The Story of my Computer Science Youtube Channel

0 to well, not really hero

Hi! You may not know this about me, but I run a YouTube channel called The CS Classroom. It is focused on teaching Python and IB Computer Science.

At the moment of writing, the channel has almost 3600 subscribers and has accumulated over 300,000 views. It’s also generated nearly $3000 in sales.

I decided to write an article chronicling my journey because I think that this represents a potential opportunity for all educators both as a business and as a proof of work.

A Pandemic Bandaid

I initially started the YouTube channel during the pandemic. I was teaching IB Computer Science (Grades 11 - 12) at an international school, and Zoom meetings weren’t cutting it. Students frequently turned their cameras off and were clearly disengaged, despite my best efforts. I think that globally, based on the performance and behavior of many students returning to the classroom, they were not unique.

I wanted to create a way to asynchronously deliver content, and to assess students based on their completion of a series of projects, according to a transparent grading rubric. 

My plan was to create a series of videos, which would be accompanied by a programming assignment, and that would be assessed for completion of a certain set of tasks. Zoom sessions would be purely Q&A sessions to address student questions and concerns.

I started creating videos by recording my screen using Quicktime and recording my voice simultaneously through a $50 microphone. I initially meant to upload the videos to Google Drive and share them with my students via a link, but uploading and streaming from Google Drive was a huge pain. Google Drive also always wanted to convert my videos to a specific format, which was super inefficient and time-consuming.

My setup in the early days

I looked at Vimeo and a few other solutions, but YouTube hands-down worked the best. Uploading videos was quick, the streaming quality was great, and all of my students were already very familiar with the platform, having spent most of their lives on it.

The Moment When Everything Changed

The first videos I created were coding tutorials to teach my students how to develop desktop applications in Python, in preparation for a large-scale, externally assessed project called the Internal Assessment. I ended up creating a whole series of video tutorials to do this so that students could work through them and complete the relevant assignments at their own pace. I didn’t bother making my first videos private because I figured, who would watch them?

For me, having any sort of following on YouTube was like winning the lottery - based more on luck than talent. More than that, I looked down on Youtubers as being attention-seeking narcissists who weren’t content with their social circle and therefore had decided to infect the rest of humanity with their inane content. Well, I’m not sure what that makes me now.

I looked at it as a successful experiment with clear benefits for my students. I didn’t actually think about the implications of putting my videos on YouTube until I was sitting on the toilet one day and I realized that the second video I had uploaded had gotten over 1,000 views in 3 hours.

At the time, the idea that 1,000 people from around the world had watched my video and heard my voice was crazy. This was the watershed moment, about a week after uploading, when I realized that YouTube could be more than a means to an end.

Other related videos have done reasonably well, but I still can’t understand why that particular video got so many views in such a short period of time. After being on the platform for nearly 2 years, the YouTube algorithm still baffles me. 

Experimenting and Failing…Often

Some of my viewers, who weren’t even my students, got so engaged in these videos that they asked what the homework was.

After that, I started making more and more videos, not just for my students, but also for the subscribers that I had begun to accumulate. I really had no concept or understanding of what subscribers were, beyond the fact that I needed 1000 subscribers (and 4000 viewing hours) to monetize my channel and start making money off of it.

Each hour of video took at least 4 hours of planning, recording, and editing. Basically, I would write the code that I wanted to explain beforehand. I would then put the code on my iPad so that I could look at it while I was recording a video. I would then write the code and execute it live on video, sometimes changing little things or fixing bugs while necessary. I would narrate exactly what I was doing so that my students (and viewers) would understand every line of code. 

Some of my viewers, who weren’t my students, got so engaged in these videos that they asked what the homework was. This was because I would usually mention homework assignments, for the benefit of my students, at the end of each video.

The formula for growth was really simple - keep making videos. I really had no strategy at that time. Actually, in the early days, I made videos based on what my students needed and they seemed to do well. I think that this was because if my students needed videos on those topics, it made sense that other people on YouTube would as well. Having them as sort of a focus group was invaluable in the early days, particularly when I didn’t really have the volume of views to accurately judge whether something was a success or not. 

My channel started to grow over the academic year. By the end of the academic year, I had nearly 1000 subscribers.

Personally, I think that the biggest impact was in the fact that I started to think about content creation from a different perspective.

For the first time, I started to watch various Youtubers of different genres, something that I had never really done before. I mainly watched travel videos and listened to music on YouTube before creating my own channel.

I’ve also consistently experimented with different types of videos. Nearly every video I made besides those that were technical was unsuccessful. I still haven’t successfully cracked the code for making “talking head” videos. Looking back, some of those videos that I made were SO bad. I never nailed down the right persona or genre. Maybe I’ll take another crack at those sometime in the future.

A hilarious but misguided failure

The Channel Lights Up

The previous year, I had published one video relating to IB Computer Science, the subject I was teaching in the classroom. For those of you who are unaware, it is a course that follows a standardized curriculum and is taught at international schools around the world, a potentially large but very niche market.

This video had done better than any of the other videos I made, accumulating around 10,000 views in 6 months. Not only that but importantly, people were watching the video on average for much longer than any of my other videos. And people were commenting like crazy. They were genuinely interested in the video!

My other videos were doing well, but not great, so I decided to create more videos relating to IB Computer Science and the reaction was surprisingly similar. People all over the world were demanding more. Every time I would make a video on one topic in the curriculum, people would comment on my videos or straight-up email me asking for more videos on different topics. While I was initially hesitant, I listened and kept making more videos, which did equally well.

A few months prior, at the one-year mark, I was able to monetize my channel. However, the earnings were…meh. Except for a spike, which I’ll talk about later, I’ve never earned more than $40 a month in ad revenue. For me, this was enough to replenish my coffee fund, but nothing more.

Selling Digital Content

However, around February of 2023, I had an idea. I would create study guides, basically short ebooks, to help students prepare for their IB Computer Science exams and then put links to them in the description and comments section of my videos. That way, when people would watch my videos, they would see a short message advertising my study guides below. I also started mentioning these guides at the beginning and end of my videos.

I use a popular platform called Gumroad that allows content creators to sell access to files via a link. I’ll probably write an article talking about my experience with the platform at a later date. 

My Gumroad store

For the first week, I thought my venture into selling digital products was a failure. However, then I made my first sale, followed by my second, and pretty soon my phone was vibrating multiple times every day, notifying me of sales. It was the first time that I had made money selling something on the internet. And best of all, my products didn’t cost me anything to make (besides my time)!

The coolest moment for me was the week prior to the IB Computer Science exam, which is administered globally in the first week of May. My channel and my sales absolutely lit up. My videos got thousands of views in just a week and my phone was vibrating so much that I had to shut it off. I could literally watch the view count and number of hours that each video was viewed spike in the hours leading up to the exam.

The "spike”

The Future

The channel did cool off over the summer, but as the school year is starting again, I’m seeing strong sales on a daily basis and more interaction with my videos than I expected.

The only downside is that my most successful videos are for a very niche audience (IB Computer Science students). Moreover, the curriculum on which all my best videos are based will change in 2025, so my channel is kind of doomed, unless I find a new niche to pursue.

The trouble with changing your niche on YouTube is that this basically involves making a bunch of videos until you figure out what works. Given the amount of time this takes, I’m not sure if that’s a process I want to go through again. I’ve made a good bit of money off my YouTube channel and then my digital sales, but if I compare the amount of money I earned off my channel versus the time I put in, I’m not sure it would be worth it.

I do know that it was definitely worth it for personal branding. I’m pretty sure that at this point, most IB Computer Science teachers have either come across the channel or their students have bought one of my study guides - I’ve had hundreds of sales from over 50 countries. And just because my material won’t be relevant in 2025, that doesn’t mean that my viewership isn’t going to consistently grow until that point.

More than anything else, creating and selling content has planted the seeds for creating more and different types of online businesses. If you want to see what these are and follow my journey, please subscribe to my blog below. 

Thanks for reading!