Six Benefits To Doing YouTube As A Hobby

 

I've been trying for years to build up one YouTube channel or another to the point where it would at least pay our grocery bills. I've finally decided to give that up.

If you've tried to go full-time with YouTube and become frustrated, or if you enjoy making videos and are wondering whether you should just stick with it as a hobby, the video above and this article explains the six benefits to doing YouTube as a hobby.

Benefit #1.

When YouTube is a hobby, there's no pressure or stress around it. Anyone who makes any decent amount of money from YouTube, whether it's a few hundred dollars a month or six figures a month, will tell you that pleasing both their audience and the YouTube algorithm is stressful. You have to look right, sound right, say the right things, be entertaining in some way, edit footage well, and continually come up with fresh content. All this encompasses both financial stress and psychological stress.

Then there are the negative comments, and social media and online forums where big YouTubers are often ripped to shreds by perfect strangers. In some niches, such diet and nutrition, people opposed to a particular lifestyle create channels dedicated to tearing down YouTubers who follow that lifestyle. If you're just doing YouTube as a hobby, you'll probably never get that big, and won't have to worry about that.

As a hobby YouTuber, you can upload as frequently or as infrequently as you want. Full-time YouTubers, on the other hand, are constantly under pressure to upload videos on a consistent basis.

Benefit #2.

Unlike a full-time YouTuber, a hobbyist isn't constrained to a single topic or a single video format. You can create whatever kind of video suits your current whim, about whatever topic is on your mind. You can do a lifestyle vlog one day, and two days later do a talking head video teaching about the best way to remove fleas from a dog. 

Benefit #3.

I've already touched on this, but it's such a critical issue regarding what you want to do with YouTube that it bears repeating.

If YouTube is only a hobby, you don't have to worry about consistency in uploading. Someone trying to make YouTube into a career HAS to have an uploading schedule, and keep it consistent. And at this point in time, you need to be uploading a bare minimum of once a week if you want to be seen by even a few people.

But as a YouTube hobbyist, you would be under no such constraints. If you want to upload every day for two weeks, then disappear for four months, it's fine.  

Benefit #4.

You can turn off comments. 

If you want to build a big channel so you can make big bucks from it, this is a no-no. One thing the YouTube algorithm looks for when recommending videos to viewers is engagement; i.e., likes, dislikes, and comments. So, turning off comments while trying to become a full-time YouTuber is like shooting yourself in the foot right before running a marathon.

But if you don't care about growing a big channel, you can turn off comments. And therefore, never have to deal with ugly or stupid people.

Benefit #5.

If you're doing YouTube as a hobby, you'll never obsess over your analytics. When I say "obsess," I mean, OBSESS. People trying to grow a YouTube channel are constantly worrying over a variety of numbers: those related to watch time, subscribers, and views. If those numbers are discouraging - which is inevitable if you're trying to start a YouTube channel in 2023 and beyond - they turn their brains inside out trying to figure out how to "improve" the numbers.

Ugh.

But as a hobbyist, you couldn't care less about all that. All the fun, none of the stress.

Benefit #6.

There's a fact that YouTube gurus keep locked at the back of a closet that is essential to understand when you're looking at the "YouTube: hobby, or career?" question. That fact is, unless you're a really huge channel (tens of millions of subs or more), your YouTube income is inconsistent and unstable. In fact, many YouTubers who have been full-time, in recent years have been forced to go out and get a real job because their income suddenly and inexplicably tanked.

Ha. Not so inexplicably. The more channels that are vying for advertising dollars, the less there is to go around. 

Whereas, if you're doing YouTube as a hobby, getting your living income from some other source, you don't have to sell your soul to sponsors or care about YouTube advertising glitches, and the usual advertising dollar ups and downs. 

I've decided to tap into the health-giving benefits of doing YouTube as a hobby. How about you?