Why Becoming a YouTuber Won’t Make You Rich These Days

if you're thinking about leaving your 9 to-5 job to become a full-time YouTuber maybe you don't want to do that here's why I've noticed a surprising Trend this year among very popular YouTube creators they are quitting but a study by morning consult shows that 54% of 13 to 38y olds in the US want to become social media influencers most people feel that it would be a dream job to become a successful YouTuber and while for some I really believe that would be what they want I think there are many who are unaware of what they're getting into and what their actual desire might be instead I'm going to share why this is not for everyone and a business model that gives you more freedom than becoming a full-time YouTuber I will also share why despite all of this that I'm going to tell you I am making a YouTube video right now if you become a YouTuber it isn't all about Fame and doing what you want it's actually a relatively restrictive path for yourself as a business the reason for that is the entire business that you're running being a YouTube Creator follow on and depends on you it's true that to create videos all you really need is an iPhone and you can start producing content that can help you make a living you also have the advantage of Leverage in your time because content creation means you can put out a piece of content it might get a couple views but it might also get a couple million views and it's really not going to take you that much longer to produce a video that gets a few hundred views versus Millions here's where the problem comes in as a content creator if you are turning being a YouTuber into into your business then you are the product and even though there is potential for this large amount of Leverage in producing content your views and attention will drop off if you stop creating that content successful YouTubers realize this and that's why every single week they upload new content for Their audience to consume that way not only they maintain their audience but they can continue to grow and now making a video to a week it doesn't really seem like that much work but when it really comes down to it there is a constant amount of effort that is put in behind the scenes of making that video you're planning researching figuring out how you can make the channel better and the stress that comes along with having a successful video and then worrying about is that next one that I put out going to have the whole thing flop is a real thing and I've heard from YouTubers like Graham Stefan admit in his own videos that there's a lot of anxiety and worry that comes with creating a YouTube channel and the worry that is just all going to go away in who knows how long it was kind of like I was spinning a whole bunch of plates at the same time and as long as I kept my focus on just spinning those plates I could do it it was sustainable but as soon as you threw something else in there that I wasn't prepared for whether that be just a meeting or going to a breakfast but then that's going to make the next day worse it was bad this is from YouTubers who have millions of subscribers and they still feel this part of the reason that they worry about this is maybe that next video they make maybe things start going worse maybe while YouTube is an incredible platform it is a platform and the audience that you have on YouTube it's not truly your audience so if you want to go and talk to all your followers or your subscribers you can't just send them an email or a text message they are on YouTube or me personally I want to have the freedom to do what I enjoy that is more important to me than money and it's certainly more important to me than any kind of Fame as part of that I really enjoy traveling I've been to more than 30 countries more than 100 cities and yeah there's a bunch of travel YouTubers and things like that so you could say well I can go out and record myself traveling but I don't really love recording myself and when I am traveling I kind of just want to enjoy what I'm seeing and doing without having to constantly think about how am I going to turn this into content so this all boils down to as a full-time influencer and YouTuber specifically it's really hard to be able to take time off you can't really take time away from your business in the way that many other business owners can or even the way that more people with traditional jobs can if you're with me here and you still feel that you would enjoy creating content but you're worried about all these potential negatives that I'm bringing up then I have a solution for you but first I know you're probably thinking right now what does this guy know that he is making a video about this and why should I trust him well I didn't think that I would be sitting here making YouTube videos I didn't think that I would hire a full-time Editor to help me suddenly build out a YouTube channel and I do not have a YouTube channel with millions of subscribers at the time of recording this but I do have 15 years of experience building a business and a small little YouTube channel with just a couple thousand subscribers is helping me to make a living that many would be thrilled with so how did I get here today and while I'm proud of it and I feel that I have created something really great I've noticed that I have this urge inside of me to help ensure that more people know about it not to make money but because I truly believe I'm building something that can help people and I would feel bad if they didn't know I would feel disappointed in myself if I didn't do something to try and share that with them so I've been building this on my own and now I'm at the point that I have a small team helping me do that but I've never raised venture capital or anything like that and so I don't have piles of money burning a hole in my pocket waiting to be spent on ads I need to do things to figure out how to get myself in front of an audience but there's a really interesting Turning Point here that I think we can come to realize here I am talking about why I want to grow my audience I have thousands of customers most people go the route of the influencer thinking they have to be a YouTuber and have this audience of millions in order to have a business if Fame and exposure at that level is your dream if you want to be the next Mr Beast then I would say awesome and you should go for it but I think that most people don't you can ask anyone and they would probably say that they would love to have millions of followers I think most people what they really mean is that they want freedom I think people believe they want followers because they think they'll get money they think that they want money because what they really want is the freedom to do what they enjoy the creators out there who have both a very high level of success and a very high level of freedom on average not talking about an outlier here like Mr Beast but overall those creators don't have massive audiences you might not have even heard of the majority of them but the reason that they are successful is that they have their own product to sell who are all these YouTubers who have only a few thousand subscribers but are making all this money as creators well I'll put one example right here of somebody I came across while planning this video he made his own video about how he earned over $300,000 while only having 3,000 YouTube subscribers there are many more like this and I feel that sometimes to move to the next step yourself you have to just know that it's possible so if it would help you for me to make a video breaking down a bunch of different creators and examples of how they're successful even though they don't have big YouTube audiences let me know in the comments below when you rely on Revenue directly from YouTube and from sponsorships or affiliate deals these are things where you're just getting a portion of the revenue in order to help the business behind it in the case of YouTube It's advertisers buying ads and paying YouTube YouTube is giving you a portion of that in the case of a sponsorship or an affiliate the sponsor advertising through your audience in order to buy their products is giving you a portion of that when you have your own product though you can then sell directly to your audience and you get to keep all of it for many YouTubers the relationship really is that the YouTuber has an audience but doesn't have a product and then the business has a product and either they don't have an audience or they want to grow Their audience so they leverage the audience of the YouTuber as an individual though you don't need that many customers and so you don't need much of an audience if you have your own product to sell them and the same way that you would start to try to build an audience you can build a private Community but now you're saying okay well what is this that you're talking about what is that product how am I going to go and build a product I don't have money to invest in creating this product I don't know the first thing about building a product and what that would even entail my favorite business models for creators are online courses membership communities and digital products like downloads for example what is great about these things is number one there is no cost or very little cost for you to get started the same way that you would go and record a YouTube video you can create an online course number two is that these are all business models that have high leverage meaning that you create this thing once and then you can sell it over and over again and it's not directly tied to the time that you have to put in like a service business for example you also have no inventory so it's not a product that you're going to sell on Amazon you have to buy a bunch up front and you have to store them somewhere you have to to ship them and then you have to go and buy more an online course a community a digital download you can essentially sell unlimited of that product and it's not going to cost you anymore in order to sell more next is kind of a two-part benefit first you can charge a relatively high price for information and a transformation when you're able to get somebody a valuable result and as a Creator when you build something like an online course or a membership Community you don't really have competition in the same way that other businesses do for example if you were going to sell something on Amazon you find some kind of widget on AliExpress to go and drop SHP to somebody chances are that there's another business who's doing exactly that same thing so your options to compete against them are minimal but in the case of an online course business when you're selling your knowledge you might have a course about a similar topic to somebody else but first of all it's not a bad thing because competition means there is a market for what you're doing but second of all and more importantly nobody is you nobody has the exact experiences that you've had and can share that exact unique message that you have to share so when you create an online course about a specific topic there is no real exact competition to that and actually there's one more thing and this thing is super super important especially if you want to keep going in business and really enjoy what you do and that is you want to solve a problem for people that is worth solving you want to be able to do something meaningful and fulfilling and creating a business or a product around a course or a community is one thing that is incredibly fulfilling because you're helping people to achieve a result that they are really after that they really care about you're not selling them this junk widget that they're going to throw away or that's not really important to them you're doing something where you're helping people learn and that can potentially help to change people's lives I also have a reason why maybe you should actually be a YouTuber even if you think you don't want to be that same reason is exactly why I'm making this YouTube video right now so I mentioned that I don't have a specific desire to be famous I'm relatively introverted and kind of a private person but I do have a desire to do something fulfilling and make an impact on people and in a way that I already have with the more than 10,000 creators that I've helped but what I really want to do and I feel it's almost my duty is to get that out there and share it with others so that desire to make an impact has really outweighed how much I care or don't care about trying to become famous on YouTube so why am I making this specific video now I'm creating this YouTube video now but YouTube is not my business I've been in business since 2009 I started my company after getting out of high school and the purpose of me making YouTube videos that I'm creating is to make that greater impact and bring more customers to my business in that way I'm essentially getting free advertising because unlike a sponsor that has to go and pay for a person to talk about them when you have your own audience you can tell people about the thing that you're offering them YouTube is currently one of the best platforms out there for Content creators because you've got an algorithm that that is relatively Fair it's possible to get exposure even when you're small and YouTube's monetization structure in itself is great for creators so you can actually make money from the content that you create directly with YouTube's monetization that's apart from any sponsorship deals that you have or any products that you're you own and you want to sell so essentially you're getting paid to promote yourself if what you decide that you really want is to have freedom for yourself and to not have the risk and the burden of having to have a million subscribers more in order to be successful then I'd encourage you to think about building your own products and doing that in combination with YouTube content that you create if you want to get more involved in this in building your own product you can join 10,000 others who are doing the same in our free community at creator.com and if you enjoyed this video if you want to see more please like And subscribe and check out the other videos on my channel

Channel: Bryan McAnulty

Views: 374

Keywords: business, creator, making money online

Id: s3hWhaYcD00

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024