In case you wanted to know, there many moving pieces to a small-time YouTube channel.
Obviously, there’s the publishing of video content.
Each video starts as an idea, on a large backlog board. Then it’s research, script writing, audio recording, audio editing, art gathering/generation, video recording/editing, and packaging (title, thumbnail, tags, chapters, cards, etc.).
That’s the obvious stuff.
The things you may not know?
My email traffic (both ways) is about 20-30 a day. It’s typically me receiving collaboration opportunities, and responding to the ones I might be interested in. Some of the correspondence is direct, but much of it comes through marketing platforms and marketing agencies. My conversion rate on collaborations I’m interested in is about 20%. It would be higher if I wasn’t picky about products and services that are aligned with my interests, the channel, and my ethics (like, I won’t cede editorial control).
I can see how, and why, many creators sell out. My situation is that my day job pays really well, so there’s no realistic way that YouTube could ever replace my normal income. As such, there’s no real pull to compromise on anything, and sell out. I’d rather have topic authority and integrity.
Even with the deal count I have, it’s still tracking product shipments, receiving the goods, testing and reviewing them, making sure I’m complying with the deal term - while still getting all of my observations in, tracking all of my deadline dates, and delivering everything I’ve committed to.
It can be a lot.
I maintain a board of all of my ideas, have about 10 scripts open at any given time, and still manage to be late on the videos that people want to see. It would be amazing to have a small fleet of cheap interns - especially if they were good at all of this stuff… because I’m certainly not :p
