YouTube Survival Guide I know, I know. I’m a writer blogger, but I’ve got this YouTube channel thing, as an #authorTuber. So, when I saw this panel at Balticon53, I had to pop in and take some notes. I’ve blogged about my approach before, but these notes come from the experts! Thanks to Rebecca Davis, Devin Jackson Randall, and JP Beaubien, moderated by Melissa L Hayden, I’ve got some validation for things I do, and some new things to try out. YouTube Basics How do you even START a YouTube channel? If you have a gmail account, you’re already there — at least for personal use. Why you might want a separate email and channel for your YouTube Channel Prevents hackers or trolls from easily interferring with your day-to-day accounts. Helps with branding. Because you can’t keep your subscriptions entirely private from the one you’re subscribing TO — and not all the YouTube channels you follow are likely to be on-brand. How Private Can Your Activity Be? You can hide/show a lot of things from your feed, but on the individual videos/channels that you’ve responded to, your name is still attached. Such as: likes subscriptions comments Why You Might Want Your Activity Public Just like with blogging, a good comment on another user’s blog can drive traffic back to your channel. Plus? People like to support people who support them — the reciprocal nature of YouTube can be strong, especially among smaller YouTubers. The “Rules” of YouTube Before you start putting everything out there, you’ve got to know the rules. Legally Copyright infringement check is mostly automated — a single report of infringement is a lot less “weighty”. (Thank you, trolls) You can get hit months later with an infringement charge — that results in your video getting removed — for sharing a Picture. Typically, in this case, you can successfully argue that it is: Fair use Parody Education To avoid charges — video clips from movies/etc need to be a small percentage of your video. If you get 3 strikes in one year, your site is DELETED. Why are copyright claims important? 1. If a property doesn’t protect their copyright material, then it enters into common use and their copyright holds no weight. 2. If your channel is big enough to be monetized, there are more restrictions on what you can share from other sources. How DOES One Get Monetized? The big question that a lot of YouTubers want to know. CAVEAT: the rules are ALWAYS changing. The big things you need to know: Over 1,000 subscribers 4,000 hours of watch time in the last year You get no payout until you’ve earned $100 If your content is tagged with a yellow dollar sign, it means some ads may not be appropriate for this video. In other words, you get fewer ads and less money. I.e. Some key words, that are not listed anywhere, can lead to less visibility and ads. Experience has shown YouTubers that “corpse” is one of those words. How To Monetize A Post If You Can There will be a “Monetization” tab in the YouTube creator studio You get to select where in your video the ad is: Preview Mid-video, 30 second, unskippable ad Ads at the end Pop-up ads Where Do The Ads Come From? By the time you have 20-30,000 followers, you’ll start getting propositions, although it might not be ads that you want. These days? It usually starts off with: Russian Ads Phone mobile games. Where Do YouTubers Make Their Money? It’s not from the monetization. Yes, they get some money from there, but that’s not where the salary-level YouTubers get paid. Sponsorships are where it’s at. After you have about 70,000 followers, sponsorship offers will be coming in. Make sure it’s something that matches your brand and something you’re not embarrassed to tie your name to. How To Find A Sponsorship? Wait for them to come to you, unless you have a great pitch, for a company that is an excellent match for your channel. Don’t accept a sponsor you don’t believe in. The recommended way to handle a sponsorship is through an agency like socialBluebook.com. Typically, you’ll have a contract and a due date, with 2 business days for you to approve their ad. The contract is typically terms: Either X views in Y days Or you’ll have to show their ad again YouTube is a Hussle For people who aren’t monetized through YouTube or sponsors, there’s still ways to make money — if just to support your YouTube habit. Merchandise Patreon Community Expectations YouTube isn’t just screaming into the void. You want to have something to offer. You want to have a theme, so that subscribers know what to expect — not meeting expectations is the best way to lose followers and get down-voted. You need to have a personality! People watch videos because of the person, more than the information. They can probably get the information elsewhere. Building on that — you need to entertain the audience and have energy. Invest in a decent microphone (Audacity is a decent, free, voice editing software program) Manage the comments on your posts You can ban certain words You can shadow-ban: the user sees their comment, but no one else does. Watch and comment on other people’s videos. Especially in your niche: Your videos should appeal to their audience You can see what other people are doing in your niche You can see what’s overdone and what’s not covered And? If you’re posting on the topic, you’re probably interested in it CAVEAT: Don’t spam comments. “Nice post. Check out my site.” are obvious link spam and won’t get you far. Clearly, this is a high-level conceptual approach to YouTube. Where to start, the big copyright worries, some of the details about how monetization works, and community expectations. Is there anything the panelists missed? Anything I wrote down wrong? And… is there anything you’d like to share about YOUR approach? Let me know in the comments below. And? If you’re an #authorTube blogger, this is a call out for you to share your links below! I’d love to connect.