YouTube as a career, part 2.

Moi, it’s me again with another YouTube rambling session. Last time we have tackled some of the reasons why lots of people chose to talk to a camera, instead of real humans, as a career. If you aspire to be one of those, please keep reading to gather some of my amateur but, hopefully, helpful tips.

The first thing you need to know is you would not get recognized right away, unless you made a super weird/controversial/trendy type of video, which gets viral overnight; then it’s a different story. But if want to go steady and have a long-term success, try to make videos that you are genuine about, with a proper script (or if improvisation is your thing then go for it!) and not necessarily professional, but decent filming equipment & editing software.

To break it down, these are the most important things you need to sort out before you begin to make videos: genre, video style, target viewers and general knowledge about the topics you choose.

1. Genre: find what your passion is. It could be comedy sketches, vlogging, gameplays, beauty,..etc. The first step is to do what you love, not what’s trending. That way, your videos will be more sincere and “you”. Try to learn from YouTubers who have the same videos genre. Of course, if you prefer to do a little bit of everything, no one can stop you.
2. Video style: every genre requires a different style that could make people want to watch more, or click away after the first 5 seconds. It doesn’t have to be a 1080p video with expensive lighting and a bunch of background music. Most creators started out very humbly and they still got hundreds of thousands of views. That being said, a badly filmed video with jump-cuts every 5s is not good either. You can use natural lighting, free editing softwares and your phones to create an awesome video. Remember: it’s all in the content.
3. Target viewers: This is where you decide what your viewer demographics will be. For instance, if English is not your first language, you can either choose to make videos in your own language or in English in order to reach more audiences. Will your channel be PG? Will you discuss current affairs? Will you create a character or be yourself? These are some questions to get you going.
4. Knowledge: I have seen lots of people on YouTube who unintentionally/intentionally ignore this specific step when making videos, although it is common sense. In order to discuss certain matters, you MUST have a fair amount of knowledge about what you give out to your viewers. You don’t see a chef teach kids about the bird and the bee, or a swimming lesson from a mime in real life. Only talk about things that you know about. Of course if it’s for comedic effects, do whatever you want as long as it’s not offensive. But if you are going to educate people, make sure all the information you got is correct. Then you can worry about how to make it eye-catching and stuff later.

So there you go, as brief as I could do, a guide-ish for your future career. If after reading my article, you decided to try it out, please let me know how it goes! It’d be awesome. And of course, even if you do not consider starting a career on a website that is filled with cat videos, thank you for making it to the end anyway.