In this digital age, given a boost of two years of pandemic digital content creation became a very lucrative career option. According to a report by Oxford Economics, YouTube’s creative ecosystem supported 6,83,900 full-time equivalent jobs and contributed INR 6,800 CR to the economy of India in 2020. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are some of the biggest platforms facilitating digital content creation all around the world. In 2005, the world’s first YouTube video titled Me at the Zoo was uploaded by YouTube’s co-founder Jawed Karim and got around 171 million views. Nearly a decade later in 2014, India had about 16 YouTube channels that had crossed the million-subscriber threshold. Today, there are more than 2,500 YouTube channels with over one million subscribers.
Indian YouTube channels lead the YouTube game globally with Indian music label and movie studio T-Series having 216 million subscribers, the world’s largest number of subscribers on YouTube, followed by PewDiePie (110 million subscribers). The top five of the top 20 YouTube channels around the world are Indian—SET India (133 million subscribers), Zee Music Company (84 million), Zee TV (62.2 million) and so on. Arvind Arora, who owns the short videos channel A2 Motivation (13.7 million subscribers), is an individual YouTuber with more than four billion views, the highest in India. (The report is according to the Financial Express).
According to YouTube verticals like music, entertainment, food, beauty, comedy, lifestyle, and technology continue to gain momentum, and creators like Bhuvan Bam, Prajakta Kohli, Ashish Chanchlani, Nisha Madhulika, Kabita’s Kitchen, and Technical Guruji have shown immense growth in the last few years. Content around vocational skills like gardening and photography has also expanded with creators like Mad Gardener and Pixel Village gaining popularity. Gaming is yet another genre that has seen phenomenal growth in the last couple of years, with creators like Carry Minati, Dynamo Gaming and Mortal reaching millions of subscribers.
It is one of the leading social media platforms and has taken the world of the Internet by storm. A platform that provides you with the golden opportunity to ‘make it big’, show the world your concealed creative side and express your opinions at a global level. With the world becoming digitized by the second and the boom of smartphones, this red and white play button has given birth to a new profession called YouTuber.
YouTubing is one of the most upcoming and promising careers in contemporary times. It is a field that offers tremendous scope for growth and other benefits such as flexibility of work, the ability to express yourself, opportunities to showcase your creativity, and a shot at earning popularity and fame.
While it may not be a full-time career option right off the bat, over time you can make it your profession like the many other YouTubers before you.
How to Start a Career as a YouTuber?
Creating a channel and making it successful would require a lot of hard work and perseverance on your part. Making a career out of YouTube is not about coming up with a single viral video and getting shot up to fame, it requires careful content development, distribution, and promotion to be sustainable.
- Choose the Genre and Motive for your Channel
This is a crucial step as it will help you choose the type of content you’ll create and will reflect the message you want to send out to the masses. It can be anything ranging from beauty and fashion to comedy, gaming or technology. The most common categories/genres of content on YouTube channels such as Beauty, Fashion, Animation, Kids, Comedy, Vlog, Pranks, Music (including covers), Travel, Dance, Education, Information/Knowledge, Art and DIYs, Cookery, Technology, Gaming, Sports, News, Motivation/Inspiration, Health.\
- Determine a unique Style and Voice
YouTube channel’s style will often be a reflection of the personality and unique individuality. It can come from the way you talk, the views you express, any catchphrases/taglines, your dressing style, or even the causes you stand for. A fresh and original voice are an essential element for making your channel stand out from the noise.
- Develop and polish the Content
Content is the heart and soul of any YouTube video. The video cannot get by on presentation alone, and there needs to be strong content backing it up. One must spend proper time conceptualizing your ideas, writing content/script, and editing it to polish and perfect it. It should be relevant
- Use the Right Equipment
Poor video or audio quality sends a message to the user that very little work has been put into the development of the content. Thus, it is highly suggested you invest in a good camera (DSLR/ point-and-shoot), quality lighting and sound equipment (microphone). Even a good quality mobile is enough to shoot.
- Work on Filming and Editing Techniques
Good editing and filming can go a long way in increasing the virality of videos. They are the two most crucial elements that determine the final quality of your videos, and thus cannot be ignored.
Make it a point that you use the right lighting settings and filming techniques while filming your videos. Knowledge of the basics of photography and filming (camera angles, lighting, aperture, shutter speed, framing, etc.)
- Customize the Channel Page
YouTube gives the chance to reflect the voice and identity of your channel through your channel page too. There are many ways to personalise the page – you can edit the layout so that visitors see the content you want them to see first, add a channel trailer, post a custom thumbnail to give your channel its identity, and also display vibrant artwork as your cover picture to make it look fresh and draw attention.
- Choose Relevant Titles and Tags
The title of your video and the tags you use help to ensure that your video gets featured in searches and ultimately starts getting noticed by a wider audience. Tags are basically descriptive keywords you can add to your video to tell YouTube what your video is about, and thus increase the likelihood of it being displayed in searches related to those keywords. There are many relevant free keyword tools available online. The title of the video is equally important since it conveys to the audience what your video is about. A clickable, descriptive and attractive title also helps in ranking your content on YouTube search.
- Use social media for better promotion
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, not only help to increase the reach of your content, these will also help to stay in touch with your fans and get more likes, comments and shares. Any popular YouTube channel or YouTuber, and would see that they maintain an active presence on multiple online channels.
- Stay Engaged with the viewers and Subscriber
YouTubers leverage their fame and subscribers to gain popularity for their videos, distribute their content, and highlight other brands’ products to make more money in addition to what they make off YouTube. For this reason, an engaged and supportive audience is essential. Engage with your followers regularly by regularly replying to comments and messages, asking them questions and taking up their suggestions. It is important to keep on thinking of such ways to increase your fan base and build a supportive community of followers.
YouTubing is a field where one needs to keep expanding constantly expertise and content and not be afraid to try new things. If being creative and thinking outside of the box is what gets your heart pumping, then this may be your go-to profession.
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