So You Want To Be A YouTuber? | Sabrina Cruz | TEDxUofT

[Music] when I was growing up people would always tell me that the job I would have had yet to be invented that I would be the one to make it real and that thought to a small lazy child was terrifying because I didn't know how to make a bowl of cereal let alone my future form of employment I was very overwhelmed but it turns out that I didn't have a lot to worry about because I would figure it out because hello I am Sabrina Cruz I make education and comedy videos online once a week I get paid to basically fly around the world to take selfies and my job is youtuber now you've probably heard a lot about this job recently this wonderful format where people get to make money uploading videos of themselves online gone are the days of firefighter and president kids nowadays kids want to be youtubers and adults seem to want to be youtubers as well because when I was at the dentist the other day and she learned what I did she asked me the exact same two questions I always get so how much money do you make doing YouTube and please I just be like so good at YouTube of course I was at the dentist so my answer was uh-huh but here is my answer to her meant to anybody else wondering the exact same question on how to make youtube your job but first a matter of notation because youtubers do not exist anymore there are too many social media platforms out there and if you're doing one then you're doing them all so when I say youtuber what I really mean is creator because I know it sounds pompous I know it sounds vague but when your entire job it goes everything from writing to production to editing and marketing what you're doing is creating nothing more nothing less so going back to the big question do creators get paid it's a big one but there are three main ways one merchandising you see you could do the traditional famous person route you can make merch albums books or go on tour and a single purchase can range anything from 30 to 300 dollars so you stand the chance to make a lot of money this way as long as someone is willing to pay for it a lot of someone's in fact and unfortunately we can't all be Kim Kardashian or zoella so you can't go on tour if nobody wants to see you unfortunately so do you have to be a superstar to make youtube your job well look at me okay of my small audience less than 10 percent are Canadians less than 50 percent are around your age statistically speaking you didn't know who I was before I got on stage I am NOT famous science says so so how am i doing it well it's because there are other methods like subscriber support whether it's web sites like patreon or IndieGoGo that allow viewers to pledge money to creators for projects or future videos this is the most direct interaction and exchange of money between the two and more than the money though I think the value is in the fact that it speaks to how you are valued as a creator you see these people are paying for stuff that they would have seen for free you don't really pay to view tweets but they're paying because they love what you do and they want to make sure that they can keep on seeing it on the other end of the spectrum they're selling out I mean advertising because no matter what you may have heard YouTube has the most stable monetization method the way it works is that companies pay YouTube money to put advertisements in front of videos now YouTube takes 55% of this and gives the remaining 45% to the whoever uploaded the video that hosts the ad in the first place sounds like a sweet gig except not really I mean you may have of the ad pocalypse which was this dramatically titled incident in which a bunch of companies pulled advertisements off of YouTube for various reasons but you may not have noticed that because you may not watch ads because you may have ad blocker hmm yes so one view is really worth about one thousandth of a dollar on average so creators needed to get creative and find an alternative because we all want money what we ended up on was that creators would work directly with companies to create specially branded content and so then we cut out YouTube as the middleman take back that 55% and become social media influencers this fancy new industry that is worth a billion dollars apparently it also has the worst job title in the world influencer influencer nothing good ever happens with that word like sorry officer driving under the influence you see I was speeding because I was promoting a fit T on Instagram but to be entirely transparent this is what I do these are two very branded photos on my Instagram right now and I do it because it helps pay tuition and that's the dream isn't it paying for bills by just flying around the world are talking about free stuff this was unimaginable a few years ago so how did it happen so suddenly well the truth is is that this industry wasn't sudden it just grew in secret because media clung to this image of vintage YouTube you know what I'm talking about back when YouTube was about cute animals and being at the zoo back when YouTube looked like this YouTube wasn't the place for Hollywood's million-dollar productions YouTube was the place for normal people so back then if you were a normal person and you wanted to write something you got a blog if you were a normal person and you wanted to make music you got MySpace and if you were a normal person as of 2005 and you wanted to make video you got YouTube for the first time ever publishing of all forms was in the hands of the normal people the age of democratized publishing had begun you didn't need teens and fancy equipment all you needed was a computer an internet connection and the courage to hit publish one person alone took a project from brainstorm to production to search engine optimization and I myself growing up got to watch this creator class refine themselves and their skills with each and every upload I got a watch nigahiga teach us how to be emo I gotta watch charlie is so cool like the British I gotta watch Fred be a super divisive subject I gotta watch raywilliamjohnson and what the buck and Philip DeFranco bring traditional formats to the small screen and I also got to see the Internet create its own genres like gaming and makeup tutorials and story times millions of people every single day tuned in to watch these other normal people people who just decided to broadcast themselves and why what made them so special how did they make YouTube a job well it's because they were creating something of value the value was in the fact that each vlog blogger song was made by one person you could see you could name it was intimate and authentic in a way that couldn't be replicated by those chosen and molded by agencies the internet creator was a normal person a little like you a little like me being themselves for the world to see you see whether it was their passions or their experiences as a result of their identity it became infinitely more possible for anyone to see themselves represented in media and the internet creator they became this fresh Brandin a friend who is terrible at listening but a friend nonetheless and each one of their subscribers was a reminder that there is someone out there a whole community of someone's with the same thoughts and questions and fears as you that you you're not alone and some creators worked hard to cultivate their micro communities like the vlogbrothers and they're nerdfighters they use their numbers and their influence for good to create a change in the world you see they created this charity livestream that just raised two million dollars last year and these micro communities they grew and they grew until they weren't so micro anymore for example Beauty by his subscriber base is 60 million people that is so many 60 million that's the type of number that breaks secrets so when Forbes released their 2016 list of the top ten earners on YouTube it became abundantly obvious that there was millions of dollars to be made online and so the question shifted from how is YouTube a job - how can I make YouTube my job how can I become a creator well whether you want your biography topping the New York Times bestseller list or you want to social media influence some people what you need is people people to invest in you emotionally and financially and at a time where 5 billion videos are being watched every single day it seems like an amazing time to start unfortunately 300 hours of video are being uploaded every single minute the market is full with everybody wanting the exact same jobs so my best piece of advice if you want to succeed on YouTube it's the start seven years ago it sucks because it's starting to seem like online publishing feels more and more like traditional media the thing that was supposed to replace it's so easy to feel like it is too late to start that all of the good ideas all of the good URLs they're already taken it doesn't seem easy because the truth is if you want to make youtube your job you're gonna have to treat it like a job YouTube is not just having fun in front of a camera anymore that's just editing if you want to make it work you gotta put in the work so what do you got to do I recommend you remember who you are that was a terrible impression I'm sorry but what I mean is that you should know your strengths and your passions and make that the basis of your creations because the beauty of the internet being so massive is the fact that there are at least a thousand people who share your interest so it's only a matter of finding them and I know it's super tempting to become another vlogger with a drone and jump on trends but I highly advise you not do that there is a real shady joke on there I advise you don't do that because that renders you completely indistinguishable in an already oversaturated market and so you'd find yourself making videos that you don't care about for less and less views as trends begin to change it's terrifying but it's also kind of pure because the machine that built the internet that built this entire industry and made it possible is the same thing that is whittling all of the applicants down so that only people who love their job and love working hard to keep their jobs are the ones who get it take a look at Gabe Fletcher when he was eight years old he realized that he loved politics and hated how it was being reported he wanted to fix it and normally there's not a lot of things an eight-year-old can do to drive change but fortunately Gabe was born in the age of democratized publishing so he started an email newsletter he stuck with it every single day until eight years later he still releases it every single morning to thousands of subscribers he recently got featured in the New York Times take a look at Rikki Poynter she's a deaf activist and she wanted to see new media become more accessible so she led the charge for closed captioning an online video and in doing so she pushed massive creators like Tyler Oakley to take action take a look at KC nice that he wanted to show what life was like in the day of somebody running a startup and in doing so he inspired all of his viewers to work harder take a look at me significantly less successful than KC nice that I started off as just this nerd who loved trivia and answering questions nobody asked so I took it to the Internet and ever since I've started I've gotten to work with Microsoft and redbull and crash course the people who helped me finish high school it's amazing so knowing all of this I asked again do you want to be a youtuber do you want to be a youtuber knowing still that it is a real job with real work do you want to be a youtuber knowing that statistically it is never going to be your job I hope so because let me tell you one last thing about YouTube as a job it connects you with amazing people who drive you to be better it rewards you for pursuing your passions it is exciting and fulfilling and even though I will be the first one to say that it is almost impossible to succeed it isn't hard to try the phone in your pocket probably has everything you need to start so while that's left is a reason your reason to hit publish and may I remind you about all of the people I mentioned before their reason wasn't fame or money it was a perk but it wasn't the reason instead it was because we had something to say and in an age where the power to publish to billions of people are our fingertips we said it so what do you want to say thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 187,727

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Entertainment, Creation, Humor, Internet, Media, Social Media, Youth

Id: CxRZaminNe8

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/specialopps]

Yes yes yes yes! Go Sabrina! This is amazing!!!

[u/Photonic_Resonance]

Oh, she got to make a TED Talk? That's legit