YouTube: The Modern Career Option?

Since its launch 10 years ago, YouTube has changed the way we watch video and consume content, and the YouTube phenomenon shows no sign of slowing down. Forbes recently published a list of the highest earning YouTube stars. Top of the list is video game play-through expert PewDiePie (Felix Kjelberg), with earnings of $12 million. From this we can gather that these days, YouTube star is a viable career option. But what does this mean for modern culture, and how do they do it?

YouTube is very much a freeform platform – you can do anything you want with it, as long as it’s in video format of course. In the early days, YouTube was mainly used for watching TV and film clips or sharing update videos with distant friends and family. Since then, YouTube has been used in many ways – interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ style games (like ‘Truth or Fail’), promotional clips for TV shows, film trailers, game play-throughs, interviews, vlogs and original content (including short films and even feature length films). The most common way of gaining popularity on YouTube is to sell a personality – whether that’s a fictional character or a real person. Viewers like someone they can interact with and relate to, which is why the most popular channels tend to feature a person/character rather than a faceless uploader.

The most popular videos are often collaborations – something very popular especially with vloggers. The crossover of each vlogger’s fans means these videos get more views, and the collaboration builds a sense of a YouTube community where everyone is interlinked.

YouTube is popular because of the vast amount of choice available – television and film are busy concentrating on target audiences and where they can get the majority interested in their production. YouTubers are not so obsessed. They gain their viewers organically, one at a time. And they make videos about whatever they want to make. This gives a more free market feel – viewers can watch what they want and avoid what they don’t like, and the market responds accordingly. It also means that, because YouTube is international, large audiences can build much more easily. Something that would never gain vast viewership on TV can gain huge audiences on YouTube. This means that minorities have a better chance at fair representation – YouTube is seen as a fairer platform for people of colour, LGBT people, women, people of different faiths, and people of different nationalities. (It is also more accessible to those with disabilities due to transcribed and subtitled videos).

However, you still need a fairly vast audience in order to earn money from YouTube. PewDiePie’s videos have now had 10 billion video views, which is why he is able to earn significant income from his videos. Most YouTube creators do not have this level of success. Even those with tens of thousands of subscribers can struggle to earn enough money after YouTube has taken a cut, and they’ve paid the due tax. Many YouTube creators supplement their income by selling merchandise based on their content – music, t-shirts, posters and so on.

There has been a recent rise in YouTube stars releasing traditional content too. BBC Radio 1 has employed a range of YouTube creators to host shows on their radio station and produce content for their website. Some TV shows have been made featuring YouTube creators – as hosts or as documentary creators or guests on panel shows. But the area with the biggest rise in YouTubers is books.

Many YouTubers have written books that now fill the teen fiction section in book shops. Some are autobiographies (Dan and Phil’s ‘The Amazing Book Is Not On Fire’), some are translations of their work from video to paper (TomSka’s ‘Art is Dead’), and some are fully fledged novels (Zoe Sugg’s ‘Girl Online’). The popularity of these books is injecting money into the teen fiction market.

The world of YouTube seems to be expanding exponentially, producing more and more people who call YouTube their career, and these people are stretching into the mainstream more and more. It seems for the next generation, YouTuber is as much of a career option as being a doctor or lawyer.