 What's up? Good evening. I want to do a brief kind of chat video about About what it's like to be a minor celebrity on YouTube I know that's a weird thing to say and I'm not really talking about the celebrity status. I'm more talking about How did I get where I am? What are my recommendations for people who want to start making videos or have some kind of presence online? And my general recommendation, I mean they're not just if you want to be an easel up I actually read something the other day that Like kids nowadays their biggest goal is usually like being famous on the internet. Please. That's depressing. That's sad But I will give you some recommendations just general behaviors that will make You know making videos or probably other stuff in life a little easier for you So I'll tell you my story or at least parts of my story Now here's the first thing I'm in my office. This is where I record all of my videos I want you to look at my desk. Okay now the reason I show you my desk. This is not a fancy desk It's a little cleaner than some desks, but I want you to understand this I know there are a bunch of other channels on YouTube some of them in the same neighborhood That I am where they do. I don't know like technology stuff That they will have a set of they will have a fancy studio with you know Padded walls all over the place. This room has terrible acoustics. Mind you. They will have seven monitors I just have one. Okay, they will have a huge sound system They'll have microphones dangling from the the ceiling and the walls and all this kind of stuff They'll have all this acoustic stuff. I don't have any of that I've never had any of that and the first thing I want to be clear about is that if you Want to do stuff on the internet whatever they that might be you do not need a fancy studio You know what you need at the very most This is the only thing I I think was a Solid investment that definitely was worth the money and that is a microphone. Okay good a good Microphone that's a good quality. You might already have one laying around the house This is one of these blue yeti ones I think they were just really shilled on YouTube the time when I was looking for one So, you know, I ended up getting them. I have no preference for this particular brand But although they accidentally sent me to so I actually have two one at the office and one here so That is so that I think is all I really need to start my YouTube channel everything else Was sort of I don't know you just sort of make do with what you have in fact Let me show you while I'm on it So this is my selfie stick This is what I record on my videos on this selfie stick, which is broken I probably bought this thing for like five bucks, you know on eBay or something like that This selfie stick has probably earned me like thousands of dollars I don't I don't on YouTube now that I think about it It's one of the best investments ever But it's broken as you saw I duck taped it because like one of the little padding things fell off and It started getting to the point where the phone would always shake when I was walking with it So I taped a bunch of dryer lint on it. That's my idea. That is the production quality here on this channel Now I don't say that as some kind of weird flex. I say that in the sense that People who are thinking about I don't know having a public presence on the internet They think way too hard about it because they see people with the fancy studios with fancy $500 gimbals and go pros and stuff like that and they're like, oh, I need that I need that to be You know internet famous or something like that, you know Everything in my setup is super cheap even my computer is like a hundred bucks web cam is like 30 bucks Something like that. And when I first started my channel, by the way, this is first off as I said This is just my real-life office in my house. It doesn't have super great acoustics It's pretty pretty echoey as you can hear But I started in conditions that were even worse when I started My channel when I was living in a very small apartment in Arizona In fact, it was probably barely bigger than this room if at all or it really it was like really long But it was like super skinny. It was so annoying But I lived in this duplex when I I recorded some of my First initial videos that really took my channel off in that crummy apartment where the walls were paper thin And if my the people who lived in the duplex the other part of the duplex walk by they could hear They could hear me ranting at my computer about Linux or something like that. In fact, I remember recording One of the videos that basically made my channel. Okay, was this video I put out that was like how to pick a Linux distro stop thinking and that got that was like my first video to hit 100,000 views it got really famous most of my subscribers at the beginning of my channel came from that video It's the one with Varg's face on it and then some logos for Linux distros I recorded that in that apartment in my bathroom that was off to the side because it had slightly better acoustics And I was worried that during the 10 15 minutes It took to record that audio for that that someone would walk by and I'd sound really weird just like yelling at my microphone In my bathroom because you literally there you could literally they were paper thin you could hear right there It was so awkward, but I did it and it doesn't sound like I recorded it in a bathroom either Now what I'm trying to say is stop making reasons for you do not need fancy equipment You don't need anything fancy you can you can do it with what you have if you find yourself constantly trying to rationalize like oh Why I need this or that you probably are just making excuses because you're nervous about doing it Okay, so just go ahead and do it you're gonna be fine I if you saw again, this is all I got Okay, additionally, so here's another important thing. This is relevant. Okay, so on one side You don't need fancy equipment. You also don't need fancy Video making techniques frankly people will sometimes ask me Luke How do you do your video editing and I'm always confused by that kind of question because does it look like I do video editing? Are there things flying across the screen? Most videos I don't even have cuts like I will just get in front of my phone Turn on my or you know turn on my screencast on my computer and I will just record and go and that's it And if I make a mistake if I make a big mistake that I don't want being on the internet I'll just record it again. I don't even care enough to edit it at the very most Yeah at the very most I might If I want to add something on the end I'll just re-record something and then use FF impact to join the videos, but I don't do video editing now I used to some of my first videos I did do video editing in but my recommendation is Now I'm not against video editing. I am against video editing for myself. It's a personal preference I don't think I'm not particularly good at it And I don't think that it detracts from the realness of my videos I like my videos being real and grainy and and no cuts no fanciness just I don't know real life stuff But I'm also bad at video editing like not in the sense I mean really in the sense that it takes me a lot of time to do stuff in a video editor I never really you know I sort of started learning it when I started my YouTube channel But you know I remember that video I mentioned a second ago about choosing a Linux distro I did do video editing on that and that's a 10 15-minute video that took probably a week for me to edit because I was just so bad at it So here's my recommendation. You don't need to do video editing if you really don't like it My I guess what I would say is it's best to get in a position where you are most comfortable in Doing whatever you're doing in making quote-unquote content. I hate the word content I hate the word content creator more than anything. It's the most absolute like please kill me if I ever call myself a content creator Oh, no ironically terrible word. It's just just the most Orwellian thing ever So But what I'm what I'm trying to say is there are people like me who are sort of against video editing Just because I'm not so good at it. So it's easier for me It's more of my style just to flip it on do a really real shot and that's it I'm not I'm not dabbing on people who do do video editing I think that video editing is very nice. It can make some funny moments. It can do some great things And really make your videos look professional, but I'm just trying to say you don't need to do it You absolutely don't need to do it. You just need to get in the style You just need to sort of find what works. Okay when I started my channel I did not do videos like this when I was just talking to a camera not just because I didn't have a selfie stick But I it did never occurred to me just to do this This is like the easiest way to record videos and it is also usually the video that I don't know gets the most responses people just Realistically people on the internet sometimes just want someone to talk at them or talk or have the idea that they're talking with them You know something like that. It's a very naturalistic way of communication and I don't want anyone I like the fact that no one looks at my channel and thinks oh well This is like this fake manufactured content. The reality is it's like too real So I don't do video editing but sometimes I write things on a notepad because I know I'm gonna forget if I'm just rambling about something But so another super important point. Okay. This is this is one that people ask me about all the time. Okay in real life I get less questions about this You know by email, but in real life someone every once in a while someone will talk to me Who's not necessarily interested in Linux or something or any of the content that I put up on my channel But they'll ask me You know, I'm thinking about making a YouTube channel, but I don't see any YouTube I like I don't think there's a market for what I'm doing. You know, I'm interested in this. Oh, I'm interested in Some theoretical physics issue. I'm interested in religion. I'm interested in Reviewing this kind of product or something like that and I don't see any of that on YouTube So I don't think there's a market for it. That is exactly the opposite mindset that you should have I will tell you Okay, so I started my channel at the very end of 2016 I guess and I will tell you back then YouTube especially technology YouTube looked a lot different and I'm sort of subtly saying That I had an effect on it a very tangible effect because nowadays you finding a channel that does Linux dot file Configuration and arch Linux and stuff like that. Those are a dime a dozen. You see them everywhere But before my channel, it was really rare to find that kind of stuff I mean you would find like maybe a guy with a thousand Subscribers who used arch Linux. He wouldn't really talk about it He'd just be like, oh, I downloaded this and you know, look at that like there were very few Instructionals there were very few people Reviewing programs really the only one was got Bledu who's a channel that I always usually Say that he was one of my influences because he has the same mindset as me. He just turns on his computer He starts recording. He films a screencast. It's super real. That's it He does basically the same kind of stuff that I do but he does Maybe more minor programs that he just reviews. I don't know if he even uses all of them And he also curses all the time. This is a Christian channel We know curse but And that and Chris Acapinti. He sort of he's been on YouTube for a while and he's done similar stuff on more shell scripting But in general, there are lots of channels that I'm not I'm not saying are copycats of me But I'm saying like when you have your own thing that you want to run with and when I was you know I started making my kind of content because I started using arch Linux and I started doing all this new stuff and Oh, I just learned how to do this. Let me do a video about it I was I realized I was creating a market for that kind of stuff. There are a lot of people who are like, oh, this Inspires me to do this and that now. I'm interested in it now. I'm open to seeing other people talk about it so that that's the kind of thing that happened and Really how I took it Especially with like memes and stuff. I know this is sort of a cringe thing. I mean, I'm an old boomer I don't care about being cringe But one thing in particular is that when I started my channel, I would intentionally do this I would have highly analytical Educational content and then I just throw extremely indulgent memes and everything I would have, you know in the videos that I would edit I'd have memes slide shows and stuff like that While I'd have a totally deadpan voice. I would have the most ridiculous thumbnails Just like any kind of thing that I was just Like self-saturizing, you know clickbait, I guess is a way to way to think about it And what happened is like there's so many people now on YouTube who do Linux stuff who think it's hilarious Like all these Linux memes are hilarious and they run with them to me They're all well at least the ones that are dead are cringe to me. There was a period I don't know if I told you guys this that I banned the word bloat on my channel because it was like a year after that Meme has totally gone sour. Like I'm sorry. I'm sick of people calling literally everything bloat There's another one I banned on my my channel at some point. I forget what it was But I think I unbanned them eventually, but There are just some I don't know anyway What I'm trying to say is when you come to if you have an idea of what you want to do on YouTube As long as it's something that you could imagine someone Possibly being interested like if people are interested in it in real life They will be interested in it on YouTube So if you can think of a good medium to do that that is gonna work that's gonna you will have people viewing it It might be hard to catch on initially, but once it's there you will have a market. That's gonna work Let me check my note card one more time. Okay. Yeah, I basically said my last point already But the recurring theme is just be real like if you want to to make a channel Yeah, there are some people who have fancy production value and stuff like that. I don't happen to do that It's a little try hard. I you know, maybe I've added a little flourishes to my channel Now I have like a web, you know a face of my or a webcam of my face and some of my screencast and stuff like that But what I'm trying to say is just do it. Don't overthink it You can evolve your brand quote-unquote Don't start with an idea of what your brand is gonna look like do what you want and the brand emerges if I had started my channel You know, I named it something stupid like unabomber Rants in the woods or something like that. It would make no sense a brand is something you build over time The jokes that have come with this channel and the things that I've done Those are something that come from real events and what I'm telling you is be real Production value doesn't always matter. It's good. It's nice. I'm not knocking it But it you don't need to worry about it as much. You don't need to worry about having expensive gear You don't need to worry if you know, you don't feel like there's This niche is already on YouTube That's better for it not to be on YouTube because that means you're you'll be a trailblazer One final note that I will say and I think this is sort of common knowledge among people who I guess Know how that YouTube system works nowadays. It is important if you want to sort of take off on YouTube It it usually what makes that happen is not even consistent putting out videos every single day That does help a whole lot with your viewership on those days But the real way to take off on YouTube is to have one or two videos that go really really big and that means a video That is general purpose that a normie could watch and they will enjoy and think is funny for my channel I think I mentioned the how to choose a Linux distro stop thinking the one with Varg on the thumbnail That is one of the videos that made my channel. It was anyone who knew anything about Linux could watch it It was funny. It had memes in it. It had stuff like that and the other one that made my channel was Why I don't you why I? Hate using Apple or Mac anything or something like that That's an even more general category video because you don't even have to be a Linux user to use that Or to watch that so those are the videos if you look at my analytics that Originally made got me the subscribers that I have I mean not actually probably most of them have come later than that But that initial push from me being a channel of like a hundred to me being a channel of several thousands That was it that and so the important thing if you really want to get big is have General you know a couple videos that are general purpose that lots of people could watch but they don't have to be try hard They don't have to you don't need a studio. You can be like me. You can record in your bathroom Oh, I actually remember that bathroom was terrible when I moved in there. Okay, this is disgusting But I'll tell you it anyway when I moved in there They had cleaned up the apartment and I think they had moved in a new toilet But they hadn't bolted the toilet down and I didn't realize this none They hadn't realized it and I didn't realize it for a while, but basically I'm not even going to describe Exactly what it was like, but over time it started to stink and I had to figure out what that was and I realized They had not Bolted the toilet down correctly that that's anyway. That is where I recorded my The video that made my youtube channel, so That is that really gonna be the way I end this video whenever Shoot. All right, that's it. See you next time