Youtube: How to Win

Preston Attebery
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

After closely following Youtube for several months now and binge-watching countless hours of vlogs, here are my thoughts on how to win as an individual on Youtube:

The biggest winners don’t rely on youtube for the bulk of their income or status. The platform is too fickle and the pressure put on viewers to keep watching or you’ll starve is extremely stifling to growth. Examples: Casey Neistat, Logan Paul

The fastest growers didn’t start on youtube. They built a following elsewhere, then pivoted towards Youtube from Vine, mainstream film, HBO shows, or modeling. Examples: Jake Paul, Karlie Kloss.

You can build a following on Youtube but it’s a very slow burn. It took Casey Neistat 5 years to reach 500k subscribers and even he had viral hits and was featured on mainstream news.

There are a handful of proven channels on Youtube with intrinsic ceilings of success. All other channels fail.

The proven channels are:

  • entertainment: pranks, magic tricks, messing with people of the public, puns
  • makeup
  • music
  • education: tech reviews, unboxings, how-tos.

Nothing else works. Either people want to listen to music, be entertained, or learn. There’s nothing else to offer people that they actually care enough to sit still for.

Once you start a vlog and millions start watching, it’s an eternal rat race.

There’s nothing more difficult on Youtube than starting a vlog. Whether it’s the constant editing, the constant shooting, or the constant demand to fill your day with viral content, vlogging is incredibly hard.

There is no break from it. Every moment you have a camera with you, every second you’re thinking of your next phrase or shot — how you’ll edit your real life into bite-sized chunks so people won’t get bored watching it.

Once you start, it’s very hard to stop. The adrenaline rush of millions of views everyday alone will keep some uploading. Or the backlash when you stop vlogging.

The unnerving feeling of irrelevance the day you stop uploading daily. As your following grows, so does the pressure to perform — to act out — to manufacture everyday life into something interesting.

Youtube is a beast, but for some it’s all you can ever dream it would be!

-PA

Preston Attebery

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