I’ve made my living on YouTube for about 15 years now, so I know it is possible to make the internet pay your actual bills, but a bit like kids who assume they can play in the premiership because they are okay on their school side, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye really.
In order to have longevity in video format, you need a balance of being a strong communicator with plenty to tell. You need a wealth of life experience, essentially! Otherwise you have the same few stories to tell over and over and they aren’t very interesting the first time. The people who are worth continuing to follow are the ones who have kept raising their hands in life to keep having stories to tell. They need to try things or go through things that are interesting enough for others to want to listen.
There is a need for multiple streams of income and almost everyone you see making a living is making more than the videos you see on their main channel. Somewhere there will be long format videos in addition to short format videos, somewhere there will be ‘premium’ content people are willing to straight up pay you to watch rather than earning a penny per view on TT or YT.
There is a heap of marketing. Almost no creators exist on one platform alone, so you have to keep an eye on what’s working on three or four different networks and that part can be less fun than your original passion.
There’s a decision to be made as to whether the topic(s) you cover are more universal or niche. Lots of people watch the more popular topics - like how millions of people will watch the same make up tutorial. But also those topics are crammed full of influencers already and it’s really hard to break through and get any views at all. If your topic is less universal, it’s easier to break through but you can be absolutely at the top of the game and be in the five figures of subscribers, not millions and millions. And if you decide not to have any sort of topic then… well… good luck. It will be really hard for anyone to find you without some sort of easy way to describe you.
You're self employed so you will need to do your taxes, work out how to balance uneven income from month to month and all that boring stuff that is so far removed from making the actual videos.
I’m old so never was a teenager thinking I would do this. I studied other things and started in a more traditional career. I didn’t give up the traditional job until the side thing had overtaken my earnings and I’d given it enough time to make sure people actually liked my videos enough to keep coming back. I hope he doesn’t look down on his followers like he does people at work, because I just can’t see that working.
Anyway, sorry I’ve written you some sort of essay in working on the internet and a lot of it might be obvious to you but I feel like it’s often not at all obvious to teens who think this will work. Absolutely no problem with dreaming about it! But a bit like when you find out a singer you love actually went to the Brit School or the footballer never went on holiday as a kid because the family put all time and money into their sport training, it often turns out that there is a ton of work behind the scenes before the big success.