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WHY MOST CONTENT CREATORS ARE POOR

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I am a poor content creator- Should I quit?

This is a bit of a rant I felt like pouring my heart out and sharing my struggles.

I have been a content creator since last 5 years - I began writing this blog before I jumped onto YouTube. I didn't know much about the websites so I watched many YouTube videos on how to create one. Soon I was able to buy my domain, and set up everything. I then started writing articles. It was a sharp learning curve as I really didn't know much and I had to learn a lot. Each article took two to three days to write and publish. This was way before AI came in place so all was done on my own. Also I was writing in English despite Polish being my first language. So I knew there will be mistakes not just typos, but the grammatical too. Neverhesell I have published about 20 articles before I started to noticed ythat noone was even visiting my website (apart of my friends and family I sent the links too). I needed to switch and I though- Let me do YouTube. At that time a friend of mine helped me get over my fear of camera through her coaching sessions. And I scripted my first video. Oh my day, it was so crindge. My husband helped me and I was struggling to memorise my own script (I don't know how actors memorise pages of script).
It took me about 5 attempts until I did the "acceptable" version.
Then I had to edit it. Initially my husband purchased a course on Premier po editing and we both sat down to watch it. Very soon he lost an interest and I carried on...
From now he never once edited any of my videos, I was on my own with it for many years before I even tried outsourseing it.
The edits took time, but I managed to get my first video out and sent it to my friends and family. Not many people seen my first videos and maybe that's for the best. One feedback I got from my friend was that it was boring and she would never actually watch it had it not been mine...
It was painful truth but at least she was honest.
But I got hooked onto it. Something was driving me to carry on... I eventually dropped my blog (the same one you are reading now) as it would be too much to do. I have had a full time job, a house to manage and 3 kids, so I had my hands full already.
I now have posted over 500 videos, but have only 40 thousands subscribers. And the worst part is that I am not even making enough money to sustain myself from this hustle. And this is what I want to rant about. So please forgive me my long introduction to this post but I wanted you to understand that before I even joined Youtube Partnership Program and made any money whatsoever I was already creating content for over one year... And when I finally got to sign into it, it was peanuts... It still is peanuts. I hardly make enough to cover the expenses that involve running a channel. I would probably be correct in saying that I paid into this creation journey far more to what I have made so far, yet some things I just don't record or take into account as expenses due to their nature. Say I get an upgrade on the hotel (which I would have to pay for otherwise- I don't know exactly how much would this cost me so I do not count this. Or the cost of my iPhone, iPad, editing software, Canva subscription, Epidemic sound subscription, InShot subscription, Cloud storage, Website costs, so on and so forth. I do not include this. Maybe I should one day sit down and count it all up so I have an idea just how much out I am. But really, being a content creator is like being an artist. You spend years and years creating and crafting different peaces of art before you even get noticed. And on Youtube you are constatntly at the mercy of the everchanging algorithm. And it can really take many many videos before the YouTube notices your content and pushes it to a wider audience.
Now, I want to give you a perspective on what I have been making so far from YouTube and other streams of income that I managed to generate over the years.
First is the YouTube ads which as up to now I made £6914 over the last 4 years of being on YouTube


Here is the full analitics and as you can see the very first two years was heardly anything, then in Aug 2023 it spoked only to now be back to same kind of earnings as before the spike. But at least it is something.
Now I know many creators who have a smaller channels and slightly larger channels too. They too are not making much money. Unless you manage to create multiple income streams alongside Adsense revenue, it is a very difficult task to actually live off it.
My second income stream is (or was I should say as we hardly get it these days..) consultation
I cannot show you the screenshot as the payments came through to my account across many months and it is difficult to display. So YouTube ads is easy to show and understand where it comes from. As to the consultation, I want to tell you how this came about. About a year into my YouTube journey my husband opened his transport business. I though it would be a great idea to share this on the video. So once he was running it for the year or so, we put together a summary of what is it like to run a transport business and a few other videos where we explained how much one can make off such business. We also talked about the process of getting the operators licence. So all this we posted on my channel and eventually we had a question from out viewer to help them set up a business. So what happened is that the videos we were putting up gave us the authority to now teach someone else how did we do it. Over the months we got some more people and I figured I need to create a landing page and get some free checklist attached to it so that people can book calls with us. My husband shared a lot of knowledge with people. So I knew we have a lot of value to give. I even written the whole course on it but just never came around to make it online as I got stuck at choosing a platform to host it on. I might get to do it one day.
So the consultation totaled around £5000 but I lost the sheet I used to save it on so I remember last figure was around that much.
But the biggest winner was when we met a group of friends who came to our consultation and they asked if they could take over our business. At that point me and my husband were planning to leave the UK. The business was difficult to run, the weather is not great, expenses kept going up due to political instability, and we just had enough of a rat race. So this came at a great time to us. We took the opportunity and sold the business. This was the biggest win, but as the business was actually not mine (yes my husband was the owner, but the sale would not happen had he not had a business). So I cannot count this as a pure YouTube gain. Let's say I am counting a small percentage of the sale as my fee - I call it £10000.
I did try affiliate marketing but it never generated any significant profits for me so I won't even list it as it's kind of embarrasing to admit...
So that's all the money made...
But the amount of time I have spent creating the content cannot justify. 5 years of content creation of minimum 2 videos a week which each can take several hours to produce cannot justify the money I have made...
And I know some of you might think... it's not always about money, and I would say yes you are right. It should be first the help, value, satisfaction and creativity that you are fueling and money will follow. So despite all this I am still doing what I do, hoping the money will flow. But... I am changing a direction of my strategy. I will now start building a community not just on YouTube but I will start writing my posts in hope to share my thoughts with you and also hopefully provide some behind the scenes insights and motivation to help you to cope with the content creation journey.
I hope this was useful and you might find this as an inspiration as nowadays there is so much knowledge available and so many AI tolls to help you become a better creator that there is no excuse why you too can make a side hustle out of content creation. or if you are already a content creator just keep learning from other successful creators while utilising some of the hundreds of tools available to you. Please let me know in the comments below if you have same struggles, and what would you like to say to a person who might be at the start of the journey.
Thank you
Agnes

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