Should I Make What the Audience Wants to See?

I am writing this blog right now.

My topics are completely random.

Sometimes I write about AI. Sometimes I write about history. Sometimes I write about English.

To be honest, I do not write about topics that I cannot personally care about.

In the first place, I am not trying to make a huge amount of money from this blog.

If it leads to work someday, that would be nice, but I am not expecting too much from it.

So I write whatever I want.

I used to make YouTube videos too.

I made videos for engineers, such as AWS tutorials and technical explanations.

The results were terrible.

…or at least, that is what I would like to say. But actually, the problem came before the view count.

I could not keep going.

I ran out of ideas.

Video production was harder than I expected.

I had to record, edit, and make thumbnails.

After making a few videos, I could no longer find the next idea inside myself.

So I put my own area of expertise aside for a moment and researched “how to build a channel that gets views.”

I thought maybe I should stop being picky about the theme and just try to make a channel people would watch.

What I found was mostly advice like this:

• Study growing channels thoroughly
• Copy successful patterns
• Leave originality for later
• Make what viewers want to see, not what you want to say
• Viewers are not looking for the right answer; they are looking for empathy

In short:

If you want people to watch, make content that gets watched.

I understand the logic.

In fact, that probably does raise the odds of success.

But at some point, I thought:

I cannot do this.

If I were planning to live entirely from YouTube, that would be different.

I would research the market thoroughly, chase popular themes, and optimize for the algorithm.

But I am an engineer.

I have a main job.

I did not have the energy to spend even my hobby time doing market research and mass-producing “the content viewers want this week.”

Still, I did learn something from that experience.

People who seriously make a living from content are truly impressive.

When we hear the word creator, we may imagine someone freely doing what they love.

But the reality may be the opposite.

They throw away their personal obsessions.

They hold back what they personally want to say.

They keep delivering only what users want.

That, too, is a kind of craftsmanship.

At least, it was not for me.

That is why I still write whatever I want on this blog.

One day I write about AI, the next day about unemployment in India, and the day after that about string theory.

From a marketing perspective, it is probably terrible.

But I am still continuing.

YouTube did not continue.

This blog does.

For me, what mattered was probably not being read, but being able to keep writing.

And in practical terms, I feel that a random blog that continues for ten years is stronger than a video with zero views.