Hi Jaymo nice to meet you! It's sad when some threads remain without reply so i will fix that u.u. First of all I feel you when you talk about the difficulty in building a community because I'm introvert enough to find difficulties into doing that ( I mean I'm active here, also on Reddit and I try to do my best on twitter but I'm afraid other people may think I don't want to socialize, it's just I'm not so used to xD).
Anyway I can't check your channel from the link in the signature because it seems broken so you need to fix it (there is a guide somewhere here but I don't know where it is <,<).
From the highness of my "experience" (just 2 months and some days in this world) maybe I can give you some tips:
1)I'm still facing thumbnail problems and I'm still learning how to use photoshop properly but there are some free programs that you can use, but the best one is surely GIMP 2(is the one i used before photoshop) and there are a lot of guides online for tutorials;
2)For the lighting I suggest you to put at least 2 lamps near the pc and one of them should be in front of your face (the best should be the "3 point lighting setup" but I'm on budget so I use what I have in the house xD);
3) If you are recording in a room that presents a lot of hard walls or furniture I suggest you to use blankets to reduce echo and reverb ( I personally put 2 blankets on the wall that my desk faces and it's a blatant solution).
If you want company feel free to contact me, as i said i'm on twitter and tumblr (technically also on Instagram but I'm not that picture guy so).
I hope i was helpful somehow! Bye and keep improving!
