Expectation vs Reality: How to be a YouTuber For Beginners (2019)

What's up you guys? It's Graham here, so let's talk for a minute, figuratively speaking, of course, because we actually have to make this video over 10 minutes long to be able to place mid-roll ads in the video about what it's like to be a YouTuber. Is it really all just tons of money, driving around Lambos all day, hanging out with friends, just living the life, and smashing that like button? And the honest answer is yes, yes it is.

But now, real though, let's discuss some of the misconceptions out there of what doing YouTube is really like. And you're hearing this from a channel that is now doing over forty thousand dollars a month just in YouTube ad revenue alone. So, it's very easy for people to see this and think, "Oh, you know what? Quit my job tomorrow, I want to make YouTube videos." But here's the completely truthful, honest reality of what being a YouTuber is really like.

A perfect example of this part of the reality of being a YouTuber is eventually having sponsors, like our sponsor today, Skillshare. Now, for those that aren't aware, Skillshare's an online learning community with more than 25,000 classes in design, business, finance, and so much more. For instance, I was checking out one of their classes about how to edit with Final Cut Pro because, unfortunately, iMovie here is a little bit limited with their editing options. So, if I ever want to take it to the next level, I need something a little bit more advanced.

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And again, if you don't like it, if you don't find it useful, just cancel before the two months is up, and there's zero risk to you. So, with that said, let's get into the video. The first expectation that many people have is that it's easy; you spend 30 minutes talking to a camera, and then you're done. That's exactly what I thought too until I started making YouTube videos. I was really under the impression that it was just as easy as turning on the camera, talking for like 10 or 20 minutes, asking people to subscribe, smash that like button, and buy my merch, link in the description.

But here's the reality: the viewer only sees the fully polished final product. It's like going and watching a two-hour movie without realizing that every minute that goes by is actually days of work that went into making that. From planning, filming, editing, production, post-production, and everything else that goes into it, to make just a 15-minute video like you're watching right now, there's probably about eight hours or more of work that goes in behind the scenes that you don't see. This means that every one minute that goes by right now is really over a half hour of work that went into making that.

And here's exactly how: First, you have to come up with a topic. This is really hard to do. First of all, your topic can't be too niche; otherwise, no one's going to watch it. It also has to be relevant to the channel; again, otherwise, no one will watch it. I also can't talk about any topics again that I've just recently talked about. I also need to make it interesting enough for you to want to watch it, but also interesting enough for myself to make it, and something that people will find useful. Ideally, this should be something I have not talked about yet on my channel.

Now take all of that and do that three times per week, every single week for two years straight. You run out of ideas very, very quickly. And the longer you do this, the harder it becomes to make videos that you feel are original ideas. But then once you pick a topic, you then need to plan it out, and this could take another one to two hours. I don't just talk off the top of my head with whatever comes to mind; I plan out what I'm going to say and in what order I say it. This way, I make sure the video flows nicely, it doesn't really jump from topic to topic, it can keep your attention, and I don't miss out on anything important.

And sometimes this planning takes even longer, between two and four hours, like if I'm reading the fine print of a business, doing research, finding statistics, so that way I know what I'm talking about when I make a video and I don't make a fool of myself. And then finally, after it's all planned out, I film it. Now, I've definitely gotten a lot better at this over the last two years, but in order to make a 15-minute video, it is very easily at least 45 to 60 minutes worth of filming because guess what? You say the wrong thing a lot. You will mispronounce words, you will say the wrong thing, you won't say something the right way. Like, I could say an entire paragraph perfectly and then mess up the very last word after I've been talking straight for 45 seconds.

Well, guess what? I got to do the entire thing over again because I am a perfectionist. But what's all filmed? This is when the work really starts because now it's time to edit. This means you need to cut out all of the bad takes, you need to delete all the unfunny jokes I sometimes make, you need to piece it all together. Sometimes you have to move parts around if you feel like it helps flow better, and then you have to cut out all the parts that you feel don't need to be in there.

Then I will watch the entire thing again, bit by bit, to crop in images and pictures, add sound effects, and add any text overlay that you see. And then after all that's done, I will watch the entire thing again to make sure nothing is missing. Fun fact: something is always missing that I then have to re-edit and make a little bit better. Now, that's only like 60% of the work that's done. There's even more.

The next thing to work on is the video thumbnail. It needs to be something visually appealing, it needs to be high-quality, it needs to be something that gets your attention, it needs to be somewhat clickbait but not too clickbait as to turn off the viewer. And also, if I put any text over the thumbnail, what exactly do I say? What gets someone's attention but doesn't reveal too much about what the video is? I also think to myself, would this get my attention if I myself am just scrolling through? Does my thumbnail stand out?

So, of course, I have to do multiple thumbnails, and this takes me usually about 30 minutes to do in Photoshop. But then we have to figure out the title, and it needs to be relevant to the video, and it needs to be a little bit mild clickbait but not too much clickbait; otherwise, people get upset by watching it. It also needs to rank on the YouTube algorithm in the YouTube search bar, but it can't be too long of a title either. I'll easily spend days mulling over whatever the perfect title will be, and usually I come up with like six different titles and then look at them all and see which one looks the best. I want to come back to it like a day later. It takes so long to figure out what the title even is.

And geez, this work does not end because then I will spend another 20 minutes creating the perfect description for you guys to read, not only so that it ranks for YouTube search keywords but also so that if you don't watch the video, you can just look at the description and pretty much read the entire thing there. Then I also have to come up with the tags for the YouTube search algorithm in the video. That's probably another five or ten minutes for me to try to figure out which ones to use and which will probably rank the videos the highest.

So, you might now be thinking to yourself, "Wow, Graham, that's a lot of work. I didn't think about that." But there's more work; it keeps going because once I post a video, I'm available for usually one to two hours after that video is live to answer all of the comments. I also use that time to analyze the real-time 60-minute view count of the video to see how well it's performing. And if it's not performing that well, sometimes I will change the title, I will change the thumbnail, and I will do things to kind of switch it up if I don't feel like it's the best that it could be.

So all in all, I am easily spending about eight hours just to create the fifteen-minute video for you to watch and enjoy. The second expectation here is that YouTubers just drive around Lambos all day and just make bank. And the reality is that yes, that's very true, but no, the reality is that very few YouTube channels are ever going to get to that point.

Bloomberg found some research that suggests that 97% of YouTubers will never make enough money to even break the U.S. poverty line. Chances are, even then, it comes down to how well that YouTuber fits the mold for advertiser-friendly content. I've personally seen channels that are doing 20 million views every single month, and their ad revenue is about $1,500. However, the catch here is that despite how much ad revenue pays, how much money a YouTube channel can really make depends entirely on how well that creator can monetize and treat this like a business.

I've seen so many amazing YouTubers quit because they weren't making ad revenue, and I’m thinking to myself, you just ran past hundred dollar bills so you can go and pick up pennies. Now, for most YouTubers that are smart about monetizing, meaning that they can add something of value to their audience, like selling merch or programs or anything, whatever it might be, there's no reason why they can't make on average of $10 per 1000 views.

I'm not gonna mention any names here, but I know some channels that are doing about 700,000 views per day. They're making about $200 in ads but making about $7,000 a day net profit selling merch. By the way, I got merch in the description. And this really goes back just to the concept of having 1,000 true fans. This is very simple: those 1,000 true fans will spend $100 per year supporting their favorite YouTuber, and in return, that means a six-figure income for that person.

And there is no way you can't tell me that a channel with fifty to a hundred thousand subscribers does not have at least one thousand true fans. But anyway, here's what I'm getting at: yes, it is true that 97% of YouTubers will not make enough money to break the U.S. poverty line. However, they have the potential to make a lot more money if they're able to properly monetize their content in a very smart, conservative way that benefits their audience as well.

Now, the next expectation when it comes to this is that it's really fun to make YouTube videos. The truth here is that it is really, really fun to make YouTube videos. I would say for myself, about 90% of the time, I am so excited to be able to film a video, edit it, post it, and talk to you guys in the comments. I absolutely love the process, so I'm not gonna spend too much time telling you guys how great it is because, I mean, if you just love what you do, it doesn't really feel like work, and it comes very easily.

So instead, I'm gonna talk about the 10% of the time where it does not feel like that, and I'm gonna break this down in a way that I've never really done before. This is really what it's like. There are many times where I'm just not in the mood whatsoever. I just feel down for whatever reason. I don't feel like I can put on a happy, energetic vibe to make a good video.

Those days where everything I do I think is just total crap, those days that I just can't seem to come up with anything. There are days that I just feel completely unmotivated, where I just want to do nothing. If I have nothing to post the next day, I really have to force myself through all of this just to get another video done so I stay on schedule, and those times are rough because it's really hard to put on that energetic mask and make something that I feel like I'm actually proud of.

Also, I don't want to miss a video because I never miss a video. There's also the constant pressure of making videos that I myself find interesting, but also that you would want to watch as well. And yes, I'm talking to you right now, you specifically watching this; this is all directed right now towards you. I've constantly worried about posting something that you won't like, that you won't find interesting, or something that might disappoint you.

I'm worried that you might be bored with the topic, or you might just feel like I'm starting to repeat myself, or maybe I say something that you end up disagreeing with. The hardest comments for me to read are the ones that really deeply criticize your video on a human level. I'm not talking about the comments that are like, "This video sucks," "This mic sucks," and so on. I'm talking about the comments that break down in detail everything that's wrong with your video, everything that's wrong with you, and how you've changed, or the ones that deeply criticize and villainize you for any choice you end up making. And that is really, really hard to handle.

At the end of the day, I am a real person who does the best I can given the options and knowledge I have available to me at the time. Sometimes I make mistakes; I always try to improve from that, but I am definitely far from perfect. For me, the comments are very much real; it's just as real as you coming up to me and saying this to my face. Even though it might just seem like words on a computer screen, I'm sure most YouTubers will not mention this, but I am almost positive this happens for everyone.

It is very easy to tie your own personal success with how many views or likes you end up getting. Like, for instance, if the YouTube algorithm decides to promote you, and you're like, "Wow, this is amazing! It must be because of me!" And then all of a sudden, when the YouTube algorithm dethrones you and your views drop by 50%, you think, "It's me, what did I do? I must have done something wrong." I totally understand that that sort of mentality is extremely unhealthy, but when you end up doing a lot of YouTube, it's very easy to get caught up in this and to forget that how many views you get or how many likes you get has no representation of you as a person.

And again, I have a feeling that very few people would ever admit this, but if most people were in the same position, they would probably feel the exact same way. The hedonic treadmill is a hell of a thing. But yeah, I didn't mean to make that sound really depressing because 90% of the time, it's amazing. I absolutely love it, 99.9% of the comments are incredible, and 99% of you guys are like having a ton of hundreds of little internet friends that we can all chat with and be buddies with, and it's awesome.

But I figured that most people just assume that it's awesome, so I'd rather focus on the parts that most people don't talk about and most people don't hear. Now, the next expectation when it comes to this is that when making YouTube videos, you have total creative expression and the freedom to say whatever you want. And the answer is yes, I can say whatever the f*** I want, but not really though.

This is something I didn't fully understand when I started making YouTube videos. When I first started making YouTube videos, I said whatever came to mind and whatever I thought. That means I swore in my videos, I said dirty jokes, I didn't care what I said; I just had a great time with it. I didn't put any thought into who was watching my videos. But as soon as you start gaining any sort of audience and people start watching you, you realize that you have to be very careful about what you say and the image that you portray to the world.

The first thing is that as you gain a larger following, how you act and what you say influences a lot of people, and those are people that expect that you have their best interests at heart. This is definitely not something to be taken lightly, and everything I say and do publicly is really crafted around being the best role model that I can be for anyone who watches me.

Now, the second thing is that as you start growing larger, inevitably you become a bigger target. Think of it this way: if Bob over here gets drunk and pees in an alley, no one cares because that's just Bob. But if Justin Bieber does that, it's front-page news. I'm not comparing myself to Justin Bieber because hopefully, if I get drunk and pee in an alley, hopefully no one should care. But the reality is that now I have an audience; if I end up doing something really, really stupid and if I end up saying something that's really, really stupid, that can have career ramifications for my entire life.

And the third thing is that as you become a bigger channel and you start gaining more influence and you start getting more views, you become a target of getting sued. If someone goes and talks some s*** but they have five subscribers and they get ten views, no one cares; no one is going to waste their time. But if someone who has two million subscribers says something like that, well guess what? They're probably getting sued, and they're a target. So, because of that, I'm extremely careful about crafting wording, citing my sources, and not saying anything that might put me at risk.

But yeah, besides that, pretty much I can say whatever I want, just within reason. So anyway, you guys, I hope that this answers some questions about the expectations vs. the realities of what it's like to be a YouTuber, and I really hope you appreciate the transparency and honesty when it comes to doing this. So, as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it, and it would not be a great YouTuber without plugging the merch. We got merch; we got dislike unsub hats, hoodies; we got do epic hats, hoodies, t-shirts, mugs, iPhone cases, link in the description. Also, feel free, if you made it the very end, to subscribe, smash that like button, and add me on Instagram. I post there pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there. Thank you again for watching, and until next time.