How I started a YouTube channel that will soon reach a million subscribers

The interview I did on the bank of the river in Connecticut got five million views.

I thought of writing this article when a friend got in touch and asked me to share some of the videos I have made. I had taken on digital and social media editing roles since 2015, and that meant I spent more time helping others to produce their own videos. But I have produced many videos including one that has been viewed more than five million times on the BBC Vietnamese YouTube channel.

It was an interview with a general who fought for South Vietnam in a war that was won by the North in 1975. He was then sent to 17 years in prison while his wife and nine children fled Vietnam by boat. If you click on the inline link above, you'll be able to listen to him singing a French song he used to sing while in prison.

In the first two years after the video was uploaded to YouTube, the average viewing time was more than 12 minutes.

The video was shared nearly 1,600 times up to 2017

Assuming a lower average viewing time of just 10 minutes since I left the BBC in 2017, the total amount of time people have spent engaging with the interview with a former general from the Vietnam War era has already been some 50 million minutes. That’s the power of YouTube. I…