Are You Doing YouTube Full Time?

I do have to admit, in the last decade or so, I have gone through so many changes. From quitting my engineering job to working for Olympus Malaysia, then quitting Olympus and become a full-time photographer, then I started the YouTube channel, I guess the only constant in my life is obviously change. However, I am currently still a photographer, earning the bulk of my income doing paid shoots and assignments for clients. Therefore, it was incredibly amusing when more and more people have come up to me and asked how "life being a full time YouTuber" was like. I then told them YouTube is just a side hustle, and you can see the shock in their facial expressions. How, and why would people think I have become a full time YouTuber? On the contrary, should I take the dive and be an actual, full time YouTuber? There is a lot to unpack here. 

I am not going to lie, YouTube has played a huge part in my life, in fact it saved my life. During the Covid-19 pandemic, with forced lockdown everywhere, for 2 years I was out of jobs, no one hired an on-location photographer. I do mostly event coverage, stage photography and some weddings and portraits, and I was earning nearly zero in the year 2020-2021. Thankfully my YouTube channel took off just before the pandemic hit, and I only had to do a little push before it became a reliable, consistent source of income by late 2020. Basically, I managed to survive on YouTube income alone during those tough times, but it was far from being sustainable. 

As things started to get back to normal, I had two choices to make (there were plenty, but let's simplify to just two for discussion sake): 1) Go 100% with YouTube, and forget about my photography career or 2) Revive the photography business, since demand was coming back and it would be silly to let years of hard work building my foundation go to waste. I opted for choice 2 while still maintaining my YouTube channel, because I don't want to put all my eggs into one basket. One thing I have learned is that anything can go at any time without warning, the YouTube did prove to be extremely useful during the dry months. I have also built quite a strong network and portfolio for my photography business in Kuala Lumpur, so it only made perfect sense to do both, while prioritizing rebuilding my photography business, and maintaining the YouTube uploads on the side. 

Since I have decided to push the photography side of things, I had to do some compromises on the YouTube direction. In the first 2-3 years, I published 2 long form videos per week, every Monday and Thursday without fail. Since life has gotten busier, and I was getting more shoots, I did not have enough time to make two long form videos anymore, so I cut down to just one video upload per week. To compensate for the loss of one video (which was a significant chunk of revenue). I started Live Streaming, which was an entirely different story on its own, that I have mentioned several times here in this blog in the past, but one Live Stream every week was not enough to recover the loss of revenue of the long form video. It did bring in some income, but it was also much easier to execute - after the stream is over, I hit end stream, and no hours and hours on video editing was needed. 

This model of shooting jobs as my main income, and YouTube as secondary hustle worked well for the past 2 years or so. The jobs come in steadily, and the channel grew at a slower pace, but I was perfectly fine with that. The channel was no longer the priority, so I cannot expect 100% output from a 50% input. In short, I did not give my best, and I knew there was always the potential of growing the channel more. 

I am not sure how people would come to conclusion that I have become a full time YouTuber. 

There is always the possibility of me quitting my photography career and just do YouTube full time, maybe that will happen in the future, but not now. YouTube economy is an interesting place - besides the obvious AdSense (Google Ads), there are many ways to earn some income through the world of YouTube. There is collaboration with brands and companies, to direct sponsorship which can bring in steady flow of income, both I have not explored much yet. Then there is the merchandizing aspect - I can sell products or services, for example, photobooks, or T-shirts, or even online courses on photography, all that pushed through the YouTube platform. The big ones would be doing workshops in exotic locations, or conducting masterclasses, possibly online too, but I'd rather do that in person if I can. There are just so many ways to earn and expand the YouTube economy, and I barely scratched the surface. I cannot be spending too much time and effort plunging in all these, when I still have to meet my clients, spend time shooting, editing my images, and scouring for next possible photography jobs. 

For now, I am a photographer first, YouTuber second. I am not saying this will stay the same forever. But I am quite happy where I am. Finally for the first time, in a long time, I managed to find some balance in my life, and I'd like that balance to stay a bit longer if possible. 

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