Over the past 5 years, I have seen a surge in new metal detectors coming onto the market. Each time one is released the hype seems to be getting bigger and bigger, and the YouTube testers becoming more and more prolific, obviously these metal detectors are being given out freely, but as we all know, nothing is free in this world, and if you have something for nothing, you can bet your life you're going to have to sell a part of your soul testing it, and tell anyone who will listen that its the best thing that's ever appeared on the market. This makes it difficult for new people to the hobby to choose a starter detector, and many have faced the utterly confusing, passionate barrage of replies to the innocent question 'Whats the best detector for a beginner?' Few take into consideration the amount of money the questioner has to spend, where they are going to detect beach or land, if ill health and machine weight is an issue, or if they want a simple switch and go or a...

There seems to be a large increase in people wanting to make YouTube videos of their metal detecting outings and finds, which is great, it helps others, some make great content and it can be an additional hobby for the creators. Obviously they are eager for their channels to get viewed and for people to enjoy their hard work. Facebook looks to be the perfect platform to gain followers from, and they eagerly post their latest video across as many groups as they can, hoping to pick up new viewers and subscribers.. However, this can be one way to ensure that people WONT watch your channel, You have to remember that most people are in most groups across facebook. If you post your link across 15 groups, its highly likely that people will see your link 15 times in a row, if you do this every couple of days, you suddenly become 'not him/her again' clogging up their feeds. You are then likely to become viewed as a spammer, get thrown out of groups and generally frowned upon. Y...

So how did it all start? I started my Digger Dawn channel purely as 'a bit of a laugh' and filmed the first time I went out detecting, with no idea what I was doing, armed with a cheap detector and no expectations. Id never tried to edit a video before and even filmed it the wrong direction, I didn't realise that anyone would actually watch my video, as Id uploaded a video of my cat 5 years before which had a massive 10 views, so I thought I was only videoing for my own memories. I wasn't on any metal detecting facebook groups at the time (I didn't realise they existed) and had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I had only watched Diggers on National Geographic channel, which was what had motivated me to give it a try. My channel quickly started growing and to my upmost amazement people were enjoying my digs, helping me learn and generally being a lot of fun to be around. I was overjoyed to be interacting with people who enjoyed history like myself, I found F...