Shenelle Rodrigo’s (@sheneller) travel and lifestyle YouTube channel recently reached 30,000 subscribers, and considering how their incredibly impressive high-quality video projects have gained immense popularity amongst travel enthusiasts, both in and outside the island, we asked Shanelle about her thoughts on hitting this new milestone and their plans for the future.
To begin with, Shenelle shared that she and her partner Shehaan Thahir, whom she collaborates with on all of their videos, started the channel in 2018, but they only started regular uploads somewhere around late 2019. She said they experienced a very slow crawl in exposure at the beginning; however, despite the lack of traction, they kept going. Come 2020, due to consistent uploads, higher-quality projects, frequency of produced content, etc., things began to pick up and they started to see some momentum.
She did point out, however, that they had projected bigger numbers for this time of the year, but the recent lockdown and resulting lack of uploads have somewhat dampened that progress. She said that regardless, they are incredibly happy and most grateful to the viewers and everyone who enjoys their content.
As for the growing responsibility creators experience with an ever-expanding viewership, Shenelle said she does feel a sense of responsibility and so she tries to be as transparent as possible, and of course does her best to enforce sustainable travel. As they are focused on building a travel-based audience, and since their content is primarily travel-based, with some sprinklings of lifestyle elements which have allowed them to keep the channel going during times like this past lockdown, she shared that she makes a concentrated effort to share sustainable and ethical travel practices – like when you go whale-watching or in safaris, by encouraging people to ask their drivers not to chase down animals or get invasively close.
We also asked Shenelle about her thoughts on the niche they’ve carved out for themselves as their own corner of the internet, and whether they have much competition when it comes to travel content creators doing what they are also doing. She said they do in fact feel like they’ve created a niche for themselves, primarily because there aren’t any travel content creators from Sri Lanka making content about Sri Lanka in English. She said this was actually one of the primary reasons for their rather slower climb in the ranks, stating that they would’ve been doing much bigger numbers had they chosen to do this in Sinhala.
She said that for the YouTube algorithm to pick them up and give them a chance was slow-going at first, with their videos not really reaching that big of an audience, and figuring out those logistics has been a challenge in and of itself. She shared that now that they have somewhat got a hang of it, she would say they are able to really represent themselves at a level playing field when it comes to those other content creators.
Shenelle said their goal has always been to take their channel global, and while a majority of their content would be about Sri Lanka, they also wish to explore the world and create content on a much broader scale – to bring their audience a plethora of experiences and cultures, and to never really limit themselves in what they share. She added that what they are doing is simply sharing experiences, and for the longest time they felt as though they were shouting into the void where there was absolutely no one listening, and now, to have this many eyes on them, a number which is growing each day, has been wonderful.
YouTube: Sheneller
Instagram: @sheneller
