There will be no more poker vlogs from me. So many people have messaged me saying that they can't wait for new vlogs that I decided to just go ahead and post this. If anyone is curious why, here's a way too long explanation of the history of my vlogging and why I'm not returning.

When I decided to start a vlog I didn't really have a plan or a goal. I didn't really care what happened. I didn't care if I succeeded or failed. I just thought I played in some fun games in a fun way that poker fans might like to see. That's it.

The vlog took off quicker than anyone could have expected due to a) the games I play in are insane, b) I don't play a boring style, c) I have a background in graphic design and programming and was able to create a better produced product (IMO) than the typical poker vlogger.

There was a specific weekend where I went from just hitting 1K subscribers to hitting 3K subscribers in 3 days. This ended up really being the catalyst for the vlog. It showed me that people really did like the content and it showed me that money could be made through YouTube.

The very first month of vlogging I made $1.2K off of YouTube. If you consider the hourly rate, each vlog took me 3 days to produce, this is not good. But I had only 3K subs and I'm seeing people like Polk saying you can't make money off of vlogging and wondering why he says that.

I never started the vlog to make money but sinking immense time into something with no payback was going to be a clear killer for the vlog at some point - so seeing this income gave me some ideas that this could actually be part of my job/business.

For those that don't know, I don't play poker for a living and I don't even play poker for the money. My real job is that I'm an internet entrepreneur who has invented multiple money-producing websites.

My day-to-day responsibility is to make sure my websites keep making money, to keep up with technology advances, and to produce new websites at some rate to diversify and keep up with Google constantly changing who they think is the most relevant in each industry.

This means that I can take months off from doing any real work, other than checking email, and I'm still making a living. After seeing that I could make $1,200 off of just 3K subs I started to think that I could turn vlogging into a profit center.

If the top vloggers can get 200K subscribers I saw no reason why I couldn't get there and it seemed like the YouTube income would increase linearly. Over the next few months my subscribers grew from the 3K subscribers to over 20K subscribers.

During this time my YouTube income dropped, and dropped, and dropped. Due to my background in developing websites and then monitoring analytics through industry standard tools I'm pretty good at looking at analytics and finding patterns to define causation of situations.

I spent a lot of time researching what was happening and found was two things. First, 80% of my viewers were not subscribers. This means that YouTube is showing people my video thumbnail on their "home" page and it's interesting enough that many of them are clicking on the video.

Not just that but they are watching enough of the video that it's counted as a view. And secondly, I saw that YouTube was showing my thumbnails less and less often to these people. Although my subscribers were going up my actual views were going down.

As a content creator you have only a few things you can do to prevent this number from dropping. The first is to simply make interesting thumbnails that will get your videos clicked on. There is some give and take between click-baiting people and making uninteresting thumbnails.

I opted to be closer to the non-click bait strategy but had no problem throwing in a photo of Johnny Vibes ( even though he didn't come play in my game when we met) or suggesting that I might have played with Postle when I only played with a guy that looked like him.

I did some optimizing of my thumbnails and found some instant gains. I felt like I found a good formula for making thumbnails. The one thing I refused to do was spoil the content even though I knew it would work. No videos saying, "Getting hit and run for $2K second hand..."

Another thing I realized at this time was that the last 3-4 videos had not been my standard content. I had produced a video of me playing on a live stream. I made a video of me critiquing a friend's play. I put out the Farkle April Fool's video.

And then I published an insane video that had some questionable poker playing due to a very aggressive side game added to the mix. I realized that some of the recent/continued fall off could simply be that I wasn't producing the same content that had been so popular.

It was never my intent to change formats, I had just accidentally lumped together some videos in my vlogging "career" that weren't the most optimal videos and published them all in order that they were shot. My plan now was to just return to the simple formula that had worked.

Then Coronavirus hit. I knew pretty quickly that I wasn't going to play any poker if it turned out to be serious. I am successful in other parts of my life and poker is a way to compete and have fun but it's not something I can't live without.

I've decided to hold out until at least a vaccine is available. I considered doing content during lockdown and quickly realized that a) I didn't love doing it, b) it wasn't what I was good at, and c) it wasn't going to be just a few weeks of no live poker.

During lockdown I had the idea to turn a website that I had recently created for texting poker game invites into a business marketing mass texting system. I was sending text invites using my website to players who could RSVP for my game and reply LIST to see who was coming.

This powered my game for all of the vlogs and was a tool that other games didn't have. I expanded upon this Event Invite texting "app" and added Polls, Surveys, and Coupons along with standard Messaging aimed at business marketing professionals or small business owners.

Both the development of this, the expected launch, and upcoming 1-2 years of work to get it going made it obvious that there was now something that out-ranked vlogging as far as expanding my business. I only have so many hours in a day and vlogging took an immense amount of time.

I can't vlog AND start a new venture. I'm launching the site on Monday and expect it to be my #1 focus for the biz in the coming years. I plan to return to poker but maybe not at the same volume as before. I love the game. I love the competition. I love the people. It's not over.