It’s Still Work

A refrain I often year from YouTube creators, especially small YouTube creators (or “small youtubers,” as some of them like to be called) is that they would like to create videos as a full-time job. Shortly after uploading their first few videos and tasting a bit of success by gaining a couple hundred subscribers, they’ll start finding forums and communities dedicated to YouTube and ask, “How do I make this my job?”

Often, if I visit their channels, I’ll find the same things over and over again. Badly-shot footage. Terrible sound quality. Lackluster ideas and amateur or non-existent editing skills. All of those are things that can be learned and improved. However, the #1 issue I find is that people who claim they want to make videos for a living don’t actually make all that many videos.

It has stopped surprising me, the number of empty, arid channels I’ve found from creators who state quite emphatically that they want to be “full time YouTubers.” When I ask why they’re not creating videos, they say they have no time or motivation or ideas, and that’s where my inability to understand the disconnect sets in.

As much fun as creating videos for YouTube may turn out to be, it’s still work. The creators who have large followings with hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers put in a tremendous amount of time, energy, and long, boring hours doing things that may not satisfy them on a creative level, but are necessary to the health of the channel and the life of their brand.

Factory workers

Sure, it’s not factory work on an assembly line, but it’s still work that needs to be done regularly, even more so than with a traditional 9-to-5 job. Researching topics that people search for, finding better ways to title and tag your videos, looking for images and backgrounds and props and music clips, writing scripts and editing footage…all of that can be fun and interesting in the short term, but eventually, it’s going to become a slog more often than not.

If you want a career in anything, it’s going to be work. If you want to have a successful career in anything, it’s going to be a lot of work. And that work isn’t always going to fulfill you. The boring bits, the tedious bits, and the difficult bits are the things that will mean a lot more than the bursts of inspiration that buoy you and make it fun.

Those who’ve had great success know this. So should you.

Get to work.

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6 thoughts on “It’s Still Work”

  1. SO true! Feeling that this month more than ever. I was one of those people saying ‘I want this to be my job’ at less than 100 subs. A year later I’m still here, posting twice weekly, daily throughout Feb.
    It doesn’t matter how we start, it’s about having the commitment to continue

    1. Exactly! I have seen a lot of people who truly believe that they’re owed a following just for adding videos here and there without a plan. I don’t have any better of a plan than anyone else, for sure, but I do try to stay committed. Or at least maybe I should BE committed. 🙂

  2. I don’t think it gets any easier, either. In talking to people above and beyond where I think I could ever hope to get with this, they sound as exhausted as I am by all of it. And they have a lot more pressure to make everything perfect, consistent, and appealing. Whereas most of us can have a terrible few weeks and not lose any friends over it.

    So it’s funny when people say they want to make it their career, and then only promote each video by like… tweeting it a couple times and dropping it on a Facebook group full of other creators. Good start. Now multiply that effort by 1,000 and then continue to do that day after day until you’ve made so much money that things don’t have a ‘cost’ anymore. Then you’ll be good to relax a little bit.

    Not to mention that making and promoting videos is about, what, 2% of the actual work that goes into being a YouTuber?

    1. Indeed. And the whole idea that “YouTubing” is what we do. I do realize there are a number of YouTube celebrities out there who some folks can’t see another category for, but PewDiePie is a comedian, Casey Niestat is a documentary filmmaker (his subject for the past couple of years was his life, but he approaches it as a filmmaker), Jaclyn Hill is a makeup artist and cosmetics maker, etc., etc., etc. I just keep seeing this idea that putting videos up without any plan and without any meaning behind them is the path to a career, and…I don’t think that’s it.

      And yes, the promotion and the creation can be exhausting, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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