Hello, and welcome. In this episode, I’m going to talk about the reality of what it’s like to have a YouTube channel, as well as the questions you really need to ask yourself to understand whether or not you want to invest and commit to this journey.
Episode 5: Should you **really** start a YouTube channel? Here are some Qs you need to ask yourself – Podcast Transcript
I’m going to be answering the question, giving you questions to answer on should you start a YouTube channel? This is a question that I know a lot of you ask yourself and I’m going to talk about the reality of what it’s like to have a YouTube channel, what it’s like to grow a channel.
Hey Thrivers, I’m Sara Nguyen, creator of Thrive Video Academy, and I’m here to help you go from stuck and overwhelmed to becoming a confident, profitable and thriving creator. Join me here each week for honest conversations about what it really takes to become a successful YouTube creator without compromising your creativity, sacrificing cheeky drinks with people you love or downtime for yourself.
You’ll hear about the hard lessons I’ve gone through, so you can avoid making the same slow and costly mistakes on your journey, as well as my secret weapons to help you dig deep and do the work it takes. I’m so honoured and grateful to have the opportunity to share this together with you right here on the Thriving Creator Podcast.
I’m glad you’re here. Let’s get started. The first question that I want you to ask yourself if you are looking to start a YouTube channel, or if you have one and you’re looking to grow it is are you doing this just for the money?
I feel this is an important question to ask because when I work with creators and I ask them: why do you want to start a channel? Why do you want to go through all this YouTube pain?
And when the answer is because I need the money or because I want to make more money, and that’s the only reason why, for me, that’s a red flag. Let me tell you why. When it comes to making money on YouTube, particularly when people think that I’m going to be a massive creator and get thousands and thousands of dollars every single month.
That’s not the reality. Lots of people think it just starts raining money and the cash registers or the money just keeps falling and falling and falling. And that’s what people think about YouTube money, but the reality is that it takes time.
One of the YouTube creators that I follow is Phil DeFranco. Phil DeFranco currently has over 6 million subscribers on his channel. And I love Phil because in one of his videos probably a month or so ago, he talked about YouTube money and he talked about how he now makes a decent living off YouTube with 6 million subscribers and he has a daily show and he has sponsors.
But he talks about how the YouTube money didn’t start paying for two years. Well over two years and he was doing it as a full-time effort. When people say, I’m doing it for the money, or when people say that I need the money, I say, this is a problem because the …money doesn’t come for a while for most creators.
If you really need the money, you need to get a job. You need to find another way to supplement your income, because the reality is it’s just going to take you time to start earning money from the YouTube partner program and from AdSense.
And if you’re thinking that this is your way to get out of debt, your way to get out of all your financial problems, you’re going to be really sorely disappointed. But if the answer is that I want to start a YouTube channel because it’s a creative outlet for me, because I have a message and I want to get it out there.
I want to build a brand. I want to make an impact. Those are the right reasons to be creating a YouTube channel. But I think that if it’s solely because you want to make money from Google AdSense alone, you’re going to be very, very disappointed.
In addition to that, I highly recommend if you are looking to make money and YouTube is part of the ecosystem in the equation that you diversify. I make money from a couple of sources with YouTube.
I make money from the YouTube partner program. I make money from my courses. I make money from affiliate marketing and coaching. I don’t purely rely on AdSense alone. Why? Because it’s something that you can’t control.
It’s inconsistent. It fluctuates and it takes time. I really feel that we need to address the fact that YouTube AdSense money isn’t going to solve all of your money problems. And if it’s the reason that you want to get into YouTube, it’s probably the wrong reason.
Ask yourself the question, why are you doing it? Are you doing it just for the money? If so, YouTube is probably not the best platform for you. The second question I want you to ask yourself is, are you committed to creating quality content that’s relevant and focused on user needs?
And the reason I get you to ask yourself this question is I see A lot of creators come to me and they say ‘my channel is just not growing’. When I look at their channel, I can see that they either don’t have any videos or they’ve released 5 videos.
It’s because you haven’t created enough content. Or they’ve got like 50 to 100 videos, and when I look at those videos, I’m like, you’ve just uploaded for the sake of uploading. Maybe because someone’s told you to do that but if you’re going to play this YouTube game you have to be willing to focus on improving your content.
And that means taking the time to do the keyword research so that the content you create has actual demand. Spending the time to make sure that your content is good. Researching the actual content or taking the time to film, create, produce.
I find that when creators start on YouTube, some of them just start throwing stuff out there to see what sticks and that’s not what will help you grow a channel. There needs to be the question of, are you really committed to creating the content that’s relevant and focused on the viewers’ needs? It’s not about you!
And if you can focus on that YouTube will reward you and send your video to more viewers. That’s the second question that I want you to ask yourself. Now, the third question that I want you to ask yourself is are you in this for the long haul?
I think that a lot of creators, when they first get started, they look at these massive creators. They look at the Phil DeFrancos. They look at the Casey Neistats, who have millions and millions of subscribers.
And what you don’t realise is those millions and millions of subscribers happened over decades. The most part, it takes a long time. 5 years, 10 years. Years not days, not weeks, not months, years to grow a channel, particularly to that size and that scale.
And a lot of people think, oh, I’m just going to be an overnight success because I see that. But those cases are really rare. I think you really need to be committed to creating that content, creating consistently over time, improving your content.
And this takes time, particularly if you are brand new to YouTube, you’re brand new to video, you’re brand new to editing. The reality is as most things that you do for the first time, you’re probably not going to be really good.
It’s going to take time for you to create, it’s going to take time for you to improve and the trajectory of your improvement may be exponential, but that’s still going to take some amount of time. The reality is as most things that you do for the first time, you’re probably not going to be really good.
It’s going to take time for you to create, it’s going to take time for you to improve. Are you willing to commit to the time it takes to grow your channel, because it could take 6 months, a year before you start really seeing some traction, until you start being really confident and creating really amazing videos.
It takes time to come up with content. It takes time to really produce good content. It takes time to do all the things and people don’t realise that. I also hear creators go, I want to do YouTube, but I don’t have time. Well, something has to give.
You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. You need to sacrifice that extra hour that you’re spending, watching Bridgerton on Netflix or that extra hour that you’re spending scrolling on your phone each night.
You need to find the time to do the things that you want to do the things that are important to you. Ask yourself, are you in this for the long haul? And then the fourth and final question I want you to ask yourself is, Are you willing to take full responsibility for your channel growth?
Too often I hear things like: the YouTube algorithm’s just not showing my videos. YouTube doesn’t like small creators. It’s really hard. In one sense yes.
But on the other side, if you are focused on creating the content, making sure it’s optimised, producing it consistently and focused on the next video and how can you improve your video by 1%? Whether you work on your delivery, whether you work on the content side of things, whether you work on the production side of your video, whatever it is, taking responsibility and not blaming YouTube or other people is a key thing to helping your channel grow.
And that’s how you grow a channel, and that’s what it takes. Those are the key things I want you to ask yourself when it comes to whether or not you should start a YouTube channel. I think that everyone can start a YouTube channel, but whether they should or not you really need to ask yourself the questions of, are you doing it just for the money?
Because if you do it just for the AdSense revenue, you’re going to be sorely disappointed and honestly, you’re better off getting a job because you’re going to go months, years without any decent money. Go get a job. The second one is, are you committed to creating quality content for your viewers?
Because your content is the heart of your YouTube efforts. The third one, are you committed to the long haul of growing your channel? Taking the time to improve your content, taking the time to do YouTube and understand that it’s a longterm play.
And fourthly, Are you willing to take full responsibility to grow your channel? Stop blaming the algorithm. Stop blaming everyone else. It’s on you to grow your channel. No one else.
If you focus on these four questions and you focus on these four areas of YouTube consistently over the next six months to 12 months, a year from now, you’ll have the views, you’ll have the subscribers and you’ll have the success that you want on YouTube.
I promise you that if you do all these four things, keep creating content, keep optimising it, making sure that it’s relevant, focusing on delivery, focusing on getting better each time, in a year’s time, you will have so much growth and you will have everything that you want. In an actual YouTube channel.
Those are basically my handy dandy questions for you to ponder if you’ve been thinking about, should I start a YouTube channel? One last thing before I go, I created this podcast as a reminder that you are not alone in this.
Growing with video is hard and I want to be here to help and guide you and others through it. If you found this podcast episode helpful, please leave a review.
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