I started the Old Guy, Career Change YouTube channel 10 weeks ago. In that time, I published 15 videos.
I’ve noticed a few things.
- Making a good video is hard work. I’m still climbing the learning curve. I record about three times the raw video for the finished product, and spend about six hours doing the editing. I use iMovie.
- Capturing good quality audio is surprisingly hard.
- Much of the advice about creating engaging videos and channels is repetitive and anecdotal. With a dash of the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy added for good measure.
- Some YouTubers have large subscriber, view, and Like counts; and claim to make a lot of money.
They do that by advising other YouTubers how to get large subscriber, view, and Like counts; and make a lot of money.
This is a lot like courses or books about making money in real estate or the stock market. If their advice was any good, why didn’t they do it themselves? - YouTube ads will earn you, at best, a couple of hundred dollars per week. And that’s if you have a lot of viewers.
- Per the videos about making money on YouTube, the big revenue streams seem to be:
- Selling advice and consulting services related to the channel
- Selling online courses and books related to the channel
- Selling merchandise related to the channel
- Affiliate marketing links
- Sponsorship deals
- Paid membership on Patreon or a similar platform
- Buy me a Coffee or similar sites
- The game starts with the thumbnail. It must be visually engaging, trigger the casual viewer’s interest, and not be clickbait nor intellectually insulting (though this varies by channel). The YouTube system favors thumbnails that are splashy, have an emotional facial expression, bright colors, and a concise and provocative summary.
- The game continues with the video’s description. It must be within YouTube’s allowed length, trigger the viewer’s interest, and be up up up!
- The game continues with the video’s first 30 seconds. It must tell the viewer what the rest of the video will tell them, match what the thumbnail and description promised, and move on to the promised topic as quickly as possible.
- There’s a lot of triggering going on. ^^^
- I wonder how many psychology PhD and Master’s dissertations have analyzed the YouTube experience for creators and viewers.
I won’t think about monetization until and unless my videos reliably rack up more than 3K viewers a piece.
I’m not sure what the future holds. So far, it’s fun and scratches a creative itch. I’ll keep at it until both of those are no longer true.
Seek Nuance 
It feels very much like the early app-store days, with the gold-rush mentality – highlighted by a few people asserting they were making serious bucks. There were “a gazillion” people out there making apps (ne content), most meh, some good, a few amazing – but the incoming from it was so low that it wasn’t a functional wage for most. It effectively globalized app (ne content) creation, driving the price to the floor.
What worked to bring in a reasonable income was mirroring the pattern from the Klondike 49’ers. Sell picks and shovels, provide guides and transport to get them there, and wave them on their way with money in your pocket from the eternally hopefully.
Thanks, that’s a great analogy. It really captures what’s going on. There is a difference that may be minor, I’m not sure… When you sell a material object like a pickax to someone, the pickax is theirs and they use it. After a while it’s lost or discarded. Someone else wanting a pickax buys a new one.
But these videos are watched over and over. So I wonder, and forgive me I haven’t fully formed the thought in my mind: How many videos do we need telling creators that thumbnails have to be engaging? How many videos are needed that say the thumbnail should trigger the user’s interest and be intellectually interesting and provide cognitive dissonance to the viewer?
You see what I’m getting at. I suppose when how-to videos are “old”, a viewer would rather read a newer version on the same topic. Maybe that’s the answer, older videos stop attracting viewers and so these pickax–sellers record a replacement video that says the same thing slightly differently, and they continuing gathering more views that way. What a racket!
For what it’s worth, the “useful lifespan” of technical writing was generally pretty short. (My expectation is loosely a max of 6 months from a thorough piece of content, like a book or such). I expect the YouTube algorithm has a much steeper drop-off than that. But also that “newness” and “just a bit different, but related” seems to ‘sell’ with that algorithm, and since the creators are catering to the algorithm… it’s not surprising that’s the result.
There was a pundit that I followed for ages in writing that I loved. They got heavily into YouTube, trying to make a go from that alone, leaned heavily in the “please the algorithm”, and they fell deeply into the hyperbolic/shock-jock bullshit. I stopped watching anything they created, don’t hear anything from them any more, and don’t miss that final form at all.
What’s (darkly, sarcastically) funny is that compared to Instagram or TikTok, YouTube is an honest gem of transparency; and actually appears to be trying to continue to encourage paying their creators and building more “quality” content.