Education To YouTube, or not to YouTube

That is a solid point, why are you making videos? Because you want to, to make money, to create a community, to share information, to get famous? Personally, if I started making content and I wasn't gaining followers or views I would stop.

My wife started uploading videos to document our life under Covid, sort of a video diary. She started to rapidly gain followers while the lockdown prevented her for opening a few language schools (really bad timing). She pulled out or renting spaces and stopped interviewing to focus on content creation. Now she is very successful and negotiating a television contract as I'm typing this. That said, content creation is very demanding and she works very hard, much more than she would in a normal career or even running a chain of schools but it is worth it for her. Now she gets to meet directors and television producers and has the opportunity to pursue her dream as a scriptwriter. It really depends on what you want to get out of it and how well your content is received, but you won't know if you don't try. Previously, my wife hated social media and now she lives on it.

 

Completely agree, but for me, it is also about charisma. Do I want to listen to this person while drinking my morning coffee?
Charisma is what makes you stand out on a crowded platform.

 

That ship has sailed... google my name and company and there are pages of videos, blogs, articles and so on with me waxing lyrical. I'd expect it to be the first thing any prospective employer looks at, and can't see how that sort of visibility would do anything other than improve my chances, competitive or not.

So, I'm not overly concerned about appearing in my videos, and will be for reasons others have mentioned - yes there's a list as long as my arm of hugely successful YouTubers that have never appeared in their own videos, but for the sort of thing I fancy doing, I just don't think it would work.

I do face and voice stuff for work all the time and have done for years, and recently a lot more video for obvious reasons, so I must be doing something right in terms of how I come across. And I'm told my weird is-it-American-or-is-it-British accent works well for making people listen by people that don't have to be nice to me (or maybe they've said I have a face for radio, that's also possible)

Anyroad, this ins't necessarily about building a massive audience of adoring fans to quit my day job, it's about doing something I think would be fun to do, and in the case of the home theater build log, if there are people asking for updates then it might help me pull my finger out and not take 18 months about it this time around. And if it stops being fun to do or starts taking up too much time then I'll stop doing it.

 

See I would like to try this, but similar to you I'm worried about it being utter drivel. Like my current slow burner project the garage conversion. Yeah I put it on here but I don't think people would enjoy me trying to explain in a video what exactly I'm doing.

 

Give it a go! The fact you can actually string a paragraph together (let alone a sentence) seems to put you ahead of a lot of other folks putting videos on there.

Besides, what's the worst that could realistically happen? You get some inane comments from the kind of people who actually comment on YouTube videos .

 

"First"

"hi"

"follow my channel"

 

I think a common trend among YouTubers these days is that they are doing it very specifically because they want it to become their profession, having seen so many do it before them. This doesn't prohibit them from creating content about a subject that they love, but it does make it a very competitive endeavour.

My take is much like your own: if you just want to share stuff that you genuinely love doing, go right ahead. I used to upload content to YT quite regularly but now it's much more sporadic because I just don't have the time.

 

Waffling videos are one of my favourites.

They mean you can hear the thought process at work.

 

All my videos used to be off the cuff and basically ad-libbed. Never once wrote a script. I made some notes once about specific points I wanted to cover in an overclocking video, but that was about it. I've been tempted to pick it back up now and then, but I'd need to make some more progress on some of my projects first.

EDIT: Apparently I'm still getting views... Not many, but I've done nothing in.... many years to properly promote this channel...

 

I shall get the little guy a dust mask too!