When I woke up 3 days ago (Friday), it was just another cold Canberra winter morning. Then when I looked at my phone to check the time, I realised something.

Exactly ten years ago, on just another cold Canberra winter morning, Zombie and I got married. We got married two more times after that. Our three weddings spanned seven months altogether.

And because we had so many videos of our weddings and still a lot of family and friends around the world who weren’t able to catch the three cities of our ‘wedding tour’, we looked for a way to share those videos.

 

So I decided to create a YouTube channel. Uploaded 4-5 videos of the weddings.

And this was how my YouTube channel was born. I’m dedicating this post to my YouTube channel. This is not sponsored at all. I just realised that out of all my social media channels, it is YouTube that I take for granted the most.

I’ve been using YouTube just as a medium to upload my travel videos to accompany the blog posts. This YouTube channel of mine, almost ten years old now, has been silently chugging along. That’s how I treated the channel – like the plain but dependable best friend and sidekick to the protagonist, which is this blog.

But I didn’t realise that this sidekick in itself has been growing steadily. It’s brought some amazing opportunities (and is actually the main reason why I became a travel blogger!) yet I never gave it the credit it deserved.

Over the years, we uploaded some stupid stunts we created during our travels. Some A lot of it is just so silly I’ve decided to take down a few.

And in 2012, we booked a trip to Tahiti. On a whim, my cousin suggested we film a video of me rolling from the bed and straight into the ocean.

I never say no to ridiculous ideas, so I did the best I could.

This was an entirely personal trip (I wasn’t even a travel blogger then) and as I didn’t even know anything about YouTube rules, I used music that was copyrighted. This led to the video being muted for a long time until I found a less appealing, but approved music to use.

Well this one single video is, how shall I say it… the magic beans to Jack’s (or in this case Jean’s) beanstalk.

A Middle-Eastern based airline seemed to notice the video and contacted me. After a handful of emails (and a LOT of research from me), my eyes were then opened into the world of travel blogging – and what one can make (and get) out of it. I could hardly believe it. Someone wanted to work with me because of all this tomfoolery? If not for this video, I wouldn’t even know about the world of professional travel blogging!

And then there’s this food trip video. On one of our trips to Malaysia, we decided to create a food trip sort of video (even if we’re not really foodies). This entire video was created out of a Flip video camera (does anyone remember those things??)

Like all my other videos, this one just sat there until a couple of years after it was posted, a food company contacted me. Apparently, they liked the way I ate (??) and offered a paid ambassadorship deal. I had to laugh out loud when I read the email. I mean, me?? of all people! If I received the email months or a year earlier, I may have said yes. But I’ve increasingly made my diet really simple boring (health and ethical reasons). By the time I received the proposal, I had already taken meat (except seafood) out of my diet completely. I turned the offer down. Not only was it unrelated to Holy Smithereens. I have to be honest- it’s really not my interest and would deservedly suit someone else more.

There are now 128 videos and it’s steadily growing. It’s mainly a travel channel, and I plan to grow it more than just resort, hotel and airline tours (though they are my most viewed).

I guess I’m just giving my YouTube channel the love it deserves after close to ten years of being there, entertaining myself and hopefully others too.

I hope you give this old channel a little love too and subscribe! 

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Do you have a YouTube channel? What do you mainly post? Leave a link and let’s follow each other!