Is a Small YouTube Channel Worth It in 2026?

Is a small YouTube channel worth it in 2026? Here is why even videos with 10 views can still convert, support your SEO, bring warmer traffic, and create real business opportunities.

Many people wonder why I still post on YouTube when some of my videos get 10 views. Sometimes 100. They say, “Just focus on TikTok and Instagram, where you get 1 million views every month.”

So I decided to write this blog to explain why my small YouTube channel still makes me more money, helps me convert better, and supports my website more than social media does. I will give you a little teaser for this blog to make you keep reading. A video that has made me over $500 on Youtube had 180 views in the first 6 months. After 5 years it has 120,000 views. No, $500 is not a life-changing sum but producing that video took me 30 minutes in total which makes it pretty well paid job.

Yes, my TikTok is much bigger. Yes, social media gives me amazing reach when I do it right. But reach and conversion are not the same thing.

A video can get thousands or even millions of views and still bring you nothing. No clients. No buyers. No website traffic. No real business value. Just a nice little ego massage and maybe three people asking, “where did you buy that jumper?”.

That is exactly why I still care about YouTube.

Social Media Reach Is Not the Same as Conversion

Social media can be incredible for reach, but it is often much harder to turn that audience into clients or buyers. It is not impossible. If you know how to build a brand, communicate clearly, create trust, and position your offer properly, then yes, TikTok and Instagram can absolutely convert.

But only when there is a real strategy behind it.

A creator on TikTok or Instagram with 1,000 followers can sometimes make more money than a creator with 10,000 followers or even 100k+. That sounds weird if you only look at numbers, but it makes perfect sense when you look at the actual audience. If you want to know more about this, you can download my e-book about Tiktok for growth, building a business for free. 

Do you sell anything, or do you just post content? Is your offer clear? Are you trustworthy? Is your audience made of people who would actually buy from you? Does your product or service align with the audience you have built? Are you bringing value to people, or are you just entertaining them for 15 seconds before they scroll away?

That is the difference.

Having 1,000 followers who are exactly the type of people who might become your customers is much stronger than having 10,000 random fans who like your content but will never buy anything from you.

That is why small TikTok creators can sometimes make more money than bigger creators. It is not always about the size of the audience. It is about how relevant that audience is, how much they trust you, and whether they understand what you actually offer.

The Ego Problem With Small Numbers

This is where ego becomes a problem. If you post a video on Youtube and it gets 10 views, you want to delete it and pretend it never happened. If you have 120 followers on Instagram, you want to buy followers to look better. That is another conversation, but buying followers can completely destroy your account. You may never be able to have really good organic reach again.

I know because I did it. I bought followers and likes on Instagram to record a YouTube video showing people how scammy it is. It is not real, and it hurts your profile.

Suddenly you have bots who do not watch your videos but still give you likes. You have followers who have never posted a picture themselves. You have accounts that look fake because they are fake. Instagram knows these are paid followers. They are not stupid.

People are not stupid either. If you have 10,000 followers but 3 likes on your posts, dude, it is obvious. And honestly, it makes you look worse than having 100 followers with 30 likes. At least the person with 100 followers and 30 likes looks real.

Buying Followers Can Destroy Your Reach

Buying followers is usually done because people want to look successful before they actually are. I get it. Nobody wants to look like they are talking to an empty room.

But buying followers does not fix the problem. It creates a bigger one. Now your account is full of people who do not care about your content. They do not watch your videos. They do not comment properly. They do not click your links. They do not buy from you.

So when you post something new, the platform sees that your own followers are not interested. And if your own followers are not interested, why would Instagram or TikTok push that content to more people?

This is how you can completely mess up your organic reach. In my case, I needed to start a new account to get out of it. So yes, having low numbers can feel embarrassing, but fake numbers are worse.

What YouTube Taught Me During the Pandemic

When it comes to YouTube, I learnt my biggest lesson during the pandemic. I filmed a video about Euro 2020 just for fun. I edited it and posted it.

I knew right away that there probably would not be a huge interest in seeing shots of Wembley Stadium, even though the shots were amazing. So I knew the video would most likely not get many views. But the process of creating that video brought me joy.

I posted it, and after three months it had 11 views. I actually wanted to delete it because it looked so awkward.

You even get comments from people who, of course, have never created a single video in their lives saying, “8 views lol!!!!” That comment obviously proves the intelligence level of that person, but it still gets in your head. It is basically someone trying to stop you from doing something you enjoy, just because the numbers do not look impressive.

And yes, you do start thinking about it. Should I delete the video? Is everyone laughing at me? Does it look embarrassing? But then I had to ask myself something else.

Is the video good? Yes. So why should I delete it? Am I really that desperate to be validated by the whole world?

The YouTube Video With 16 Views That Got Me a Netflix Email

So guess what happened three years later. Netflix approached me about that video. The same video had 16 views.

They asked if I could sell them those shots because they wanted to use them in their new documentary.

What?????? If this is not the biggest lesson of all, then nothing is. That video looked like a failure from the outside. It had almost no views. It had no hype. It did not go viral. Nobody cared. But the right person found the right video at the right time.

That is the thing people do not understand about YouTube. A video does not need to go viral to have value. Sometimes it just needs to exist, be searchable, and be good enough for the right person to find it later.

When a Small YouTube Channel Is Not Worth It

Having said that, I also want to be realistic.

If you post on YouTube for a year, your best video has 100 views, you have not converted anyone, and your website has not ranked higher on Google, then no, there may be no point in having a YouTube channel.

Or maybe you simply need to make videos people actually want to see. YouTube is not magic. Posting random videos and hoping the algorithm adopts you like a sad little orphan is not a strategy. Also, because I am a videographer and editor, it takes me a very short time to produce an entire YouTube video. That makes YouTube easier for me to keep as part of my business.

If one video takes you a whole day or more to make, then of course you need to reevaluate which part of your business you want to focus on. In my case, I can dedicate about 20% of my time to YouTube and play the long-term game. If I spent 80% of my time on YouTube, I am not sure the return on investment would be big enough for me.

So yes, YouTube works for me, but it works because I understand what role it plays in my business. It is not my whole business. It is part of my visibility, SEO, trust, and conversion strategy.

The Full Story Behind My 10-View YouTube Videos

When I say I have videos with 10 views, that is not the full story. I have also created videos that reached 60,000 views in a couple of days. But those videos often do not grow over time. They are usually short-term hype. They bring attention, which is nice, but the value can disappear very quickly.

More people know about you for a moment, and then everyone moves on with their lives because the internet has the attention span of a goldfish on espresso. Most of my YouTube videos are different. They are search engine based, which means I post them with a long-term plan.

A video that has 10 views today may have 5,000 to 10,000 views after a year. Some of my videos reached 30,000 to 100,000 views after three years. Yes, some videos flop badly. That happens. But the majority of my videos grow slowly over time. Very slowly. Painfully slowly. The kind of slowly that makes you question your entire existence.

But they do grow.

That slow growth matters because those videos are not just bringing views. They can bring warmer traffic, help people trust me, send visitors to my website, and support my SEO. This is also one of the reasons I was able to rank my website organically and for free at number one on Google.

Why YouTube SEO Works Differently

Some YouTube videos have 10 views for two years, and then in the third year, for some random reason, they gain 3,000 views in a week. That is why YouTube is so different from TikTok and Instagram.

On social media, a video often has a very short life. It either performs quickly or disappears. You post it, the algorithm tests it, and within a few hours or days you usually know whether it worked. YouTube does not always work like that.

A video can sit there quietly for months or years. Then one day, people start searching for that exact topic, or the algorithm decides the video is relevant again, and suddenly it starts growing. This is why YouTube SEO is so powerful.

You are not only posting for today. You are creating content that can be found later by people who are already looking for that topic. That makes the traffic much warmer.

Someone scrolling TikTok might accidentally see your video while eating crisps at midnight. Someone searching on YouTube usually has a reason. They want an answer, a tutorial, a solution, an opinion, or proof that someone else has the same problem. That makes YouTube a completely different game.

The SEO Benefits of YouTube Videos

The SEO benefits of YouTube videos are huge because one video can support your website in multiple ways.

Someone might find your video first, trust what you are saying, click through to your website, and then spend time reading more about your work. Over time, that builds authority around your topic and sends warmer traffic to your site long after the video was posted.

It can also support your Google ranking because YouTube gives your content another searchable place to exist.

This matters even more now because search is changing. People are not only using Google in the traditional way anymore. AI search results and tools like ChatGPT are already influencing how people find information, recommendations, websites, and services.

So if your website, videos, blogs, and content are all connected around the same topics, you are giving yourself a much better chance of being found. That is why a YouTube video with 10 views can still be part of a bigger SEO strategy.

It may not look impressive today. It may not feed your ego today. It may not make you look like a superstar today. But it can still help your business.

Why Small YouTube Channels Can Convert Better

A small YouTube channel can still convert because YouTube is not only about views. It is about search, trust, timing, and intent.

If someone finds your video because they searched for the exact topic you covered, that person is already much closer to taking action than someone who randomly saw your TikTok while scrolling. That is the difference between cold reach and warm traffic.

My TikTok may be huge, and yes, getting 1 million views a month is great for visibility. I am not pretending it is useless. But visibility does not automatically pay the bills.

YouTube helps me in a different way. It supports my website, brings in people who are actively searching, builds trust over time, and gives my content a longer life. That is why my small YouTube channel can convert better than my bigger social media platforms.

The Humiliation of 10 Views Is Part of the Long-Term Game

So yes, the humiliation of having 10 views on a video you posted is the price you have to pay if you are playing the long-term SEO game. You have to accept the nasty comments. You have to accept people laughing at you. You have to think long term.

Also, by the way, people who laugh at your 9 views are usually the same people who emailed you trying to sell you their “YouTube strategy success” and got bitter when you declined. A lot of these people work by charging you hundreds of dollars and then sending your video to their 10,000-person email list or some paid watch-time farm where people are paid a few cents to watch your videos.

Suddenly, you have 10,000 views on each video. Amazing. Except once you stop paying them, your views go back to 10 because all the traffic was never real. It was their people. It was not your audience. It was not your customers. It was not your community. It was fake attention. And fake attention does not build a business.

Final Thoughts: Sometimes 10 Views Is Just Early

A small YouTube channel can still convert if the videos are useful, searchable, connected to your offer, and part of a bigger business strategy. It can support your SEO, bring warmer traffic to your website, build trust, and create opportunities long after you post.

My TikTok and Instagram may give me bigger numbers, but YouTube gives me something different. It gives my content a longer life; helps people find me when they are actually looking for what I do; supports my website and brought me real opportunities.

Including Netflix finding a video with 16 views. So no, I am not deleting my small YouTube videos. I am not embarrassed by them because I do not need an outside validation from the world that doesn’t know my plan and strategy.

Because sometimes the video with 10 views is not a failure. Sometimes it is just early.

If you need help with anything mentioned in this blog you can contact me or right away get my content review on your videos.