Good morning everyone! Are you thinking of starting a YouTube channel or are you
simply curious of knowing what it's like to be a youtuber in 2021? Well this video is
definitely for you! I will share 10 truths about becoming a youtuber in 2021. Let's roll the intro!
For those of you who are new to this channel, I'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer
and filmmaker on a journey to become better at this art! Let's get started right away with the
infamous views. Okay, so let's talk about views. I'm not going to tell like most youtubers to stop
looking at your views and not look at your analytics. Instead, I'm going to tell you
that you need to be careful about what views are telling you. So around last November,
I got a huge spike in one of my videos getting over 150 000 views on that video. That was huge
because at that time most of my videos would only get around 100 to 200 views. I also had two other
videos during that time on the Google Pixel 4a that got a lot of views with around 50 000 views
each of them. The problem with all these videos, even though I got a lot of views,
is that it's not good for my channel in the end. The problem is that my most of my subscribers,
5 000 of them, came from these three videos and they all expect to get a lot of content about the
Google Pixel 4a. The reality is that my content is much broader than just about the Google Pixel 4a
but every time I post a video that isn't about this topic, they don't perform as well as these
original videos because that's what my subscribers are expecting from my channel. So the lesson here
is that slow growth is much better than viral growth. If you're starting a channel in 2021,
you're very lucky because [YouTube] Analytics is much better than used to be. There's two things
that you should really look at when you're analyzing your videos and the first one is
click through rate. This allows to tell how much people are clicking your video once you
publish it and they see it inside of their feed or somewhere on YouTube. My very good click-through
rates are around 10% to 15% for the few days for videos that perform very well but most
of my videos are actually around five percent of click-through rate which isn't very great.
The other thing you want to look for is the watch time for every videos. So it used to be
only a graph but now [YouTube] Analytics actually tells you if there's a dip, if there's a spike,
if people are watching continuously and much more information like that which is very helpful
,because remember in the end Google want to sell ads and the longer you keep people watching your
video the better it is for your [YouTube] Analytics. So the second truth is that views
are not the statistics you should be looking at inside of [YouTube] Analytics. Okay, so now let's
talk about the money I made on YouTube. I made about a thousand four hundred dollars in the last
six months which is about forty seven dollars per video: that isn't much at all. What was a little
bit more surprising is that i made another three hundred dollars with affiliate links which was
much more than I expected but even with that it's still just about 50 dollars per video which isn't
enough to sustain your channel if you consider you also have to pay for things like Epidemic Sound,
Adobe, Geniuslink and things like that. I ended up spending over two thousand five hundred dollars in
spending for the last year so I actually had a deficit in the end and didn't even make a
profit with YouTube. So if you're thinking of starting a YouTube channel to make some money
it's just not viable at the beginning and this is the third truth. Now let's talk about the
most controversial subject of all which is which gear you should buy. Most people would suggest to
buy the Sony a7s iii or the Canon R5 to start your YouTube channel but this is completely ridiculous
because these are much too high-end cameras for most people. I personally use this 500 camera the
DJI Pocket 2 it has a great front facing screen, very good video quality and also a much needed
wireless microphone and this allows me to really easily go all around outside using this camera.
Another thing that I recently upgraded is actually adding a dead cat that only cost a few dollars
but this really helped getting better audio and I didn't have to buy a new Rode video microphone or
something like that that is much more expensive. Another thing is that most people are going to
suggest buying Aperture 120d light but this is completely ridiculous for somebody like me that
doesn't film much inside. I instead bought this small little Aperture light that I can actually
use outside when making videos at night or even in the day when I need a little bit of fill light.
All of this to say that the fourth truth is that you should buy the gear that is right for you,
not the gear that you want to be buying. This is also going to allow you to do things like
travel instead of having to upgrade a camera. So instead of buying Canon R5, I actually saved some
money and I'm going to be able to travel and create content that is much more interesting
for my subscribers and better for my channel in the end. My next piece of advice is definitely
going to be some controversial one and it's to stop stressing so much about finding a niche.
Instead my truth number five is to make content that you enjoy because if you're enjoying the
content, people are gonna see it and it's much better that people see that you're enjoying the
content than trying to please the algorithm. My next truth is definitely not a popular one
and is that it's much harder to start a YouTube channel in 2021. I actually have 1 million 668 204
content creators that have more subscribers than I do. That's a lot of people to compete with! Even
Peter McKinnon that I thought would easily be in the top hundred has 5 200 other content creators
that have more subscribers than he does. On the positive note, here's a little bonus truth: it's
that people usually subscribe to you as a person not necessarily just the content you're creating.
My next tip is one that I learned the hard way and it's actually really hard to publish a video every
single week. About two months ago, I had to take a break of four weeks because it was just too much
trying to create a video every single week and also have school full-time and doing my exams.
What you don't realize is actually that it takes about two to three hours to write the script for
every video, one to two day to film the video, another one to two to edit the video and finally
two to three hours to publish the video because you have to create a thumbnail,
you have to translate the video, you have to create a description, you have to add chapters, so
there's just so much work around creating a video! Another truth that i realized is that consistency
is maybe a little bit overrated or just not really well, understood what i think is very important
is to never stop creating videos but you don't necessarily need to be publishing videos every
single week. Most of my best performing videos were not published on a regular schedule. My next
point has everything to do about free stuff and more particularly in my case about getting free
gear. I regularly get messages of people telling me that I'm lucky to get some free gear but the
truth is that nothing is ever completely free. You need to understand that for most companies it's
much cheaper to send some products to reviewers than actually have to create ads to reach people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really grateful of getting all this free stuff because as a small content
creator it's not possible for me to go out and buy all of this gear. With that being said,
I still refuse most of the gear because it's just not a right fit for my channel and it's also not
good for the environment to be accumulating a ton of gear that I'm never actually going to be using
in the end. My last truth is that you should really enjoy the process of creating videos
before starting a YouTube channel. If you want to become rich or you want to become famous,
there's much better and easier ways of doing that. I had three precise reasons why I wanted to start
a YouTube channel. The first one was to become better at English and creating a video every week
really helps me keep my English and become better. The second reason was to become better at my
technique, so either filming, telling a story or editing the videos and for this I'm still taking
Skillshare classes to become better every single week. Finally, my last reason was to document my
life and for this I still have to work quite a lot to document my life more than just talking about
gear, photography or filmmaking. And these reasons are super important because it's going to help you
continue making videos which is very important when creating a channel instead of just abandoning
the first time you have stats that are not good or things like that. If you really enjoy the
process it's not gonna be hard continuing to make videos week after week. I'll end this video on a
more positive note and tell you that's a lot of fun creating videos when you enjoy the process.
I also want to say a huge thank you to all of you that come back every single week
because it's a lot better making this video with all your support!
Definitely let me know if you enjoyed this video by hitting the like button below and
also consider subscribing because I'm gonna have more videos on how to create a video from planning
to publishing and everything in between in the coming weeks! See you in the next one! Bye, bye!