Creatives in the YouTube vlog business face many hurdles in their journey to success. Vlogging is a practical business school of it’s own. Those who have succeeded and now earns from this channels are good examples of resilient creators.
Sadly, people who have not vlogged before cannot understand the REAL meaning of ‘giving up on something‘ until they get involved in the vlogging business.
The most common question I am ask by people is; do you make money from your blog or YouTube channel? Its a really tricky question because the value one gets by creating content is beyond money.
In this blogpost, I will share my vlogging story as well as some hurdles creatives go through to get their videos out there to their targeted audiences.
The Creative Process
“What I am going to share?” That’s what goes through the mind of a creator each week when planning to produce their content. With time, one realizes that unique and original content takes time to create and sell.
My regular blogging and vlogging experience has thought me that google and YouTube algorithms are unpredictable. It therefore means that the only way to beat it is to come up with original content targeted at a very specific niche/market.
It took me a year to realize this. At my early stages, like any newbie creator I wanted ‘many views.’ In the channels I owned in the past, I bought ‘views’. This never made any difference in my life apart from seeing that I had many views on my videos:-). I was getting no feedback from those who watched or liked the videos I created.
I did this for a year. Over this period, I realized that the contentment I wanted from it was missing. So, I had to sit down and rethink on my content.
Why was I having a YouTube channel in the first place? What was my purpose? Thinking through these questions helped me restart and reorganize myself again.
My Vlogging Story
In my life, I have had more than 5 YouTube channels that are no more. The first original one was suspended back in the year 2014. I was not told the reason why despite trying to appeal unsuccessfully. The channel that followed after that was similar to the original one but never got anywhere because I was not getting views like I did in the first channel.
The third channel was for my business which I closed it down this year 2021 because of permanent dissolution of my company.
The other two was targeting a niche market. I was leveraging on information found on the internet to create the videos. I will explain how I did this in a moment.
Leveraging On Information Found Online to Create Content
If you search on YouTube today, ‘How to make money on YouTube without shooting/creating any video‘ you will get several video tutorials showing you how to do it. I find many of these tutorials ‘predatory’ in some way depending on how you look at them. If you believe that video creation is art- and you are an artist- I suggest you don’t follow what any of these videos tell you because you will end up wasting your time.
With that said let me tell what happened after I followed one of the video tutorials. So, I stumbled upon the video while scrolling down on YouTube.
The idea is to produce videos on a daily basis on the trending topics they tell you. For example, today you may decide to do a video about ‘Health.‘ Lets say that based on your SEO keyword research, you notice that many people are searching for ‘How to lose belly fat.‘ You google the same and find many articles talking about belly fat.
The idea here is to use someone else’s blogpost to create the video. You copy word by word but reorganize the points. For example, if the article is about 10 ways to lose belly fat, you create a video about top 5 ways to lose belly fat. You get the point right?
Next step, is to open a Cloud Text-to-Speech app or software and paste your script there. In this blogpost, I will use Google text to speech online program. Choose the voice over you want (either male or female) and click play to listen and record the script.
Download free videos and photos online relevant to your script. Match it with voice over recording from text to speech program and add a free music from YouTube Music Library. Create a nice intro and outro for branding. Once ready post your video on YouTube.
Credit the blog author in the video description area by pasting a link to the blogpost you got your script from.
This sounds like a good and legit idea right?
The Question is How Sustainable is it?
At the beginning of taking this route, you will find yourself very excited that you are finally building a YouTube channel. This is especially if you love video editing. But the excitement will only last long if you intend to use your channel to market your ‘video editing skills.’
If your motivation is to make money out of your channel, the probability of being disappointed by the ‘search engine‘ algorithms is high. For the six months that I ran my channel this way, I never succeeded to make any dime. I used to post 2-3 times a week.
It therefore means that having a purpose for starting to vlog at the very beginning in very important.
What is ‘A Purpose‘ in Vlogging?
I will try to define this from my own experience. Having been fully suspended or expelled from YouTube once and having ran unsuccessful channels in the past, I have found out that having a YouTube Channel is not about the views you get. It’s about the contentment you get from creating the content.
YouTubing is an art. You must resonate with your target audience. My channel on Freelance and business is about a year now and it doesn’t have several views as one would expect.
This doesn’t worry me at all because, I am sure a time will come when I will be able to connect with very specific audience on YouTube. When that time comes, those who will be subscribing to my channel will be real fans.
That’s what will give me more contentment. It starts with the creator being proud of their content. This only comes when you are original.
Avoid Greed On Your Way Up
Don’t be greedy to have many channels. Run one channel consistently until it’s successful. When that happens, you can consider having a second channel when you are capable of hiring someone to run it. Greed took toll on me earlier thus I did not succeed.
When you are able to overcome greed, you will be in a good position to explore your creativity to the latter.
So What Does It Take to Succeed?
When you are able to take care of your psychological issues surrounding starting a YouTube channel, it will be very easy to remain consistent once you begin.
Success begins with you. Do you like the information you are sharing on your vlogs? Do you enjoy writing your scripts? Attach your vision to the content that you create.
Link your idea to the business that you are doing.
For example, at the end of my every vlog, I tell people about my business. Also, at the description area of each of the video that I post, I have a link to my business and my blog.
I believe if one does this for a long-time, it will help them grow their business in many ways i.e SEO, backlinking e.t.c
Conclusion
If you do something that you love, you will enjoy the process and getting many views will be the last thing that will worry you. Your mental health is directly linked with the content that you create. If the information is useful to you, it will also be useful to others because people will react by responding.
What do you think people should focus on in order to succeed on YouTube Vlogging? Share your thoughts in the comments section below here.
And if you need help to create and produce professional screencast videos, you can request a free quote here.
Until next time, bye bye and take care.
Follow me on twitter @cheptiony.
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