05-24-2018, 12:23 PM
12:07 Zane is so down with the program... I love this guy, he knows what's up.
Thing is though...
Those people making bank off YouTube every month are contracted YouTubers. They're there to push certain agendas, and if they stop pushing them, the gravytrain comes to a screeching halt. There are no shortcuts in this game, IF you want to keep your independence. You have to build your own empire from the ground up.
However, if you're cool with pushing their agenda, if you're cool with censoring yourself, if you're cool with pushing sponsored products and whatnot, then sure, it would be very possible to make bank on YouTube today.
About 10 years ago was the time to try and be immensely successful on YouTube. They've nerfed the system so hard in the last few years, YouTube is really just secondary (or third, or fourth) to anything you're seriously trying to accomplish.
But just consider that with one push of a button they can delete your channel and every video you've ever made... forever. If you are depending on ONE SOURCE, ONE PLATFORM, that you DO NOT OWN... you are setting yourself up for a crushing loss. And it's unwise. Especially if you're not saving ALL your videos on your own device. If you were, it would be less of a loss.
The way one properly builds an empire on the internet in 2018 is to have their own website... (I'm hoping Zane was the one who registered his own name as a domain just this month, BTW).
You have your own website where you publish your content, you make your content sharable in a variety of forms (text, video, podcast, etc)... you share links to your content on social media sites, keeping in mind that ALL social media sites (including YouTube) are supplementary and never the main goal.
Now when your main content is videos, unfortunately in this current internet paradigm, it's pretty necessary to have those on YouTube. So you would continue to do that while having your own website where you embed them, and you would save EVERY SINGLE VIDEO so that you could upload it elsewhere at a later time in case you're ever wiped out. But when you're sharing anything else, such as text (like I am), or podcast... you are good to go just publishing your content solely on your own platform.
This is a long road... it takes years to build up content, viewership, ranking, etc. Zane is in a good position because he's entering the game WITH an audience. Quite an advantage.
One needs their own website, and their own store. That means that you have to have PayPal to make it easy. A lot of other alternatives cost money to run on your own site, and it's best to have PayPal as the payment option regardless because it's done on PayPal's secure site and not your own site... that way people know it's secure. And this is truly entry level shit right here. When you're several years deep into it, you can have all kinds of upgraded checkout options and all that other shit... but in the beginning, you start with the basics. If you don't have PayPal capabilities, you're already set back a little bit. It means that you'd have to use a site like Etsy or some kinda shit like that to start out. And that's fine... it's just too bad you couldn't do it on your own site/store. Regardless, you still have your store listing all the items you wanna sell... you just link each one from your site, to Etsy where they're actually for sale. Because you're thinking LONGTERM... someday you will jump through all the hoops and you will be able to sell on your own site's store.
The reason it's important to have a STORE is because your viewership want a piece of you. Don't kid yourself... men and women alike want a piece of Zane (or any other person who is putting themselves out there to an audience). They want to have whatever you want to offer for sale. Of course the integral part here is viewership, since it's a numbers game. Once you get to a certain point of popularity, there will be people out there who want to buy anything you have for sale at any price. Why? Because it's human nature. We all want a part of each other... when you like somebody, and admire somebody, you want something to remember them by. People can deny it all day and night, but that it is the way this works.
As I stated earlier, you want to offer your material in lots of formats... audio, video, text etc. This means you want to do something like release an eBook at some point. It's pretty hard to come up with an eBook when you're busy every day doing everything else you have to do and want to do. So you have to think efficiently about it. You can transcribe stories told in existing videos and put them into an eBook. That's just one example. Learn to take the content you've already made and maximize its application and usability.
As far as merch goes...
Merch and selling items in your store are two different things. People want something you've personally handled. That's where your site's store comes into play. You only sell the special stuff there. Merch, you can design it and sell it from a third party and then just link to it, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. And that's also why you shouldn't depend on it to be a significant source of income. Merch is great for those mindless contracted YouTube channels who make lots of money every month because they're pushing the agenda du jour. It's great for those channels with hoards of mindless followers. But you gotta decide what you want...
Do you want mindless followers? Do you want to make lots of money selling meaningless merch? Or do you want to share something REAL, with people who can think for themselves and who enjoy what you put out there because it means something to them on a deeper level? Many times, the easy thing to do isn't the right thing to do.
