About six months ago, The Huffington Post published an article on The ‘Rising Billion’ New Consumers who will arrive online by 2020. In economically developing regions of the world like Africa or Asia there are 3 to 5 billion new customers, who have never purchased anything online, never uploaded anything or even used the internet. This represents tens of trillions of new dollars flowing into the global economy. There has never been a better time to start thinking about your dream career in social media. If you have an idea you want to share with the world, you will never have a better platform with such an abundance of customers than the internet. This article aims to help you find a good place to start.
According to CNBC, YouTube, which is owned by one of the world’s largest search engines Google, has 1.8 billion users every month. This number shows that you don’t necessarily need to worry about an opulence of potential customers.
One of the biggest questions you may be asking yourself is can I financially support myself?
The answer is yes, but it is not easy; with patience strategic planning and smart thinking, it is indeed possible.
Aimee Song, a fashion and interior design blogger with over 300,000 YouTube subscribers, has an annual salary of $150 thousand. Willyrex, is a famous Spanish gaming YouTubers is the 10th Richest gaming YouTuber in the world. His annual salary is between $1.7 million and $2.2 million, not including merchandise, brand deals and endorsement which will cause him to earn substantially more. Patricia Bright, a famous beauty vlogger, has a net worth of about $800 thousand.
Although this article can’t promise you will become a millionaire vlogger, it will at least give you advice on how to have a viable career in Social Media.
When deciding where to start your career there are many different social media platforms to pursue, but unlike Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat: YouTube is a search engine and the second largest one after its parent company Google. It is one of the best places to start your journey in terms of letting an audience learn more about your content.
Imagine working from home in front of a camera being sponsored by a company to share your opinion on one of their products. This is just one of the perks of being a YouTuber. However, being at this stage of your media career where YouTube is your primary source of income is relatively hard to do if you are not patient or don’t carefully plan your content. Many YouTubers who are successful today started off relying on their regular 9 to 5 job when developing their channel, but only transitioned to a fulltime YouTube career once they had generated regular income.
However, before thinking about your YouTube future lets start talking about how you will get there; prepare to be your own director, editor, script writer, and stylist. Also, before you can be qualified to be directly paid by YouTube via YouTube Ads you have to fulfil certain requirements. After you qualify, you can be paid around $2 per 1000 views depending on the country you live in. This may not sound like a lot in comparison with vloggers who can demand over $100,000 per month. If you do the math, you can see that the vloggers who are able to command such high salaries from YouTube consistently have a very high amount of viewers per video.
However, there are some YouTubers who don’t come even close to 1000 views per video but still consider YouTube as a full-time profession. For many small-time creative people like Homeschool on, YouTube Ads contributes to a small element of their income. Affiliate programs, brand deals or crowdfunding are example of various streams of income small time YouTubers use to be vlogger full time. For example Yemisi Odusanya, a Nigerian lifestyle and food vlogger on her channel Sisi Yemmie, admits in an interview with Punch Newspaper that maintaining a YouTube career in the beginning was financially difficult but started having a relatively lucrative social media career when she secured endorsements from Maggi.
Viewership is also very important when establishing your brand. Sean Cannell, a YouTuber with many of his videos having views ranging in the millions, specializes in educating vloggers on how to turn YouTube into a full time career. He believes that YouTube being a search engine is real advantage for vloggers. This means that it is better to use your talent to create content that answers questions rather than specifically talking about your life. For example, if a viewer types into YouTube’s search engine how to make puff puff? The video that has the title and the content of what the person is looking for is more likely to be viewed than a life vlog about a vlogger they do not know.
Even after having more than a million subscribers across his channels, having specific content still works for Sean Cannell. Some of his videos that are four years old still make money for him as his videos answer the questions viewers are looking for when they are starting their YouTube career.
However , the most important tip is to always think of yourself as a brand. Present yourself in a way that provides impact in people’s lives, so your viewers will learn more about you and what you have to say. Remember you are your own best product.
Hopefully, you have found this blog helpful and is a step in the right direction.
— Beulah Samuel-Ogbu, Marketing Intern.
Making Life Possible is our ethos at paga, and it is what keeps us committed to our mission of providing inclusive financial services for all Nigerians. With over 16,000 agent outlets and 9 million+ customers, we are inspired by the stories of the community we are building and the people we are empowering by making life possible every single day.
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