I posted documentaries on YouTube for 100 days

Summary

Tom Gregory tested whether a documentary-focused YouTube channel could become an independent income source. Over roughly 170 calendar days—described as 100 days because he initially worked part-time or intermittently—he published 14 videos and spent about 560 hours on the project.

Strategy and Operating Approach

• Start with a defined experiment: Gregory initially committed to publishing six videos before deciding whether to sell his apartment or find a job. He chose local history topics that were accessible to research and film.
• Test topics and learn from performance: Early results varied widely. One video reached 76,000 views after a month; another received 257,000 views in its first 30 days. A documentary about Victorian bathing habits attracted only about 1,500 views in its first month.
• Create accountability through self-imposed deadlines: To overcome slow production and a lack of urgency, he wrote himself fictional employment contracts. These required three videos in three weeks, followed by further scheduled releases, with a strict Friday 5 p.m. deadline. Missing a deadline meant forfeiting the ad revenue under the contract.
• Develop a repeatable production process: Weekly deadlines helped him form a documentary-video template and publish consistently—one video per week for 11 consecutive weeks.
• Respond to audience feedback: After viewers accused him of using AI-generated narration, he changed the format to make his authorship more visible, including traveling to locations and filming himself on site.
• Evaluate whether the model could support the business: Despite strong view counts on some videos, revenue was too unpredictable to sustain his lifestyle. He ultimately took a full-time job and could no longer devote roughly 40 hours a week to the channel.

Results and Metrics

• Videos published: 14
• Views: 968,000
• New subscribers: 3,800
• Video performance: Four videos had fewer than 10,000 views; seven had 10,000–100,000; three exceeded 100,000.
• Time invested: Approximately 560 hours, or about 40 hours per video.
• Ad revenue: £3,095 total, equivalent to approximately £5.53 per hour.
• Revenue volatility: Daily earnings ranged from £9 to £104; his best month brought in £1,054.
• After publishing stopped: Views fell sharply, and daily income dropped to roughly 30–40 pence.
• Outcome: The channel did not provide enough stable income to replace employment. Gregory believed that a larger library of videos might help build repeat viewership, but 14 videos had not done so.

Practical Takeaways

• Treat early content as market research: compare topics and formats, and use both strong and weak results to identify what viewers respond to.
• Use firm deadlines and externalized accountability to counter procrastination on self-directed projects.
• Don’t assume one viral or high-performing video reveals a repeatable formula; test consistently before drawing conclusions.
• Consider how production choices affect trust and differentiation. Audience perceptions of AI prompted Gregory to make his personal involvement more visible.
• Assess a creator business on repeatability and income stability, not views alone. This experiment generated reach and learning, but not dependable earnings.
• If scaling, Gregory believed he would need to take the channel more seriously and hire assistants so he could focus on the parts of production he most enjoyed.

Presenter/source: Tom Gregory, describing his own YouTube documentary-channel experiment.