 Should you be creating YouTube videos in 2021 and beyond? Hey, there's a lot of panic around YouTube right now. There's a lot of bad press. There's a lot of people complaining about being demonetized. And the question is, should you even be making videos? Well, in this video, I'll explain to you if you should or shouldn't and exactly what you should do. Thanks so much for watching this video. Don't forget to subscribe. Hit that subscribe button down there. Turn it from red to gray. Don't forget, ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so that you are notified each and every time I go live or I upload a video. Okay, so I'm doing YouTube videos. Now the question is, should you do YouTube videos? Now, according to a recent Bloomberg study, 95.5% of the people who have a YouTube channel never break the poverty level. They just don't. 95.5%. Now, does that mean that you shouldn't? Well, it all depends on you, really. What are you gonna do? How hard are you gonna work? What's gonna happen with you in the future based on your efforts? Now, let's look at some important facts, though. YouTube is crushing it, okay? It's got over one billion viewers. It's got more viewers in the 18 to 49 category than all of the cable networks put together. So, yeah, the audience is there. The question is, what do you do with it? And Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Crushing It, he said, and I quote, no platform has created more wealth and opportunities than YouTube. Now, here's the interesting thing. So many people think that breaking the poverty level on advertising dollars on YouTube is the way to go. And it's not. That's not where you're gonna make the majority of your money on YouTube. So let's investigate some of the other ways to make money that can make you rich on YouTube. This means that you could sell a subscription site. Now, I have several subscription sites. People pay me every month. I have ones that are $27 a month. I have ones that are $97 a month. I have ones that are $497 a month. And I make money every single month off those subscription sites, whether I make any money on YouTube advertising or not. What about merchandise? I mean, I sell merchandise. I own a survival food company. So we actually sell products. People get to know me on YouTube. They check out my survival food company and they buy those products also. Next thing you can do is sell courses or guides. I have a whole bunch of different courses on everything from advertising to SEO, to email marketing, to drop shipping. And those courses make me money every single month because people see my videos on YouTube. In addition to that, I have speaking engagements. I have book sales. I have all kinds of things in different ways. Not to mention affiliate marketing that make me money on YouTube, not just the advertising dollars. So I don't want you to think of YouTube as a place where you're gonna make money. I want you to think of it as a gateway to a whole bunch of different places that you can make money. It's not just the advertising dollars. Now my channel is monetized and every month I make advertising dollars. I don't make the majority of my money off advertising dollars though I make it all of these other things that I market through YouTube videos. So before we get into how we're gonna make all this money, let's talk about how you make a good video first off. Step one is plan your video. Why are you even making the video, right? You gotta ask yourself, why are you making the video? I see so many people who will just turn on the camera and just ramble on and I'm like, why did they make that video? What was the point of that video? Your video actually should fall into one of three categories. It should be educational, okay? If you wanna make educational videos and teach people how to do things like what I'm doing right now in this video, that is extremely marketable, okay? The next thing you can do is engagement. Maybe you want people to engage with your videos. Maybe you want likes and comments and shares and you want people engaging with your videos. That's another reason to do a video. And then the last one is awareness and entertainment, okay? Maybe you wanna make people aware of different things. Maybe you wanna entertain them. Maybe you're a funny person, okay? Maybe you're a political commentator but those are the areas that you wanna think of when you're making your video. Not just, I'm gonna turn on my camera and make a video. Being keenly aware of what you want to achieve in your video is the very first step, okay? You do want to achieve something. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna give you a list of questions that I want you to ask yourself before you actually make the video. First off, who is my target audience? Who am I actually focusing on? Am I focusing on people that wanna learn something and am I focusing on people that wanna be entertained? You know, what is the particular niche of entertainment? Is it comedy? Is it singing? Is it dancing? What is it that I'm focusing on? And then think about the message of your video. What is the actual message that you're trying to get across to people? What are you trying to say to people? Next up, of course, is do I have a budget, okay? Is there a budget to making my videos? Am I just gonna make them on my iPhone? Am I gonna buy equipment? Am I gonna have lighting? Am I gonna have backdrops? What am I gonna do? Next question you wanna ask yourself is who's gonna be in the video? Is it just gonna be you? Are you gonna be a solo person in your video? I'm a solo person in my video. Now, I have B-roll that I use in my videos, but it's just me, but are you gonna have other people involved in your video? Next thing you wanna ask yourself is how long will the video be? I see way too many people turn on their cameras and when they're done talking, that's how long the video's gonna be. Now, all of my videos are planned out. Generally, I stay in the 10 to 14 minute link for a video, but you gotta think about that in advance. And where are you gonna shoot your video? Is it gonna be indoors? Is it gonna be outdoors? Is it gonna be a live type blog where they're following you around? Is it gonna be exploration videos? Is it gonna be a cooking video? Where are you gonna shoot it? You also wanna make sure you have a script or at very least an outline. I always have an outline here on my computer so I can look over at the outline and kinda see what I'm trying to do and stay on track. Next question you wanna ask yourself is what equipment do you have available? Do you have a nice DSLR camera? Do you have lightings? Do you have a spot where you can actually film? I use this spot here all the time to film my videos. Make it boring after a while, but bottom line is I have a nice clean area that's well lit. Then you're gonna wanna ask yourself, are you gonna edit the video or is somebody else? And yes, the answer is yes, you do have to edit your video, okay? You can't just do a video with no edits because you're gonna make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes so you wanna make sure you're doing the edits. And I prefer to do my own edits in the beginning. I do have a video editor also, but I do some of the major edits up front and then give it to him to add all the other items to. And I want you to think about your equipment. So your equipment can be very important. And everybody says, hey, you could just shoot videos on your iPhone, and you can. If you have a smartphone, not necessarily iPhone, but if you have a smartphone, you can shoot on your phone, but if you wanna get better quality, you're gonna have to move into more high-end equipment, you're gonna have to have better microphones, for example. Now, if you're shooting with your iPhone, yeah, about arm's length is about how far your audio is gonna be good. But past that, unfortunately, any smartphone picks up any sound in the room, so it's not gonna be focused just on you, but it's also gonna be focused on the air conditioner and the wind blowing outside and doors opening and shutting. So that's gonna really affect the quality of your video. So keep in mind, if you're doing something that's further than maybe arm length away, you're gonna wanna think about having an external microphone. Sound is very important. Next thing is lighting, of course. Lighting is super important. Now, when I film my videos, I'm in my office right now, I have windows in front of me, which you can't see right now, but there are some windows in front of me. Maybe I'll put an image up of that. And then I have a lot of lights that are on me right now, too. So between those two things, I have enough lighting. So then, of course, lastly, you wanna think about your editing software. I use a software called Camtasia. I also have Final Cut Pro. But if you have, let's say you have Apple products, you're gonna have iMovie. If you have Windows, you're gonna have Movie Maker. And those actually come with it, and they're pretty good, but they're not gonna be able to give you the, I guess, creativity of having a real editing software. And also try to develop a style. I mean, my style is an office setting and I'm talking to you about making money online. But let's say you do it in a cooking video. BuzzFeed always has a camera that's right over the food and they're shooting the food, always over the food and they're doing stuff real fast. And that's their style. So after a while, you'll develop your own style of something that you feel comfortable with. The next step, this is the tough one, get comfortable with being on camera. Now, most people are not comfortable with being on camera. They don't know what to do. They freeze up, they get excited, they get scared, they get nervous. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to think of it this way. And this is how I think of it. I'm talking to one person. I'm just talking to this one person in a conversational voice and I'm saying, hey, these are the things you should do. These are the things that are going to help you out. I want to help you. And as I'm talking to that one person, it's going to resonate with some people out there. And it always does. I always get comments. I always get feedback from people. And a lot of people are helped with my videos and that's my whole goal. So when I see that somebody's helped with it, it kind of encourages me to do that next video. Now here's the big one that most people never do, hit record. Yeah, hit record. A lot of people think, you know, I'm going to do this video with this great thing and I'm going to get this great equipment. I'm going to get this lighting and I'm going to have, you know, this room set up. I'm going to have this stuff, but they never really get started. And the next thing that kills people is they want instant results. They want instant results. You're not going to get instant results, okay? Every now and then you're going to have a video that's going to get a lot of views. But for the most part, most of your videos won't get hardly any views at all. And you've got to just keep going. I see so many channels start and they get 100 subscribers or 500 subscribers. And then all of a sudden they just quit. Now I've been doing this for years. I started actually in 2015. I didn't take it serious then though. I didn't really take it serious up until probably about three years ago, okay? Before I really took it seriously. And it hasn't grown as fast as I wanted, but it's grown and I make money off it. And I get ad revenue every single month and I sell my courses and people get to know me and I have really cool conversations with people. And I understand it's not instant wealth, but I also understand every single time I put a video on my channel, it incrementally increases my income every single month. And that's a pretty cool thing, knowing that my income is going up every month. And all I got to do is keep making videos and that's what you've got to do too. So to answer your question, yes, you should be making videos on YouTube. But you got to remember to monetize it with courses, with downloads, with affiliate links, with all these other things because that's where the majority of your money's gonna come from. At some point you may get monetized. At some point you may start getting ad dollars. I get ad dollars every month. I love my ad dollars, okay? Because I feel like essentially I'm not doing anything for them. I'm making the videos anyhow and that's just extra income. So yes, you should be making videos. Don't worry about that 95.5% of the people that don't make the poverty level, I don't know, advertising dollars, that doesn't matter. That's not why you're doing videos. Thanks so much for watching this video. I hope you appreciate it. If you did, give me a thumbs up. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button below. Turn it from red to gray. Don't forget to bring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live or I upload a new video. 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