TubeThink came from making YouTube videos. A lot of them.
I've been creating on YouTube for about a decade.
During that time, I've built channels in very different niches, published hundreds of videos, generated millions of views, and earned revenue through advertising, affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, and the businesses those videos support.
Some of those videos have reached millions of people.
Plenty of others haven't worked at all.
And after doing this long enough, I realized my biggest problem wasn't a shortage of YouTube tools or advice.
It was keeping all of the thinking behind each video connected.
Ideas ended up in one place.
Research somewhere else.
Titles were brainstormed in documents.
Footage lived on hard drives.
Analytics lived in YouTube Studio.
And many of the lessons from previous videos lived mostly in my head.
Then I'd sit down to make another video and find myself making many of the same decisions all over again.
TubeThink started as an attempt to build a better way.
What years of making videos taught me
I've created videos for people actively searching for help with a problem and videos designed to interest someone who wasn't looking for them at all.
I've made videos meant to explain something, help someone make a decision, document an experience, review a product, or simply tell a story.
They're all YouTube videos.
But they're not doing the same job.
And success doesn't mean the same thing for every video either.
Sometimes success is reaching a huge audience.
Sometimes it's becoming the answer people find when they search for a specific problem.
Sometimes it's helping a smaller group of viewers make a decision.
And sometimes the most useful result is learning that an idea didn't work the way you expected.
That experience shapes how I think about TubeThink.
Why I built TubeThink
I wanted one place where the thinking behind a video could stay connected from the first idea through what happened after publication.
A place to find evidence for what might be worth making, develop the idea into a plan, and capture what actually happened after publishing so the lessons aren't forgotten before the next video.
That's what became TubeThink.
It's a YouTube planning and production workflow designed around the decisions that happen before, during, and after you make a video.
Why these articles exist
The software is only part of TubeThink.
This site is where I explore the thinking behind it.
That includes practical topics like titles, thumbnails, descriptions, analytics, planning, research, workflow, and other parts of creating videos.
But I'm less interested in adding another rule to the pile than understanding why something works, when it works, and when it doesn't.
That's what you'll find here.
Ideas I'm testing.
Things I've learned from making videos.
Questions I'm still working through.
And practical ways to make the decisions behind each video a little clearer.
It's the same thinking I'm using to build TubeThink.
You shouldn't have to start your thinking over with every video.