 If you wanted to post a video, it was going to cost you tens of thousands of pounds or dollars. And if you're, who's gonna pay that? Not even a corporation's gonna pay that. And then in 2006, YouTube comes along and says, oh, we'll host your videos free of charge. It was completely revolutionary, completely revolutionary as a content creator to suddenly have a platform which let you publish videos and embed them on your own web pages if you wanted, free of charge. How did you know that your channel is a thing? It was a thing because no one else had that thing when I started. I started on YouTube in 2006 and was one of the first channels to review anything, let alone cameras. Today, reviews are absolutely everywhere. And it's great because it forces everyone to raise their game. It can be very disheartening and demoralizing, especially if you're reviewing something that's popular because everyone else will be reviewing it. And you're gonna be trying to get attention for something that a thousand other people, probably more than a thousand other people who have got a lot of them or have way bigger followings than you may have or we may have. And you're trying to compete against these people, which is very hard, again, just before I answer your question, top tip number two, talk about stuff that no one else is talking about. Some of my most successful reviews and videos have not been because they were any good or useful or incisive, it's simply because no one else had reviewed them. And you can't guess what that's gonna be. You know, a new camera comes out and you're like, is everyone gonna do this? Because time is of the essence. You've gotta be one of the first as well. So you don't know if anyone else is doing it, but typically when I attend like a camera launch as a journalist, there's rarely just one piece of news or one product. There's typically lots of different things. They'll be the one main product though. That's the thing which you came along for. And that's the thing which everyone's gonna be talking about, but there'll be some crappy accessory that you'll be like, yeah, whatever, film it, talk about it, review it because no one else will. And you could end up getting way more views and revenue based on that than the main thing which you invited for. So the unfortunate thing is to cover everything. But how did I know why it had become a channel? It's because, again, when I started, no one else was doing this. So when I put out a review, it kind of, it was such a refreshing, it was such a nice world to be part of because there was no competition. So everything you did did really well because there was nothing else. There were no other camera reviews. You wanna review of the Canon, whatever? It's that bald British guy again because no one else has done it. So let's listen to him and look at his terrible technique. So it's again to interrupt, but you started in 2009. Six. Sorry, 2006. So did you know quite early in the late naughties then that this is a thing that actually is gonna be quite big? No, not at all. I'll tell you why I started doing it. So I come from written, well, I have done some broadcast or TV or radio, but most of what I do is written. So when you're writing a review or something, you have to describe it with words, right? And if you're paid by the word, which, anyway, forget that. You've got to describe how something looks, how something moves, how something sounds. And when you're reviewing a camera and you wanna describe in words how the lens extends, the kind of noise it makes when it extends or zooms, the clicking sound it makes for some reason under certain circumstances, it's really difficult to write that in a sensible way. The best way of doing it is to point a camera and it film it and say, look, look, this is what it does. Listen, this is what it sounds like, but here's the rub. I've been publishing on the internet since the late nineties and back then in web 1.0, video was out of reach for pretty much everyone, even major corporations. It was so expensive to serve video because you would have web hosting for your web pages, but then you'd need separate hosting for audio or video. And they would charge you per view. And it was like something stupid, like a pound of you or something, right? And the quality was rubbish as well. So if you wanted to post a video, it was going to cost you tens of thousands of pounds or dollars. And if you're, who's gonna pay that? Not even a corporation is gonna pay that. And then in 2006, YouTube comes along and says, oh, we'll host your videos free of charge. It was completely revolutionary, completely revolutionized me as a content creator to suddenly have a platform which let you publish videos and embed them on your own web pages if you wanted, free of charge. And then shortly after that, they allowed you to monetize it. Now, as anyone knows who tries to monetize on YouTube, you don't get paid a lot, but you can see that it's scalable. And if you get enough views, it can actually bring in some money. So it was, you know, a truly revolutionary platform back then. So I got into it as a way because it was the most affordable way to demonstrate something on video. And I had no intention of, it wasn't in my mind to see it as a platform which would grow by itself and where people would go to YouTube. I thought people would use it the way I was using it, which is to host video that you then put on another page and people would view it there. And I think they did initially with my content. And in the meantime, while you're doing that, you're getting all these comments on this other platform, this YouTube platform. You're like, who are these people that are actually watching on YouTube? So once that started to come in and once you were getting really massive views at the time because there was no alternative, that's when I thought this is a thing and I should actually produce content specifically for YouTube and for people who are consuming on YouTube. What year roughly was that? I would say a couple of years in. This was approximately at the time that other people really began to catch on. And suddenly I was getting, I went from having no competition to loads of competition. And it was really hard for me because imagine thinking you're the most popular person on the block. But sadly, it's actually only because you're the only person on the block. And these other people were coming along who were better in every way. They were more entertaining. They were way better presenters. Some of them, I thought, well, the one thing I've got is experience and technical knowledge, but people come along with that as well. And people most crucially of all, and this is how you disrupt it as a creator, people who are coming at it not with a journalistic perspective. You know, like sometimes I think I should put on a dinner suit and do everything like the early days of the BBC and speak in a voice like this. You know, maybe we should go back to that, but no. These other people come along saying, I've no idea how to present this guys, but here it is. And you'd look at it and you'd go, what's this rubbish? And then you'd look at the views, you'd be like, crikey. People really like this. And actually I like it too because it's entertaining and it's fun. And it's a bit like when you, I encourage anybody to do a quick experiment, which is to play any episode of the first season of Friends where everyone speaks in a kind of monotone voice and they deliver like this. Go forward a few seasons and everyone's up and down. They're doing comedy voices. I'm now speaking like this. When did that happen? And the same thing happened with YouTube, except it took ages for me to catch up for a year, up until like only a couple of weeks ago. I was still speaking like this. Hello. I didn't even say hello. No, it was worse. I would actually read out the URL. I think I actually said, hello, I'm Gordon Lane, editor of HTTP colon, forward slash forward slash dot. And if you still have viewer retention after that, you've nailed it, they love you. But of course they will go, who's this guy? Compares their ad goes, hi guys, I'm going to be looking at the new one ever. Who would you prefer to watch? And that's what happened. And I got really disheartened because everyone started watching them. My views went from literally everything I posted I've got hundreds of thousands of views. Half a million views was not unusual for me. Now, half a million views. I've only had like one video in the past two years that has had that number of views and that's the long exposure tutorial because it did everything right. Everything else to these days, I'm delighted with 10, 20,000 views because there's so much competition. And there's more of my chats with Gordon Lane from Camera Labs and post this amazing video that you put in so much work into, you try so hard and you tick all the boxes, you know, your subscriber base is going to love this. It's perfect. It's you. It's the definition of your channel and you post it but what if YouTube is punishing you for the previous deviation and that video doesn't do well and I have seen that. Is it because they are punishing you or is it because it just coincidentally didn't do very well? And I don't know but again it does kind of put you off. It's like the day you, you know you're in the schoolyard and you stand up and you say, hey, why are we doing this? Whack. And then you're like, I'm gonna take my head up again in that environment. And please hit the subscribe button if you want to see more Great British YouTubers. There's a playlist and a podcast. All the details and links are in the description. I'm Neil Mossy and I'll see you on the very next episode of Great British YouTubers.