WORDS WITH A WISEGUY 16 ...
Thanks to everyone who has recently signed up for this newsletter – we’re up to 361! If you want to read any of the previous posts, I usually put them on my website a couple weeks after I email them here. If you know anyone who might be interested, please have them visit TravelwithaWiseguy.com and sign-up!
THE PAST FOUR WEEKS …
Normally I do these emails every three weeks, but I think I’m going to switch to monthly as my schedule will be increasingly busy from now until next summer (travel + coaching track at Wichita State). I really enjoy sitting down and writing these, but they do take up a chunk of my weekend.
That being said, it was an interesting month of November. I did three “trips” with one being a short day trip to McPherson County, Kansas. That’s where I made the Santa Fe Trail video through Canton, Galva, and Empire. I also took a 2-day trip to Hodgeman County, Kansas. Over Thanksgiving I drove down to the Texas Panhandle and explored around a lot of cool places along Route 66 and northern Texas. You can see what videos I have planned from there at the end of this email.
NOVEMBER YOUTUBE RECAP
I’m going to go on a stream of consciousness rant here for those of you who are interested in the behind-the-scenes of building a YouTube channel. I’ve always been a big numbers/math/statistics guy throughout my life, and you can get overloaded with analytics on this side of the YouTube creator website. It gives you every piece of information you can imagine. It’s easy to over-analyze the immediate results you get from publishing a video. If you’ve been following the channel for any length of time, you probably notice I put out all kinds of videos. Obviously, the main type of video is small towns, rural places, etc. But lately I’ve been doing interviews, compilations, and we even stuck a GoPro on Curt’s head and had him run around the Great Plains Nature Center (that was awesome). Doing these “different” things confuses the YouTube algorithm and often stunts the channel’s growth in the short term. But I believe this diverse collection of videos has much better long term growth potential. I’ve gotten to know several YouTube creators this year, and some of them have told me they feel like they have to constantly “chase the algorithm” and wish they could do different types of videos. Fortunately this channel has gotten to a level that even a “bad month” is pretty good.
For example, the beginning of November was when I published the final Hawaii videos. I think those videos are terrific and who doesn’t want to see me and Curt in a swimming pool? But those videos temporarily cut into the momentum of the channel and that lasted until the middle of the month. The final two weeks of the month I released more videos in my “wheelhouse” and the momentum came roaring back and has continued into December.
As the library approaches 400 videos, I hope that you all enjoy the variety and continue to give each one a chance. I want to always do the videos I want to do and never become controlled by an algorithm.
THE FASCINATING OREGON TRAIL COMPILATION
On November 19 I released a 3+ hour Oregon Trail compilation video that was originally filmed in the summer of 2022. In the new intro I talked about how I’m pretty sure this is the only video of it’s kind on YouTube showing each and every town, landmark, and historic place on the current version of the trail. I’m fascinated by the “life” of this video so far, and it’s one of the things I talk with Curt about on an almost daily basis.
This is the 3rd compilation type video I’ve released (Route 66, US 89). I wasn’t sure if people would want to re-watch these videos, but I thought it was worth a try. And fortunately they’ve done pretty well. But I was always curious how this Oregon Trail video would do because we felt it was a unique thing on YouTube. It had a slow start as you might expect for a 3+ hour long video. But in looking at the analytics it showed some interesting data. Even though the views were below average to start, it had an average viewing time of almost 60 minutes per person. That’s an incredibly high number for one video. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about YouTube - they like videos that people want to watch for extended periods of time. So little by little YouTube has started pushing this Oregon Trail compilation video more and more. Couple that with the terrific thumbnail Curt made, and three weeks later it’s getting more than 2,000 views a day (and increasing). And the good news is the average viewing time has remained steady around 60 minutes. When I interviewed Joe Evans from Joe & Nic’s Road Trip, he made the comment that once you think you have YouTube figured out, you realize you don’t – and he’s 100% right. So maybe this video will fade into oblivion or maybe it’ll skyrocket (or likely be somewhere in between). It’ll be fun to see what happens with it over the next 12 months!
HITTING THE ROAD FOR THE HOLIDAYS
I’ve been very busy lately with my coaching duties at Wichita State, and we just finished out semester. So, now I’m looking forward to an extended time away from Wichita and I couldn’t be more excited! I’m still working on some of the details, but here are things I would like to do in the next few weeks …
Initially I’m going to make a short trip to western Kansas for a Christmas themed video. After that I’m hoping to head into eastern Colorado to explore some ghost towns. I feel like I need to get some more content in that beautiful state. From there I’m going to drive south to New Mexico and Arizona. My goal is to make a video on the smallest towns in Arizona. What I found in my research is that Arizona doesn’t have very many incorporated towns, and the smallest towns all have several hundred people. The 10th smallest town is much larger than most of the other videos like that I’ve done, so I thought I’d do the “5 Smallest Towns in Arizona” instead.
Then I’m going to fly from Arizona to Ohio and spend a week with my family (that’s where I grew up). I’m hoping to do a few videos in the Buckeye State, including a “passion project” about my family’s history. Then I’ll fly back to Arizona and continue exploring around Arizona and New Mexico. Next, I’m going to drive to El Paso and do some exploration along “the wall” in southwestern Texas before turning north and heading towards Oklahoma and Kansas.
It's an ambitious trip and I might not be able to do everything I want. The longest consecutive days trip in my life has been 17 days. This trip has the potential to be 24 days, but since I’m driving, I could always cut it short and head back home if needed. I’m definitely excited! I will be posting daily photos on my Instagram story if you would like to follow along starting later this week.
NEW TYPE OF VIDEO
In this week’s “member only” video I talked about a new idea I had for a video (member only plug here haha). Often on the way home from a trip I’ll take a two-lane road instead of the expressway. On the way home from my recent trip to Texas it hit me like a ton of bricks. I love driving through small downtowns, checking out the old buildings as I cruise through. Then I thought what if I turned this into a video where I film driving through 10 of these towns, give some fun facts about their history, and then rank them 1-10 at the end? It turned out to make my drive home to Wichita a lot of fun and I got excited thinking about how to turn it into a video. I texted Curt and we came up with the name “Small Town Downtown” for the series. The day after Christmas is a Thursday so we’re going to put this out there and see how it’s received. The towns range from 70 at the smallest to 3,000 at the largest. What do you think of this idea?
FOR THE DIEHARDS (Spoiler alert)
For those of you who read all the way to the bottom, here are the upcoming videos on the channel for the month of December (tentative):
Already released:
Sun, Dec 1: Hodgeman County, KS – Part 1
Tue, Dec 3: Great Plains Nature Center – Wichita, KS
Thu, Dec 5: Hodgeman County, KS – Part 2
Sun, Dec 8: Jericho, Texas – Route 66 ghost town
Coming up:
Tue, Dec 10: Off the Grid – Jericho, Texas
Thu, Dec 12: small town, USA – Miami, TX
Sun, Dec 15: Roberts County, TX
Tue, Dec 17: US 50 compilation – Kansas to California
Thu, Dec 19: small town, USA – Okeene, OK
Sun, Dec 22: Route 66 Texas – Part 1
Tue, Dec 24: Christmas in Wakeeny, KS
Thu, Dec 26: Small Town Downtown 1
Sun, Dec 29: Route 66 Texas – Part 2
Tue, Dec 31: My 10 Favorite Towns of All-Time
THAT’S ALL FOLKS!
Thanks for reading all my ramblings!
If you enjoy my channel and want to help it grow, feel free to share videos to your friends and/or family! I also have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X (Instagram is probably the best to follow). Oh yeah buy some merch! (but only if you want)
Thanks for all the support and we’ll see you down a backroad!
John Wise
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