I started a YouTube channel, and forgot to tell anybody about it. Until now, of course! And now we’ll see if I can shut up about it (spoiler: I’ll probably forget to keep talking at some point). Want to cut to the chase and see what a graphic designer-slash-artist’s life is really like? Click below to start the chaos!
Soooooo, YouTube
So it seems like everyone and their cousin is making videos and trying to be the new YT celebrity, right? If you’re on the same planet as me, yeah it seems that way. And there are a whole bunch of reasons people get into it, but I’ll just give a quick rundown on my own for joining the proverbial chuckwagon race.
And that reason is basically: BUSINESS. RainyCraze is my art business, and I want that business to grow. And for a business to grow it needs time and effort in the right areas, which will be different for each business and each person running it. I happen to suck at marketing, and try as I may with all the business marketing advice I can get a hold of, never gets a solid hold in my head. Enter, Gary Vee.
Gary Vee, I’ve heard of that guy
He’s certainly not for everyone but the people he gets to are, just, super devoted. I’ll listen to Gary Vee’s podcast when I need to hype myself up or clear up my own confusing mess. He’s a marketing man, to say the least, and here I’m going for two big principles he’s always advocating: 1) Document, and 2) Start with macro content.
Firstly,
That means I’m making videos documenting how I’m making the art. I’m stuck in digital commissions for the forseeable future, and because watching time lapse of pixel pushing is interesting for only so long it’s kind of turned into a weekly vlog format. This is opposed to making up stuff on the fly just to post on social media in an attempt to stay relevant to whoever.
Secondly,
Starting with longform content like podcasts and bigger videos and such allows for this neat trick wherein the big piece of content can be cut up & reformatted for all the other platforms. Transcribe a podcast, edit it for blogs, then cut out quotes to retweet, as an example.
Now I’m certainly not a great video editor or anything so I’m probably going to suck at the marketing thing for a long, long time. Or until the the business makes enough income I can hire some good people anyway. But I’m likely to try the YouTube>TikTok>Instagram and YouTube>Blog>Twitter routes, in this case.
But then why YouTube, specifically?
Well my friend, that is very simple. I like watching YouTube videos. It is my main form of entertainment, since most regular shows are utterly mediocre and take too much of my time and money just to disappoint me in the end. So as a consumer I’m familiar with how it’s matured.
It’s gone from this niche little place to host bad videos off flip phones to a legit career option. It’s crazy. And it looks like a lot of fun! And with the handful of videos I’ve made so far, yeah! I’ve learned a bunch of new skills, gotten better at old ones, and met some cool people.
As far as the launching point, I’m not sure how but I got wind of Derral Eves’ book pre-launch. But I found it, found out he’s the pooping unicorn commercial guy and jumped in head-first. So I got the book and marked it all up, went through all the preorder exclusive streams and mini course, and joined a mastermind group on Discord. And I’ve learned a lot from all of it!
Where it’s going from here
So I’ve been making weekly videos for the last month, and I’m going to continue best I can on that schedule. (Thanks in no small part to the Accountability chat & bi-weekly live Meetings of the aforementioned Mastermind Discord). Inasmuch as I’m not any good, yet, I am getting better! And like any other creative effort, you gotta get through all the ugly learning phases before anything comes out really nice.
Interested in seeing how running an art business on the side is really going for me? Check out the new channel here!
