@RobbyF Said
What does it take? (more in body)
Since professional YouTubers are a thing now, in your eyes, what does it take to make it?? I feel like my day to day life and personality is to boring to be successful at it... however you measure that... The thought of it does sound like a lot of fun though! I've read articles about it, but I wanna hear what YOU guys have to say about it!

@mrmhead Said

"The advertising industry alone has spent BILLIONS trying to understand it, and we see the results of their efforts every day, and what a waste of money that's been!"

I don't see that as a waste of money - Look at all the people they are putting to work - from the study, through to the production of commercials.

@psycoskunk Said

If you wanna make it on Youtube as a 'professional Youtuber,' you've got to have a lot of things going for you and a good idea of what you want to do. For instance, if you want to do a "Let's Play" channel where you play different games and record your gameplay footage, you have to pick interesting games, have a great sense of humour, the ability to improvise and ad lib if need be, talent, charisma, showmanship to a certain degree, video editing/Photoshop skills, a fairly up-to-date game roster/massive collection and above all, originality! Let's Play channels have been done to death, so being able to capture an audience's attention and hold it is the absolute most important thing you can have. There are thousands of pewdiepie clones and wannabes that have tried and failed because they just parrot what they hear other gamers say. If you're not original, you're not getting enough views and if you're not getting enough views, well...

@RobbyF Said

I think that's a REAL good breakdown, thanks!! Yeah, I definitely don't have what it takes. I also think of it like this, I have a lot of friends who went into auto mechanics because they loved working on cars.... once it became a JOB it started to really suck... MOST of them are in other industries now. They are still hobbyists active in the car community, but not working as mechanics anymore. I think YouTubing (or vlogging in general) is fun, but I feel like it would get old fast as a JOB!

@psycoskunk Said

It all depends on what you want to do with it. When I feel like I have enough free time and am financially stable enough, I plan on doing a Youtube Channel, mainly just doing whatever I feel like doing at that time. I couldn't narrow down what I wanted the focus of my channel to be, so I figured that I'd just do a few different things like comedy skits, animations, "Let's Plays", short films, song parodies, food recipes, etc... but have a sort of reliable schedule of what is being made and when. I'd do gameplay footage for a large bulk of the content, but also include random, funny videos and animations when I start getting more used to making them. The recipes would be easy enough to do for a weekly thing. Song parodies and short films would definitely have to be every 2-3 months or so because planning, filming and choreographing everything is a pain in the a** and takes so much time. I'm still coming up with a lot of ideas and there's a ton of equipment that I need to still get, so I'm not gonna be starting it any time soon. But when I get my s*** together more and I feel like I've got enough content, then it's on!

I'm mainly plan on doing this as a hobby, or at best as a side job. But to get to that point, you need a decent number of subscribers/fans and getting the first 10,000 subscribers from what I've heard can be the make-or-breaking point for Youtube channels.

@RobbyF Said

It sounds like you actually have a PLAN!! You know YouTube has a lot of info on how to make it too, I couldn't tell you how to get back to it, but I've poked around in user settings and come across all kind of good info and statistics. Like it will tell you if people are not watching your full vids and give some ideas that may help change that! I agree, subscribers, and a schedule are key, but you're right it IS a ton of work. Idk how some of these people release 2 or even 1 vid a WEEK!!