The OTHER SIDE of Being MONETIZED on YouTube

It seems that everybody's goal is to get monetized, right? But I really want to ask you a question. I really want you to sit down and I really want you to think about this video. So when you're thinking about being monetized, are you saying it because you need some money, because you want a side job, or because you're doing this for fun right now and so you are doing it to kind of sort of, you know, work into getting monetized? Like, ask yourself if any of those answers apply to you, okay? Now, my name is Dolly. I've been creating videos here on YouTube for 15 years now. What started out as me doing it simply because I just really wanted to and not even, my real backstory is the fact that I was homeschooled. So YouTube was right there, I was right there, and so I just did it live streaming all that stuff, right? I just did it. I was at home. So my reasoning is completely different than anybody that wants to start YouTube now, okay? So I understand that much. Now, why I'm making this video is because I wanted to really just talk to you for real and let you know on the other side what happens, okay? Pardon me. I have been monetized since 2018. I want to say like August 2018. Yeah, let's just start there. When you do YouTube with no expectations, when you do it because you love to create content or just because you feel like you have something to say or that you can genuinely help people with your content, then you're just going to upload, you know, no matter what. You're not really going to care about it and then you're going to be excited when a video pops off because it's like, you know, like that's great what I did, but, you know, I didn't mean to or, you know, it's going to be a genuine excitement for when you do blow up because it was unexpected, but it's that way. But if you are on YouTube right now and you're working towards monetization, you've already put yourself in this mental spot where I'm just going to tell you right now, you got to take a step back because when you get on this side of monetization, it's not what you expect or what you think on the other side whatsoever, okay? People like myself that upload a lot of content daily, it's because we're in niches that don't require us to hold back our content. It doesn't really require us to spend hours upon hours to edit. It doesn't really involve research. It's more based off of us, our personal lives, or what our personal interests are. So it's just easier for people like myself, lifestyle, people on blogs, those type of categories to really just pump out their own content and at a rapid pace. But when it comes to people that are creating content already overly produced or just putting a lot of content outlining and things behind it, you're going to find that none of that matters when you actually make it to the other side of monetization. I have children, they're in the back. But you're going to realize that none of that matters when you get on the other side of monetization, okay? Every single video has its own ecosystem. Once you upload a video, it goes where it wants to go, okay? YouTube is going to take it, see what your audience, the current audience that you have, does with it. And then after that, it's really up to them and the algorithm to figure out who else needs to see this video. So for example, when I do shopping content, my shopping content, because YouTube shopping is so big on the other side of the world, in countries like India specifically, China, Singapore, Indonesia, these are just places that I've seen on my analytics, in Cambodia even, these people, they're already utilizing YouTube shopping. So if you're utilizing that feature on here automatically, your videos are going to hit that audience. So I've seen that. And then when you do topics like just regular talking topics or anything like that, you know what I mean? Then it'll go to like an American audience or something like that. So even like on my page, you'll see that my shopping content sometimes does get more views or food content or just random stuff versus like me just sitting down talking and stuff like that. Yeah, the engagement might be better, but it's because those videos, these people, personal stuff, that's going directly to an American audience, you know? I say this also to say that not everybody is like me and my channel is like me, where we are able to diversify our content. So that's the thing that I'm saying. If you're one of those channels where you rely more so on posting once a week or things like that, don't be disappointed when you get to this side. Start to hear how creators are coming out and talking about the struggles that they have with finances. Me personally, I don't like when, but I do appreciate the transparency of when creators come out and talk about their finances, because the ones that I do see being transparent about it, their entire premise of their content has nothing to do with that. But at the same time, when they are coming out to talk about it, that means that something has drastically changed, OK? So I'm letting you know that already as a person that creates multiple types of content on here and even in different forms. I apologize for talking fast. I had to pause the video and get up and tend to the kids, so now I'm out of breath. But yeah, I appreciate that they can, I appreciate that they can be transparent with that because I'm one of those people that are like, the audience doesn't need to know type thing. It's like, you guys got to handle that yourselves or come over to our side where we're already actively talking about that stuff so that you don't have to like mess up your audience and the audience is like, what? Whatever, you know? But yes, do listen to the people and the creators that are bigger than myself, that you are very familiar with their content. And when they make those videos saying like, hey, something's wrong with YouTube or YouTube's broken or like this video got demonetized or all this type of stuff. Do understand that those type of struggles come with it on this side. There's a day that's going to come when you're no longer unmonetized and it's now a job. In 2021, 2022, I took a break, right? And it's one of those things where it's like, why would you do that? That was like the biggest time ever. Everybody was at home because by that time I had already had the pressure put on me of this being a job versus me just posting because I want to post today or I want to post right now just because I want to. The same exact way that I'm posting now where I'm posting because I want to, I'm posting what I want, when I want, what time I want. I'm not thinking about the whole like content schedule thing. So that's why I said, if you're already on that mindset, like you might want to chill out for a second because when you get over to the other side and you are monetized, you're going to be like, well, why was I tripping so hard over something I didn't know? And now that I know it, I didn't even need to trip that hard then. You know what I mean? Because now you're going to have to keep up what you did that got you monetized because there are rules when you get monetized. There are a lot of rules and you can even get unmonetized. You can get demonetized. I've been demonetized before and even just based off of the rules that they come out with, you can get demonetized. When the made for children thing came out, my dumb self was over here like, yeah, shoot, kids can watch it. But yes, why not? Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't research. I was unknowledgeable in the way of how I am now where I literally go and find the news and I really update myself and really dive into like what's happening and algorithm and platform changes. But I wasn't doing that before. So in 2019, I got demonetized because I'm putting in my videos for children and they're really not. But I'm thinking, yeah, young adult talk, like whatever. No, you have to like, you have to really pay attention. You have to really know what you're doing outside of the content. And that's what I want to prepare somebody for. I want to prepare them for the thing that made me lose love for this was the fact that I did it because I loved it. And then when it no longer became something I love because I saw how much you can make from it, then that's when it became a lot of pressure. That's when I started to put myself in a box, when I started to close off my content, when I started to not be myself. It's just a whole lot because you just don't want to get in trouble. You know what I mean? But yeah, I just really wanted to try to help somebody just take a second thought about why and what their goal is and why they're making a YouTube channel or why they're doing it because we all know it's monetization. So let's be honest about it. And like really think about what happens when you become monetized and like all that you're doing now. Think about all you'll have to do then. You know what I mean? To really keep it and maintain it. Not everybody makes it this far. Even with making it this far, you do, you see my channel, like you see the numbers and things like that. But if you're going to do this, you have to know how to do other things too. And that's kind of the base around it. You can't just put all your eggs in one basket of just making content. So yeah, I hope that this gives somebody some insight to something that they maybe didn't think about when it comes to YouTube. You know, you you're thinking about it, but maybe you didn't think about it to that scale. But yeah, if you have any questions, I also do mentoring, consulting, that type of stuff. I'm no coach. I just talk to you straight up. You if you ever want to talk to somebody about some stuff, if you have some ideas, you want some feedback. I've been doing this for a very long time, so I can give you some, you know, perspective from me, my creative perspective, basically. But yeah, go ahead and check out from a creator's perspective dot com. You can go ahead and send me an email there and think about it because it gets hard over here. OK, it's very weird and hard, and I can definitely make more videos about just the monetization side in general. Just let me know if I like in this video. I love you all so much. God bless.