ENGLISH PODCAST: WHAT IT'S LIKE BEING A YOUTUBER & TIPS FOR BEING A SUCCESSFUL CREATOR

- [Jack] Today, I'm gonna talk about what it's like

to be a YouTuber or a content creator,

because I've been doing this content creation online

for a number of years now,

and I've got a lot to share when it comes to my experience.

And I've also got some ideas about where social media

and content creation and consumption,

so if you create content, you make content.

If you consume it, then you watch it and listen to it.

I'm gonna talk about where that is gonna go

in the future.

I'm gonna look at an article with that.

And then, at the end, I'm gonna give some tips

on what to do if you want to become a content creator.

Now, I think this is all relevant

when it comes to learning English,

because, hopefully, this is an exciting topic,

and you're going to get some good listening practice.

But we're also going to use some good words

and phrases today and talk about things in terms of trends.

So I'm gonna start with this article, but before I do,

I just need to mention very quickly,

again, welcome to you.

If you're new here, please subscribe to this podcast,

just click that subscribe button.

And if you enjoy this, then send this episode

or this video, if you're watching on YouTube, to a friend.

So we're gonna talk about one of my favorite websites,

which is explodingtopics.com.

They have a great Instagram channel as well,

and a great Twitter handle.

I'll leave links in the description.

And they talk about trends, and they use this algorithm

to show you what is trending at the moment.

So they've said, for example,

during the height of the pandemic in 2020,

that certain things were happening,

like people were buying Peloton.

People were ordering at home meal delivery services,

and they look at trends like that.

And they have won seven cultural trends for 2022 to 2025.

And I was looking at this before,

number one is: the creator economy keeps growing.

The creator economy keeps growing.

So the creator economy is where creators

earn money by creating content on YouTube,

on podcasts, on Instagram, et cetera.

And I'll talk about the ways you can earn money later

if you're interested in this.

But again, this is just great listening practice,

so stay with me.

But I'm gonna read a little bit of this to you,

and you can look at the graphs by clicking

the link in the description, but it says,

"Thanks largely to platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

People are spending more time consuming content

created by individuals."

So there's a difference here because,

with the creator content, it's normally done by individuals.

Although, some big companies are on YouTube

and Instagram as well, but it's mainly funded through

or driven by individuals like me.

Like my friend, Shayna at "Espresso English".

Gabby at "Go Natural English."

Vanessa, "Speak English with Vanessa",

and Ethan at "Real Life English".

We are all like individual creators

where we create content online and, in our case,

it's English lessons,

but there are a variety of different people doing this.

The fitness industry, it's huge, for example.

And I follow some fitness people.

They're good personalities, the ones I follow.

They're fun to watch.

They have some interesting things,

but the ones I follow tend to be individuals

with ideas and specific ways of doing things.

And they talk about what they've learned,

and they share their results,

and they share what they have done.

And it goes on to say, and viewers

are increasingly flockin'.

Okay, great word.

I'll talk about that in a second.

And views are increasingly flockin' to platforms

like Twitch to watch amateur content

instead of professionally produced television.

Now, flockin' to platforms.

This means, going to platforms in big numbers and quickly.

So you can just imagine it in your head

where lots of people are going to Twitch.

People are downloading it, they're watching stuff on Twitch.

And if you don't know what Twitch is,

it's a live streaming platform.

Now, in terms of numbers,

it says here, "It's estimated that 50 million people

around the world now consider themselves creators.

And one survey even shows that more kids today

want to become YouTube stars than astronauts."

So I know this.

Kids are obsessed with YouTube, at the moment.

YouTube, and when they get a little bit older,

it seems TikToK becomes really popular too.

Now, here's some more stats.

Speaking of YouTube, as of 2020,

there were more than 51 million channels on that platform.

51 million YouTube channels.

I'm just one of 51 million, it's incredible.

It says here, "A market that didn't exist 20 years ago

is now worth roughly $14 billion dollars."

Now, I just wanna talk a little bit

about my journey into being a creator.

And, at the time, we tend to call ourselves

English teachers,

because a lot of people who went online

at the start, they were producing,

or they were given, sorry, one-to-one lessons online.

So most of the people I knew who were English teachers

were given one-to-one lessons online.

And then, what happened with me was I started to use,

especially Facebook as a platform to find more students.

So, I would produce lessons, and write stuff on Facebook,

and share my website on Facebook

to try and find more one-to-one lessons.

And then, I think it was in 2013,

I started a YouTube channel and interestingly,

it was under a different name, it was "JDA English".

And then, in 2014,

I changed the name to "To Fluency" because I stopped doing

one-to-one lessons,

and instead I focused on creating YouTube content,

and also selling online courses.

And I remember, back then, the big YouTube channels

for English teachers had 50 or 60,000 subscribers.

And getting to a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube,

was a massive thing back then,

in terms of the big channels,

the biggest channels of English teachers.

I remember "Rachel's English" was probably

the biggest one that I remembered.

She's still going now, still producing really good stuff.

So she's been an online creator for a long time, too.

And she was a big channel at the time.

And my channel it grew, to begin with,

but I think it took about three years to reach

a hundred thousand subscribers.

Now, as of January, 2022,

I have 610,000 subscribers

and other English learning channels

have multiple millions of subscribers.

So, when it says here,

and the title is, "The creator economy keeps growing".

Yes, it does.

People are consuming content on YouTube

and more people are producing content on YouTube.

But not just YouTube now,

Instagram is huge.

Facebook used to be the number one platform,

from what I remember, when it came to English lessons

and creating lessons.

That's not as big now.

Instagram is massive now.

And then, obviously, we have different channels

growing up different platforms.

There are different ones

in different countries, for example,

but another big one around the world is TikToK,

which I started to make some lessons on TikToK.

But I do wanna talk about,

this is a good way to talk about why I'm not creating

as many lessons on in Instagram

and TikTok right now,

and why I'm focused more on the podcast.

And it's for one simple reason,

the watch time, or the listening time for a podcast

is much higher.

The attention is much higher,

whereas on TikTok, especially, it's about "next video".

"Okay, I see this video, next one.

Next one. Next one. Next one."

And you just go through this endless stream

of an English lesson, a funny video, a fitness person,

maybe some politics, more comedy,

where it's just constant new videos in your face

all the time.

And I was thinking that making those are fun,

but I don't think they have as much of an impact

as a podcast.

I think the podcast is my favorite thing to do,

and that's why I've be making more podcasts

than anything else right now.

I've been doing more audio lessons.

And from what I've heard, this is a rumor,

it seems like YouTube are gonna start

their own podcasting platform, which is really interesting.

And it amazed me that my "most watched" lesson

on YouTube is actually an audio lesson.

And that my podcast episodes do better

than when I make a lesson with me on screen.

I don't know what that says about me and my face,

or me on screen with different text effects

and everything like that.

But I do understand some people prefer that,

and I am gonna make more of those in 2022.

Now, I just want you to have

a little think about how you consume content,

and how much content you consume.

Because for me, I listened to a lot of things.

When I'm in the car driving, a YouTube video or a podcast

when, in fact, I have the YouTube app,

but I listen more than I watch on YouTube.

So I use it like a podcasting platform.

There's certain videos like if I'm watching

football highlights where I can't do that,

but, for the most part, I like to listen

to football podcast and history podcast,

those are the two things I listen to.

So, for me, I consume most of my content long form

when I am exercising, maybe go for a walk some times.

Mainly when I'm doing housework, and I'm alone at home

where I'll just put in some ear phones,

find a podcast and wash up and do that type of stuff,

which what you might be doing right now.

I also like to do it to fall asleep.

So I'll set a sleep timer, put in some earphones,

listen to a podcast, and then fall asleep while I do that.

But I'm sure you also use apps like Instagram and TikTok.

And those are quite fun to pass the time,

they're quite entertaining in that sense.

But, again, creating that kinda content,

I know a lot of people

will just watch 10 seconds and it's gone.

And not sure if that would have as much of an impact

as a long-form podcast, but let me know.

Would you like me to create more of that short-form content

on Instagram and TikToK where I'm making short videos?

'Cause now, I think about it,

probably a combination of the two is good

where you can listen to long-form content,

but then I create smaller lessons based around

the long-term content on different platforms.

But let's talk about what it's like being a creator.

And I'm gonna just share my experience of this.

And I think a good place to start is just to say

that there have been ups and downs where, sometimes,

I'm all in, and I'm making content eight hours a day,

and I love it, and I'm posting on Instagram every day

and everything's going strongly.

And then, there are other times when I just ran out

of that creative juice,

which is a good term to use like the creative energy,

and I don't feel like I'm in that creative space.

So it is much harder to do in those situations.

But, for the most part, I love this job,

and it is my job to create podcast episodes

and YouTube videos for you.

And, as you know, at the moment,

I'm doing it once a week, released on Thursday.

I was thinking today that I might make it twice a week,

but the key to this is that you have

to stay consistent with it.

So you will have noticed that,

over the last year or 18 months,

I've made a video every week without stopping.

Since I started the podcast in April,

I've released episode, every week, without fail.

And part of being a content creator

is making sure that you're consistent,

because an audience, as you know, loves consistency.

You want know that there's a podcast every week,

and that it's gonna be there.

I know that people wait for my podcast episode,

and they see it's live,

and then they'll start listening to it, and they expect it.

I find that is really useful for me, as well,

when it comes to different YouTube channels that I like.

There's a football channel called "90 men",

which has a podcast episode every Monday and Thursday.

They didn't do it for two weeks,

and I really miss it.

They took a break over Christmas and New Year,

and I really miss it,

but I expect it to be there every Monday and Thursday.

And part of my routine on Monday and Thursday

is to work out and listen to those episodes.

So as a creator, people like that consistency.

and when it comes to starting out,

when I started out, I tried to create something

that was "really polished", which is a good word to use.

That means, it's really well-produced.

So you can think of using a good camera,

a good microphone and editing lots of text on screen,

doing lots of cuts and making it really good.

However, that took me about eight hours per video to make.

And I thought that if I could make it really well-produced,

then my channel would stand out.

However, it wasn't sustainable because it took too long

to make the lessons, the videos, when I started YouTube.

And I was also teaching one-to-one at the time,

so I couldn't keep that going.

And I think just the key at the start

is that you're going to find your voice,

you're going to find your style.

You're going to find videos and content that works

if you start creating it.

If you get lots of practice,

and you listen to your audience,

and you learn from your audience,

because, in my YouTube stats, I can see

which types of videos work the best,

and it's always surprising.

For example, those one I made recently,

which was, I think I've made it in November,

and it was, "9 other ways to say, 'I don't know.'"

And I put so much effort into this video.

So much effort.

It took me hours and hours to do.

And I used my newest green screen,

and it was the kind of video of the teachers are making.

And they're really, really popular.

And it got 14,613 views,

which, for my channel, is quite low.

And, especially, because the video I made the week before

got 52,000, and it was a podcast episode.

And then, the one after

got a podcast episode, it got 23,000.

So 10,000 more views, nearly.

And, again, just another podcast episode.

So, that shows me that people want the audio,

the longer form audio, 20 to 30 minutes.

Those are quite popular on my channel.

So when you're creating content, it's important

to think about what people want to listen to,

what people want to watch,

what are people watching and do more of that.

But, again, you don't know until you try.

You don't know until you try these things out.

And then, another thing I do,

which I think is really useful,

is to use something like Apple notes or any note-taking app,

whatever you wanna use.

And I have a tap here, and it's "Lesson Ideas".

And I create a list of lesson ideas

that I wanna go through.

For example, I've got the POSperfect,

which I've had that forever, and I don't think

I'm gonna make a new video on the POSperfect.

But one of my podcasts episodes recently

was about shadowing and memory.

And, basically, what I did is I just put out

an outline of what I wanted to do.

Bullet points, for example, of what I wanna talk about,

and then leave the links in there,

which I used to talk about as well.

And that's what I did for this podcast episode,

basic ideas of what I wanna talk about,

the links I wanna use,

and then I'll read from the websites

and leave the links in the description,

but then, every now and then, I'll go to a coffee shop

and just say, "Okay, for the next two hours,

I'm just gonna write down podcast and YouTube titles

that I wanna do.

Go through my old videos.

See what's been working, see what can change from there

and then do more of what's working."

And then, from there, it's about creating.

Knowing that it's never gonna be perfect,

never gonna be perfect.

There's no such thing as perfect content.

I mean, some of my, (chuckles)

some of mine are close, just joking,

but you never gonna get that perfect thing.

But the more you do it, the better you get at it,

the more comfortable you feel doing it.

It's weird.

Weird talking into a microphone in a room on your own.

Talking into a microphone, and then looking

at a camera, or talking into your phone,

'cause I used to do some vloggin' around town,

so I used to take my camera, talk on the street,

go into coffee shops, do that type of thing.

And then, I realized, that's just not me.

It just doesn't feel right doing that kinda content.

But for different people, it's different.

So try different forms of content,

write down lots of ideas,

start producing and then get feedback from your audience.

And the best way to do that is just look at your stats.

See what people like, see the watch time

on different videos and podcast episodes.

So I think also, just with the trend,

like it says in this article, it keeps growing.

The creator economy keeps growing.

And I think the more time that we're just spending

on these phones, the more content we're gonna watch.

And I talked about that in another episode,

talking about social media, the good side, the bad side,

and how to use it to your advantage.

So using it to your advantage is, for example,

creating content, if that's what you want to do,

but also taking in content,

which is another word for consuming content

that's gonna help you.

So, for your case,

it might be to learn new things in English,

or if you like history,

to listen to history podcasts in English.

To listen to my podcast in English,

so that you're using social media to your benefit.

A lot of these new apps come out,

and yes, people are moving to TikToK and everything else,

but YouTube keeps growing, podcast keep growing.

My podcasts on Spotify and Apple iTunes, especially,

every new episode gets more listeners.

So if you are watching, oh sorry,

if you are listening on one of those platforms,

then welcome to you.

And if you've not subscribed yet, please subscribe now.

And then, like I said, please share this with a friend,

if you find it useful.

And I hope you have found this useful

in terms of just getting that listening practice,

where I'm talking about a topic,

not really talking about the language,

although we have learned some good words

all those types of things.

And I hope you have learned some new words and phrases.

And I think next week,

what we might discuss is trends when it comes to education,

because we have discussed this a little bit

in terms of the metaverse.

I love that episode, and if you haven't listened

to that one, just take a listen,

it's really interesting,

or at least the topic's interesting. (chuckles)

I'm sure you'll find it interesting,

but there's also these seven emergent education trends,

which we might go into next week

and talk about online learning,

and wherever this is something that's here to stay,

if it's going bigger and bigger, et cetera.

And again, I love to know your thoughts on all of this

and where you think it's going,

but for this episode,

share your thoughts about consuming content,

which platforms you like,

and if you are a content creator,

then leave a comment as your channel

and tell us all what you create.

Okay. Thank you so much for listening,

and I will speak to you soon.

Bye-bye, for now.