How Do You See Your Channel?

iGM

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Congrats on Uni! Good luck with it helping you in the future. It definitely should since it's related to what you want to do for a living. I feel like if someone just does it strictly for the money there's not a lot of happiness in that. It would be much easier to burn out that way if you aren't passionate. If you do it for the love of it AND it starts to pay the bills I think that's awesome.
To quote or paraphrase an author and/or philosohper I can't really remember the name of;
Find a job you like to do and you will never work a day in your life.
I totally agree. Most likely why some YouTubers I have come across have stop posting content. Realized that YouTube isn't the money grab the mainstream media make it out to be.

Always been a quote that has stuck with me and thank you! :D
 
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ALEA freelicencemusic

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I upload free music for creators and this post has made me realize how inconsistent I've been. I've tried keeping a steady schedule, but I'm afraid to put out unfinished/bad sounding stuff just to stay on track, so I abandoned the idea. The funny part is that I also started to make an electronic music series that I never finished, shifting my attention on recording live and changing up the instruments to work on my production skills.

I definitly see my channel as a free tool for creators and a "music production gym" for myself. If i see that creators get interested and people ask for stuff... i could see this going more into a steadier direction
 

AceOfBats

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I guess the most I've ever wanted to get out of my channel is for it to be a "self financing hobby." I always liked to shoot my videos for Yu-Gi-Oh for some time, this last year was just the first year we actually did something about it really. It's still fun and I still love going into the community and having a blast. I've recently started looking at analytics because the hobby is kind of expensive and I'd like to subsidize my costs. SO more hobby than business, but I'm starting to see the value of the business side of things and am willing to invest in my own success. If any of that made sense.
 
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iGM

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I upload free music for creators and this post has made me realize how inconsistent I've been. I've tried keeping a steady schedule, but I'm afraid to put out unfinished/bad sounding stuff just to stay on track, so I abandoned the idea. The funny part is that I also started to make an electronic music series that I never finished, shifting my attention on recording live and changing up the instruments to work on my production skills.

I definitly see my channel as a free tool for creators and a "music production gym" for myself. If i see that creators get interested and people ask for stuff... i could see this going more into a steadier direction
Uploading things like musical scores is much like uploading short films; you cannot really upload regularly as to produce such things takes time, resources and a lot of determination to get to a decent quality. So i get what you mean but every creator is always looking for backing tracks and scoring - just the way it is.
The best way I have found is setting yourself personal goals before making them public.
I.e try making a track a month or a track every two months or something. If you find you can do this consistently, then make it your schedule! :D[DOUBLEPOST=1518111981,1518111826][/DOUBLEPOST]
I guess the most I've ever wanted to get out of my channel is for it to be a "self financing hobby." I always liked to shoot my videos for Yu-Gi-Oh for some time, this last year was just the first year we actually did something about it really. It's still fun and I still love going into the community and having a blast. I've recently started looking at analytics because the hobby is kind of expensive and I'd like to subsidize my costs. SO more hobby than business, but I'm starting to see the value of the business side of things and am willing to invest in my own success. If any of that made sense.
That makes perfect sense.
If it is a hobby that can self sustain itself and subsidise the money you spend on it then it is a win-win. Anything beyond that (monetary wise) is just a bonus for you then. When I ran my gaming channel, the money I made went into better hardware and more games to play, to in turn generate more content for my channel.
So, again, I can see where you are coming from for that.
 

Farley Productions

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I see my channel as a hobby currently. One day I'd like to make it into a business but I don't see Youtube being that money-maker for me anytime soon. But it's great for advertising and like an online portfolio for people who'd want to hire me to help them with their Indie Films, projects or weddings, etc.

Overall I just have fun making videos, connecting with people and pursuing my love and passion while sharing it with others. That is why I never see myself stop doing Youtube. =]
 

OrbitGuy

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This always creates an interesting dynamic in discussions on this forum because I can often tell who is looking at it from each perspective. In the past year I've made a mentality switch from hobby to business. I do think taking a more serious approach has some advantages. For me it has been several things that would have happened a lot slower if I had been in hobby mode. How I plan my content and what I do has changed from what do I want to do, to what do I need to do. Which is still actually a lot of what I want to do but I spend more time figuring out what videos are going to be worth my time and identify which ones are most likely to have success and make those. Last spring I was still just making any old idea I came up with and that meant I wasn't using my skills to their full potential. Understanding what ideas have potential and people want to watch has been a constant strength of mine and I need to play on that more and not be lazy about it.

So putting more effort into topic creation, research, and data analysis has made an impact on what I was able to do this past fall and currently. I've also sat down and actually figured out how much income I would need to support myself from YouTube and which sources I could realistically get that from. That includes looking beyond ad revenue towards other avenues such as affiliate marketing, investigating sponsored content from famebit, patreon, and a few other things. Trying to figure out what split from each source could cover the amount that I would need to make... There are channels who make most of their income from sources other than ad revenue but I do think it takes a degree of planning that isn't always present with a hobby mentality. There are relatively small channels who make a lot of money from YouTube, more than many larger ones and they didn't just get lucky in a lot of cases there was active effort and planning.

I've just reached this point where I'm looking at my content and I have 60+ videos with over 10,000 views and almost 17,000 hours watched per month and I really feel like I have the skills to take it to the next level. I kind of got the feeling that maybe my passive mentality about it was holding me back and I've been trying to be more aggressive in moving towards concrete goals to make this a reality rather than a vision. I've spent a lot of time with it as a hobby, and I don't think it did as much to advance the channel as I've done in the last 6 months taking a more serious approach even when I uploaded less.

Also, I don't have a regular upload schedule, I put out as much content as I possibly have time to create. A lot of the top mobile channels can average more than 1 video per day so the audience is usually accepting of a lot of content. I'm not stuck doing a series but I try not to go too far off brand. I don't put random projects on this channel normally. I do check what did well and what didn't and make adjustments like they might do on TV.
 

The Matt Diaries

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Hello,

Quick discussion topic for all the YouTubers out there. My question being this: how do you see your YouTube channel?
By that I mean the following:
  • Do you see your channel as a hobby?
  • Do you see your channel as a business?

Also:
  • Do you see your channel as a broadcasting outlet, like for example, your own TV channel - with regular series' and upload schedules?
  • Do you see your channel as a place to upload your standalone creations or videos, without serials?
When I started I saw it as a hobby but now I'm in a situation where I've two different series going (A comedy skit and a weight loss diary) that are completely different themes. I'm now wondering if I should break one off onto a different channel and market them separately.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
 
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MikeSchimm

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I see my channel as a hobby but their are certainly business aspects to it, just how YouTube is. However, I just see that as part of the fun with the hobby