Читать книгу Get Rich Blogging - Zoe Griffin - Страница 8

Men’s fashion and grooming vlogger Robin James (youtube. com/TheUtterGutter) has 65,000 YouTube subscribers and is growing his channel in addition to holding down a full-time job. He works Monday to Friday, then spends Saturday filming videos and Sunday editing them.

He says: ‘I don’t often see my friends that much, but I love vlogging and I’m enjoying what I do. That’s why I’m happy to make sacrifices to grow my YouTube channel. I want to be successful and make informative videos, and, if fame is a result of that, then great.’

Robin says he is prepared to sacrifice sleep if it means he can create more content. He genuinely enjoys talking about clothes and male grooming products, and said he would stop and spend his weekends seeing friends and relaxing if he didn’t enjoy it.

Fashion and music vlogger Helen Anderson (youtube. com/snakebitesparkles) agrees. She adds: ‘It’s been four years of hard work to get traffic to my vlog. People come up to me in the street and say they think I lead a perfect life, but they don’t see all the work and stress and arguments that being a YouTuber can cause. I can be working until really, really late at night at times to make sure I have an upload.’

Picking the right theme may involve hours of soul-searching, which is not always a pleasant task, but there are ways to make the process easier. Grab a pen and a sheet of A4 paper, and divide the sheet into two columns. On the left-hand side, make a list of things that interest you. Now ask yourself: what subjects could you talk about for twenty-four hours a day? Circle those and cross everything else off the list. On the right-hand side, make a list of your skill sets. Are you a great researcher? Do you have high energy levels and a great deal of enthusiasm? Or do you have a dry, witty sense of humour and a love of satire? Ask others to help you with your list, as sometimes people see qualities in you that you never realised you had.

At the end of this task, your paper should show one or two subjects on the left and a longer list of skills on the right. A way you can be unique and offer something interesting to the vlogging community is by covering the topics on the left-hand side and presenting your videos in a format that fits in with the skill sets you’ve listed on the right-hand side. You might end up with an idea to cover beauty in a humorous way or feature gaming in a more energetic way than other gaming vloggers.

Don’t be afraid if you have diverse interests. For example, maybe you are interested in sport and beauty? This could make for a pretty interesting vlog. While there are lots of fitness vlogs and lots of beauty vlogs, there aren’t so many that combine beauty and sport, telling us cute but practical hairstyles for the gym or how to protect our skin from sweating. Try it, and you can always switch things up later if you discover that you enjoy the beauty part more than the sports part or vice versa.

Once you have picked your theme with the help of your lists, the final step is to do some research. Go to YouTube and enter the subjects from the left-hand column into the search box. Which vloggers are already operating in your area? Are there any you particularly admire? If so, subscribe to them – you want to keep tabs on what they’re doing, and perhaps there will be an opportunity to collaborate in the future. Are there any vloggers in that subject area who aren’t hitting high traffic figures? What can you offer that they can’t? What mistakes are they making?

Turn over the sheet on which you wrote your original list of subjects and skill sets. Divide the blank side into two equal columns, and write ‘Do’ at the top of one and ‘Don’t’ on the other. Under ‘Do’, list the vloggers you admire and explain what it is you like about them. Under ‘Don’t’, list some vloggers you aren’t keen on and explain what they’re doing wrong.

Store this piece of paper in a place where you can access it regularly. You should look at it at least once a week to stay focused and avoid going off message. Reviewing it will also keep you motivated as you’ll be reminding yourself that you have a unique place in the vlogging industry and that you have the skills to achieve success.