I am not looking to go full time as a content creator.
I have already had my own business before it got acquired by my current workplace, and I love it.
I really love my job,
… but as someone who has been self-employed full-time mixed with my interest in YouTube, I thought of a strategy to go full-time on YouTube.
I’m also going to tell you some of the pitfalls to look for, some of the pitfalls I’ll definitely fall into if it were me who were going full-time on YouTube.
This is both for you who actually have the funds to try and go full-time now but also for you who are not financially there yet.
#1 Grow a base audience before you go Full-Time on YouTube
First thing first is you have to grow a base audience before you go full-time, even if you could go full-time right now even if you have the funds saved up, then you should grow a base audience first.
This is because you need to learn what works from your own channel.
You can’t really learn YouTube by watching others or by studying, you only learn YouTube by actually making YouTube videos.
And then when you have a base audience, then you can take the plunge into full-time on YouTube.
A base audience in my mind could be maybe a couple of hundred or at least 100 views as a base view on each video you post every time you post it.
And then one key indicator is that the views, the steady views, the bottom views on each video is on the incline and not on the decline.
I’m not talking about outliers like big videos that really tend to make it, but I’m talking about the bottom on the last like 10 or 15 videos, what could you at least expect to have on each video?
And going full-time has nothing to do with the amount of subscribers you have on your channel.
When you have this base audience and when you have an incline in steady viewership even on your worst videos, then you have data to learn from in the YouTube-Studio to see what your audience likes and to see what you need to make videos about.
And then the next steps are for you when you’re ready to take the plunge, maybe you have the savings or maybe you just financially make it to this point now you want to go full-time.
#2 Treat YouTube like a job and a real business
First of all, you need to treat it like a job today when making videos besides your job just as a hobby.
How long does it take you from start to finish to make a video?
Maybe try and go tracking this for a few days
my videos on the channel for this blog, and on my tech channel tend to take anywhere from one hour to a maximum of six to eight hours, but it depends on scripting and how long I take on editing.
Especially if it takes you 16 hours today to make a video, it’s okay you just need to know how long it actually will take you to make each video.
Time constraints and deadlines are perfectly normal in the business
… and did you know that constraints like maybe a time constraint actually breeds creativity?
So my idea is this:
if you actually are going full-time to make a schedule
- from 8 – 10 every day to script and make the title and thumbnail all the planning process for this video
- then you record until 11 and until you take your lunch break
- after your lunch break and on until the day finishes you have to edit the video
if you are done by 2pm – then don’t do any more work on YouTube that day.
You have to take the rest of the day off even though you could maybe squeeze in some more work, you shouldn’t work so hard that you don’t have the energy to start all over the next day again.
And if you tend to take much longer either by shooting the video or scripting the process then try to make these constraints to train yourself to do it faster, but avoid this pitfall.
#3 Avoid this common mistake about YouTube and Entrepreneurship
I fell into this trap when I was full-time self-employed
… and I bet you all of you YouTubers are going to fall into the same trap if you go full-time.
The trap is basically when you’re your own boss, there is nothing that you have to do
and slowly every day life just creeps up and you start to make less and less and less work every day.
Procrastination,
you will find all sort of other things to do — and you might even find very good reasons to do them
but I promise you this
As long as you are not working on your YouTube channel, you will not grow.!
So just remember to treat it like a job and to set goals and deadlines for yourself, and to hold yourself accountable to those goals and deadlines.
And when you are not growing, you are slowing down your business.
This might be why I don’t want to go full-time on YouTube
I have already been self-employed – and have seen the results on my bank account when you don’t put in the effort.
Afterwards, followed by working more and more because you can see the financial results of working more and more.
I can tell you this, everything, even YouTube, becomes a job at the end.
So make sure you understand, just because you want to do YouTube for a living that doesn’t actually mean that you can do less work than a full-time job.
I would actually say it’s quite the opposite
it requires much more of you than a normal nine-to-five job.
#4 Hire as fast as possible
And then my best tip is, if you grow and get success financially, then hire as fast as you can, and maybe a tad bit earlier than you actually can.
When you have the funds to pay yourself, then consider paying an employee first, and then having your own salary or something, so you can get some help.
The moment you get at least one employee working for you, from nine to five, it’s the moment that you’ll also start working from nine to five.
And if you are as lazy as I am and fall into these deep pits of procrastination, then hiring help is an enormous win for your YouTube channel.
Did you know that you don’t need a thousand subscribers in order to make money on YouTube?
In this video right here, I’ll explain to you how you can make close to a thousand dollars on a channel. To this day, I don’t even have 600 subscribers on the channel I’m talking about in this video
