Is YouTube a Real Job? Debunking The Myths!
By: Daniel Imbellino
Tags: YouTube, YouTuber, Youtube Creators, Content Creators, Social Media

When it comes to how hard content creators on the web work to make a living, often the average internet user will make the assumption that the inspiring minds of creativity across the web really don’t work that hard at all. YouTubers are also no exception to this bias against creators we see sweeping across the modern day web, and they’re often the biggest victims of harassment from the public over the work they do. The question is, why are YouTubers getting so much hate, and just how hard do they really work? These are the questions we’re going to seek to answer here, and given I’m no newbie to the web, I’m going to use examples of my own experience to held shed some light into this often extremely misunderstood line of work.

Get A Real Job!

This is the reaction I often see in the comment sections of videos across the YouTube platform; where viewers tell creators quote, “This isn’t a real job, you don’t work that hard, and you’re just being lazy!” To the average viewer on YouTube, they just assume that creators are just people who sit in front of a camera running their mouths aimlessly, or some gamer who sits in front of a computer recording their latest game plays in hopes of making a fast buck.

Sorry to tell the world, but it ain’t that simple! The fact is, those mega channels with hundreds of thousands and often millions of subscribers actually worked for years to build the audiences they have today, and those hard earned audiences are often the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of hard work, and years of endless slavery.

I know from personal experience with building my own media on the web just what it takes to build a massive audience for ones cause, and its no walk in the park. For instance, my social networking organization “Strategic Social Networking” on Google+ has over 157,000 members in its community today, and do you really think I built that audience overnight? Better think again! I spent literally thousands upon thousands of hours working to build up that brand’s audience over a time span of close to 6 years! I also wrote hundreds upon hundreds of articles to share with its audience in order to help the brand to grow.

Given how incredibly hard I worked to build that audience, I know there’s no way those creators on YouTube made no effort at all, and it would be a ridiculous assumption for anyone else to assume so either.

After years of working as a web publisher and building brands and corresponding audiences across the web, I too more recently turned to YouTube in hopes of finding a viable way to make a living from my work. Low and behold, its much harder than I had originally anticipated.

In the case of a separate gaming brand I built up on the web, Gamers Bay, I decided to launch a corresponding channel for it on YouTube. Producing all those gaming news and reviews on YouTube was a lot harder than I thought. I can literally spend 10 or 12 hours to produce a single video, sometimes days. Just one of the gaming series we did over the summer took over 600 hours of work just to do the initial recordings, and that didn’t include the time it took to edit and publish all those videos. It was over 500 recordings total, and we settled on just a little over 60 of them to be published.

In other cases, things can go wrong, such as when I recently did an hour and a half long gaming review only to realize my recording software crashed midway through recording, and the video was ruined.

Better Keep Your Supposed “Real Job”, Its a Lot Easier Than Mine!

Long before I worked to produce brands and content across the web, I actually spent over a decade working in the restaurant industry, and I can tell you from experience, the work I do on the web is 10X harder than any work I ever did in any restaurant, and its like 10X the stress too!

The first thing I’d like to mention here is that the work I did in the restaurant industry was hardly complicated at all, and none of it required much of any intelligent thought. Other than the pains of physical labor, there was nothing complicated to figure out, even when I worked as a manager, the process of running a restaurant was pretty cut and dry once you know what you’re doing.

On the other hand, the work I do on the web is full of complexities and constant challenges I never faced in any restaurant. Producing good quality content on the web takes real ingenuity, as you’re effectively competing against a web full of millions of content creators who all want to out rank you! The process of content creation, whether it be on YouTube or a blog makes no difference either, as the work involved doesn’t end simply after hitting publish.

Other complexities in the content creation process have to do with how one plans to promote their finished work, how they intend to make their content rank in search engines, and of course creators then have to worry about how their content will resonate with the wider audiences across the web.

Another thing to consider here is that content creators on the web, including within platforms like YouTube, often work long days and don’t get much time off. For instance, my average work week on the web is about 75 to 80 hours, vs. my average work week in restaurants, which was around 40 to 50 hours. Likewise, I worked 5 to 6 days a week in the restaurant business, while my work on the web is typically 7 days a week. Yep, getting a day off when you work on the web is a rare event, and if you manage a sizable amount of media like I do, then forget ever getting a day off.

Also, restaurant pay was more reliable, while finding revenue from your efforts on the web is a daunting task at best.

After losing a restaurant job I had back in the early 2000s and not being able to find a replacement, I went back to school to study information technology at a local community college where I also received several technical certifications.

Fresh out of school, it was the same thing, no work to be found anywhere :( But unlike when I lost the restaurant job, this time around I had real skills! I started a tech support business, and for a long time it really seemed to work. Back in 2008 when millions were losing their jobs, I was repairing, upgrading, and building computers for both consumers and businesses in the St Louis area. Work was often scarce at times, with some months being really busy, and others being dead slow, but I survived.