I signed up on YouTube back in March 2007. That means my YouTube channel is 12 years old. During those 12 years, I’ve uploaded 60 videos. That means five videos per year that got me 1,500 subscribers. In fact, most of them subscribed due to a specific video. That video was about sports betting, which it’s been ages since I last wrote or created something about.
And suddenly in the year 2019, I decided to go full steam ahead on video. Am I doing it wrong?
Marketing dinosaurs
As predicted by advertising gurus, video marketing skyrocketed the past few years, and YouTube followed through. The explosion of social media marketing had been going on already, which became so popular that students dream of becoming influencers when they grow up. In simple words, to exchange their online social network popularity for not so hard-earned cash via product promotion or advertising in general.
All this sounds absolutely normal to Millenials’ ears and certainly to Screenagers (Generation Z) who are growing up with touch screens in their hands. The previous generation, that I’m borderline part of (born in 1979) struggles to keep up with the information torrent and not miss the train. At the same time, I’m scared to even think how the generation before me feels, the baby boomers.
I follow people from all these generations on social media. I can easily tell their difference, mostly by the speed they update their feeds and profiles. While old-timers post three pictures per week, the youngsters will push photos AND videos on stories, feeds and everywhere online, as if their day has got 48 hours. At the same time bitterness is coming from older people about “how the world has changed”. Aren’t we all dinosaurs?
Adapt or die
Says the famous quote and although I’m not afraid of death, I’m trying to adapt for years on end. Yet, I feel this might be one of my last attempts to do so.
I learned how to beat the casino at 24. In my last visits, they changed the rules of the game for me and eventually they kicked me out while destroying the dreams of other potential card counters by introducing automatic shuffling machines on blackjack tables. I adapted and went for sports trading where I had bigger success. Then, at 29 I could no longer win. Once again I adapted and I met even greater success with poker, which is more or less dead nowadays (some romantics will disagree with me). Third time’s the charm I suppose, since after poker I gradually quit the world of gambling.
I forced myself to adapt yet again. Given the worldwide trend of gambling’s regulations and taxation, and sportsbooks’ hunting down of winning players, I followed the entrepreneurial path. An occupation, that is a lot more acceptable to the public eye, despite having similar hazards, strategies, and way of thinking with games of chance, which most people have no clue about.
Still, in modern times even entrepreneurship itself has evolved and has entered the digital world, making it harder for previous generations to grasp the meaning of “making a living online”.
And so we arrive at my forties giving out advice to youngsters about what I would have done differently as if life ends here.
Money is everything for young creators
When I was glued to the screen for endless hours watching charts and dancing numbers 15 years ago, I remember older people warning me that I would not be able to do that at 40. I still remember how skeptical I had been, believing that I would be different.
What? I will know how to make money online but I won’t be able to sit at the computer for long hours? Ha, no way! Money is everything.
And here I am now, trying to automate everything in my business so that I spend the least amount of time on the computer, which I so much treasure ever since I was a kid. You see, it feels awesome to make a lot of money young, winning at stuff where others lose fills you with overconfidence, but entrepreneurship has a huge edge (and a small one): making money in your sleep (and the sky’s the limit; literally).
Time is everything for older creators
So, as I become older, the value of money is replaced by the value of time. I nowadays aim to buy myself time because I can no longer do what I used to do younger. I can’t edit videos for 10 hours straight every day, despite having decided to adapt and focus on YouTube.
Not that entrepreneurship is bad, it’s just that one discovers his lost creativity in his old age that put aside in favor of making money in his prime.
I used to say that I’d become an archaeologist or a cameraman when I grow up. Since I married to an archaeologist, I’m left to fulfill my other dream. It’s just that except of camera operator, for the sake of one video for YouTube I’m also becoming a director, a scriptwriter, an actor, an editor, a colorist, and a sound designer.
And I need so much time for a single episode on YouTube, especially when having no background in filmmaking, that I constantly ask myself if I can make everything I plan to in time and whether everything is futile after all. Which is.
