In the previous chapter we discussed how to define your goals as a creator. Now it’s time to think about measuring those goals. We do this by setting targets & in this chapter we give you a quick overview of how to think about this process.
Keep your expectations reasonable. Always remember you’re creating something out of nothing and that takes time.
It’s important to know what type of expectations you should have either going into creating content for YouTube, or looking into the future as a creator. Let’s clear all of the questions up.
Be patient, cause it takes time
First – Don’t Rush.
There is no reason to rush this process. I understand that starting out, you may be excited, or maybe you have been doing this for a while and, by reading this, you are even more excited.
Now, being eager is positive, and there’s nothing wrong with that – however, that can influence your decisions and cause you to rush into things. Building a strong community is going to be a slow process and it’s important for you to simply enjoy the ride and learn along the way.
Second: Success.
It will not happen overnight, this sort of goes along with the first one. You may see progress within the first week or month or, maybe a year will go by before anything substantial happens. The important part is to realize this and be completely honest with yourself.
One day you might look at your view counts and see that you might have received 10-20 views – and then two months go by, and those numbers have yet to increase for you. This doesn’t mean that you’ve failed or that no one is ever going to watch your content.
Numbers will always increase and decrease throughout time, even for bigger YouTubers. If you believe in your content and you know its value, don’t give up. Stay confident in what you produce because one day, someone will notice it. It may not add up to hundreds of thousands of subscribers, but your content will grow and all of the hard work will pay off.
Third: Money.
Most everyone wants to know about the money that is involved and this is also normal. Let me start off by answering the obvious. Yes, it is very possible to make a living from YouTube. In fact, over one-thousand channels on YouTube currently make over six figures a year.
However, it doesn’t happen for everyone. It takes a lot of hard work, time, and dedication to make this happen. I do need to be honest with you, though – most people will never make it this far. That sounds harsh, but it’s true. Making money on YouTube is just like trying to make money from your own start-up business.
You are the CEO (chief executive officer), producer, talent, editor, and PR (public relations) team. Not only do you have to produce the content, but you have to market it and understand how to introduce your brand to more and more people. There’s essentially no clocking out of this job. There’s no assurance that the money will come, which is why it is so important to produce content simply because you love to.
Fourth: Try, try, try.
Never be afraid to try again. Your first attempts at creating content may fall short, as did mine. Experimenting is never a bad thing, and it will only help you to eventually find want it is that you what to devote your time to. Use every failed attempt to your advantage. In fact, you can use this analogy for anything in life. Any failure is simply a learning experience that will prepare you for the future, in life as well as on YouTube
In the next article we talk about how to define success for yourself and what success means to different people.
Chapter 3