Do you start your day with the latest video of your favorite YouTuber? Do you often open YouTube to try a new Italian dish for Lunch? Or do you pass your time looking at the latest music videos by your favorite artist? If you do one such thing, then you can call yourself normal. But, if your liking is more than just watching videos and are looking at YouTube as a career option. Then we are here to help you by answering one of the most important questions,’ Is YouTube a Good Career?’
YouTube is one of the vastly used social media platforms. From a platform to watch informative, educative, and entertaining videos to the career-building platform for famous YouTubers like Pewdiepie, Mr. Beast, MKBHD, or Shane Dawson. The younger generation is now looking up to YouTube as the first career choice for different niches like Gaming, Traveling, or Lifestyle Vlogs. If you have talent, or creative ideas, a camera, and a good amount of editing skills, then YouTube can be a good career option for you.
Basic Rules Required to take Youtube as a Career
You can find hundreds of videos and articles stating that Youtube can make you thousands of dollars in a month. Most of them emphasize that you need a good script, a smartphone with an HD camera to take pictures, a little bit of editing, and uploading it on your channel. But Youtube is not as easy as it appears. Like any other career choice, it requires proper knowledge, information about the topic, and dedication.
If you have thought about starting your Youtube channel because you possess some skills (like dancing, singing, cooking, or gaming), you should stop now because Youtube is not limited to skills. Apart from that, you need to know more about the rules that will help your career on Youtube.
Here are some of the basic rules required to take Youtube as a Career:-
- Unique Content
Content is a key to a successful YouTube channel. In this vast medium full of billions of creators, it’s the unique content that will grab your viewer’s attention. A newbie in this field has fewer viewers than a professional who has been posting videos for years. To create your channel with the same niche and establish yourself, you need uniqueness in your content.
While creating content, make sure that you don’t go too far. That means your content should not affect someone negatively is it be physically or mentally. Along with that, you need to be as per the rule and regulations of YouTube policy.
- Don’t follow trends Blindly.
Trends and viral videos are some of the most popular ways to make someone famous or even build someone’s career. They gain stardom in little time and become Youtube sensations.
Although these trends look like a tasty jar of cookies, what will happen when it ends? Will you feel happy or want to have more of it. If your answer is later, then instead of following these short-span trends, try to think about the ideas that will help you in long-term growth.
- Choose your passion over money.
Nowadays, most people are entering the platform of Youtube to earn money or take it as a career choice. It may seem like a great opportunity or a dream job, where you can receive dollars by creating some entertaining videos. However, if your focus is just on earning, then YouTube is not for you.
YouTube is a place for passionate individuals who possess some talent and skills. As YouTube offers you a path to sharpen your skills and learn much more new things that will later help you in the future.
For Example, GAWX runs a channel on YouTube focused on doodling. When you closely look at his channel, you will find how much the artist improved and made his YouTube channel unique. Is it be his editing style, cinematography, or comic punch in between the shots.
- Understanding Youtube Algorithm
To enter any platform, you need to have a basic understanding of it. The same goes with Youtube, as before starting your page, it is essential to understand how Youtube works. So in a technical sense, you need to understand the Algorithm of Youtube.
You have to learn what type of content dominates the YouTube market, what kind of audience you are targeting, what should be the duration of your videos, or what type of content YouTube promotes.
- Find your Niche
Before starting your channel, it is essential to select a niche or direction you want to go. In other words, you need to know what type of content you want to present to your audience. For example, is it be funny, educative, or informative. Even if it is informative, what will that information be related to, is it be about electronics or some products.
Selecting a niche helps create videos surrounding those particular topics, and it will give your audience an idea of the content of your channel.
You can create your Vlogs channels and create a different type of content every time. But these channels often get unnoticed and failed to get monetized due to the lesser number of subscribers.
- Keep an eye on your Competitors.
Starting a Youtube channel is like starting a new business, especially if you want to create it as your business or brand. Just like any brand, you need to keep an eye on competitive channels.
You can start by looking at the channels that have inspired you to start yours. Observe their uniqueness, their script, camera movements, or the way they keep their audience engaged.
Following a famous channel with the same niche can help with your channel. It guides you to choose the correct topics or to understand the formula to achieve similar results.
- Be consistent
Before entering Youtube, you have to be consistent with your content. The more videos you update, the better your reach be over your subscribers. Therefore, YouTube only promotes those pages that remain consistent and active with their content.
You may have seen some big channels with thousands of subscribers lose their reach because they stopped posting regularly. It’s because, in a platform with a large number of videos, it is hard to stick with every channel. Due to this, you may lose hold of your subscribers.
- Have good Editing Skills
Editing is one of the basic needs for a good YouTube video. Whether you are starting an educative, informative, or funny channel, good editing will act like a 5-star plating to your homemade dish.
You can learn editing basics through online tutorials and practice it regularly. Apart from that, various editing software in the market can automatically create edited videos as per your choice. If you have some money to spend, you can hire an editor to give your YouTube videos a professional touch.
- Building Good Relationship
Building good relationships and friendly relations with other Youtube creators is one of the best and fun ways to get more engagement on your channel. Collaborating with other famous YouTubers helps in getting more audience.
To build relationships with other creator’s you need to communicate and get engaged with their content. As instead of just being a silent audience, you can start commenting on their videos, engaging with them on social media platforms, and get connected with them on Discord. Discord is one of the most engaging platforms used by famous Youtube creators nowadays. They will even guide you to grow your channel.
- Be Active on Social Media
Running a YouTube channel is not limited to creating, posting, and promoting it to a limited audience. To take Youtube as a full-time career, you need to grab the audience from every social media platform.
For engaging more audience, you need to dedicate proper time to other social media platforms as well. For example, for a food channel, you can promote it on Facebook with clips of behind the scenes, make reels, and post new recipe pictures on Instagram and interact with your followers on Twitter.
- Create your Brand
Branding is an essential part of creating a successful business, and in this case, a successful Youtube Channel. You are not just on Youtube to promote others but to build yourself as a brand.
You can start with giving your channel a brand name, logo, and style that will get recognized by everyone. Then, you can use social media platforms to create engagement and even create your website.
- Be Patient
Making a career and getting paid is not an easy job on Youtube. It takes a lot of time and effort for a channel to get noticed. If you are a newbie, you may observe that most of the time, your followers don’t even find your channel even after searching. The reason behind this is that only the channels with maximum reach stay in the top results.
YouTube is a platform that offers no guarantee of success, and there are greater chances of failures than success. The only way to become successful is to be patient and calm. Instead of getting disappointed and demotivated, try to take these failures as learning for creating better content.
How to make Youtube a Good Career and get paid?
Most of the YouTubers that entered Youtube for the passion of creating videos or who used to do this just for fun are now doing it as a full-time job. You can even make a career on YouTube only if you have many subscribers and your channel gets paid.
Let’s know some of these ways to increase your subscribers and get paid for your content:-
- Monetize your Youtube Channel
Monetizing is a great way to get paid on youtube. Only if you have reached a large number of people, i.e., at least 1000 subscribers and 4 hours of watch hour, throughout the year.
To monetize your channel, you need to sign yourself as YouTube Partner. After becoming a YouTube Partner, YouTube will provide you with ads that will help you earn money every time ads get displayed. There are two ways that you can get paid through these ads. First, the viewer will watch the ad for a specific amount of time, or second, they will click on the ad, where every click will add to your income.
Before taking it as a full-time career opportunity, you need to get millions of subscribers to your YouTube channel.
- Get Sponsored
You would have seen how one of your favorite YouTubers uses the line, ‘This video is sponsored by a particular brand or a product. And even explain to you how this product works, and at the end, they offer you a special discount when you use their unique code. Well, this is the way you can get your video sponsored.
If you have managed to get thousands of subscribers to your channel, there are higher chances that brands want to use your platform to endorse their products. You can review these products, use them as a giveaway to generate more audience, or even get a free supply of these top brands.
- Reviewing something
You can create a YouTube channel to create reviews about something. Creating reviews helps you to get more sponsors and saves the cost of making the videos.
You can do reviews of products, restaurants, hotels, or movies. For example, American YouTuber MKBHD is famous for reviewing the latest gadgets and electronic devices. Before a new smartphone gets launched, the particular smartphone brand sends him the sample smartphone in advance for creating a review video for his audience. It will not just let viewers know about the phone, but it saves the creator from buying every new gadget.
- Crowdfunding
Not every Youtuber is rich and sometimes needs to complete a particular project. Like, if you are a small filmmaker and thought about making a documentary, but you can’t due to insufficient funds. Instead, you can ask for a donation from your viewers through crowdfunding. For that, you need to assure them that your project is worth their money.
Other than that, many channels like freelance News portals ask for Membership to get monthly donations. It will not only help them in growing the channel but provide you with various perks as a member. Like getting exclusive content, getting to chat with them, or even give your positive feedback for their next video.
What are the Pros and Cons of Youtube as a Career Choice
Even after understanding the basic rules for starting a Youtube Channel and the ways to get paid, if you are still confused. Then we are here to present some Pros and Cons of Youtube as a Career choice:-
| YouTube as a Career Choice |
| Pros Are your Boss Follow Your Passion No Education Criteria Creates a Portfolio No need for Physical Office Start with little Capital No unnecessary Pressure |
| Cons Needs more capital for better content Needs to set up a proper studio Take more time to reach Consistency can be a challenge |
PROS
- Be your Boss
Youtube is your startup place, where you can do whatever and however you want. You can set your goals, make your deadlines and create the content that you like. Then, after the successful setup of your channel, you can hire and choose equally passionate staff that share common interests.
- Follow Your Passion
YouTube is a place for passionate individuals who value content and want to explore their creativity. So if you have a unique idea, can write an interesting script, and have basic knowledge of filming and editing, you can start right now.
Just make sure that you create content that not only reflects your uniqueness but has a reach to an equally passionate audience. Otherwise, you will easily get lost in the crowd.
- No Education Criteria
YouTube has become a career choice among teenagers because of no limitation in age or education criteria. Most young Youtubers started their channel during their school or college years and even took it as a part-time job.
But before choosing Youtube over your educational degree, make sure that your content is engaging and has a vast number of subscribers that can give you a fruitful earning to spend your life.
- Creates a Portfolio
YouTube is not only to follow your passion or earning money; it is a way to create a Portfolio for the future. It provides an excellent opportunity for videographers, writers, editors, and actors to experiment and create portfolios to show their future employers.
- No need for Physical Office
If you got a unique idea, know the creative way to present it, and planning to set up your career on Youtube. Then, you don’t need any specific place or money to start it. You can commence your channel even from your bedroom or take it with your mobile phone.
- Start with little Capital.
You can initially start your Youtube Channel with a small amount of capital. Then, invest in a regular camera, a good microphone, and a laptop to edit your videos.
- No unnecessary Pressure
Working under someone can be hectic as you need to report at a particular time, complete your work before the deadline, and even work when you didn’t feel well.
Well, producing consistently high-quality content can get hectic at times. But unlike a real job, you don’t have to ask for medical leaves or wait to apply for leave to go somewhere.
CONS
- Needs more capital for better content
For every good idea, there is a need for a fantastic execution. For eye-catching content, you need to present high-quality creative content. Starting with your smartphone can be the first step to create your channel. But to grow and make it a career option, you need to show professionalism.
Apart from the unique content, you have to buy professional gear. Like a DSLR camera, lights, a good microphone, better editing software. Of course, all this requires lots of cash.
- Needs to set up a proper studio
Apart from equipment, a studio is one of the first necessities to create professional content. Taking photos in a studio provides you with a controlled environment that gives your content a professional feel.
For establishing a studio, you need more equipment, sound-absorbing walls, proper lighting setup. Other than that, you have to hire professionals. Like, editors with good editing skills, a talented team of individuals who know the market and can present new ideas, writers that can write engaging content, and videographers who know how to capture the shots beautifully.
- Take more time to reach
YouTube is one of the most time-consuming professions. Your work doesn’t get complete with the posting, as you need to promote it and wait till it gets noticed. It may take few months or even a few years, but the one who can be patient and make their content noticeable among billions of other videos can earn through this medium.
- Consistency can be Challenging.
Youtube demands consistent content and only promotes the channels that got regular updates. Before starting a YouTube channel, create a list of topics for future videos according to your niche. Make sure to choose that niche on which you have an endless number of ideas.
Lacking ideas may lead to challenges in producing consistent content. Other than that, most of the creators find their content not engaging among the audience. Due to this, creators find themselves demotivated and stop posting consistent content.
Conclusion
YouTube is a good career option for passionate individuals who have unique ideas, keep patience, and use creative ways to reach their audience. However, YouTube is not for everyone and takes lots of time to achieve the level you can easily accomplish working as a fresher in another job.
But once you get a reach and a large number of subscribers by your side, no one can stop you. You can even take it as a full-time job and earn money that others only dream of making.
If creating content, interacting with the people, and educating your audience make you happy. Or learning different editing and taking pics styles gives you satisfaction, then Youtube is a perfect career choice. So don’t wait too much; gather your ideas, create a great video, and get started with your channel.
