Читать книгу Get Rich Blogging - Zoe Griffin - Страница 7

It’s very tempting to model yourself on the most famous vloggers. Zoe ‘Zoella’ Sugg has 10 million subscribers, so if you copy what she does exactly will you get 10 million subscribers too? It wouldn’t be hard to follow a similar model. You could make vlogs about baking, shopping and mental health, and you could talk in a super-positive tone of voice. You could go further and buy some pets so you can copy her relationship with her guinea pigs Percy and Pippin. But you wouldn’t get 10 million subscribers that way. You’d struggle to get ten. It would be obvious to anyone who watches Zoe’s videos that you were trying to copy her, and nobody wants to tune into a copycat when they can watch the real thing.

Ignore other vloggers, and give some thought to the topics you enjoy talking and learning about. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, you’ll struggle to come across as educational or entertaining if you’re not interested in the subject yourself. If you’re simply trying to copy another vlogger, it will be reflected in the quality of your content. Successful vloggers have a special ability to connect with their audience and to give of themselves without holding back, and that only happens if you believe what you’re talking about in your videos. Vloggers who fake an interest will appear untrustworthy and unlikeable, and viewers will switch off midway through their videos, never to return, let alone subscribe. Secondly, a successful vlog requires at least as much work as a full-time job. The more hours you put in, the more chance you have of growing an audience. You’ll find it difficult to motivate yourself to spend hours creating and publicising something you don’t care about.

For example, consider a typical day at work. If your boss gives you a dull task like sweeping the floor or cleaning the toilet, you’re likely to procrastinate. When it’s time to do the task, you’ll probably do the bare minimum and the expression on your face will show what you really think of the work you’re doing. You cannot perform your best work when you’re not passionate about the job in hand. Because of the hours of work that go into making, editing and sharing vlogs, picking a theme that you’re only moderately interested in would be the equivalent of being told to clean the toilet twenty times a day.

Britain’s most popular vlogger KSI says he achieved 12 million subscribers only because he had a genuine love for playing computer games and making videos. ‘To be successful you have to be passionate. You have to be extremely passionate about your art,’ he said in BBC documentary The Rise of the Superstar Vloggers. ‘Every video I’ve done, I’ve crafted it to the way I’ve wanted it to be. I’ve wanted my videos to be entertaining and for people to laugh at certain points, and it makes me happy if I make people happy. If you don’t love what you do, then stop!

‘A lot of people think YouTube is quite easy, and it isn’t. I’ve been doing it for six or seven years now and I’d say the hardest time was the first three or four years. You’re constantly making new videos and you’re constantly putting up content. I work every single day to expand my brand.’