I needed 35 new subscribers this week. I gained eight. Here's what happened—and what I'm going to try this week.
vidIQ Leaderboard as of 9.26.26.
My channel is 1,104 out of 21,784 competing channels with 127 days left to go!
Last week, I publicly set myself a pretty ambitious goal.
I started my Race to 1,000 YouTube Subscribers at 300 subscribers, with a little more than four months to reach 1,000.
When I did the math, the target became surprisingly simple:
Five new subscribers per day. That doesn't sound impossible. In August, I gained 153 subscribers, which is an average of 4.9 per day.
Five people today. Five tomorrow. Keep doing that consistently and eventually those little numbers add up to something much bigger.
So how did Week One go?
Um...
I gained eight. Not eight per day. Eight for the entire week.
Welcome to the glamorous world of being a small YouTube creator.
300 → 308
I started this experiment at exactly 300 subscribers.
There's something humbling about being a small creator because every subscriber is still noticeable. You notice.
But that's also why I'm documenting this journey. I don't want to write the story afterward and conveniently make it look like everything went according to plan.
Because it definitely isn't.
I Did What I Said I Would Do
Here's the frustrating part. I didn't slack off this week. I worked hard.
My original strategy was to double down on the content that's been working best for Gigi's Treehouse: Animal names and sounds for toddlers and preschoolers.
The goal was three animal videos per week.
I published all three.
I also created and published a new Short. (A YouTube Short is usually less than 3 minutes long and uses the aspect ratio of 9:16 vs. the usual 16:9 video)
And on top of that, I completed something I've been working on for a while: an entirely different type of children's activity video designed to get kids off the couch and moving along with the characters.
It was an experiment in making the child part of the adventure rather than simply watching it.
So from a production standpoint, this was actually a very productive week.
Three regular videos.
One Short.
One new interactive format.
Five pieces of content.
Net result?
Eight subscribers.
So Much for My Five-a-Day Plan
If I'm going to reach 1,000 by my target date, I need approximately 35 subscribers per week.
Not exactly the opening week I had envisioned.
And I'll admit there were moments when it felt like I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing and YouTube's algorithm simply wasn't paying attention.
Upload consistently.
Stay within my niche.
Make more of what's already working.
Experiment with something new.
Post at consistent times.
Check. Check. Check.
Where do I go from here?
This is where I'm starting to rethink the experiment.
It's very easy for creators—myself included—to talk about "the algorithm" as though it's a mysterious gatekeeper deciding which channels deserve views.
YouTube says its recommendation system is designed to find videos viewers are likely to choose and enjoy. It looks at signals around whether someone chooses to watch, whether they continue watching, and whether they appear satisfied with what they watched.
And here's something else I learned this week:
Publishing at exactly the same time isn't the magic ingredient I thought it might be.
YouTube says publishing time isn't known to affect a video's long-term performance.
So perhaps my question shouldn't be: "Why isn't YouTube showing my videos?"
Maybe it should be: "When YouTube does show my videos, are people choosing them?"
That's a very different question.
And fortunately, YouTube Analytics and tools like vidIQ can help me answer it.
Week Two: Less Producing, More Learning
My instinct after gaining only eight subscribers would normally be to work harder.
Make another video. Then another.
Maybe four animal videos next week instead of three.
But that's exactly the burnout trap I said I wanted to avoid when I started this challenge.
YouTube itself recommends creators develop a sustainable schedule and says its analyses haven't found that simply shortening the time between uploads correlates with growth in views.
So I'm not increasing production next week.
Instead, I'm going to spend more time studying what happened to the videos I already made.
I want to look at three things in particular:
Impressions → Clicks → Watch Time
Are my thumbnails getting people to click?
When they click, how long do they stay?
And which videos are actually producing subscribers rather than simply generating views?
Using the AI Coach tool within vidIQ, we analyzed the type of content my channel produces against keywords with high search and low competition. This will become my focus for Week 2.
I'm also going to start paying closer attention to keyword search. Because maybe my problem isn't production. Maybe it's discovery through search.
Eight Is Still Eight
There's another way I could look at this week.
I started with 300 people who had decided Gigi's Treehouse was worth subscribing to.
Today there are 308.
That's eight real people who weren't there when this experiment started.
Would I have preferred 335? Absolutely.
But I'm not going to manufacture a success story just because it makes for a better blog post.
The goal was +35
The result was +8
Current total: 308
I'm officially behind schedule.
That's where the Race to 1,000 stands after Week One.
Maybe next week something takes off. Maybe nothing does.
Either way, I'm going to keep experimenting, keep looking at the data, and—most importantly—keep telling you what actually happens. Because if I eventually do reach 1,000, I want this series to show the whole journey.
Not just the part where the graph goes up.
Week One: 300 → 308. Next target: 350.
Let's see what happens!
If you’d like to follow along and track my progress, my YouTube channel is here: Gigi’s Treehouse
~ Amy
