I Did It My Way: Behind the Scenes of Seth Fowler’s YouTube Channel

For the latest installment of I Did It My Way, we caught up with Seth Fowler, a New York City native whose YouTube career dates back more than a decade. Seth shares how and why he began making videos, insight on how come up with ideas and the amazing fan encounter he had in another country.

I Did It My Way Appetizer

Name: Seth Fowler
My YouTube Page is about: Sneakers
My YouTube Channel is: Seth Fowler
Social Media Handles: Twitter:@realsethfowler | Instagram: @realsethfowler

coiski: Is there one moment or person that was the catalyst for you starting your YouTube channel?

Seth Fowler: I think it started back in like 2005/2006, right when YouTube was began. Me and my friend, Oscar, just started making goofy videos together, and from there, I just kept making videos on different channels. I think the video that got the most views for me originally was back in 2007; it was like an Xbox 360 Elite review, which was my first attempt at reviews. It all of sudden got like 310,000 views, which, even for me now, is like a bunch of views. That’s what drove to want to keep doing it. Then, with high school ending and going into college in addition to starting my professional life, I just didn’t have time. So about maybe a year and half ago, I decided to retry YouTube because I had been watching a lot of people, like YoAnty, NightWing and Qias. I had been into sneakers for a long time, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ Those guys sort of inspired me to get into it, and I just turned the camera back on and started recording again.

coiski: What is your biggest and/or most successful YouTube video to date?

Fowler: My most successful video on this channel is, I believe, “How Much do Small YouTuber’s Make on YouTube.” It’s a video about basically how ad revenue works and what you can expect to make. I made the video when I had 3,000 subscribers. At that time, I was making maybe $80-$100 a month on ad revenue. I had watched tons of videos beforehand on how much YouTuber’s made because I was interested, and no one gave out real numbers. It’s right around 500,000 views, which is by far my most viewed.

coiski: At what point during the management of your YouTube page did you say to yourself, “I made it; this can be a full-time thing?” 

Fowler: I think, honestly, it was right at the beginning. Like I said, I probably had like eight other channels, and the most subscribers was like 1000 on one of them. I knew sort of what it would take to start pumping out videos like that. So I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to try it for six months and if I get any traction, I’ll keep going with it.’ So I did it for six months, and literally from the beginning, I was doing 2-3 videos per week – stuff like buying shoes every week and then figuring out either how to afford them or return them. I had a lot of problems in the beginning with stores not liking that I was returning shoes a lot, so I had to stop doing that.

coiski: Is it tough to diversify your content all the while remaining engaged with your target audience?

Fowler: Totally, and that’s a huge thing I have been talking to some of the other Sneaker YouTubers about. A lot of them have really started to get heavy into vlogging. I mean, within YouTube as a whole, vlogging is big right now, but it’s funny that a lot of our core audiences are people who want to sneaker reviews. So, I do want to diversify for sure but as long as my channel is a ‘sneaker’ channel, I want to have that baseline of sneaker reviews because that’s really what got me started. But it is definitely a struggle, and I haven’t figured it out yet.

coiski: What’s the end goal for your channel? Is there a benchmark you’re looking to reach? 

Fowler: Not really. Like I said, I am really just doing it because I enjoy doing it. I don’t think I am going to be doing this forever. I really don’t know where this is going to take me. The goal I am trying to hit in the next year or so is 100,000 subscribers. I hope I can hit it by the end of this year but based on my current projections, I’m either going to just miss it, or be close. So, the current goal now is 100,000.