You have been watching YouTubers who inspire you with their success to fame stories. Not feeling confident? Don’t know how to take good videos and audio and edit them?
No worries, there are TONNES of FREE YouTube videos out there showing you the detailed way of how to outline, shoot, edit, publish and promote your YouTube videos.
If you do not like to be chained down by a 9 to 5 job and wanted to do something you love with freedom and flexibility, starting an online business may be something you are considering seriously.
However… Before you make that leap or do not plan to get any job after graduation but instead want to do YouTube full time, here are some considerations…
Image credit: SnapwireSnaps from Pixabay
I am speaking from my experience of more than 10 years dabbling in the online world, watching top earners rise and fall.
1. It is much more competitive
The online scene is much more competitive due to low entry barrier. Basically anyone with a laptop, Smartphone and video editing software can upload videos on YouTube.
Yes, compared to a blog, you have a better chance of being found in YouTube for the same queries. But I am noticing the scene is quickly changing now. Create a channel that is successful and the next thing, you would find 100 other channels copying you. YouTubers who have few hundred thousand views on their videos published few years ago now are sometimes getting by with less than 2k views on videos that have been published in the last 6 months. There are many emerging YouTubers fighting for the same target market.
2. It is HARD, consistent work
Of all the famous YouTubers you have seen, there are more than 90% struggling to get subsribers and views. You may find yourself uploading a good quality video twice a week for more than a year and yet not hit the 100 subsribers count or watch hours.
Note:YouTube requires a minimum of 1000 subscribers AND 4000 hours of watch time in the past year before you are eligible for consideration to be monetized.
Sometimes when I browse YouTube, I am amazed at some small YouTubers who produced quality videos with good content… Yet their videos have like the most few hundred views. They struggle to meet the subscriber count and watch hours.
The thing is, if they continue to produce consistent quality videos day after day, one day, one of their videos may blow up. And then, the growth would be exponential. Once the channel blows up, they cannot rest on their laurels and need to continously come up with awesome content.
3. Should you change your mind, future career prospects would be bleak
Assuming making videos is your first job. At first you are wildly successful and have passive income rolling in your bank account. In no time, other people are able to do things better than you. They started to outrank you.
When we are young, we have all the energy to go without sleep, sometimes for days in order to work on our videos. I remember the days where I could go without much sleep and food… Just glued to my computer churning out fresh content after content.
But 5 or 10 years down the line, when we get older, we would find that we no longer have that kind of stamina to push on. We can no longer be chronically sleep deprived and live on caffeine and pizzas. If we continue living like that, we may find ourselves developing chronic health conditions.
If all these years we have been on a full time job, then by then we may have reached a stable stage in our career. We are backed by working experience that enables us to look for a job.
Bloggers that do well 5 or 10 years ago have mostly been outranked by their younger counterparts. I remember the first few bloggers in my country who declared that they are going full time… Now their blogs are no longer being updated. They have moved on to earn income using alternative ways. It is the same for blogs, and it would be the same for YouTube as well.
Conclusion
I do not mean to discourage you from going into an online world. It is just that my advice is to go with your eyes open.
If you make it big, the money you earned in a month could be worth a few months or even your annual salary. You may choose to reinvest back some of the earnings into your business, for example hiring freelancers, upgrading your equipment, etc.
But for your personal use, don’t splurge. Diversy your income, live simply and not lavishly. Online business is lucrative but just a Google aloghtrim can wipe out years of hard work overnight.
If this is really your dream, and you have the financial means to work on it till it takes off, by all means give it your best shot. Alternatively, consider getting a simple job to pay the bills while you start on your YouTube channel part time.
I have tried a several myself, but that is quite true, there is too much competition, I remember seeing comments not long ago about this subject, you have a game channel with more than one hundred subscribers, so there many out there with more, and even more.