Everyone Should Have a Youtube Channel
Everyone should have a Youtube Channel, and a personal brand or some type of online presence. Youtube isn’t just a site to watch funny cat videos. Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world. Youtube is also an incredibly powerful tool for ranking high in Google searches. Whether you have a personal brand or a business you’d like to drive traffic to, you need to be on Youtube. Furthermore, just setting up a Youtube Channel about a topic you’re interested in can be a great way to grow an audience and an online presence that you can use later on down the road to start a business or to sell other people’s products.
This past weekend I returned from eCom Chicago, a convention here in Chicago about eCommerce, Digital Marketing, and all types of other ways to make money online. One recurring theme over the course of the weekend was the idea of Indepreneurship. Indepreneurship is essentially the business of you. It’s making money off your knowledge, skill-sets, and experiences, and Youtube is a great way to do that.
At eCom Chicago I connected with a number of people who watch my Youtube Channel Rules For Rebels. Something that kept comming up again and again was that many people I spoke with wanted to start a Youtube Channel of their own but were hesitant for one reason or another. I noticed among talking to many people the same handful of questions kept comming up so I wanted to cover these questions and hopefully give you the confidence you need to launch your Youtube Channel today.
5 Common Question About Starting a Youtube Channel
1. What equipment do I need?
One of the most common questions people would ask is what type of equipment do I need? Many people seem to think they need to run out and buy a $1500 DSLR camera to start a Youtube Channel. Each and every one of you have everything you need to start a Youtube Channel right in your pocket. It’s your cellphone.
Cellphone cameras are more than good enough quality to launch a channel. In many cases cellphones actually have better video and audio than many dedicated cameras. It’s also something you always carry with you.
Initially you should be focusing on building an audience and creating an inventory of content, not production or cameras. The most important thing when starting on Youtube is audio. People will put up with bad video quality and bad editing but they won’t put up with bad audio.
Your cellphone should be fine audio as is, however if you’d like to pickup a cheap lapel mic from Amazon they are handy to have. If you want to up the audio quality even more you may want to consider grabbing a Snowball Ice microphone. It’s the go to affordable microphone for most Youtubers.
For video, again your cellphone should be fine. If you’d like to pickup an affordable webcam for screencasts or making videos at your desk, the Logitech C920 is the go to webcam. It’s high def and has good quality sound.
Lastly, I would hold off on buying a DSLR, however when you get to that point you may want to look at the Canon SL2 DSLR camera. It’s one of if not the best bang for your buck out there for DSLR’s right now. More suited towards video than photos but does both well and at the time of this writing is the smallest and lightest DSLR on the market.
2. Should I focus on one topic?
Another question that came up a lot is whether to focus on one subject matter, or multiple subjects for the channel. When you’re first starting out, if you’re lacking direction you may want to consider just making a general channel. Get started making videos, get in the habit of creating content, and get comfortable in front of the camera.
As you begin creating videos you may find you run out of content to make on a specific topic, or you may find that a certain type of video does really well getting views and is something you really enjoy talking about. This will help you find a direction to go with your channel.
If you already know what niche you want to get into make sure it’s a niche that you’re either knowledgeable about, passionate about, or both. Youtube is a long term game. It’s going to take a while to get things going, and it’s going to take a while to build an audience. If you enjoy the subject your talking about it will keep you interested and motivated and in it for the longhaul.
As far as mixing subject matters, it depends on how closely related the subjects are. My Youtube Channel is a business channel. A while back I started doing a lot of cryptocurrency videos and while investing is somewhat related to business and Entrepreneurship, my audience felt that they signed up for a business channel and not a crypto channel so I quickly changed directions and got back to my roots.
If you’re going to start a channel about vegan eating and technology it’s probably not a good mix. If you’re going to start a health and fitness channel however you could cover everything from vegan eating to working out to some more mental and personal development type content. Generally speaking however it’s good to focus on one subject area and carve yourself out a niche.
3. What should I make videos about?
This is another commonly asked questions. What the heck should I talk about? There are Youtube Channels about literally every topic under the sun. Have a favorite television series you like, you can make a channel about that. Want to show off your favorite recipes and teach others how to cook? You can do that as well.
A couple examples I bring up to highlight how literally any subject matter can be turned into a channel, is that one popular niche of channels right now are Prison Channels. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like, guys who got out of prison are making channels and talking about what prison was like, giving advice to other people who may be heading to prison, showing meals that they cooked in prison.
This may sound like an odd niche, however oddly enough it’s one of the fastest growing segments on Youtube. Many of these creators are coming out with mini documentary series, lines of merchandise, and paid groups. This is a great example of indepreneurship. Taking your background and experiences and turning it into a business.
4. What about the haters?
This seems to be one of the questions most aspiring Youtubers have. What about the haters? What if someone tells me I have a big nose, or a pimple on my head, or my content sucks? Who cares.
Anyone who has anything worthwhile going on in their life doesn’t have time to criticize others who are putting themselves out there and trying to do things, so don’t worry about what they have to say. The only way not to get any criticism is to do nothing at all and be average and ordinary. Don’t worry about the haters.
5. How much money can I make as a Youtuber?
This is probably the most commonly asked question. How much do Youtubers make? How much does someone with 1 Million Subscribers make? How much does someone with 100,000 Subscribers make? This question is impossible to answer.
Youtube ads pay per 1,000 views on your video. The rate at which you are paid is referred to as your CPM or cost per thousand viewers. General consensus is that Youtube pays $1-$2 per 1,000 views. Depending on the niche your making videos for you can however get substantially more than that. My CPM is oftentimes closer to $20 per 1,000 viewers.
It really depends on your subject area. More general subjects and entertainment style channels doing pop culture topics or prank videos tend to get a lot of views, however they don’t monetize well. Reason being they aren’t targeted towards something a specific advertiser would be interested in. On the flip side, a channel that shows you how to fix a hot tub, while it may not garner as many views monetizes much better. Think about it this way, if I had a business that sold hot tub parts and supplies, I would want to advertise on that channel as everyone watching those videos is a potential customer of mine so I’m going to be willing to pay more to advertise.
One last thing regarding monetization. Don’t be reliant on Youtube ads, it’s something you have no control over. Years ago we had the Adpocalypse happen which tanked people’s ad revenue for months. At any time Youtube could cancel your monetization, change terms, demonetize your videos. You really need to have other avenues to make money whether it be Patreon, selling merch, doing sponsored videos, shoutouts, and brand deals, or utilizing affiliate marketing. Youtube ads in the grand scheme of things don’t pay that well, it’s pennies on the Dollar. There are much better ways to monetize out there.
Wrapping Up
Well, I hope that answered some of your questions about starting a Youtube Channel. Ultimately the best thing you can do is stop overthinking it and launch your channel today. Take action and just get out there and start creating content, you can figure out the specifics and layouts and monetization later on. The most important thing is just getting started. If you have further questions or other topics you would like me to cover please drop a comment below.