NO. 20 — NEW BEGINNINGS
“I think [I started a blog] because it was a place where I could do whatever I want and I’m completely in control of it. I can still share things that I love and not have a view number or a follower number define me. I like that it’s all me.” WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES IN DOING YOUTUBE, AND NOW, RUNNING YOUR OWN WEBSITE? My biggest thing right now is the fact that YouTube was a job. I really don’t make that much money off of my website so I’ve had to find substitutes, and I saw it as a big problem last year. I was wondering “what am I going to do for money?” and I think that’s a thing that holds a lot of people back from leaving YouTube. I kind of turned that around and got an internship last year at a probiotic skincare line, Tula. It was only two people fulltime at the company and now it’s grown so much and I work there part-time. I can’t even imagine not having this experience to see how a brand works in all aspects. Because it’s so small I get to see the marketing, the product development, P.R., everything. They’ve taken such good care of me and they teach me everything I want to know and I’m like, “What if I stayed with YouTube and never met these people or never learned this?” So money was probably the biggest thing but, it’s not the end of the world. I still do make a bit of money from sponsored posts, which I don’t do a lot, but hopefully more of those will come!
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WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST ADVICE FOR THOSE WANTING TO START A YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND HOW WOULD THAT ADVICE BE DIFFERENT FOR WANTING TO START A WEBSITE? For YouTube I would say to make sure you have really nice equipment, nowadays you have a lot to compete with. A good camera, good lighting. Make sure you’re making content that is true to you, it’s very obvious when someone is just putting on an act just to appeal to a certain person. As long as you are really passionate about what you’re doing and you’re producing it in a way that people would be impressed by--I think that’s really all you need. I don’t think you should ever act like someone else or try to be someone else for views or money, because that’s eventually all going to die down. For a blog, I would say kind of the same thing. Make it the most “you” that you can. Make sure that in whatever you’re doing, whether it’s YouTube or a blog, that it’s true to you. And even if it’s something that you’ve been doing on the side for a while, you’re already winning. Even if you have a full time job and you want to do that on the side, you’re already set. WHO ARE YOUR FAVORITE YOUTUBERS? My favorite YouTuber is Casey Neistat but he stopped his daily vlogs! I feel like I can connect with him because he’s right in New York. He literally had nothing for a long time, and he’s so passionate about filmmaking and you can tell. It’s so different and unlike anything else on YouTube, and he’d wake up at like 7 AM, run twelves miles, go to work for a full day, edit these vlogs and upload them and I was just so inspired every day to see what this man could do in one day, while producing this amazing movie.