What You Owe Your YouTube Audience
YouTube audiences almost exclusively consume content for free. Since there’s typically no financial reciprocation or legal consequences of not delivering content, it’s safe to say that as a YouTuber, you don’t owe your audience a thing.
As viewers ourselves, it’s easy to understand the viewer’s perspective. We never feel obligated to watch a video, even if its our favorite YouTuber who posts it. If we want to watch, we watch. If we don’t want to watch, we don’t.
So if viewers aren’t expected to uphold their end of the YouTuber-Viewer relationship, why do we, as YouTube creators, feel obligated to uphold ours?
Whether or not you realize it, as a YouTuber, your obligations aren’t with you audience. They’re with yourself, your family or in some cases your employees. Maybe you want to be self-employed, or you enjoy attention. Or maybe you want to spread your ideas or inform the public about a product.
You might say you rely on your audience to achieve those goals, and that’s true, but your obligations still aren’t to them.
If your YouTube channel is your primary source of income, you may be obligated to keep posting videos in order to feed your family. In this case, again, the obligation is not to your audience; it’s to your family. If a brand pays you to create a sponsored video, you’re obligated to post it, but again, the obligation is not to your audience; it’s to your sponsor.
If you neglect your audience, they may neglect you, which in turn makes it difficult to fulfill your other obligations. But instead of stressing about how you may or may not be fulfilling your end of a nonexistent agreement with viewers, consider who you really work for.
