Expectations vs reality of being a full time YouTuber, my experience
I went from never posting a YT video to full-time in ~6 months (with 30k subs, 1m+ views). So I'm in a uniquely qualified position for an expectations vs reality perspective. Oh yeah I do mostly longform content. I've posted some shorts but they haven't helped my grow
Here are some unexpected things I've learned along the way.
1."I'll never do "Clickbatey" titles and thumbnails".
You realise very quickly "clickbatey" T&Ts are what the audience actually responds to, even though there are lots of moans from a vocal minority. You should never lie about what the video is about with the T&T (because people will just click off and kill your video) but you need to find the most clickable framing of what the video is about. Even if it is negative and clickbatey "NEVER do X without THIS trick" etc. Or better, start with a good t&t idea instead of a "content of the video" idea
- A "view" is someone who watches the whole video.
No, if you're making good videos, 30-40% are clicking off your video in the first 30 seconds. Only about half will make it all the way through. Mr Beast says on his videos they lose about 30% I'm the first 30 seconds. So it happens to everyone. But personally it makes my view counts feel pretty "fake".
- Subscribers will watch all of you videos.
Nah, subscribers don't matter much for video performance anymore. YouTube will push videos harder when more of the audience click subscribe on that video. But it doesn't mean that much for them actually watching future videos.
It also means I have to sometimes repeat content covered in previous videos.
- All of your views come in the first few days.
Nah video views come in over the LOOONNNGG term. My best video has about 350k views. After its first month it only had about 25k views. The algorithm keeps picking it up about once a month for a week then drops it back again. And each time it gets about another 50k views. YouTube is a long term game.
- Making technically perfect videos will result in more views.
Nah my 3 best performing videos all have some major technical flaw. On one I accidentally overexposed all of the shots because I wasn't used to my camera yet. Another the audio kept clipping because of my jacket hitting the mic. So I have to keep overdubbing with a mic plugged into my computer. And the cutting between sounds horrible. But they're still some of my best video ideas so they outperform some of my cinematic quality filming, editing & audio videos.
So you're much better off making lots of pretty good videos instead of one "perfect" video.
If you like this post feel free to click my bio and follow my 2nd channel where I'm trying to document my journey from small YouTuber to bigger YouTuber. But also feel free not to, that's not the point of this post
- Editing won't take long
Nah it's 80% of the time it takes to make a video in my experience.