woodworking. In the beginning, I had a lot of questions about the landscape of woodworkers on YouTube:
- How many woodworking channels are there?
- Which woodworking channels are the most popular?
- Which woodworking channels are the oldest or newest?
- Who produces the most videos?
- Whose videos are the most popular?
A list of woodworkers on YouTube
Step one would be to create a list of the woodworkers on YouTube. I searched for one, but didn’t find any that were comprehensive. Google is geared to show you individual videos and channels in the search results. If you dig hard enough, you can find small lists like this one, but the lists are usually outdated.
I’m a spreadsheet freak so I decided to build my own list. In no time at all, I had a list of a couple dozen channels that I liked and found myself visiting often.
Upgrading from list to dashboard
What I really wanted was a dashboard of woodworkers on YouTube. Step two would be to add some channel statistics that allowed me to answer some of the questions above. I added some stats to my spreadsheet and, for a time, it satisfied my curiosity.
- For example, did you know that the most popular woodworking channel is Tuan CT? It’s not even close!
- Which channel has the most subscribers? You might think it’s Tuan CT, and you’d be right, but Blacktail Studio is a close second.
- Which channel has the most videos? You might think it’s Tuan CT or Blacktail Studio, but it’s actually 731 Woodworks.
Upgrading from point-in-time to real-time
My spreadsheet was super cool, but it had a fatal flaw. The data only updated when I had the time to update it. The more channels I added, the longer each update took. It meant that my dashboard was accurate at a point in time, but the data got stale between updates. I needed a real-time solution.
My main hustle is in a software startup, so I’m technically-minded and knew the answer would be to source the data from an aggregator and automate my spreadsheet. Thankfully, YouTube makes a lot of its data available for free. You just have to know how to manage a connection to the YouTube Data API. I’ve picked up a few things in my 30-plus year career in software startups, so this wasn’t as intimidating for me as it might be for most woodworkers.
Briefly, I created an API key, wrote some Javascript to call the YouTube Data API and put data in a Google Spreadsheet, and installed a plugin to make the data display nicely on my website. The end result is a dashboard of woodworkers on YouTube that updates automatically every morning by 4a Mountain Time. Really freakin’ cool!
Where to go from here
My tribute to woodworkers on YouTube would be incomplete if I didn’t take the next step of highlighting the people behind the channels. Some of them have been a huge help. They might know I’ve subscribed and liked their videos, but I want to do more than subscribe and like.
They’ve leveled-up my woodworking skills, kept me going as a side hustler, and provided inspiration for many of my projects. I’ve watched some channels so often I refer to the woodworkers by their first names and think of them as my buddies. The least I can do is drive a little traffic their way!
Ironically, I have chosen not to be a YouTube creator. Maybe I’ll write a post about that another time. It will have to wait because my next few posts are going to be about these amazing woodworkers. Stay tuned!
