This is one of the most frequently asked question about YouTube. Am I qualified enough to give you the right advice? I don’t know. I’m not a YouTuber. But I have learnt a lot about this platform from watching YouTube videos for hours. Let me share my share my thoughts on this, you may get some help from it!
No more hassle to go to office
The main thing you’ll do is making videos right? You’ll write your script or think about the content of video. Once that is done, you need to gather the props, talk with the people, arrange the place for shooting, set up the camera and micro phones. And now you can go ahead and record your video. YouTube doesn’t have an office where you’ll go and do this stuffs. You will have to do it all by yourself at a place that is convenient for you. It could be your bedroom as well! So, you don’t have to take the pain of traveling to office daily.
Do what you love!
You are the boss. Nobody will dictate you how the work needs to done, by when it needs to be done. You will have the freedom of working on the content that you love and have the ownership of it. Nobody can interfere or preach you about what should be done and what should not be.
Is it just about money or your passion?
This part is tricky. You have successfully uploaded your first video. It’s been a month or two that you are regularly uploading videos on your channel but where’s the money? You worked your ass off to make the best videos you could. You need to be patient and persuasive to make it through this career. If your primary objective is to get money out of your video, it can be pretty disappointing at first. But if it’s your passion to make videos and money is secondary, you’ll find it less frustrating.
What value do you offer to add to the platform?
There’s probably nothing left in world on which a YouTube video has not been made. In such a difficult competition, what unique quality does your content have to live on? If you are going to make same gameplay, reaction channel, cooking, DIY/life hacks, make-up tutorial, the platform already has thousands of other big channels doing the same. Making the same type of contents as others is like adding water to the ocean, which is of no use.
Job security
YouTube as career could be fun. At the same time it’s not a traditional job. You don’t have the job security here. If you’re contemplating to drop out of school and start off your own YouTube channel it’s high time to give it a second thought. Nobody knows, how popular YouTube would be after 5 years. In any such scenario, it will be your education that will help you out to find out an alternative career.
Big challenge for small channels
After all this Adpocalypse and all, YouTube has made centain changes in its policies. One of the changes is that a channel that can monetize its content only when it has a minimum of 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch-time. Now this is going to pose a great threat to the small channels.
Demonetization
This post would be incomplete if I don’t mention about demonetization. This is a situation when YouTube is telling you that you can’t earn money from this particular video because it has violated some community standards. The worst part of it is YouTube is never going to explain what exactly went wrong. It’s like working for the whole day and suddenly your boss shows up, “you’re not going to get paid for today. ” Through all these years, YouTubers are playing this guessing game to guess why their videos got demonetized. But nobody till now has completely figured it out.
YouTube algorithm
Have you seen the recommended video list? YouTube’s algorithm is changing all the time- sometimes the 5 minutes videos are the one that are preferred. Sometimes the 10 minute long ones. Nobody knows which video will earn more. The videos that are highest earning today might not be the same tomorrow. This is too one of the things YouTubers struggle to understand.
Transparency
Like the above 2 aspects there are many other things that will affect your channel and your earnings that YouTube is not going to explain to you. Not having the proper understanding of what you are doing could be stressful and frustrating.
Facing the parents/school/society
Coming from an Indian middle-class family I know how frustrating this could be.
Beta, where do you work?
– I’m a YouTuber. I make videos.
That is fine. But what is your real job?
-Aunty. I already told you.
You can be famous on internet Suddenly. But that doesn’t make your life any easier. Elders in your family who don’t understand your job will keep on taunting you to get a real job. People may laugh at you for what you make. You will receive a lot of comments from people who don’t matter. Ask yourself if you can handle this criticism, free advices and hatred. You’ll get support and love as well but you need to prepare yourself for the worse.
Going global
You could be a boy or girl from a small town that nobody knows of. But through your contents you can reach out to millions of people in different corners of world. You’ll understand that despite the difference in our language, background, geographical barriers how much similarity we have! You’ll get to know a lot of people you didn’t ever imagine to know.
I hope that I haven’t demotivated you. It’s all just about as much knowledge as possible to gather before you take a decision.
Despite all the challenges YouTube is still one of the best platform to make content on. It’s up to you how you’re face the challenges and make it worth it. ❤
(Photo credit: YouTube Rewind 2017)
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