Monthly Catch Up: July 2026

I'm Owen. I'm building a small online business in public, from nothing, and at the start of every month I write up how the last one actually went.

What worked, what didn't, and the real numbers underneath it. No rounding up. No "results not typical".

These are my numbers, not a promise about yours. I'm one person at the start of this, and I publish them mostly to keep myself honest.

8 videos are live, and this was the month YouTube properly started putting them in front of people.

It showed them about 1,500 times. 36 of those turned into someone actually watching.

That's the bit I want to be honest about. Fifteen hundred chances to earn somebody's attention, and I earned about thirty-six of them.

So the thumbnails aren't doing their job.

If you scrolled past one of my videos, you've effectively scrolled past all of them, because they all look samey.

But there was one genuinely good thing in there, and it's the first bit of evidence I've had that any of this is working.

The people who did click stayed longer than they did last month. Not by much. About twenty seconds. But on a two-minute video, twenty seconds is a lot.

Which tells me something useful.

The problem isn't the videos. It's that not enough people are giving them a chance in the first place.

One other thing happened, and I've thought about it more than I probably should have.

Somebody left a comment, and then subscribed to this newsletter.

First person who wasn't me. (Thank you if that was you! 😊)

Longer videos next batch, closer to seven or eight minutes, with the actual stories told properly instead of summarised in a sentence.

And hopefully some better thumbnails.

That's it. Two things, not ten.

£118 this month, across seven tools. Nothing changed from last month.

So, nothing coming in, £118 going out. That's where this actually is.

If you're curious what I'm actually paying for, I keep the full list here:

→ What I use

If you want to watch the rest of this happen, I write one calm email a week and do one of these catch ups at the start of every month.

You can join in below.