This guy's gonna pay me $1000 a month!
That would have been the dumbest decision that I've ever made.
I said no to everything.
You have to be the CEO and the COO and the manager and the creator.
Went from a hobby to a full-time job for both of us.
What's up insiders!
Editor Barbara here.
So, I recently sat down and interviewed two creators
as they happened to be visiting our YouTube offices.
It started out as a general Q&A about their channels
talking about why they started their backgrounds etc.
But what was most interesting
Was how they each over the past four to five years
have turned their channels from hobbies into full-blown careers.
They offered a ton of insights that I had not heard from other creators.
So, today's video is going to be
their top 12 tips for turning your YouTube channel into your career.
I hope you enjoy.
I'm Barbara. I've got two creators here with me today.
What's going on guys?
I am power banger on the Powerbang Gaming channel.
I cover mobile games primarily looking at PUBG mobile these days.
I'm out there slaying newbs on the battlefield
also offering some tips and tricks here there.
Wow. What a pitch
I like a concise short bump!
I'm CWA Mobile Gaming aka Ash and I cover mostly Clash Royale right now
supercell games but with an interest in ESports and the competitive scene.
Let's start things off right at the very beginning.
How long have you been on YouTube?
Close enough four years.
Okay. Yeah.
Awesome. I've been in since August of 2014.
Put yourselves back in the mindsets of your younger self in 2014/2015.
Why did you start your channel?
What were your goals at that time?
With YouTube I think it's a common misconception
that a lot of people want to get into it for the fame or the money or the notoriety.
I think all successful creators start out with a passion
and it's something that you hear people say over and over
and I think with Ash and I both that's where it started for us as well.
Man, if you were in this for the money or expect rapid growth
unless you're an extreme outlier
you're probably in it for the wrong reasons early on.
I just did it for the fun and a passion of mobile games
which were my niche at the time.
In what other ways do you help build your brand?
Thinking beyond YouTube.
Focusing on Powerbang for a second
being very consistent with community
trying to establish an identity of who you are as a person
and what people can expect from your content and from you as being part of your community
I feel is extremely important.
And then being visible, having a presence
on all the different social medias Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
All of these are important and trying to be consistent…
Even when you're starting out too even when you're small because I remember…
That was a mistake that I made!
When I started I was like "no one's gonna follow me
"who cares, what am I gonna make of it?"
but I think it's really important to do that
In hindsight looking back I wish I had established my Facebook account
I wish I had started out Instagram when I first started doing this
because look at how much further ahead we'd be
because all of a sudden brands start to approach
"What's your following on this social media and that social media?"
and I'm like, "Oh. Yeah."
There's that awkward "I should probably get on that."
And so that's the point when I was like
"Ok, I'm gonna focus on building up off platform as well"
and being an ever-present person in people's lives…
Your brand lives on YouTube but it extends everywhere.
I think setting a quality bar that you're comfortable with
and always striving to meet that quality bar
whether it's in your production value whether it's in the delivery, the script
set a certain standard that you're going to adhere to
and always make sure that you meet it and settle for nothing less.
Consistency on quality and quantity.
Absolutely. To touch on brands as well.
That's something that, for us, we reach out to a lot of people
and we cultivate a lot of business relationships as well.
And that's incredibly important because it gives you off-platform revenue
in addition to the ad revenue you're seeing here.
What's the worst that people can say? "No, I don't want to work with you"
Ok, move on to the next.
You have to be the CEO, the COO, the manager, everything
and the creator of your channel.
The one thing I regret really early on
is treat as a business, even if it's small even if you don't want to make money from it
still treat it as a business.
At what point did you start to reach out to brands?
Or was it really this hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube
and they started coming in to you?
Honestly that's about the bar
when you start seeing at least from the gaming perspective
from this little micro ecosystem
that is when I noticed a lot of offers start to come in
and they weren't necessarily great ones.
I would strongly advise that you don't accept every little thing
that comes through the door…
Especially early on…
Exactly – I said no…
That is exactly true. You have to have a minimum quality bar
and that still stands with brand sponsorships.
A little story for me is
early on when I probably had about 10,000 subscribers
I was approached by an entrepreneur who said "I would like to buy your channel from you."
So you sign a 10-year deal and he's like "I will pay you $1000 a month for 10 years"
and at the time I was probably making $50 a month
and I remember calling my friends and saying
"This guy's gonna pay me $1,000 a month!"
and now looking back that would have been the dumbest decision
that I'd ever made in the history of my life, my career.
That might be an extreme example,
but be aware that there're a lot of sharks out there
who are in this to take advantage of people who are just getting to that threshold
where they can start making some serious income
and start to consider this a full-time job.
Definitely.
Be very very aware of that.
You also have to value your own personal time and then kind of establish "What am I worth?"
Just from my own self-happiness standpoint, not so much your influence.
So you have to understand
before any of that success comes or those opportunities come
you have to understand "What am I comfortable doing for people?"
To identify the sharks out there the people looking to take advantage of you
because they are out there and they're plentiful
and a lot of those opportunities that you see start to come through the door
from 100,000 subs all the way up to 200,000 subs.
I don't want to use subscribers as the bar
for where you should be when you take opportunities on
but I will say in my own personal experience
at around 100 thousand is when
a lot of the companies out there are like "oh this guy's a serious player
maybe we'll hit him up."
And you start to get these low-ball offers come through.
Yeah
And I said no to everything up until around…
Good for you Good for you
…250,000 subscribers was when I started seriously looking at "Ok
what am I worth at this point?"
I started to do some market research and figure out what type of reach I have
what type, who am I actually impacting here?
And what kind of sales can I drive for people who want to work with me?
That's a good point too.
It's not just accepting the offers that come in
but really understanding doing the research there
so that you're able to go back and negotiate on these things.
Definitely and it can be tough to find that because there's a lot of variables, you know.
Where is your audience watching from? Even the geographically can be a huge…
What're your demographics age-wise?
All those are factors in landing sponsorship deals or brand deals
or even just one-off making a video, sponsorship video.
So all those things take a lot of initiative on the creators' part
but once you establish that then it becomes easier.
So I would just advise people
to be very reluctant to hop into relationships early on
unless they really have done a lot of research.
Talk to me about the support circles that you have for yourselves
and for your channels right now.
Support circles are really important
and it's one of the things that I feel in the industry of content creation
on YouTube and on other platforms in general
is really lacking.
It's very isolating industry…
Yeah, I agree
When we make content typically, a lot of creators, you guys are at home.
In your basement, in your bedroom, door locked, dark…
Grinding, grinding content.
You're grinding that content and that can be really isolating.
It can be really lonely…
But somehow you found each other coz it seems like you're creator buddies…
We did like and that was huge.
This guy, he's my rock.
Little bromance
But no, honestly, we became best friends
simply through YouTube so it's actually a really cool story
I would've never met this guy had we not both been doing YouTube.
I tend to seek out folks that I have respect for in their content
And you can see that they're genuine people outside and off platform, so it's like "hey!"
You reach out and strike a relationship up and you just kind of see where it goes.
How'd you find him?
We covered the same game.
So, we just kind of knew of each other and we were both doing similar things.
We'd pop up in recommended videos
on each other's channels and that kind of thing.
So we knew of each other but it was quite some time
before we actually had a direct dialog.
It's very difficult to say "Oh, just create a friend in your industry…"
"Just get a best friend YouTube buddy."
But it's easier said than done
and I'm sure that a lot of the topics that we talked about today
especially even the market value stuff
I'm sure a lot of viewers are like
"Yeah, that's, great market value. Where do I go for that?"
And that's why I think that I don't know if it's YouTube's job to do that
but it's difficult.
It's just difficult right now out there to find those
but in terms of just piggybacking on that and the support system
we've gotten the point now where we actually have managers.
Shout out to Justin but we have a manager…
Same manager for both of you?
Yeah, we share everything!
Comment section's going to go wild!
But yeah, I think that eventually
finding someone you trust… It's all about finding people you trust.
Finding people you trust and then once you, do keeping them close.
And it took me a while. It took me almost 4 years
to finally get to a point where I had a manager.
Up until that point we both did our own kind of deals
and our own kind of networking.
So develop relationships with developers relationships with like-minded creators
and anybody who you identify as either a leader, even the thought leader
or an influencer in your space. I think it's really important.
One thing that I would advise is
make sure that the people that you're aligning yourselves with
and signing with and that kind of thing that they do something to earn your business
that they show you that they're willing to go to bat for you
before you're signing with them.
And that's something that you know
the people that we trust really showed us here's why you should trust us
before we were like "Ok,"
because we were both staunchly independent like, "we will take care of ourselves"
whereas a lot of people out there are not necessarily that way
and I know a lot of the younger creators are looking for any sort of support system
and any influence for them like "Give me a roadmap.
What do I do? Where do I go?"
And that's something that there are resources out there
sadly to say "Google it"
you're gonna find a lot more information like that
than you would signing with somebody
who's literally just looking to take advantage of you when you're young
Yeah and the last thing I would be remiss if I didn't mention
is build a support network.
If you can't find a manager,
you can't find a deal you can't find whatever
build a support system from your own community of loyal viewers.
I have a Discord moderator
I have someone who helps me on my Patreon
I have somebody who helps me with text guides for all of my videos on a website
which is another relationship I developed.
Building a team around you from people who you've met
by watching your videos because you know that
if they're watching all your videos they probably don't have bad intentions
Sure.
You'd be surprised at how willing people are
to chip in and help out to further the cause.
I would say the last thing the last bit of advice is I've heard
I think Warren Buffett once said this
if you want to take the next step in any business
the best thing you can do is volunteer unpaid
with somebody who you really admire
and I think that's something that I took to heart
reaching out to somebody like a bigger YouTuber in your ecosystem
it doesn't even have to be that a bigger developer and be like
"hey, I just want to help you free of charge"
and give it your all.
And that way you're proving your worth
and from my perspective now if someone came up to me and did that now
I'd be like wow that person has…
and they would be the first in line for someone to consider
if I ever wanted to work with somebody if I knew…
So what it comes down to is
Try to find some creators who are in a similar type of vein
making similar types of content and I hear from you "just reach out."
Just try to contact them and see what happens
and also take members from your community
and see how you can work them into helping support yourself and your business.
We've talked a lot about positive things, but YouTube isn't always the easiest thing.
What are you struggling with right now?
The biggest struggle that I have is general well-being
and I know that's something that you focus on a lot.
I put a lot of hours in. We're talking 14 hours a day.
Seven days a week.
And that gets to be…
I'm luckily a person who is pretty strong mentally
I don't let a lot of stress faze me.
At the same time though it's not necessarily fair to my family
Or some of my extra-curriculars that are missing right now from my life.
I want to have more balance.
That's been the biggest struggle right now.
Part of what I'm doing to fix that issue
is trying to delegate more
by hiring staff to help me with my production.
Also set higher priority on those things that I do deem important
because at the end of the day
what's the point of all of the success
and what you're doing with your career if you're not actually enjoying life with it.
So that's something that is my biggest challenge
and also my biggest focus is to try to fix…
I know you've covered this in a lot of content and a lot of videos
here on the channel but burnout is so prevalent.
Especially once you've been doing this for years
there's enormous pressure to continue at the rate or even up your rate.
It's difficult if you want to do this as a full-time career.
There's just enormous amounts of stress and pressure that comes to it
and everybody says "Look at this! You're doing YouTube as a career.
"You're doing what you love you're making videos!"
Yeah you're playing video games as a career.
It's not always like that behind the scenes, you're at a desk
twelve hours plus a day just by yourself.
I think that's my biggest struggle as well on top of just where will I be in the future?
The uncertainty is something that he deals with a lot better than I do
and in not knowing what the future will hold.
How long do you see your career on YouTube lasting?
I don't think I'm gonna be that 65-year-old man in a rocking chair
playing mobile games like the kids.
Or like "I'm into that guy. I'm gonna watch that."
So I think there's a shelf life…
That could be a shtick though.
It could I think I could rock that as a character, right?
Maybe I go away for a while and come back and make a splash.
That's it!
But to directly respond to your question
I feel like I've got a window of maybe 4–5 years.
We almost view ourselves —it sounds silly—
almost as like professional athletes where you go in you make a name for yourself.
You try to secure some business secure stability and then hopefully
parlay that into other ventures
and/or longer-term stuff whether it's other businesses
whether it's just a huge pot of money that you're gonna live off of forever
whether it is real estate investments.
There's all kinds of considerations that are being made.
I want to stay in the industry for sure.
ESports is a passion of mine. Gaming is a passion of mine.
Definitely want to stay in the industry
And the one cool thing about YouTube is I've got roughly a million subscribers now.
Think of the networking that is.
What if I put up a video one day just like
"Hey, I'm looking for a new adventure. Email me."
Might be kind of interesting who knows what's gonna happen.
I would be very interested in seeing the responses.
An experiment.
One thing I want to add is I don't think I'll ever stop YouTube.
I put so much into it that I don't think until the day I die
that I'll stop making content just maybe not with the frequency.
Maybe not even the topic that I have right now.
I would say that as well from me. I'm saying 4–5 years for the daily.
Yeah the daily grind.
I think I'll make content forever.
I think that right now we're in business mode
because when you see any opportunity
especially once you're full-time
you capitalize on it and then maybe it will go from
maybe in the lifespan of my channel
it will go from hobby to career to hobby again — I don't know.
Do you have any last-minute thoughts for our insider audience?
For me one final tip for up-and-coming or aspiring creators
is not to think too hard.
I mean we've given a lot of tips a lot of advice on best practices
things to go try to learn, try to do
but at the end of the day you just go do it — make stuff, create stuff.
Put it out there, learn for yourself…
Have fun while you're doing it.
Exactly. There's no better school than the school of hard knocks.
You go figure it out. Put it out there.
Don't be afraid to fail, take the feedback, take the criticism, make the change.
Then there's always tomorrow
and there's always the next video and there's always the video after that…
And very short memories.
…overreacting and overstressing in the moment is something I think we've learned a lot to
you're gonna make mistakes along the way
So you have to take risks?
And you have to try out new things to try to understand what your audience likes
and where to take your cuts?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Thank you very much.
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Thanks. Bye