I recently tweeted, “So many #youtubers ask “How do I get more subscribers?” So few ask, “How do I make better videos?”

While on the surface, that seems dismissive and snarky, I truly have my heart in a good place with this idea (no, really, I do!). While it does often seem that creating something and finding people to appreciate it or buy it are fully intertwined, I don’t necessarily buy into that concept.

Perhaps it’s from my background in improv comedy and small theater, but I find it very difficult to fully understand most of the YouTube creators’ obsession with subscriber numbers and views. Yes, a larger audience may result in a channel being financially supportive of its creator, but given the number of channels that are on YouTube and the number of channels that are large enough to even pay out something on a monthly basis (YouTube has a $100US threshold for payouts), focusing so exclusively on audience building and retention often results in little attention left for craft, never mind art.

Much of this obsession is absolutely stoked by YouTube itself. In the Creator Studio area, where videos are uploaded, edited and described, there is a constant barrage of messaging from the company about building an audience, following current trends, using proper SEO techniques, and making money. The narrative is similar to what you would find in the promotional materials of an average multi-level marketing company, and I suspect the results for the average user are about the same.

This does not in any way take away from the fact that YouTube is a wonderful platform for sharing your work with others. If the audience is one, ten, or a million, video creators today have an opportunity that was impossible 20 years ago, and we’ve completely lost focus on that. Independent filmmakers could toil at making movies that, at best, had a chance of being seen by a few hundred people at fringe film festivals and video tapes passed from person to person.

Remember, when turning on the camera or sitting at your editing program, that “making a video” and “making it on YouTube” are not the same thing, and that you can be proud of the former without requiring to succeed at the latter.