Since you’re reading this article, I’m guessing you’re already interested in starting a YouTube channel. Let’s see if I can convince you to start by the time you finish reading it!
In this article, I’ll share 10 reasons you should become a YouTuber, including because: you will learn many useful skills, because YouTube is a great creative outlet, and because of the personal growth you will achieve as a YouTuber.
#1 It’s an Incredible Opportunity
Most likely, your grandparents and everyone before them never had the opportunity you have right now. What opportunity is that? It’s the chance to spread your message, creativity, and inspiration, to the whole world. With YouTube, you can educate, encourage, and get your word out, all for free! You can build a business without having to invest a bunch of money into it right away. I guess this point is kind of a summary of all of the other points I’m about to mention. We live during a time of great possibilities, where we have the chance to reach the world for free. But remember, just because we don’t have to pay for it doesn’t mean that getting there is not going to take a lot of hard work.
#2 You Will Learn Some Amazing Skills
Before I became interested in starting a YouTube channel, I didn’t know how to edit a video. I didn’t know how to shoot good footage. At one point I didn’t even understand hashtags! Granted, I was only 12 or so years old. Gradually I learned a lot thanks to my dad, who got me started, and a bunch of great YouTubers.
When you’re a YouTuber, you learn so much about the online world. You learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which can help you a lot if you later go on to have some sort of online business. You learn how people think, so that you can get people to click on your videos. Filmography and the ability to edit videos in a high-quality and entertaining way are also great skills that can definitely help you later in life. You also learn speaking skills, how to articulate your words clearly and coherently, so that you get your message across to your viewers. Most YouTubers see a lot of improvement between how they speak to the camera in their first videos, and how they speak now!
#3 It Can Help You Become Braver
Are you camera shy? Becoming a YouTuber will help you overcome that! Maybe you don’t have a problem speaking to a camera, but you do have a problem with doing that in front of people! I used to never want my parents to watch me make my videos (in fact, I still feel that way sometimes!). If you become a YouTuber who makes videos in public, you’ll be forced to overcome that fear. Generally, now I can pull out my camera anywhere and start talking to it, even though sometimes I actually feel very uncomfortable. If you’d like to learn how to vlog confidently, read this article!
#4 You Will Learn to Not be So Sensitive
As a YouTuber, you’ve got to be tough. Sure, you’re going to get lots of comments and feedback that are encouraging, uplifting, and generally positive, but you’re also going to get some haters. And that’s ok. It can actually help you grow as a person. When you are confronted with viewers who disagree with you and dislike you, you’ll learn to deal with those kinds of people. In reality, we should have sympathy for those who like to tear people down because normally they are having a hard time and are taking it out on you. As Sean from Video Influencers put it, “You must have thick skin and a soft heart!” Learning to be tough on YouTube can help you become a less sensitive person in general, and being a YouTuber will teach you how to deal with criticism. If you’d like to learn more about negative comments, you can read this other article I wrote.
#5 You Can Earn Money
Ok, this is the one everyone talks about. It’s true! You can earn money by being a YouTuber! YouTube is a great place to start building a business. Start building means it doesn’t have to be limited to YouTube. AdSense is a nice bit of revenue, but the really successful YouTubers don’t rely on it. Once you build an audience on YouTube, there are a variety of ways to earn money. Here are a few:
- You can sell your own merch, such as t-shirts, mugs, bracelets, etc. with your brand’s logo on it. If you have a large following of loyal viewers, this is a great option for you! Roman Atwood from RomanAtwoodVlogs developed his brand, Smile More, and now he has his Smile More store, from which he sells lots of merch. I has grown to be a huge business for him!
- For those who have educational channels, developing their own resources or courses to sell to their audience would be perfect. Sean and Benji from Video Influencers did just that. On their YouTube channel they, “Interview top YouTubers, video creators, and business owners who are CRUSHING IT with video and online business.” Together Sean and Benji wrote YouTube Secrets, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money As a Video Influencer. It’s a great book, I highly recommend you read it and watch their videos! If you’d like to know about more YouTubers who teach you about YouTube, read this article!
- Sponsorships are another way you can make money as a YouTuber. If a brand contacts you (or you contact a brand), you can work out a deal with them where they give you free products, pay you, or both, to promote/feature/review their product in your video! And sponsorship aren’t limited to products. You can even make deals with services, hotels, and travel agencies. The important thing is that the brand fits your channel, so that you will genuinely be helping them.
- The last way to make money on YouTube that I want to mention in this article is affiliate marketing. A lot of companies have affiliate programs where if your viewers end up buying a company’s product through the special link you provide, you will get a commission of that purchase. According to Wikipedia, “Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.” Affiliate marketing can be done with platforms other than YouTube as well. I have affiliate links on this site as well as on my YouTube channel.
#6 You Can Influence Other People for Good
Hopefully, if you do decide to become a YouTuber, you’ll use it not only to help yourself but also to help others. When people watch your videos, eventually you’ll earn their trust. They’ll feel like they know you, and you can use that to influence them for good. You can encourage them, inspire them, challenge them, spread educational information that people need to hear, or even just make their day better by being positive.
Roman Atwood is a great example of someone who uses his YouTube channel to positively influence his viewers. He makes family-friendly videos that are upbeat, fun, and encouraging. Watching his videos will definitely make you smile more! PragerU is a an example of a channel that shares information the world needs to hear. According to their About Page, “PragerU is an online video resource promoting knowledge and clarity on life’s biggest and most interesting topics.”
#7 It’s a Way to Express Your Creativity
I love the creative side of being a YouTuber! Most of the time, editing my videos is so much fun. It’s so satisfying when you work hard on a montage and the finished result is clips that are seamlessly cut to music. The music I use in my videos can often be exciting in and of itself! I’m so happy when I find songs that fit my videos perfectly. However, the process of finding that perfect song can often be quite exhausting!
When I film videos with other people I like to crop the video close to people’s faces when something funny happens or is said to emphasize that and keep my viewers interested.
Transitions, when carefully chosen, can also make your videos more beautiful. I like to use a transition called “Bloom” in some of my videos. Be careful how you use transitions though. Choosing the wrong ones or using them too often can make your videos look tacky.
You know you’ve got a good video when you enjoy watching it yourself!
#8 You Will Capture Memories
Another reason you should become a YouTuber is to capture memories! In fact, this could be your sole reason to start, you might not even want to build a business off of YouTube. It’s true, you can just save video clips of that special trip to your camera roll on your computer. But you’ll have to go through everything to find them and they’ll be single clips that might be raw and boring to watch. But if you turn those clips into a YouTube video, you’ll have a nice, compact, entertaining, and enjoyable video to watch with your family years later, complete with music! And since it’s on YouTube, you’ll be easily able to share your experiences with your friends.
Trips and vacations are definitely things you’ll want to look back on, but YouTube isn’t limited to helping you remember those special times. If you start vlogging you’ll get to reminisce on your everyday life and see how little your kids used to be. Pictures are great, but videos will really capture their expressions, fun times you had, the food you used to eat all the time, and places you went together as a family.
And if you don’t have kids yet, or are still a kid or teen yourself, if you start a YouTube channel now you’ll get to show your future children and spouse your childhood! Previous generations had pictures, but you have the opportunity to record your life for posterity. Plus you’ll enjoy seeing how you change through the years!
What if you don’t become a vlogger, but instead start a niche channel? You might not be recording your every day life, but you’ll still be capturing your voice, expressions, and opinions to show to your children and grandchildren one day. You can even do what Sara Dietchy does, and make videos that have a vlog element to them. By the way, if you want to turn your channel into a business, you should start a niche channel! Read this article about vlogging to find out why.
#9 You Can Become Well-Known Within Your Niche
While it’s true that you might just become a world-wide famous YouTuber, it’s more likely that you’ll become famous within your niche. What does this mean? Well, say you make videos about farming. Viewers who want to learn about farming or who are wanting to start their own farm will most likely search for information on YouTube, since YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. As you keep making videos, like-minded people will start to find you. Eventually other farming YouTubers will notice you too, and you’ll become one of the channels that people think of when they think of farming videos. As an example, while I don’t consider myself a “famous” YouTuber, my family and I got recognized a lot when we lived in Indonesia. Why? Because my Dad started making videos in Indonesian on Pak Martin, and then I started doing the same a couple of years ago. Not too many foreigners were doing that, and so our family became kind of well-known in parts of Indonesia.
#10 You’ll Keep Getting Views
If you make a video that you know people will like, out what keywords you need to put in the tags, make a captivating thumbnail, and write an interesting title, that video has the potential to send viewers your way years after you have posted it! That’s one thing that is so cool about YouTube. Long after you create them, your videos still work for you!
The first video that I ever posted to my channel was uploaded in 2016. Years later, I still get people commenting on it! Another example is one of my most popular videos that was uploaded in 2017. I still get people commenting on it. YouTube is a powerful tool!
So, have I convinced you to become a YouTuber yet? Tell me down in the comments! And if you have any questions or want to share your experiences as a YouTuber, let me know! Thanks for reading!