Categories
DEEP DIVE ARTICLE MINDFULNESS YOUTUBE

Why Do YouTubers Quit?

The dream of being a professional YouTuber is undeniably appealing. Making content for a living, working to your own schedule, doing what you love. So why, then, do so many people give up on that dream?

This is something that does not just affect those who have tried and failed to achieve the dream.

Some YouTubers achieve immense success and then, seemingly without warning, give it all up. Others seem to be on the cusp of that dream—having achieved constant growth for some time—and then just… stop.

For those of you starting out on the road to YouTube greatness, it can be something of a mystery why these people would do this, but there are perfectly good reasons behind it all (and some bad reasons), and we’re going to take a look at those reasons today. So, why do YouTubers quit?

Let’s see.

Do YouTubers Still Get Paid for Old Videos?

Burnout

Probably one of the leading causes of YouTubers quitting is burnout. One of the reasons it is so common is because it does not discriminate between successful and unsuccessful YouTubers; it is equally possible to get burnout with a few months and twenty followers under your belt as it is if you’ve been YouTubing for years and have hundreds of thousands of followers.

Burnout can come about due to a lot of reasons, but the broad scope of the problem is doing too much of something. For a long time YouTuber, this might be because they have been making the same kind of content for extended periods, and it is getting harder and harder to find the motivation to do it. On the other hand, a YouTuber who has not been doing it for that long might get burnout because they have pushed themselves too far; trying to get more content out than they have the time to reasonably make.

In both cases, it is possible to combat feelings of burnout if you take proactive steps. Things like trying to vary your content where possible. Granted, you probably have a niche and your audience expects a certain kind of content from you, but explore that niche fully, and try different things. It is easier if you do this from early on in your channel’s history, but it is never too late to start.

Remember, losing some of your audience because they don’t like a new direction is better than losing all of your audience because you don’t make videos any more!

Getting burned out because you are doing too much, and it is wearing on you can only be handled by managing your time more effectively. Most YouTubers get started while attending school or working a full time job, some might also have children to care for.

Trying to produce daily—or even weekly—videos around these obligations can be challenging to say the least. It is important to remember that many YouTube channels have succeeded with erratic upload schedules, or long intervals between videos.

Sure, your particular type of content might benefit from more regular uploads, but again, the damage from taking your time is almost certainly less than the damage from burning out and quitting!

Moving On

As strange as it often seems to those who are early on the path to YouTube success, not everybody wants this life. Some YouTubers learn this after achieving some of that success and realise it is not making them happy. Some go into the YouTube game knowing full well that they don’t intend to stick around. Other’s may merely be using YouTube as a promotional tool and have reached a point in life where they no longer have anything to promote.

Whatever the reasons, there a lot of YouTubers who quit because they don’t want to do it any more.

This type of quitting is also common with people whose success on YouTube has opened doors for them that they never previously considered. For example, a person whose charismatic nature lands them a hosting role on a television show. In that case, the person in question might never have considered hosting a television show as a career path before, but now that they have the opportunity, they find that they prefer it to YouTube.

Though not technically quitting, another reason that a YouTuber may stop uploading is because the success they have achieved outside of the platform is leaving them little time to work on the channel.

The most common example of this is probably musicians who, after gaining immense popularity on YouTube, find themselves too busy touring and making music to work on new videos. In this case, they might never have intended to stop making videos, but circumstances have made it too difficult to make time.

Why Do YouTubers Quit?

A Project Has Run its Course

Not everybody enters the YouTube game with the intention of becoming a full time YouTuber for the foreseeable future. Sometimes, people enter the platform with a specific purpose, and when that purpose has been achieved, they leave.

An example of this could be a political channel that is pushing for a certain thing—a particular candidate’s election, or a certain policy to be enacted. If that goal is reached, they could shift gears and move on to something else, but it is not entirely uncommon for YouTubers in this form to just dust their hands off at a job well done and disappear back into the night.

A similar version of this—and one that could be termed similar to burnout—is a channel exploring all the possible content in their scope. This could be a tutorial channel which has covered everything there is to teach on the thing they are covering. Again, the channel could shift gears and move onto something new, but it is not uncommon for the YouTuber to just decide to close things up and move on to new things.

This, in and of itself, is another form of the project running its course. If a YouTuber simply feels satisfied with their channel, that they have done all they want to and have nothing left to add to that particular body of work, they might decide to stop making content for that channel. You might think this is burnout, but it is different.

In this case, the YouTuber is capable of making more content, does not feel frustrated or tired with their channel, but simply decides now is the right time to walk away.

Auto Draft 26

External Factors

The final reason we’re going to cover for why YouTubers quit is somewhat less voluntary. It sadly quite common for YouTube channels to end due to factors that are either beyond their control, or of their own making but ultimately against their will.

An example of the former would be a channel that goes under due to one of the many YouTube adpocalypses. Many YouTubers do it for the love of the thing, but if you were previously making enough money from your channel to be a full time YouTuber and a change in YouTube policy erases your income overnight, it can be understandably demoralising, and might well cause you to quit.

An example of the latter tends to be things like repeated copyright strikes or community violations leading to the channel being suspended. Though we wouldn’t go so far as to say this is fair 100% of the time, it is the case that the vast majority of channels that finish up this way had plenty of warning before they were taken down.

The important thing to remember about this is that, ultimately, it is YouTube’s platform, and whether you agree with their ideas of fair use of hateful language, etc., you have to follow them if you want to use that platform.

One final note on external factors; it is worth remembering that YouTubers have lives outside of the platform, just like the rest of us. Out in the real world, there are practically endless factors that could cause a YouTuber to stop making videos. They could have had a loss in the family and are no longer in the right mindset to make content. They could have landed a new job that prevents them from making online content. They could have been arrested for something.

They might even have died. It’s always good to take a moment and consider the possibility that things are going on in the YouTubers life that are keeping them away before getting angry at them for not uploading more videos.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, there are more reasons than we could ever list why someone might quit YouTube. We’ve done our best to break them down into broad categories, but humans are complicated, and that complexity is hard to pin down when talking about why someone might do something like this.

Still, the most common reason by far is that of YouTubers not achieving the success they had hoped to achieve as quickly as they wanted to. The only way to avoid that particular hurdle is to stick with it, and look for ways to get better. It is no guarantee of success, but quitting is a guarantee that you won’t succeed.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
BUSINESS TIPS DEEP DIVE ARTICLE MARKETING MINDFULNESS TIPS & TRICKS

How To Work From Home for Beginners (10 Life Changing Tips)

Many people are going have to work from home in the coming weeks and months. I’ve been working from home for about eight years, so here are the lessons that I’ve learnt that can help you shortcut the learning curve as you fight the urge to watch crappy morning tv and binging on chocolate for breakfast…

How To Work Home for Beginners

Start Early

You will be amazed by how much stuff you can get done starting earlier than you would have done from your normal clock in at nine o’clock. At the moment, I have a human alarm clock that wakes me up at around about six o’clock anyway and she wants feeding and she wants entertainment and Hey Duggie and anything else on TV. But the advantage there for me is that no matter what, whether she’s going to nursery or whether she’s staying at home, I can wake up at six, seven o’clock in the morning and hit the ground running – making content for my YouTube Channel.

Even before my stepdaughter came into my life, I still got up at six o’clock in the morning, let the world wake up around me, grabbed my life saving massive cup of tea and focused in on that days to-do-list.

I find at that time in the morning, you could be the most motivated, and most rested that you will be all day. Time to hit the floor running, tackle the things that you need to do, organize your day!

The sooner you start, the sooner those creative juices can tackle what you need to tackle.

Now, if you’re like me, it might just be the very first thing you do is tidy up the things around you. I’m one of those people that needs a tidy environment work in. So I’ll get up, I’ll make sure that all of the dishes are done, I have a nice cup of tea, I clean the living room, and then I can sit down and then I’m focused because if I’m setting that at eight, nine o’clock in the morning, my brain would be like, “Whoa, I need to pick that up,” and “Oh, you need toast or whatever,” whilst other people might dive straight into their hardest task and get it out the way, knowing that it’s all easier for the rest of the day.

Pretend You Are Going To An OfficeHow To Work Home for Beginners 1

There’s that mental block for the first two to three months when you’re you get to work from home where you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m home,” For love for all the Tea and Coffee in the morning, make sure that you’re in the right mindset.

If you can set it in your head a set time, you switch into work mode or there’s a set chair that you sit in or there’s a set area that you go to, as soon as you know that you’re in work mode, you can focus much more. Rather than, Oh, just sit down and I’ll have my cup of tea, I’ll watch GMTV, I’ll flip through the morning news, now it’s 11 o’clock, now you’ve wasted half the morning. Getting the right mindset. This also includes getting dressed. You can’t just sit there in your PJ’s all day, you need to act like you have any other job.

Get up, get wash, get dressed, brush your teeth and then put yourself in your mindset because then that way you’ve prepared your brain to work.

How To Work Home for Beginners 2

Structure Your Work Day

Whether you’re in retail, whether you’re in an office, whether you’re in any other job, there will be some form of to do list, whether it’s from your manager or whether it’s from yourself. This structure is the thing you need to inject into your working from home life, that will allow you to accomplish some things throughout the day. For me, I have a to do list that I write on my desktop and they have set days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc etc

I know that that’s the thing that I need to achieve that day. If I want to bleed into other days and get more done than I can do so, and it shuffles stuff up through that list and by the end of the week I have a little bit more free time to myself, but at least I know that as long as I do those three or five things that that same day I’m on top of my workload, for don’t do those five things. I know I’m behind my workload, these are the things that helped structure me.

For you, it might be your Google calendar. You can set tasks in there, like blocking out time to bulk record YouTube videos, you can have set times, you can have recurring things, you can have your computer alert you when you are five, 10, 15, 20 minutes away from it and even remind you to do them. You can even set your own lunch break so you’ve got a pattern and a routine.

How To Work Home for Beginners 3

Set A Designated Work From Home Area

This could just be a set work chair or a set place on your dining table or a set room in your house, reset corner of your living room, but a dedicated space helps you click into that mindset, it has everything around you.

I am very lucky that I can work from home and we’re in a three bedroom house. Which gives me the very precious space, the home office! It makes my YouTuber life a little easier as I’ve already got my YouTube filming set set up so I can record in front of it, I can talk in front of it. There is an L shape sofa that I sit on an edits and maybe watch the rolling news, with the TV which is literally just there. But because I have a dedicated efficient workspace, you’ll be amazed how quickly your brain turns on rather than always sitting in the same place on your sofa, whether your Netflix and chilling or whether you’re working.

You need to dedicate a space where you brain can turn on.

Just like they say, if you go to bed and there’s a TV in your bedroom, your brain will associate the TV in staying awake rather than going to bed. You need workplace hygiene, to help you work at home properly, as well as sleep hygiene to help you sleep at night properly.

How To Work Home for Beginners 4

“Work From Home” Doesn’t Have To Mean “Staying At Home”

I know this can be hard right now, (early 2020), but in an ideal world you’ll get a chance to go out, make sure that you take your laptop with you! Coffee shops, parks, woodlands… you could be anywhere as long as you have a wifi enabled device!

Or if you don’t have to take your laptop, you can take a notepad and just write things down. Just get out of the bubble.

At this point in time I understand that that may be hard, but if you’ve got a balcony or if you’ve got a back garden, as long as you keep yourself in a reasonable safe distance, then you can still do it. Plus, let’s be honest, social distancing still works when you’re working. I know that I prefer not to have people around me when I’m working because if people talk at me whiles thinking it gets me frustrated and annoyed. if I’m sat out in my backyard and all I can hear is the birds and the wind, it’s fantastic for my mental health.

Take the advantage of strolling to your local corner shop that five, 10 minute break, that fresh air, that mind reset because if you’re frustrated on a task, you’ll be amazed what a little bit of eye distancing can do.

Have you ever heard of the phrase of just like computer blindness or task blindness – where you’ve been staring at the same thing for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, and no matter how much you look at it, it seems to be doing the same thing or it’s the same trouble. You step away from it and you come back, you’d be amazed how quickly you can find that jigsaw piece that you were missing from the puzzle just two minutes ago.

How To Work Home for Beginners 5

Make It Hard To Muck About On Social Media

Now this has become more and more prevalent in the last few years because everybody can flip through their phone or everybody can just tab over to Facebook or Instagram or take talk or whatever. I know from focusing on editing a video and it hits a hot spot, it can drive me off to Facebook out of frustration, but I’ll come back to it.

But if you can eliminate those entirely and just focus on the thing that you’re doing, maybe even turn off the computer, move your phone away, putting your phone on silent, put it in the up side of the room, whatever, if you can not give yourself the chance to distract yourself, you will get so much more done.

That also means don’t distract yourself with TV of your favorite thing on TV. So don’t sit there and watch Game of Thrones episodes if you really into them because you won’t end up working, you’ll end up watching Joffrey get killed.

How To Work From Home for Beginners - 10 Life Changing Tips

Commit To Doing More Things

You’ll be amazed, working from home, how quickly you can spin through some things that may have taken longer in an office.

When you’re in the office environment and there’s other people around, you might take a little longer to the coffee machine or to the water machine where you might every now and then glance over and see someone in another cubicle or stare at the clock or have a look at the call center, whatever.

I tend to find that you can actually do a couple more tasks than you would have done in a more social setting because you’re much more focused. If you ever hit that, the zone and then just kept piling through work, you’ll be amazed how much additional work you’ll get once you’re in the zone when Billy is not there to pass your chocolate or to ask you this question or to point at something to make you chuckle, that throws you out of the zone entirely.

How To Work Home for Beginners 6

Work When You Are Your Most Productive

Nobody turns on the computer at seven o’clock in the morning and it sprints all the way through their work in the zone, in that niche all day.

We all have our ebbs and flows! We all have moments when we know that we work better, maybe you’re a little bit more groggy in the morning, you don’t want to talk to humans in the morning, but you’re happy to edit videos and take your phone calls in the afternoon.

Maybe you’re not a morning person at all and forego a morning start up because you know that if you got up at nine, 10 o’clock you could work till two o’clock at night/in the morning, and you get much more work done.

Be honest with yourself, if you know that you’re lagging about two o’clock and maybe even you need a nap between two and four then allow yourself to do so, as long as you make sure that you allow yourself to work when you know that you’re most focused at eight o’clock in the afternoon.

Set yourself up for success based on what you know about yourself. If you know that you’re going to be wading through your brain fog, avoid that fog.

How To Work Home for Beginners 7

Save Phone Call For The Afternoon

I find that in the morning I’m less sociable and so are many others. So what I do is I make sure that I do all my solitary tasks in the morning or after the normal nine to five crowd so therefore, I know at six o’clock in the morning till about 10, 11 o’clock, no one’s really gonna pick up the phone and at 11 o’clock they’re thinking about lunch so I’m gonna start my phone calls at one o’clock in the afternoon.

It also means that it’s seven o’clock in the evening, once again, they’re not going to be there to pick up the phones. So what I do is I allocate that time for around about one o’clock in the afternoon to about five, six o’clock in the afternoon for those phone calls. Not only will my brain be more awake, but I’ll also grind you through so much work in the morning that be ready for a chat.

How To Work Home for Beginners 8

Keep Your Brain Busy

How many times have you gone to the gym and once you finally started at the gym, you got there, you finally got on the treadmill, but the entry feeling good and you wanna keep going, but the interstate, you sit down and you give yourself five minutes, you’ve seized up and you’re ready to go home. Oh, that’s it, you’re done for the day. I find that’s the same with working at home.

Keep your brain always on something, anything.

What I do in between my pieces of work is that I’ll do a task and if my work brain needs a rest, I’ll go and do the washing up or I’ll go into the clothes washing or I’ll prep my tea for the evening. The reason for that is because my brain continues to stay busy, it continues to spin and spin. It’s like a perpetual motion machine, but because your brain’s been so active, if you used to sit down and turn your brain off, it might be harder to restart that spinning.

Keep your brain going even if you’re just changing it up to make sure that you’re not bored. Edit your stuff in the morning, go for lunch, plan what your Tea happens to be, do your washing, do your hoovering, look after that kid, make sure you’re playing with their toys.

But that way you’re spinning plus by the time you get to bed, you’ve outbrained yourself and you’ll be more than happy to fall asleep, but don’t stop buzzing because the more your brain’s going, the more I find I get done because I’m not having to re-rev that engine to get started each and every time, I’m not doing a task for 15 minutes and then sitting down for 15 minutes and then having a restart, it’s quite consciously flowing all of the time and that also might be that I listen to podcasts while as I’m doing the washing up, so I’m still businessing, I’m still learning and I’m multitasking all at the same time.

For more tips to work from home, check out the video below.

Categories
MINDFULNESS SOCIAL MEDIA

Should You Go To Vidcon? Vidcon London Review

Is VidCon Worth It? Is VidCon Worth The Money? – I was invited to VidCon London with vidIQ – an eye opening experience that has helped me understand what I have actually been doing for the last 8 years of my life and reassuring me that there is a very large family of people that love online video as much as I do.

I made sure to vlog the event so i could imortalise the wonder and awe of my first conference and I wanted to share it with you too – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKWo0GVankM&list=PL09mwoOn57VRluKGu0eCPglbIRSTP8Vm3

Side note – I would like to thank the vidIQ team I worked directly with (Liza, Liron, Rob, Ilya) for the amazing experience, the friends, the food, the brain melting moments – and I would like to thank Derral Eves, Hank Green (@hankschannel @vlogbrothers) and Luke Owen of WrestleTalk

Categories
MINDFULNESS

What is Mindfulness?

Are you supposed to clear your mind, or focus on one thing? Here’s the Mindful definition of Mindfulness.

Mindfulness. It’s a pretty straightforward word. It suggests that the mind is fully attending to what’s happening, to what you’re doing, to the space you’re moving through. That might seem trivial, except for the annoying fact that we so often veer from the matter at hand. Our mind takes flight, we lose touch with our body, and pretty soon we’re engrossed in obsessive thoughts about something that just happened or fretting about the future. And that makes us anxious.

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

Yet no matter how far we drift away, mindfulness is right there to snap us back to where we are and what we’re doing and feeling. If you want to know what mindfulness is, it’s best to try it for a while. Since it’s hard to nail down in words, you will find slight variations in the meaning in books, websites, audio, and video.

The (All-Purpose) Definition of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

Mindfulness is a quality that every human being already possesses, it’s not something you have to conjure up, you just have to learn how to access it.

While mindfulness is innate, it can be cultivated through proven techniques, particularly seated, walking, standing, and moving meditation (it’s also possible lying down but often leads to sleep); short pauses we insert into everyday life; and merging meditation practice with other activities, such as yoga or sports.

When we meditate it doesn’t help to fixate on the benefits, but rather to just do the practice, and yet there are benefits or no one would do it. When we’re mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and aware ness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’ well-being.

Mindfulness meditation gives us a time in our lives when we can suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness—to ourselves and others.

8 Things to Know About Mindfulness:

  1. Mindfulness is not obscure or exotic. It’s familiar to us because it’s what we already do, how we already are. It takes many shapes and goes by many names.
  2. Mindfulness is not a special added thing we do. We already have the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are. But we can cultivate these innate qualities with simple practices that are scientifically demonstrated to benefit ourselves, our loved ones, our friends and neighbors, the people we work with, and the institutions and organizations we take part in
  3. You don’t need to change. Solutions that ask us to change who we are or become something we’re not have failed us over and over again. Mindfulness recognizes and cultivates the best of who we are as human beings.
  4. Mindfulness has the potential to become a transformative social phenomenon. Here’s why:
  5. Anyone can do it. Mindfulness practice cultivates universal human qualities and does not require anyone to change their beliefs. Everyone can benefit and it’s easy to learn.
  6. It’s a way of living.  Mindfulness is more than just a practice. It brings awareness and caring into everything we do—and it cuts down needless stress. Even a little makes our lives better.
  7. It’s evidence-based. We don’t have to take mindfulness on faith. Both science and experience demonstrate its positive benefits for our health, happiness, work, and relationships.
  8. It sparks innovation. As we deal with our world’s increasing complexity and uncertainty, mindfulness can lead us to effective, resilient, low-cost responses to seemingly intransigent problems.

Meditation Is Not All in Your Head

When we think about meditating (with a capital M), we can get hung up on thinking about our thoughts: we’re going to do something about what’s happening in our heads. It’s as if these bodies we have are just inconvenient sacks for our brains to lug around.

Having it all remain in your head, though, lacks a feeling of good old gravity.

Meditation begins and ends in the body. It involves taking the time to pay attention to where we are and what’s going on, and that starts with being aware of our body

That approach can make it seem like floating—as though we don’t have to walk. We can just waft.

But meditation begins and ends in the body. It involves taking the time to pay attention to where we are and what’s going on, and that starts with being aware of our body. That very act can be calming, since our body has internal rhythms that help it relax if we give it a chance.