The first thing that people should know about my so-called career as a content creator is that I started as a way to justify playing video games when I was unemployed. I stumbled across the idea that you could make a living by playing non-competitive video games by watching the folks on Hermitcraft. Streaming came up because I happened to be online one time when Joe Hills started a stream.
Since then, I’ve had a few people ask about streaming or making videos. Generally, these people want to get paid to play video games. That’s not what happens. If you get paid for just “playing video games”, that means you’re streaming your gameplay, and you’re actually being paid to let companies run ads (hopefully, to a very large audience). If you’re making videos, you’re being paid for conceptualizing whatever you have decided to do, planning a narrative, spending a long time doing the basics so you can play well or understand how to earn whatever achievement you’re trying to document, recording (probably multiple takes), editing, publishing, and promoting; even then, you’re only getting money when companies advertise before and/or during your video.
Now that I’ve told you the basics of the work, I should tell you some other disheartening facts. I’ve been streaming off and on for almost two years, fairly regularly for one, and: my average concurrent viewership is about two and a half, my earnings from streaming are about US$2-3/month. You will NOT be discovered quickly. You will NOT get rich quick.
I’ve been around for a couple content creators going full time. The things they have in common is that they had been doing content creation (videos and streams) for the better part of a decade or more; they have alternative income (generally related to their streaming) such as Patreon, merchandise, investments, or government benefits; unless they have substantial alternative income, they also keep their spending extremely low (near or below poverty level in some cases).
One of these recent full time content creators records the interesting parts of their content on stream, so I know that their minimum time input just for recording is over ten hours. This doesn’t include planning, researching, editing, coordinating with other content creators on the server, or any other administrative work. Those ten hours of recording turn into a half hour long video.
Those hours of recording are only the beginning. Any YouTuber then has to review the footage, then edit the footage, then there’s the additional work of making that edited footage into a useful video (text overlays, intro and outro sequences).
Next comes the encoding necessary to make it a YouTube video, and not just one that can be played from the hard drive. This step can fail at any point (including the literal last minute of a multi-hour process). This file then has to be uploaded to YouTube, another long process which could fail. Once this is uploaded, congratulations, you’re a YouTuber.
If you’re going down the streaming branch of content creation, it’s technically easier to create the content, but the actual process of making it a practical source of income is just as hard. To start streaming, you only need a computer that can run the game you want to stream and a piece of software to send the image to your streaming service of choice. You can stream without a microphone. You can definitely stream without a camera (I do, several people that I socialise with do; there’s even a whole community using virtual avatars).
Once you get past that barrier to entry, content creation takes a lot of work unrelated to making content. As I said, you won’t be discovered fast, you won’t get rich fast. Getting discovered is proof that overnight successes take years of work. You have to network (interact with other content creators, game devs, etc.) so they can recommend you, let you know about new games, all the things make it easier to get attention; however, networking in a cold, calculated fashion will lead to alienating the very people who can help you.
Earning money out of content creation takes as many hours as working in a corporate environment, and a lot more effort. In a corporate environment, the direction of your work is decided by managers and directors, promoting your product is the job of a whole department. Creating content on your own grants you freedom to choose your own direction, but if you’re drawing a blank, you’re the one up against it. You will also have to do your own publicity and promotion.
If this has not made you decide against content creation, then consider your goals and desires for content creation. If you want to do this to make money, because it’s easy, or it’s the “in” thing to do, realise that you’re not going to make money, it’s not an easy living, and you will get bored. If you want to make videos or stream because you enjoy playing video games, I would strongly recommend you find a career to pay the bills and make content as a passion project or side gig.
If you want to do it because you enjoy streaming and making videos, that’s the perfect reason, so find a job to pay the bills for a couple decades while you hone your craft and build a fanbase that can contribute to your success. If you have an opportunity to attend a camp or seminar or conference to learn more, do it. Play around with making videos at home (there are a number of free software packages to make videos). Learn how to do the art, learn how to do the supporting work.
I’m not telling you these things to tell you to not pursue content creation; I want the people who are asking to know the reality and to not run into the “I never knew it was this hard” wall. Everything we, as humans, do has some difficulty associated with it: actors spend hours getting their makeup done to film a scene for several hours that will run on screen for five minutes; photographers take thousands of photos and only publish one or two of them because the others are blurry, crop someone’s head, has a bird leaving a dropping in the background; programmers and software developers go through multiple iterations before having their code returned because it doesn’t work with the UI; managers have to convince their employees (who all have different motivations) to do the best work they can. All of these things happen after we learn how to do the things we’re trying to do. The learning is long and hard, the working is long and hard, the failures are frequent and painful, but the successes are all the more wonderful, exciting, and joyous because of that. Find your successes where you want, but make sure you know how far you may have to go to get it, and be sure you are ready to go that distance.