How I Built a Business on YouTube | iJustine

thanks to sophie for sponsoring a portion of this video hey guys it's justine and today i want to talk to you guys about a topic that is always coming up pretty much for the past 15 years that i've been creating content here online the question is how do creators make money online and it is different for everyone so everyone does have a very unique story but there are a lot of crossover and similarities i think with mine and a lot of people who are also making content today but for years everyone is always asking me how i make money and how did i get to where i am today and a lot of times they will assume that it's some sort of overnight success or some sort of just something that happened magically and while i wish that that was the case i would say it's safe to say that most people regardless of their success level hasn't had an easy road to get to where they are or it's not going to be an easy road to get to where they want to go so today a portion of this video is sponsored by sofi and when they came to me interested in sponsoring a video i just was thinking of so many video ideas that i could just casually mention their product and then carry on with my video like usual but i really wanted this to kind of be different because i feel like sometimes not talking about money is actually a detriment to the entire community and not just the entire community but to people who are just starting out and have no concept of this world i feel like there's so much that i didn't learn in school or even in college about the industry that i'm in because it was something that i sort of i guess fell accidentally into and sort of created it as i went so i really wanted this video to kind of answer a lot of those serious questions that people have about making money online about my history of making content and how i managed to get to where i am today and hopefully i can offer you guys some answers but also most importantly some inspiration and i'm so grateful for brands like sofi who are kind enough to trust creators like me to share their message and product with all of you guys so first let me tell you guys about sofi and then we can get more into it so far members can have a suite of financial products that are available to them that all can work together to help you guys achieve your financial goals it lets you save spend earn borrow and invest all in one app i also really love the community aspect where they offer complimentary financial planners to sofa members to talk to you one-on-one to walk you through a financial game plan for so many people in the u.s our college debt is something that just seemingly takes forever to pay off i know i'm so lucky that my parents were able to help with a portion of my tuition and they also helped me apply for a lot of different scholarships that i was eligible for but after graduation i was still left with a huge portion of that loan that was my part to cover so after i graduated and then many many years later after i finally started creating content on youtube after having several jobs i worked as a graphic designer i also worked as a video producer and editor at a chiropractor i did talk a lot about this stuff in my book so some of you guys might already know this story but the one thing that i did when i finally started getting success on youtube was putting as much money possible as i could to pay off my student debt but not without incurring so much interest that it still upsets me to this day to think about it i do really wish that there was something like sofi back then this is easily accessible as it is now sofi is a private lender that offers student loan refinancing that can save you thousands of dollars on your student loans there's a simple online application that you can fill out and you're able to check your rate online in about two minutes so how it works is they pay off your existing loan and then they give you a new loan with new terms and it costs nothing to refinance and has the potential to save you a lot over time there is one important thing to note though we are still in such a strange time with covid so due to the cares act extension that goes at least through the end of september it's not advisable to refinance your federal student loans right now you should wait and watch what happens with the cares act but if you do have private student loans refinancing could be a great option they also offer personal loans and home loans as well so that can help you achieve other goals of buying refinancing or remodeling a home or just paying off stubborn high interest credit card debt which i have definitely been there i'll put a link in the description if you're interested in checking out so far thank you again to sophie for sponsoring a portion of this video so now we're gonna head into answering some of your questions and the first one is surprise this was a sponsored video and that is one of the main ways that i am very fortunate enough to be able to make money here on youtube and it's interesting because i've talked to a lot of my creator friends and a lot of them say that that is not their main source of income i've been very lucky that a lot of my content over the years has been super brand friendly and the way that i've kind of structured my content which is yes it is an intentional thing is to be able to integrate really great brands into my videos one of the things that i've noticed though specifically about the tech space is being very careful to not sometimes call a sponsored video a review since it is sponsored sometimes people feel like they're paying for a review so kind of my new mindset is i'm gonna show you this cool thing i would not be showing you this cool thing if i didn't actually like it i do turn down a ton of brand deals where i'm not actually into the product so if i'm showing you guys something here it may not be a full comprehensive review if it is a sponsored video it is something that i'm showing you guys that i think is cool and hopefully you guys will enjoy it as well so sometimes there's a couple of different ways that i'll work with brands we'll either do like a full integrated video so the entire video will be about said product or something like this video where the integration kind of happened at the beginning and so they just sponsor kind of a portion of the video but even though just that portion was sponsored i felt like this was such an important topic that i really wanted to kind of open the dialogue have a conversation and then continue this conversation either in the comments or on twitter or i don't know like maybe we'll do like a clubhouse or something one of the biggest issues is a lot of us not talking about these things because unfortunately in this industry and basically the entire world in general there's a lot of people who really don't care about you and there's a lot of very shady businesses out there and they will try to take advantage of creators and i think one of the most important things is reading contracts or if you're not going to read the thing in entirety find yourself an incredible lawyer that can do that on your behalf i know some of you guys might be just starting out and you can't afford to have a lawyer you can't have and all of these things seem so just out of reach it does take time and i can't even stress enough like i've honestly been making youtube videos since 2006 that is longer than some of you have been alive so can we just maybe put that into perspective there's something else that kind of has upset me a little bit but i think it's kind of more of a personal thing is that i sometimes feel bad for having success like it's a very very strange thing i wouldn't say it's imposter syndrome because i do feel like i belong here i've worked very hard to get to where i am so i think it's more like i don't want other people to feel bad for not being successful or have not reached that level of success that i feel like i'm at right now i do feel like there is so much more that i can be doing there are so many things that i could have done better i could be doing better but it really sometimes just comes down to how i'm feeling if i personally don't want to make a video it's really really hard to do so and i think that's one of the things that i'm kind of working on in the next couple of years is how can i still be creating content but while having other source of income that doesn't rely around me i think that's one of the biggest issues that a lot of us have fallen into is these businesses rely on us they rely on our mood they rely on our health they rely so much on you that if it wasn't for you they couldn't exist so that's kind of something that i would really stress to a lot of you is if you had to take yourself out of the picture what would happen if you weren't there and i'm still kind of struggling with that because this channel really is based on me because this channel still is based on me and i'm the one talking to you guys so it may look a little bit different in the future it may stay the same it's really hard to say i know a lot of you guys have asked me a bunch of questions about this so i'm gonna pop in here and see if i can answer a couple of them for you but as we go if you guys think of any questions feel free to ask them in the comments send me a tweet and if you guys would be interested maybe i'll do a little uh live stream and i can answer some of the questions you guys have for you live so this first question is actually from trisha who has been also making content for a very long time and it's really cool to sort of see creators like trisha and some of my other youtuber friends who continue to create who continue to inspire me to create and have also found ways to stay relevant for so long which is one of her questions is how you've managed to stay on top of various platform changes and adapt your content to be successful in every iteration queen well trisha thank you you are also a queen there's a lot to unpack here kind of in this question is obviously how i've stayed on top of all of the various platform changes is it's very difficult and then also adapting my content to be successful is a whole nother kind of take because i know the type of videos that do well on my channel but sometimes those aren't the ones that i want to create so that is the battle i feel like every youtuber kind of falls into because i loved creating vlogs i loved sort of sharing my daily activities or travels and adventures and those just for some reason stopped performing well on my channel so what i found though is people really enjoyed the tech reviews so i tried to find a way to merge those two things together is how can i do a tech review but also do a vlog and unboxings are fun but they kind of were getting boring and just repetitive like okay great look i'm opening something up here it is so the type of videos that i'd like to watch were okay you opened up this thing go outside test it out give us real life experiences and show us how it works so really when it comes down to the type of content that i'm creating i'm creating content that i want to watch while also trying to figure out how to appease the youtube algorithm which is a whole other mystery but trial and error and just know that guess what some videos are going to do well and some aren't and sometimes there really isn't an explanation and i think that's one of the most difficult things to sometimes really comprehend like you just can't actually figure out why why did this video not do well i know some of you guys are very analytical i am not a huge analytics person and i know a lot of you are probably cringing like justine you could learn so much from your analytics yes that's true but i got to the point where i became so obsessed with the numbers that it kind of took away from the joy of creating content and for me keeping myself inspired and excited about creating content was almost more important to me than looking at the numbers obviously numbers are very important because it kind of is the whole name of the game of creating content you need to have the subscribers you need to have the numbers and the views and the eyeballs but finding that fine balance of not being obsessive while still enjoying creating content that you want to create it's difficult and it's something that i do deal with on a weekly basis you do have to be ready to change at any point because things do move so quickly that a lot of times what maybe worked yesterday might not work tomorrow like my entire mentality has just been i'm not gonna quit so i'm just gonna keep doing this so if something isn't kind of working it's really fun because you get to experiment and you get to try different things and see what works and see what doesn't because with that mentality you're not going to quit so you just kind of keep going this one is from ryan and he's asking how does one find their voice in terms of deciding what kind of videos to make you like making sketches and short narratives but you also started liking video game streaming so what's great about youtube people love watching people talk about things that they're passionate about i mean i know if there's something that i'm interested in like i recently have been obsessed with rubik's cubes so i've been searching for like rubik's cubes unboxings and tutorials and tips and tricks and watching people who are so passionate and so knowledgeable about the topic and the subject of solving rubik's cubes is just so fascinating because you can really tell that this is something that someone loves so creating content about something that you love something that you're knowledgeable and passionate about it really does shine through in your videos and for you guys i think one of the well it's like kind of a compliment but also kind of not people will say that i'm too over excited about something and i'm like that's great because this is genuinely how i feel when i'm unboxing something or showing you guys a product so while some people might take offense to that i'm like you're right i am hyped i am excited and it's great that you guys can actually feel that through the screen and to touch on finding your voice that is something that kind of comes over time because i have had so many iterations of content i mean i used to make cooking videos which were something that i really really enjoyed but for me those cooking videos were kind of the pieces to the puzzle that were missing in between the tech videos so i feel like before i wasn't doing as much tech because i didn't have all of the connections that i do now since i kind of switched my channel over to focusing a lot more on tech and it also seems like the industry is also growing quicker so there are so many more tech products out so i feel like the need to do those cooking videos wasn't as important because i had so much stuff to make content about that those just kind of were the filler videos and i honestly also started not enjoying making them as much so it's kind of this battle that i had with myself like okay i know you guys really enjoy them but for me i wasn't enjoying them as much and most recently i actually did do a cooking video and i was like i kind of miss this so don't ever rule out something like that coming back here because who knows maybe my tech channel is going to go back to cooking again and that also kind of goes back to like how i'm feeling like i can't sit here and make a video if it's something that i don't want to do and that is a personality trait for me that has helped but also i think hindered a lot of things uh like in school like i really struggled with you know getting good grades for classes that i didn't enjoy but those classes that i did like like computer programming and art and photography and yearbook and all of those things oh you better believe i excelled very very well at those ones so for me like knowing myself and how i work is really important because i sometimes need to bring in other people to sort of fill in those spaces of things that i know that i'm unable to complete i think another question that a lot of people ask is about my team like what just what do the people around me look like like who else do i work with probably surprising to people that i do have a very small team i know a lot of youtubers have you know massive teams of people that are editing and doing thumbnails and all of the stuff mine is still very small i still edit a lot of my videos but i'm grateful that my friend tyler works with me as well he does shoot and helps edit as well and then my sister and i both do a podcast together so she also sometimes edits the podcast and then tyler will also sometimes edit the podcast and i will also sometimes edit so it is a very small team but it is a team effort and i'm very grateful for both of them who assist almost daily on whether it's shooting or editing or just random tasks that need to get done so then outside of that i do have a management team that i've been working with for wow oh my gosh a very long time you guys might remember patara who has been in some of my vlogs back in the day we've been working together for a very very long time and then i also do have an agency which is wme who i've been with for a couple of years they work more in sort of the scripted doing some bigger brand deals and they don't do so much the day to day whereas my management team call them like my babysitting team because i am not very good at keeping myself on track sometimes like i said knowing my faults and knowing my downfalls and they are there to sort of fill in those blanks and help me keep on track post things on time and kind of do the day-to-day working with the brands and kind of negotiating on my behalf is incredibly helpful and then one of and then another very important piece of the puzzle is i do have an incredible law firm when i first started the first maybe five or six years i had nothing i had no one i was reading all of the contracts myself i was calling in favors from friends so it really was a lot of people who were kind of just helping me so i'm very very grateful for when i first started out for all the people who were just so kind and generous to to offer their time and their energy to help me sort of navigate this new world because this was something that was nothing like there was no one doing this so even the lawyer friends that i had were like we've never really done this type of stuff before we don't really understand entirely and i'm like well i don't understand either because this is a whole kind of new world so the brand deals that i'm getting now i mean obviously are so completely different from what i was getting in like 2006 2007 even up until 2010 i feel like the landscape now has kind of leveled off like there is some sort of standard whereas before i mean we were just making it up as we went and i'm sure some of you guys are questioning like well what does an actual deal look like does vary between different brands and companies because a lot of times i might be doing a project for said brand then there's an agency in between and then that agency is talking to my agency and then they talk to me so there's a potential for a lot of disconnect in between there so it really is always great when you can talk to the brand directly and be able to hear this is their vision this is what they want to come across in the video and it's really fun because i feel like at this point i've kind of earned enough of that street cred of okay listen you have this idea i don't think that's gonna go over so well with my audience so it's kind of keeping you guys in mind and knowing that like if i said what those people wanted me to say you guys are gonna make fun of me you're gonna make fun of the brand and we can't be having any of that so sometimes those deals will be just a specific youtube video sometimes it'll just be instagram or sometimes it'll be a youtube video plus a couple of tweets plus facebook plus a tick tock maybe a snapchat maybe some instagram stories so it's like every deal kind of looks a little bit different and a lot of times it will really start with okay how much budget does the brand have and what can we kind of do for that so really every kind of project is sort of tailored towards like what the brand is looking for what is their messaging are they giving you guys a discount are they buying something then there's also the whole other side of things of affiliate links so affiliate links are when somebody clicks on a link and then you get money if they buy something so sometimes we'll work with brands to do affiliate links where i'll get a percentage of whatever you guys purchase and then also there's just the basic amazon affiliate links which i do use in the description there's a website called genius links that i use which is kind of cool because when you click on the genius link it will then take you to an affiliate link of wherever you guys are located so just know that when you guys do click on affiliate links from creators you are helping out the creator so if there is something that you're looking to buy go find one of your favorite content creators and use their links because it definitely does help out the next question is from renee who is asking how i've stayed so positive and optimistic over the years i feel like in my content and everything that i create that is something that i really strive to do because that's the type of content that i like to watch like i don't really like watching drama videos i don't like watching negative reviews i like seeing positivity and i like you know kind of spreading positivity but i feel like that is so far from i guess the actual truth and like reality of creating content because i'm kind of thinking back to there's been some times where i've had to film videos where i've received maybe like some of the worst news that like a person could ever like receive like you know in a text message and you're just like like i have these moments that are like actually captured on film of like me receiving this has happened several times actually of like some sort of news where you're just like it's a really weird thing like i don't know if anybody has ever kind of like experienced that before as a creator um i do tend to try to keep most of my private life kind of like off of like the internet which is very strange because i was somebody who shared everything like i vlogged almost every single day and that sort of turned me into somebody i feel like that i didn't like and having sort of that experience of like feeling myself become someone who i didn't like and that was creating content for the sake of creating content and not living it's such a weird strange thing it's hard to explain if you've never really experienced this but i'm sure maybe you as a viewer or a consumer who have watched a lot of your favorite youtubers over the years who have maybe daily vlogged and kind of just like sort of seen that demise that downfall like you can just see it in somebody's eyes so i guess going back to kind of getting that type of news and sort of not only is it traumatizing getting that type of news but trying to take yourself out of that situation of receiving that news and knowing that you have to finish shooting this video before you can deal with what you just were dealt with there's been times where i've had to go to set the next day after finding out like a very close friend had passed away it was still something that kind of just i think about a lot is how difficult it was for me to kind of you know find out this news you're grieving and you go to set because there's no way that this thing could have been rescheduled there's so much relying on you being at this i'll never forget like going to the set and shooting all day and then it was like the last take and i just freaking like i couldn't do it anymore like i just broke down crying i was like i'm so sorry because it was like all day i was like fighting how i was feeling to just try to power through for the sake of you know getting this project done there were so many people involved i think being on a channel like this where things do revolve around you it's very very difficult to sometimes just know that like you kind of have to sometimes put your feelings aside to get things done because a lot of things are riding on specific projects or keeping your channel going and i think it's finding that balance of work life and making sure that you're not ignoring like those feelings of grief or whatever it is because these things do revolve around us and you guys look to us for that inspiration or for that content and you know if we're not in a good place for you like we're definitely not in a good place for ourselves there's another question right after this where josh was asking was there a point where you almost quit making videos or considered doing something else there was some points where i felt uh i guess i just kind of felt like i wasn't enjoying making videos as much as i used to i knew that this was something that i loved but i couldn't figure out like what was it why was i not enjoying it and because i had started taking on too many projects i it was running like four or five channels at the time i was doing daily gaming videos i was doing daily videos and i was focusing on too much i had so much on my plate i went back to the drawing board i'm now gonna only do one channel i'm gonna focus on this and what are the things that make me happy like what do i love and why did i start making youtube videos to begin with and i came to the conclusion that like i made videos because i enjoyed it i made videos because i wanted to share information i wanted to feel connected to people and i also made them because i wanted to make people laugh as well i thought like all right what are my favorite things and at this point i think this might have been around like 2000 maybe 2016 2015 no because after i got my dog so it was probably 2016. i was like all right your girl she likes video games she likes tech she likes food and she freaking loves her dog and she loves traveling so i basically went like that and i just started changing everything that i was doing on my channel to everything that i loved and i instantly like started seeing like my numbers going back up but the engagement going up and you guys seemed to start enjoying the content more and it was because i started creating stuff that i was passionate about this goes back to the beginning of the video where i was talking about finding that passion and creating videos because it's something that you want to create and i know that's really hard because sometimes the algorithm doesn't reward that type of content so how can you kind of do both and sometimes the type of content that you're creating it will never be something that reaches a wide audience it can be something so niche or so specific that not everyone is going to be interested in that thing but what's cool is because that said topic may be so small you can work and strive to be the number one search result for whatever it is that you're interested in so i just can't stress enough about finding your passion and just really going with it and maybe it's not creating content maybe it's just in your everyday day-to-day life looking for a job like what is it that motivates you like what is it that makes you happy and just really figure out a way to sort of make that a part of your everyday life make it your job make it your career and it's not going to be easy at all like it's not and if it is easy then that's amazing and you're super lucky and you should be very grateful for having an easy and not so challenging time whereas most of the time there are tons of ups and downs and if you are experiencing a down right now just know there's only one other way to go and that's up so i don't know this video has kind of taken some turns i think i actually got a little emotional at some point and uh also not even sure if it's gonna make the video or not because uh i lost my audio halfway through this video and so some of the stuff that i planned on talking about there's no audio for it so i don't even remember what i said if i had to tell my 2000 self what would you tell her about the journey you've gone through honestly i would just tell her like watch this video and just know that like you're gonna go through some crap it's not gonna be good but it's gonna be rewarding you're gonna have a journey of a lifetime and you know everything that's gonna happen to you is it's gonna happen for a reason and each one of those things that have happened to me over the course of the past like 20 years of leading up to where i am right now i'm also just to share with you guys in case you're curious i'm 36 i will be 37 i have seen a lot and there's still much more to be seen and i've learned so much over the past like 20 plus years that i would tell little justine so many things but none of it would actually really i think make a difference because we don't necessarily listen to our parents until it's too late and there's so many of you out there that are probably like my parents have told me this justine you're telling me this and none of this is even gonna make any sense until you are in a position where something has happened and you learn from that and you're like man justine told me this or oh my gosh my mom or my dad or my grandparents or somebody warned me about this thing and it's not going to make any sense to you until you actually really learn it yourself unless you are one of those people who actually do listen to advice and and listen to your parents and know that they're probably most likely correct because they have lived through so much and have seen so much so that's something that i think i've learned way too late in life is like a lot of times a lot of people older than us have seen so many things and what they're telling us is probably just for our own good so that we don't make the same mistakes that they've made but uh if we don't make the mistakes then we don't actually learn do we staff is asking if there's anything that i would change kind of looking back and i don't think there is because things that i do regret are what have kind of like made me who i am today and some of those things that i might have a slight regret on i mean if i would have done something differently something else good in my life might not have happened or something else so there's just so many trajectories i feel like that you can sort of take for me just kind of going with it and knowing that i am strong enough to figure out anything that's thrown at me whether it's good whether it's bad like it's gonna work out it might take some time it might take a lot of work but that's kind of been my mentality of most of my life and i've somehow figured it out and i think this generation and even the younger generation like we have already been dealt with so much over just the past year i feel like the entire world has completely changed so we've had to shift we've had to adapt and it's been really amazing to see so many young people kind of step up and try to figure out this whole new world so it's like you guys you really are the future so when people say i really want to be a youtuber i'm like no no you need to think bigger you need to think broader because this career that i have right now was not a career when i was looking to start a career you know with other content creators but because i was so early i mean we were really figuring this out from the beginning and making it as we went and that is something that i really want to challenge a lot of you guys think bigger like think of what's not out there and create it and become it and be the best at it and i know that you can do it because i did it i know so many of you guys out there have that will and that drive that you are going to create the next thing so i look forward to hopefully still being around when you do create it well thank you guys again for watching this video there are some things that i feel like i didn't actually get to say to you because i lost my audio and then i don't remember what i said but i know i definitely almost cried at one point i'm just so incredibly grateful to be able to have this opportunity to sit here to talk to you to influence you but mostly i just want to thank you for letting me i guess kind of find my place here online because when i grew up i didn't know what i wanted to do i didn't have a lot of friends a lot of people didn't like the same things that i liked so being able to find this community of people that are accepting and like the same things as i like has just been so incredibly rewarding and life-changing and i just honestly can't thank you guys enough so thank you to you guys for watching and also thank you so much to brands who support creators because without them it would be so much more difficult to be able to create the type of content that we want to create and to keep entertaining for you guys so again thank you i am forever so so grateful and i would love to keep this conversation going because i know you guys are probably going to have a lot more questions so leave them in the comments below tweet me and i do want to do a follow up live stream so that i can actually kind of have a real dialogue a real conversation and answer some more of your questions so thank you guys for watching i'll see you guys later bye [Music]

2021-04-19 06:18

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