Have you ever created and published a YouTube video? Maybe even a blog post? If you're anything like me, it's tough. It is tough because the expectation you've set for yourself is so high the end result won't come close. This causes procrastination on even getting started. Que the 8 week content challenge.

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The 8 Week Content challenge is something I'm starting based on the 90 day content challenge laid out by Miles Beckler, just 34 days shorter. The idea is that when you've set a goal of publishing a piece of content every other day for 8 weeks, you begin to stop caring so much about each piece of content (in a good way). Instead of tying to create something perfect, the goal is just to create and get it out there for the world to see.

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Back in March of 2018, I did a 12 week 90 days to 10K challenge where I posted a video a week. I had high hopes for the first video; it was going to be perfect. I had lighting, a high quality camera, audio equipment, and a background in video editing. Due to when I started the challenge, the first video had to be posted no later than Thursday night. So, Thursday morning I sit down to start filming and realize my wife went to work in the car that had ALL my video equipment.

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So, Thursday morning I sit down to start filming and realize my wife went to work in the car that had ALL my video equipment (she works 12-hour shifts).

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At this point I had two options. Option one, I could postpone posting the video until the following day and make an excuse to the audience as to why I couldn't do it when I said I would. After all, I had a pretty good excuse. Or, option two, I could prop my phone up on the desk and film it right there. No fancy equipment, just me and the camera on my phone. I went for option two and I'm glad I did. It made me realize that while high quality videos are great, the content is what matters. High quality content with average quality video is better than no content at all. Okay, enough with the backstory. On to what the 8 week content challenge is and the guide lines if you are ready to take it on with me.

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How It Works

There is one main rule for the 8 Week Challenge and breaking it should be avoided at all costs. At the end of the 8 week (56 days), 28 pieces of content need to be published for the world to see. That's it. These can be YouTube videos, blog posts, podcasts, etc... Whatever medium you want. I will be doing YouTube videos.

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Ideally you would publish one piece of content every other day, that's what I'm planning on doing. But above all else, the real goal of the challenge is publishing 28 pieces of content in 56 days. Do you want to create content in batches of 3 and then schedule them to go live each day? Go for it. Do you want to actually create and publish content every other day? Go for it. Do you slack off the first two weeks then batch create and publish 7 pieces of content all at once? Probably a bad idea, but go for it so long as you are actually hitting the 28 pieces of content goal. There is no minimum time requirement for videos or word count requirement for blog posts. Although, I'm going to be shooting for roughly 10 minute videos since YouTube tends to value videos at that length. If you are writing blog posts, I would recommend 1,000 words or more since Google likes to rank longer content over shorter content.

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If you know me, you know that I'm the kind of person that normally preaches quality over quantity. With this challenge specifically, quantity is the only metric I'm focusing on. While I hope the videos I create are helpful and solve a need, my main goal for the next 56 days is posting 28 videos. After the challenge is done I very well might slow down to three videos a week to focus on longer and higher quality content, but first I want to get in a content creating mode as I said early and get over the perfectionist in me.

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In addition to that, here is a little marketing lesson on YouTube. YouTube loves to promote channels that publish content consistently. It's better to have 10 5-minute videos that get 200 views each than 1 5-minute video that gets 1,000 views. While more isn't always better, more times than not with YouTube, it is. YouTube cares about one thing and one this only, watch hours. They don't care about views and subscribers, they just want to know people are actually watching your videos. The most content you have, the more likely it is you will have people watching your content. In the example above, 10 videos with 200 views each at 5-minutes (if people watched the whole video) would give you 166 watch hours. 1 video at 5-minutes long with 1,000 views would give you 83 watch hours.

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Aside from the goal of getting in a content creating mode, creating a store of content for YouTube is a second benefit of this challenge and would be extremely useful if you have a brand new YouTube channel. At the start of this challenge, I have 15 videos on my YouTube channel (the majority of which were posted almost a year ago), 20,000+ views, and 830 subscribers. I started my YouTube channel almost exactly a year-to-date from the start of this 8 week content challenge.

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Getting Started

While diving in head first and just getting started is a great way to go about this specific challenge, I would advise you to take one day to plan it out. Here is the simple process that I'm doing before the start of the challenge.

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Step 1

Open up a Google spreadsheet and make a list of content you want to create. Try and write more than 28 topics so you have a variety of topics to choose from. My current list stands at around 40 items. While most of my content will be on the topic of selling on Amazon, I have mixed in some other business/life hacking topics in there as well.

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Step 2

Rank you topics in order from most excited to create to least excited. If you list 28+ topics, hopefully you are excited to create all of them, but some will definitely outweigh others. Start with those.

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Step 3

Take 15 minutes (5 minutes each) for your first three topics and write out a basic outline/script for the content. It doesn't need to be perfect, just something to get your creative juices flowing and give you ideas so that when tomorrow comes, you have a head start on your first three pieces of content.

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Step 4

Film or write each of the first three pieces of content on day one. You don't want to start this challenge by getting behind and I can promise you something will come up by day two or three that will prevent you from creating. So get ahead at the beginning and schedule your first three pieces of content to go live on day one, two, and three.

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Expected Results

At the end of the 8 Week Content Challenge I will consider it a success if I've posted 28 pieces of content. Here is what I'm expecting to come out of producing the content.

‍First, I hope to over come the desire I have to make each piece of content perfect and instead focus on just getting the information out there.

‍Second, I hope to boost my YouTube account to over 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. This is the limit YouTube imposes on new accounts before they can monetize their videos.

‍Third, I want this challenge to keep me accountable for the 8 week eFLIP challenge I will be running at the same time. Videos from the eFLIP challenge will count towards my 28 video goal and will be posted once to twice a week. In addition to this goal, I hope to inspire 100 people to start the eFLIP challenge with me.

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