How To Start A Successful Youtube Channel
You know, if I
wasn't old enough to be this chick's grandfather I would be like so totally in
love. And I promise, I was not looking for a video of a pretty young thing who
talks too fast with the boundless enthusiasm of youth. On the contrary, I was
simply looking for a video with good advice about how to make money on YouTube.
But there she was and... why not? And after all, this video had 3,708,334
other viewers before me and so I figured that it must be the real thing; must be what I
was looking for; right?
This kid sure takes
her time getting down to actionable info, though, not that I'm complaining. I could
watch her endlessly bumping around in her conversation trying to find a clear
path to her point, but at 1 minute and 42 seconds in to this video she shifts
gears and states "...now that I reached over 100,000 subscribers in...
less than a year... I did it with like 3 days to spare on my one year mark on
Youtube... (I know) I'm talking way too much, but..."
And then Eva is neck
deep into sharing what I guess is her idea of solid advice: Make YouTube
friends, and collab with other YouTubers (I guess "collab" means
collaborate). And this makes sense to me. But then she advises...
"So your biggest question may be 'How do I reach out to YouTubers?' and
this is an extremely hard thing, even for myself, because even if somebody has,
you know, maybe, 50,000 subscribers, and I have more than them, when I like
reach out to them, they don't know that... they just see me being me saying
'Hey, you're really cool, we should talk more... You get these messages a lot,
the more you grow on YouTube you get them even more. So how do you make
yourself stand out from other people, you know, that just want to be your
friend?.."
And that's it for me!
Sorry Eva... pretty, perky, charming, adorable, all of that is great, but at 4
minutes and 5 seconds I just had to bail! No doubt there is some valuable
advice packed into the following 12 minutes and 35 seconds of this video somewhere, but
somehow I just didn't feel like it was my time to like take advantage of it. My
loss, no doubt... And no, I didn't "Like" or "Share" this video,
nor did I subscribe to Eva's channel. It's on to the next video, I guess...
How do I make money on YouTube?
OK, THIS one has got to be the real stuff! This video is posted by something called the YouTube Creator Academy and it has all the earmarks of being put up by YouTube itself. Now your talking! But wait a minute, this one has pulled 452,942 views in a year and that little cutie, Eva, above, more than triple that! Hmmmm.... This one has a blog associated with it, too, all lucid, with good English, etc. etc. https://creatoracademy.withgoogle.com/page/education
This is actually pretty interesting because a very major percentage of videos on YouTube are posted as part of an effort to make money, if not to make money exclusively. And of course, on the other side of things there are those that are posted simply because creating and posting them is an interesting thing to do, for whatever the reason and whatever the subject the videos address. This one, from YouTube itself establishes that area of crossover in which the passionate enthusiast for something, creates and posts videos to share that passion... or so the narrative goes.
Here are a few worthwhile quotes from Andy Stack, who introduces himself as a "Product Partner Manager at YouTube." Andy explains "For many of our creators, turning their passion into a profit is an important part of the YouTube platform" (hmmm.... so that's what YouTube is; it's a platform :) Andy, for instance, explains in his best feigned spontaneous and sincere aside "I've been a drummer for as long as I can remember.... I might decide that I want to turn my passion for drumming into a profitable enterprise" (Andy is now the only persona I know, English professors included, who use the word 'enterprise')... "One way I could do this would be to create videos that would appeal to others who share my passion... I could upload those videos to YouTube and then just wait for the dollars to roll in!" Sounds good, Andy. Then he puts the old pin in my balloon, saying "Well, as you may know, this doesn't 'automagically' happen." Say it isn't so, Andy! but next, throws me a crumb of hope promising that "We'll work together to demystify 'monetization' and help you drum up some cash." I feel better already, and not just because I think I've just met my vocabulary hero, but because I've got a feeling that straight dope about this YouTube money thing is forthcoming. And in fact, in the remarkably short time of the minute and 30 seconds or so for this little gem of a video to deliver its message, some really good conceptual foundation is laid down. As Andy goes on to explain, there are 4 basic categories of play who figure into the YouTube for cash equation. There are the creators (might be me someday :), the viewers, advertisers, and YouTube itself. OK, that's simple enough. The rest is simply a matter of keeping the interests of each of these key players in mind.
A quick visit to the Channel Page for the YouTube Creator Academy
reveals the following info given in its "About" section: "Learn tips from savvy creators as they showcase their secrets and best practices. Subscribe to see a new video each Tuesday" On this page also is, you guessed it, a video titled Learn the Secrets of YouTube creators with the Creators Academy. And in this one we get to see, through little 5 second-ish snippets of one successful creator after another, the 'cut of their jib' of some of the more appealing, well spoken, and capable of communicating their seriousness about their passion for creating and posting videos about their passion, YouTube creators. And by the way, there also are links here to... well, dozens and dozens and dozens of short videos in which these folks, er... share their tips about how to be successful with YouTube. But before I conclude that I've finally come across the "Search no further, Pilgrim, YouTube deliverance is at hand, entrance into the world of monetized YouTube success, I have to stop for a second and reflect on why Andy's video, with its ever so high status poster's tag "YouTube Creator Academy", and with all of its lucidity, good taste, better than average production values, and the kind of momentum that comes with being part of one of the world's greatest organizations (that would be YouTube and its parent company Google), has been outviewed by almost 5 to one by little, giggly Eva's video on the same subject titled "How To Start A Successful Youtube Channel." Now why is that? Could it be because YouTube is so totally what it actually seems to be and tries to present itself as, an actual, killer example of how truly democratized media has changed our world forever, so much so that even YouTube, when it behaves like the kind of thing it replaced, can't compete with its own better self? I hope so!
This is actually pretty interesting because a very major percentage of videos on YouTube are posted as part of an effort to make money, if not to make money exclusively. And of course, on the other side of things there are those that are posted simply because creating and posting them is an interesting thing to do, for whatever the reason and whatever the subject the videos address. This one, from YouTube itself establishes that area of crossover in which the passionate enthusiast for something, creates and posts videos to share that passion... or so the narrative goes.
Here are a few worthwhile quotes from Andy Stack, who introduces himself as a "Product Partner Manager at YouTube." Andy explains "For many of our creators, turning their passion into a profit is an important part of the YouTube platform" (hmmm.... so that's what YouTube is; it's a platform :) Andy, for instance, explains in his best feigned spontaneous and sincere aside "I've been a drummer for as long as I can remember.... I might decide that I want to turn my passion for drumming into a profitable enterprise" (Andy is now the only persona I know, English professors included, who use the word 'enterprise')... "One way I could do this would be to create videos that would appeal to others who share my passion... I could upload those videos to YouTube and then just wait for the dollars to roll in!" Sounds good, Andy. Then he puts the old pin in my balloon, saying "Well, as you may know, this doesn't 'automagically' happen." Say it isn't so, Andy! but next, throws me a crumb of hope promising that "We'll work together to demystify 'monetization' and help you drum up some cash." I feel better already, and not just because I think I've just met my vocabulary hero, but because I've got a feeling that straight dope about this YouTube money thing is forthcoming. And in fact, in the remarkably short time of the minute and 30 seconds or so for this little gem of a video to deliver its message, some really good conceptual foundation is laid down. As Andy goes on to explain, there are 4 basic categories of play who figure into the YouTube for cash equation. There are the creators (might be me someday :), the viewers, advertisers, and YouTube itself. OK, that's simple enough. The rest is simply a matter of keeping the interests of each of these key players in mind.
A quick visit to the Channel Page for the YouTube Creator Academy
reveals the following info given in its "About" section: "Learn tips from savvy creators as they showcase their secrets and best practices. Subscribe to see a new video each Tuesday" On this page also is, you guessed it, a video titled Learn the Secrets of YouTube creators with the Creators Academy. And in this one we get to see, through little 5 second-ish snippets of one successful creator after another, the 'cut of their jib' of some of the more appealing, well spoken, and capable of communicating their seriousness about their passion for creating and posting videos about their passion, YouTube creators. And by the way, there also are links here to... well, dozens and dozens and dozens of short videos in which these folks, er... share their tips about how to be successful with YouTube. But before I conclude that I've finally come across the "Search no further, Pilgrim, YouTube deliverance is at hand, entrance into the world of monetized YouTube success, I have to stop for a second and reflect on why Andy's video, with its ever so high status poster's tag "YouTube Creator Academy", and with all of its lucidity, good taste, better than average production values, and the kind of momentum that comes with being part of one of the world's greatest organizations (that would be YouTube and its parent company Google), has been outviewed by almost 5 to one by little, giggly Eva's video on the same subject titled "How To Start A Successful Youtube Channel." Now why is that? Could it be because YouTube is so totally what it actually seems to be and tries to present itself as, an actual, killer example of how truly democratized media has changed our world forever, so much so that even YouTube, when it behaves like the kind of thing it replaced, can't compete with its own better self? I hope so!
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