When I first came to DC, everyone told me to start a youtube channel.
Feature those DIY projects that you are doing, the food that you cook, Your life in DC!
Build up a channel and get followers, earn money from ads, and start a business selling stuff once you get following. You could start exploring some crazy ideas!
I seriously considered it. At some point in my uni years when I was a lot more active in video editing, I had a vision for films. I saw how they could impact, and wanted to feature stories about the man on the street. That dream was to educate and inspire. And as much as I have the ability to figure out good angles and apply the right filters with some practice, I just didn’t see an end goal to starting a channel just to gain a following/ make money.
Other personal concerns:
At the end of the day, I always stopped short of starting anything, and I hesitate to recommend starting a youtube channel to anyone as part of brand building strategy for a product (i.e. build up a following to get people to purchase your product). Unless of course, the channel itself is THE product, then by all means. But if not, do consider the following before making a decision:
- Time-consuming. For the type of videos I wanted to create (short films, features, cinematic-style), they take up an insane amount of time to edit. That’s why you don’t see alot of these on youtube. If you want to generate fast content to build up followers, this is definitely not the route to take.
- Privacy/ Not in line with my identity. What about plonking a camera and talking to the audience? Those videos are straight forward – ensure good lighting & decent camera, take some filler shots, piece them together. It’s much easier to engage and build up an audience with a face & voice. BUT, appearing on video pretending to be all excited and hosting my channel just wasn’t in line with my personality. I view video creation as an art and embodiment of self. The idea of hosting videos was not appealing at all as I didn’t want my talking face to be stuck on the internet.
- Loss of reality. Vloggers who breathe content end up scheduling their lives around content creation. Going on trips for the vlog, etc. I’d rather enjoy life in the moment.
- Lack of content in my life. I’m not willing to plan my life around content. If I wanted to do a DIY channel, I had already missed the boat (when I was doing all sorts of upcycling things for our home. Also begged the question of how I could keep it going since my furniture is finite). Other things I do daily are cooking (not an interest; I eat to live), pottery (didn’t want to be all dramatic bringing filming equipment to the studio, messy to film with clay everywhere, studio time is precious and meant for throwing), meeting friends (don’t want to stick a camera in their faces too).
- Consistent content creation is a SLOW and tiring process. Many don’t see the hours and hours of conceptualisation, story boarding, logistics, editing behind a simple 5 min video. Multiply this weekly because you need consistent content to engage your viewers. It is alot of resources.
- Not everyone is born a content creator. Building up an audience is not everyone’s jam. Some people are just not born to entertain. You either have that mass/ niche following, or not. Some people build up a following within months, and there are others who take years with little success.
- Investment in equipment & technical skills. The minimum equipment you should have is a decent mirrorless camera (point & shoot cameras/ phones do not have the depth of field for good videos), with a basic lens kit and a low aperture single focus lens (f1.8 or below). I don’t profess to be good at video editing, but it’s important to know the basics of story boarding, broad principles of shooting and how to use video editing software.
- There is a difference between already having a following and monetising it, VS building a channel for a new/ existing brand. For the former, good on you. There are people who started out a channel purely for fun and interest, built a good following and started selling things around their niche (Eg. bestdressed who sells out vintage thrift finds and self-designed earrings within seconds, Peaceful Cuisine who wrote a recipe book). People who buy their stuff tend to be their followers. But for a new brand like mine who wants to engage in a channel strategy, I would say that I’m wasting my limited resources as a one-women-show as my key goal is to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) out, not to create videos to get buyers (that is a painful painful process with low ROI as it takes months, sometimes years to build up a following).
With all things considered, I went ahead to set up a youtube channel.
I must be mad! Why?
I would not have done it, had I not been stuck at home for 2 weeks. I had always wanted to record a tour of our pretty DC home; It is first home that we got to furnish! And mostly for personal keep sake since we won’t be here forever (and partly to show our future kids lol).
In the past month, I had also been planning a home studio, mostly for making porcelain jewelry and hand building while I’m not at the studio. Then the studio closed with the whole covid situation and I had to expedite this process. It made me realised that I didn’t mind doing occasional videos about my creation process if I was working from home. I would not have concerns that I have about recording in the studio and hand building is also less messy.
The decision to start a channel for the brand was entirely irrational; it was more for personal rather than the brand’s benefit. In my personal capacity as a maker, I just like creating cinematic, chill videos as a form of archiving my life. I know that I will never be able to afford these kind of choices in Singapore, with the urgency and opportunity cost of a full time job (Real story: my dreams for film died when I started work). In my time here, I see an opportunity to be focused in my activities, but with room for exploring. The key goal of my stay here is to build a brand, to create streamlined processes for it to be profitable. I will not deviate from that, but I see this channel as a side interest thing that may contribute a little to brand growth, but i’m not counting on any returns for this. If anything, I may revisit this decision in half a year if it gets too time-consuming.
So there you go, the first video on my channel:
