YouTube and You

YouTube and You

Have you ever thought about a career in film making?  I think most people have.  It would be so great to work at the dream factory called Hollywood, wouldn't it?  Well with today's technology you don't have to move to Hollywood to make it big in film making.  Or should I say video making?  But really what's the difference between a video and a film?  The length, maybe?  Let's forget the semantics and jump right into YouTube!

I have my own YouTube channel.  I can upload just about anything I want onto it and people all over the world can watch the videos I put up.  There are restrictions and you can't just post anything.  It is possible to get banned and have your channel removed.  My friend Chinstrap has had his channel removed.  You can't be a bad boy (or girl) and be putting up copyrighted stuff such as videos using copyrighted music!  Don't be posting a video of yourself dancing to Lady Gaga's latest hit and expect the video to stay up.  You don't own the music so you can't use it!  What a lot of people may not realize though, is that YouTube has a huge selection of music that you can download and use in your videos for free!  Just do a bit of research!  And don't post really offensive things.  The world doesn't need to see people getting their heads chopped off in an execution, or women being roasted over an open flame.  You may want to see that stuff, but it's offensive and will get you banned.  Don't post stuff like that.

Now the big question is how do you get people to watch your videos?  Uploading them to YouTube just isn't enough to get views.  Once you have an established channel you might be able to just upload stuff and people will watch it, but that takes time and effort.  So what kind of videos will people watch?  Who the hell knows?  For instance I uploaded this video and it has 7 views.  So only 7 people watched it.

Is it a bad video?  Hell no, I think it's pretty good!  But apparently no one was interested in my reading a bit from one of my own books.  What is interesting then?  How about chicken?  Is chicken interesting?  Take a look at this video:

As of right now while I'm typing this blog the video has 705 views.  People want to know how I cook chicken in a microwave.  *chuckle*  So should I make cooking videos?  I don't want to do that mostly because I can't really cook that well.  That's why I cook chicken in a microwave!  But it comes out well and so I thought I would share that secret with people.  

How about video games?  They're pretty popular right now.  There are some guys who play video games and do commentary while they play.  The videos are called "Let's plays", or "Walkthrus".  Some of these commentators have millions of subscribers.  Yes, I said millions.  Take the guy named Theradbrad for example, he has over three million subscribers.  Here is one of his videos:

Brad is so popular that I guess once in a while a smart game developer will send him their game and allow him to play it and put up a video before the game is even released.  I say they're smart because having him play your game will get the game a lot of buzz and promotion.  Brad is good at what he does and believe me, what he does is not easy!  I've tried it a few times and haven't had the same level of success.  But then I don't stick with it.  One way to find success on YouTube is to keep a steady stream of videos uploading.  So to compare, here's a video I made of the same game.  My video only has 6 views.  But then I don't keep adding videos and finish the game.  

Believe it or not, there is more to this than just pointing a camera at your tv and recording the game.  You need specific equipment to record game footage.  I think I paid around $200 for the small thing I have.  It connects the game to my laptop computer and I can record the game footage with commentary if I want and then save it as a digital file.  Now these game walkthrus might not be easy to get views on, but sports games are a bit easier.  They take a LOT of editing, though!  Football is fun, but you need to cut out all the stuff in between the plays in order to make the video short enough.  Long videos are really nice, but they take forever to upload!  Shorter is better.  So here's me editing some football:

I really was going to keep up with this series, but my Playstation 3 died after a couple of videos and I wasn't able to make any more for a while.  Months and months had passed before I was able to make video game videos again and when I finally could, I had lost the saves I needed.  That sucked.  But this thing has 75 views right now!  So people love to watch football and see how you play!  I know I like watching it!

So let's get back to making videos.  What does it take to get a YouTube video channel?  Just sign up.  That's about it.  It's all part of Google.  Now YouTube can be more than just something to show videos to the world.  There's so much to it.  I don't even know half of what you can do with this stuff!  There are people who make "daily vlogs".  I follow two of these people.  One is in Orlando, Florida and is called TheTimTracker and the other one I follow is in England and is called WanderingDaz.  These husband and wife teams do videos every day about what they're doing, what's going on in their lives, or just whatever they're thinking about.  They upload videos every day!  I honestly think they're fun to watch.  For a while they barely had any views, but eventually after they had stuck with it, people found their channels.  And now they get more and more subscribers.  That's a lot of work to upload a video every day!  I love and respect what those people do!  

So even if you don't want to make videos yourself, check out YouTube.  It's a fun thing.  You can find anything at all you want.  There are literally videos on just about anything you want to search for!  Such as this:

This video is insanely funny!  Learning about a habanero pepper the hard way is always fun!  You can search how to build a computer, or how to change out a sink!  How to train your dog, or funny golf videos.  You can type in the name of any video game at all and find things!  YouTube is fun!  So help support a YouTuber today.  You don't need to give them any money or anything like that, just watch videos and then leave a comment, or click the thumbs up icon to leave a "like".