Creating without Learning

Today's thoughts come in the form or preventative measures. That is, I don't want you to be creating for years without seeing results. That's technically the point of a lot of what I write anyway but this one is especially important since it allows you to grow beyond what me or anybody else says!

The topic of today is learning! And more importantly, how to learn. Why do some YouTubers plateau in viewership? Why aren't you getting more views? Why did your favorite YouTuber stop growing after 10k subs or 100k subs? A lot of this boils down to iteration but how do you know what to iterate on?

How do you know that your audio is bad? How do you know that there's too much dead air in your video. That your transitions are sloppy. That your idea is boring?

There are lots of ways to figure these things out. Stats can help but they don't tell the full story. People focus too much on the stats and gaining the wrong conclusion from it. There are a lot of creators that don't think nearly as hard about stats as you might expect who are making more than a living off YouTube!

Did you know that for a lot (if not most or all) of his videos, MoistCr1TiKaL uses the "automatically pick my thumbnail" feature? You're sitting here thinking about the fundamentals of graphic design, the rules of thirds, color contrast, and whatever else and he's ignoring all of that. This isn't to say that you shouldn't think about those things. By all means please don't walk away with that conclusion nor should you walk away with "he can get away with that because he's already big". He wasn't big always and he got there somehow......by using the default thumbnail system.

The point is, there's more than one way to "make it" in content creation. You could skip some of the "must have" fundamentals just by making solid content throughout the years from the heart and you'll probaly gain an audience. A lot of the biggest YouTubers weren't overnight success stories like Dream. Heck even Dream wasn't! He had esperience on YouTube before his Dream account existed and worked as an editor in addition to making his own stuff.

You can't skip the learning process. Nobody is born funny or entertaining. We're all learning how to exist and share our stories in the world before we ever hit record on a camera or OBS. If you feel as though you lack in one of those areas, hope is not lost. You think that you don't tell great stories? Take an improv class! Singers take singing lessons. Why shouldn't you as an entertainer?

Maybe you can take a class on graphic design or find lessons on better filming. Do the lessons of cinemetography suddenly stop applying because you're recording in Minecraft? Absolutely not. Same goes for music placement.

You should be pulling inspiration from all parts of media! Sure you can make it with just consuming YouTube. That's how Mr. Beast did it to be fair. It's just that his path isn't the only path and you won't stand out if you don't go out of your way to figure out how you can in the first place.

Pulling It All Together

As you start to consume more and more information, it'll be much easier to look back at your own content and see all of the things you could be doing better at. Always ask "why" someone does something. If you aren't sure, ask! You'll be surprised at how easy it can be sometimes to find out why your favorite creator made a certain choice. Lots of people love to talk about their craft and the process behind it.

Here's an example of Ryan Trahan explaining how he made the thumbnail for one of his videos. There are so many ways to learn and get information to funnel back into your own videos.

While it's certainly important to spend time making content, it's extremely underrated to spend time learning how to make it better. Let me know in the comments or on Twitter how you like to learn yourself!