Get Rich Blogging. Zoe Griffin
chance you have of growing an audience. You’ll find it difficult to motivate yourself to spend hours creating and publicising something you don’t care about.
For example, consider a typical day at work. If your boss gives you a dull task like sweeping the floor or cleaning the toilet, you’re likely to procrastinate. When it’s time to do the task, you’ll probably do the bare minimum and the expression on your face will show what you really think of the work you’re doing. You cannot perform your best work when you’re not passionate about the job in hand. Because of the hours of work that go into making, editing and sharing vlogs, picking a theme that you’re only moderately interested in would be the equivalent of being told to clean the toilet twenty times a day.
Britain’s most popular vlogger KSI says he achieved 12 million subscribers only because he had a genuine love for playing computer games and making videos. ‘To be successful you have to be passionate. You have to be extremely passionate about your art,’ he said in BBC documentary The Rise of the Superstar Vloggers. ‘Every video I’ve done, I’ve crafted it to the way I’ve wanted it to be. I’ve wanted my videos to be entertaining and for people to laugh at certain points, and it makes me happy if I make people happy. If you don’t love what you do, then stop!
‘A lot of people think YouTube is quite easy, and it isn’t. I’ve been doing it for six or seven years now and I’d say the hardest time was the first three or four years. You’re constantly making new videos and you’re constantly putting up content. I work every single day to expand my brand.’
TIP: YOU NEED TO BE MORE PASSIONATE ABOUT YOUR SUBJECT THAN YOU ARE ABOUT SLEEP!
Men’s fashion and grooming vlogger Robin James (youtube. com/TheUtterGutter) has 65,000 YouTube subscribers and is growing his channel in addition to holding down a full-time job. He works Monday to Friday, then spends Saturday filming videos and Sunday editing them.
He says: ‘I don’t often see my friends that much, but I love vlogging and I’m enjoying what I do. That’s why I’m happy to make sacrifices to grow my YouTube channel. I want to be successful and make informative videos, and, if fame is a result of that, then great.’
Robin says he is prepared to sacrifice sleep if it means he can create more content. He genuinely enjoys talking about clothes and male grooming products, and said he would stop and spend his weekends seeing friends and relaxing if he didn’t enjoy it.
Fashion and music vlogger Helen Anderson (youtube. com/snakebitesparkles) agrees. She adds: ‘It’s been four years of hard work to get traffic to my vlog. People come up to me in the street and say they think I lead a perfect life, but they don’t see all the work and stress and arguments that being a YouTuber can cause. I can be working until really, really late at night at times to make sure I have an upload.’
Picking the right theme may involve hours of soul-searching, which is not always a pleasant task, but there are ways to make the process easier. Grab a pen and a sheet of A4 paper, and divide the sheet into two columns. On the left-hand side, make a list of things that interest you. Now ask yourself: what subjects could you talk about for twenty-four hours a day? Circle those and cross everything else off the list. On the right-hand side, make a list of your skill sets. Are you a great researcher? Do you have high energy levels and a great deal of enthusiasm? Or do you have a dry, witty sense of humour and a love of satire? Ask others to help you with your list, as sometimes people see qualities in you that you never realised you had.
At the end of this task, your paper should show one or two subjects on the left and a longer list of skills on the right. A way you can be unique and offer something interesting to the vlogging community is by covering the topics on the left-hand side and presenting your videos in a format that fits in with the skill sets you’ve listed on the right-hand side. You might end up with an idea to cover beauty in a humorous way or feature gaming in a more energetic way than other gaming vloggers.
Don’t be afraid if you have diverse interests. For example, maybe you are interested in sport and beauty? This could make for a pretty interesting vlog. While there are lots of fitness vlogs and lots of beauty vlogs, there aren’t so many that combine beauty and sport, telling us cute but practical hairstyles for the gym or how to protect our skin from sweating. Try it, and you can always switch things up later if you discover that you enjoy the beauty part more than the sports part or vice versa.
Once you have picked your theme with the help of your lists, the final step is to do some research. Go to YouTube and enter the subjects from the left-hand column into the search box. Which vloggers are already operating in your area? Are there any you particularly admire? If so, subscribe to them – you want to keep tabs on what they’re doing, and perhaps there will be an opportunity to collaborate in the future. Are there any vloggers in that subject area who aren’t hitting high traffic figures? What can you offer that they can’t? What mistakes are they making?
Turn over the sheet on which you wrote your original list of subjects and skill sets. Divide the blank side into two equal columns, and write ‘Do’ at the top of one and ‘Don’t’ on the other. Under ‘Do’, list the vloggers you admire and explain what it is you like about them. Under ‘Don’t’, list some vloggers you aren’t keen on and explain what they’re doing wrong.
Store this piece of paper in a place where you can access it regularly. You should look at it at least once a week to stay focused and avoid going off message. Reviewing it will also keep you motivated as you’ll be reminding yourself that you have a unique place in the vlogging industry and that you have the skills to achieve success.
TIP: REVIEW YOUR FORMAT BASED ON VIEWERS’ FEEDBACK
Twins Niki and Sammy have almost 200,000 YouTube subscribers to their vlog NikiNSammy (youtube.com/nikinsammy). Their advice is: ‘It takes a while for each of us to develop our voice as a brand but, once you have that, you can change some elements while keeping the core the same.
‘We try different formats on our channel to keep it fresh and topical – from reactions to collaborations. But we’re still us. We’re constantly thinking, “Are we enjoying this?” and “Are they – the viewers – enjoying this?” What we do is not set in stone. It’s more organic and I think that’s what helps people to relate to it.’
WHO WILL BE YOUR AUDIENCE?
YouTube has 1 billion active viewers per month. Some of them will be interested in what you have to say, some will hate you and some will be indifferent. You can’t please everyone.
To be successful, you need to close your mind to negativity and focus on what you can control. With a little thought and research it’s possible to identify groups who are interested in your topic. If you learn as much as you can about the people in these groups, you will not only attract them, but you will remain relevant to them.
Beatles star John Lennon once said: ‘Trying to please everybody is impossible. If you did that, you’d end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You’ve just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.’ The Beatles went on to sell 65 million albums worldwide to a generation of music fans. They found a sound that was unique to them, stuck with it and the fans loved it.
John Lennon’s advice applies to vlogging as well as music. There is no point making videos containing lots of different elements in an attempt to keep every single one of the world’s billion YouTube users happy. Trying to make people interested in what you have to say takes time and energy, and means you’re not doing as much as you can to please the people who are already interested in your subject. The way to grow viewers and subscribers is to work out who your audience is and what their expectations are, then consistently deliver content that you know this group of people will like.
Music manager Scooter Braun discovered Justin Bieber on YouTube in 2008 and liked what he saw so much that he persuaded Justin and his mother to move to Atlanta so he could manage Justin’s career. After signing