So, you've created your YouTube page and you've got a constant stream of content coming out on a schedule set by you recorded by you preferable sometime earlier than when they're being released. Depending on your content, things might be picking up quickly, or they could slowly building speed and size like a snowball rolling down the alpines.
Regardless of how quickly your content grows your following, and have no illusions, it is your content that grows your following, not you. You merely grow the content. Your page is going to hit a wall where subscriptions are going to slow down, views per day might become stagnant or go down in numbers, and your monthly earnings might stand still at a specific number. Depending on where that stops, it might seem easy to just toss in the towel and retire from making YouTube videos, or it might seem easy to become content with what you're doing and do nothing to prevent the stagnation.
The sad fact of the matter is: You've got to put in work to get paid. Nothing in this world is free and the sooner you accept that and view your profile page with that set of eyes, you can begin to grow your content and following to new levels.
I've seen a lot of people on YouTube doing the what I like to call the raffle gimmick. Where once they've reached that wall in their subscriber base, they start doing raffles for certain valuable items that they either buy out of pocket, or some corporate sponsor, somewhere gives to them to promote awareness for their business and their products. This doesn't always work. You get short-term subscribers that don't really care about your content, and really only care about the prize at hand. Most if not all of them will not win the raffle, and most of them will unsubscribe after they get tired of seeing your new videos on their home page when they have no interest in your content.
The best way to grow your subscriber base, is the same way you built it up in the first place with a twist. In order to get the subscriber base you currently hold, you created a format. This format carried you only so far, but like a car, even if you buy it new, it's eventually going to break down beyond reasonable repair and need to be replaced. So using that logic, it's time to update your image. By now, you should have some checks flowing in from your YouTube partnership, Regardless of the frequency. I can't state how much mine are for, but I can tell you that as it stands right now, I get one about every other month.
If you take some of that money and re-apply it to your content, whether it be going to some of those sound clip websites and buying sound bytes, buying the rights to someone's music to use as an intro song, or paying a 2D or 3D Artist to make you a new, professional looking opening animation according to the image you have in your head. Don't be afraid to take pointers from some of the YouTube greats. Freddie Wong, Corridor Digital, Smosh, Julian Smith, and the Nice Peter/Epic Lloyd duo that is Epic Rap Battles of History all have the right idea, they're redoing the outros to their videos to advertise their second channels which is usually fully of behind the scenes footage, other videos inside the series if it's not exactly a linear series, and having some very smooth captioning work on their videos.
Some of these ideas won't work for everyone, but you can at least write down some of these prominent ideas on how to make better videos, write them down on a piece of paper and just do some old fashioned brainstorming. "How can I implement these practices into my videos?" "How much longer in production time are we looking at to implement them?" "How will my existing subscriber base respond to the revisions I make?" and most importantly: "What do my current subscribers have to say about my existing videos?"
I am currently on Gen 4 of my YouTube page, Every time I'm completely finished with a tutorial series, I review the input posted in the comments about it, and work on how to seriously overhaul my series to improve it for people. My Gen. 1 phase were some excruciating low quality videos with me fooling around with the idea of doing instruction for my page. People received the practices well, and liked my teaching methods but didn't like how unsure I sounded of the content and didn't like the quality. Gen 2 was going high definition and trying to become more confident in my content. I started releasing videos in 720p, reduced the "ums" and "uhs" in my videos. Then people started pointing out that I was really monotone. I sounded really boring and I kept finishing my videos in an annoying way to a lot of people. Gen. 3 was fixing those issues. Started sounding more enthusiastic during my opening, and soon as I got to the content, I got serious. I also shortened the way I ended my videos. Then Gen. 4 I felt it was time to have an opening clip for my videos. So I downloaded a trial version of After Effects, slaved away at the technical side of the program, so I had enough knowledge to be dangerous with the program, and then I created a simple 5 second intro that I put at the front of every one of my videos now. My responses are positive and I've recently sky-rocketed past 1000 subscribers.
Every time I did a revision it seemed like my subscriber base wasn't really going anywhere any more. My page became stagnant. Between Gen 3 and Gen 4, my subscriber base was stuck at about 350 subscribers. And now in the 4 months of Gen 4 that I've been working through, My subscribers have sky-rocketed past 1000 and I'm now currently sitting at about 1200 subscribers now. So if you're experiencing some of the woes of subscriber stagnation and you're doing everything right, don't just sit idly and watch it sit still. Work towards some positive revisions to the presentation of your content to bring yourself a little further into the future. That in itself will give back to the community enough to get more people coming in.
People want a consistent source of entertainment and to provide that your channel and presentation of content needs to be constantly evolving to give them a new and exciting experience. What they don't want is free stuff, because if they don't win, they don't care anymore. You'll shoot yourself in the foot if you try to do a quick fix.
How many of you have a YouTube partnership now? How are you doing popularity wise? Do you have any input for people who are looking to spread their roots a little further?
Showing posts with label youtube partnership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youtube partnership. Show all posts
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Youtube Partnership 2: Live Action Filming
In the previous episode surrounding the circumstances in which one can attain a youtube partnership, i outlined how to kickstart yourself into stardom by way of doing commentaries of all kinds. whether they be video commentaries, vlogs or tutorial videos. However, that spectrum of videos is very narrow and may not be the best choice for everyone who wants to attain youtube partnership status. As such, in this episode we will be going over a few video capture techniques as well as some different types of videos that users can create to add some popularity to their page.
Youtube is a diverse community that has a new video submitted almost every minute. As such there is quite a lot of variet and unfortunately it becomes extremely difficult to get any corner of the market that has not already been covered before, in every way imaginable. If you manage to come up with a truly unique idea that doesn't yield any results when searching for it on youtube, then by all means, pursue that as hard and as fast as you can because with no good coverage on a certain niche, it becomes very easy to take control of the game and get all eyes on you.
I was fortunate enough to be inspired by the discovery of the then incomplete programming language Small Basic which was developed by Microsoft as a programming language geared towards complete beginners, but as with any programming language, instruction is always desired as it's not like someone can magically pick it up and know how to write properly. When i started recording Small Basic tutorial videos, there were no other tutorial videos, just lots of videos of people showcasing these complex programs that they had written from scratch but never how to make them. So that was/still is my niche appeal. My videos are in high demand because it's extremely difficult to find a series of programming tutorials for Small Basic, let alone one that talks you through from point A to point Z with as much layman speak as humanly possible.
However, tutorial videos may not be your path of choice, a lot of the people have the abilities required to teach the content but just don't have the silver tongue of a teacher. Don't be offended, it's not for everyone. Only people who are okay with making next to nothing and working more than the average human being. Like charity work. For other people there is a greater call to action as we envision cinematic scenes of consuming emotion, gripping action, and gut-busting laughter. For those of us who envision these things, this blog is for you.
When first envisioning your idea for a live action film, you want to write down the core concept of the idea, if you have a good memory, you can expand on the core concept to your entire idea. Most of the time, these small idea fragments are not going to be the entire story arc, a lot of times people are privy to just imagining up the climax of the story as a whole. This means you're not even close to being ready to start filming.
Once you've got your idea down on paper, it's time to expand on this. Remember if you're creating a new youtube account, your account will not be allowed to host videos longer than 10 minutes, so the emphasis on this next point is critical. The more intricate you want your story arc to be, the more spartan your writing has to be. By spartan writing i mean in the same writing motifs as Ernest Hemingway who was famous for removing any excess from his writing. If it was not in his book, it was not needed in his book. No fluff. So instead of having your hero travel across the lands, meet 16 friends and then get into a big fight with the big baddie, start the book with your hero and all of his friends and have them travel to the baddie and fight him end of story. Small adjustments like that will remove fluff. Going to meet up with his 16 friends at 16 different locations adds nothing significant to the story that could not be solved with a paragraph at the beginning of the story arc.
Got your script written? Now is the true acid test for whether i will make the 10 minute cut or not. Get you and a couple friends of your to recite the script. It's not necessary to add any emotion to the script, it's not necessary to memorize the script. Just recite and time your run and see if its finished in about 9 minutes. Why 9 minutes you ask? An optional 30 seconds for an intro animation to the video if you choose and a mandatory 30 seconds for credits.
If it doesn't make it in your 9-9.5 minute limit, take the script back to the chop shop and see what you can cut out further. Rinse and repeat until you have a finished produc that makes the 9-9.5 minute cut and flows well.
Next up we need to storyboard the script. Storyboarding requires a little bit of artistic ability, the images in the story board can be as intricate as concept art or as basic as stick figures and boxes. It all depends on what you're comfortable with doing and how much time you want to spend on the storyboard. The concept for a story board is to create a single frame drawing to sum up each scene in your video. A scene is from camera record to camera cut. Unless you're intending to record the entire video in 1 continuous shot, this always remains true.
After you have a storyboard, assemble your cast and show them the storyboard. Make sure everyone understands what the idea is, what you want the end result to look like and make sure everyone memorizes their lines before you take the time to film the shot. I say this because scripts in a movie look hideous, unprofessional and strip any and all emotion from the video. A lot of what forms human emotion is facial expressions and it's difficult to capture of portray them at all if your nose is in a stack of papers.
Post processing of the video and uploading it to youtube are the last two steps in the process and post processing can be a bear. Depending on how much post processing you have to do, it could take you 20 minutes, it could take you just as long as the entire process up till now (a few days). There are some low-quality, free video editing software out there that would be a poor substitute to programs like Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects, but if you need to use them, by all means, use them. A lot of times you've got to work with what you've got and do the best you can. However, you want to make life easier on yourself and are truly dedicated to devoting a large chunk of time to doing this in the future, i would strongly suggest investing the capital into either Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects as they are both industry standards and will make your life worlds easier once you understand their UI's.
Once again i want to emphasize quickly that the chances of you being an instant success over night after your first video is uploaded are slim to none. You will need to keep working at it and let it happen naturally. If by chance you do become an instant success, the subscribers you get from your viral video will demand more equally quality content. If you don't provide, you'll be throwing that success down the drain.
Lastly, i did want to outline a list of professional filmography tools that you can make alternatives to for extremely cheap
Have you ever wanted to record your own videos? what is the main reason that has stopped you from doing so?
Youtube is a diverse community that has a new video submitted almost every minute. As such there is quite a lot of variet and unfortunately it becomes extremely difficult to get any corner of the market that has not already been covered before, in every way imaginable. If you manage to come up with a truly unique idea that doesn't yield any results when searching for it on youtube, then by all means, pursue that as hard and as fast as you can because with no good coverage on a certain niche, it becomes very easy to take control of the game and get all eyes on you.
I was fortunate enough to be inspired by the discovery of the then incomplete programming language Small Basic which was developed by Microsoft as a programming language geared towards complete beginners, but as with any programming language, instruction is always desired as it's not like someone can magically pick it up and know how to write properly. When i started recording Small Basic tutorial videos, there were no other tutorial videos, just lots of videos of people showcasing these complex programs that they had written from scratch but never how to make them. So that was/still is my niche appeal. My videos are in high demand because it's extremely difficult to find a series of programming tutorials for Small Basic, let alone one that talks you through from point A to point Z with as much layman speak as humanly possible.
However, tutorial videos may not be your path of choice, a lot of the people have the abilities required to teach the content but just don't have the silver tongue of a teacher. Don't be offended, it's not for everyone. Only people who are okay with making next to nothing and working more than the average human being. Like charity work. For other people there is a greater call to action as we envision cinematic scenes of consuming emotion, gripping action, and gut-busting laughter. For those of us who envision these things, this blog is for you.
When first envisioning your idea for a live action film, you want to write down the core concept of the idea, if you have a good memory, you can expand on the core concept to your entire idea. Most of the time, these small idea fragments are not going to be the entire story arc, a lot of times people are privy to just imagining up the climax of the story as a whole. This means you're not even close to being ready to start filming.
Once you've got your idea down on paper, it's time to expand on this. Remember if you're creating a new youtube account, your account will not be allowed to host videos longer than 10 minutes, so the emphasis on this next point is critical. The more intricate you want your story arc to be, the more spartan your writing has to be. By spartan writing i mean in the same writing motifs as Ernest Hemingway who was famous for removing any excess from his writing. If it was not in his book, it was not needed in his book. No fluff. So instead of having your hero travel across the lands, meet 16 friends and then get into a big fight with the big baddie, start the book with your hero and all of his friends and have them travel to the baddie and fight him end of story. Small adjustments like that will remove fluff. Going to meet up with his 16 friends at 16 different locations adds nothing significant to the story that could not be solved with a paragraph at the beginning of the story arc.
Got your script written? Now is the true acid test for whether i will make the 10 minute cut or not. Get you and a couple friends of your to recite the script. It's not necessary to add any emotion to the script, it's not necessary to memorize the script. Just recite and time your run and see if its finished in about 9 minutes. Why 9 minutes you ask? An optional 30 seconds for an intro animation to the video if you choose and a mandatory 30 seconds for credits.
If it doesn't make it in your 9-9.5 minute limit, take the script back to the chop shop and see what you can cut out further. Rinse and repeat until you have a finished produc that makes the 9-9.5 minute cut and flows well.
Next up we need to storyboard the script. Storyboarding requires a little bit of artistic ability, the images in the story board can be as intricate as concept art or as basic as stick figures and boxes. It all depends on what you're comfortable with doing and how much time you want to spend on the storyboard. The concept for a story board is to create a single frame drawing to sum up each scene in your video. A scene is from camera record to camera cut. Unless you're intending to record the entire video in 1 continuous shot, this always remains true.
After you have a storyboard, assemble your cast and show them the storyboard. Make sure everyone understands what the idea is, what you want the end result to look like and make sure everyone memorizes their lines before you take the time to film the shot. I say this because scripts in a movie look hideous, unprofessional and strip any and all emotion from the video. A lot of what forms human emotion is facial expressions and it's difficult to capture of portray them at all if your nose is in a stack of papers.
Post processing of the video and uploading it to youtube are the last two steps in the process and post processing can be a bear. Depending on how much post processing you have to do, it could take you 20 minutes, it could take you just as long as the entire process up till now (a few days). There are some low-quality, free video editing software out there that would be a poor substitute to programs like Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects, but if you need to use them, by all means, use them. A lot of times you've got to work with what you've got and do the best you can. However, you want to make life easier on yourself and are truly dedicated to devoting a large chunk of time to doing this in the future, i would strongly suggest investing the capital into either Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects as they are both industry standards and will make your life worlds easier once you understand their UI's.
Once again i want to emphasize quickly that the chances of you being an instant success over night after your first video is uploaded are slim to none. You will need to keep working at it and let it happen naturally. If by chance you do become an instant success, the subscribers you get from your viral video will demand more equally quality content. If you don't provide, you'll be throwing that success down the drain.
Lastly, i did want to outline a list of professional filmography tools that you can make alternatives to for extremely cheap
- SteadiCam - SteadiCam is a trademark company name that offers a series of camera apparatus' that helps you in the steadying of your camera motions. This helps aleviate a lot of camera jitter caused by shaky hands. Their cheapest models go for around $150.00 and i've seen models sell for as high as $6,000.00 from manufacturer. Naturally, most aspiring filmographers don't have $150-$6,000 to just magically blow on one piece of equipment. So there are dozens of youtube videos on how to make one yourself with about $20-$50 with of PVC, epoxy and gym weights.
- Fig Rig - A fig rig is another camera stabilizer that very much resembles a steering wheel of a car. The camera mounts in the center where the horn or airbag would normally be. An industry standard Fig Rig will cost you about $300.00, you can make one for about $20-$40 dollars worth of PVC piping and epoxy.
- Dolly Rigs - Dolly rigs are used a lot in modern film, specifically when the hero is sprinting through a forest and the camera is staying close to him perfectly to give the movie the feeling of speed. Sufficed to say, a professional dolly rig is no the cheapest thing in the world. In fact, it's one of the most expensive rigs for camera available on the market. However there are plenty of tutorials to show you how you can make your own dolly rig for about $60.00 a square meter of track using 2x4's some railing and a home made dolly.
Have you ever wanted to record your own videos? what is the main reason that has stopped you from doing so?
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Youtube Partnership
Youtube is the modern generation's go to place for any kind of video you could think of. Whether it be music videos, instructional videos (on virtually any subject) or just practical jokes videos; all of these can be found on youtube and accessed instantaneously with a click of the mouse. With that one of the biggest questions that the general public always wants to know is "how can i make fat wads of cash on youtube like Freddie Wong?" The answer to this is not an easy one which is why i'm dedicating an entire blog post to it. Sit down, buckle up and get ready for a crash course on youtube partnership.
Before you even get started there are a few things you need to indentify.
Spend a great deal of time going into laymens terms. You'll find that lengthy laymens terms explainations are always welcome and the more ways you explain something the more people will understand it. Once you've got your recording ruberic, it's time to write scripts. Unless you're the kind of person who can just speak, professionally off the cuff of your sleeve, i strongly recommend writing a script or at least practicing the first two or three minutes of every video before going into full record mode. People hate when you stutter. Um's, uh's, like's, and's, and "so basically"s are your worst nightmare, it shows that you're not fully confident in the material you're teaching or talking about.
Once you've become fully confident in the material, it's time to record. The reason you practice the first couple minutes of the video is because after a certain point, one will just accept the mistakes he or she makes and carries on with what they're doing. This is also an ideal time to tell you that you always want to record in 1 take. Don't ever, ever record videos in more than one take. it will double or even quadruple your production time which can be bad news bears for you. Don't release the videos until you've got a rock solid base to work with. You want to give yourself some break time between recording series and their release. The reason behind this is, simply put, burnout. You don't want to burn yourself out and loose interest in the process. I did for a year and i suffered on youtube channel for it.
After you have your first series finished, start planning for your second series, and start releasing the first videos on a defined interval that never changes. For me? I release a new programming video every friday, and a new photoshop video every thursday. It's perfectly okay to stockpile, it just means that you're making things easier on yourself in the future.
Lastly, i want to outline a few important notes and some don't's of the youtube partner program. Here are the don'ts:
Before you even get started there are a few things you need to indentify.
- what is that you enjoy most?
- inside that category of what you enjoy, what specific items (programs, types of math, etc) do you have basic proficiency knowledge in? (basic proficiency knowledge as defined by me is the bare basic set of skills that you need to work that specific item on your own without google instruction to create the most basic items. IE: programming, basic proficiency knowledge is inputs, outputs, variables, if statements, while loops, do while loops, for loops, methods, classes, and error handling. With all 10 of those items you can create any basic program you can imagine up) Most people watching your videos will never get past the basic proficiencies. So emphasis on identifying all the items you have this knowledge in will benefit you later on.
- what are the basic proficiencies that are required for every item you listed? much like my programming example. all 10 of those proficiencies are basic proficiencies meaning they're required to program independently.
- Search the title of the items in the youtube search and tack on "tutorials" at the end. IE if i wanted to look up tutorials for 3DS Max, i would search for "3DS Max Tutorials" in the youtube search.
- Take note of what there is to offer already for your item. If you're feeling super research-y watch a few videos, get a feel for you future competition. The less covered your item is on youtube, the easier it will be to get the kickstart you need.
- This is optional, but if you watch the videos on your item, be sure you read the comments for that video. Often times you can get an idea of what people like and don't like depending on how they respond.
Spend a great deal of time going into laymens terms. You'll find that lengthy laymens terms explainations are always welcome and the more ways you explain something the more people will understand it. Once you've got your recording ruberic, it's time to write scripts. Unless you're the kind of person who can just speak, professionally off the cuff of your sleeve, i strongly recommend writing a script or at least practicing the first two or three minutes of every video before going into full record mode. People hate when you stutter. Um's, uh's, like's, and's, and "so basically"s are your worst nightmare, it shows that you're not fully confident in the material you're teaching or talking about.
Once you've become fully confident in the material, it's time to record. The reason you practice the first couple minutes of the video is because after a certain point, one will just accept the mistakes he or she makes and carries on with what they're doing. This is also an ideal time to tell you that you always want to record in 1 take. Don't ever, ever record videos in more than one take. it will double or even quadruple your production time which can be bad news bears for you. Don't release the videos until you've got a rock solid base to work with. You want to give yourself some break time between recording series and their release. The reason behind this is, simply put, burnout. You don't want to burn yourself out and loose interest in the process. I did for a year and i suffered on youtube channel for it.
After you have your first series finished, start planning for your second series, and start releasing the first videos on a defined interval that never changes. For me? I release a new programming video every friday, and a new photoshop video every thursday. It's perfectly okay to stockpile, it just means that you're making things easier on yourself in the future.
Lastly, i want to outline a few important notes and some don't's of the youtube partner program. Here are the don'ts:
- Unless you're an attractive person with an "everyman's" sense of humor and something meaningful to add to video responses, DO NOT make your living off of video Vlog responses. This has become a very controversial topic in the last few months surrounding females who have IQ's lower than their age and knockers the size of school bus's making their profits purely off of their "feminine appeal".
- Do not ever sign with another contracting company other than Youtube. Always stay independent. Do things for yourself, the profits will be better in the long run. Machinima is notorious for finding really popular people and trying to add their uniqueness to their collective of shit videos. This will not only make you look like a sellout but it will decrease your view counts on your videos.
- Do not advertise your youtube page on other, more popular partner's pages. If they like you, they'll add you to their suggested profiles. If not, then oh well. The only thing you accomplish by posting comments like "chek ut mai utub channal plox" on another person's youtube channel or video is guaranteeing that your channel will NOT be hit by anyone who is watching that video or visiting that channel.
- Pretty identical to number 3, don't suggest videos to your subscriptions to try to ramp up your view counts and get a following... i've received too many of these to count on my youtube channel, and after a while they make you pull your hair out.
Hope you guys liked this long guide. Please tell me what you think. And don't forget to check out my youtube channel at youtube.com/kaikarden
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