So, you want to be a YouTube star, huh? Well you’ve not come to the right place. While vlogging was once a staple of YouTubers, who could be seen walking all over LA with their Flip Video cameras, vlogging is now just as accessible to anyone and any brand.
You might be disappointed to learn that vlogging is not as glamorous as it once was. Not that YouTubers weren’t known for making money off of being silly on video, but the point is: vlogging is now something that everyone can profit from in 2021, just like blogging is.
The word vlog is an amalgamation of the words video and blog. A vlog is a video blog.
You wouldn’t restrict blogs only to celebrities or media personalities, would you? Likewise, a vlog is something that anyone can partake in and profit from.
Let me walk you through the place of vlogging in 2021 and how you can take advantage of it.
What Is the Purpose of Vlogging?
Besides just being video blogs, vlogs have an added layer of personality. This is because vlogs generally involve a level of self-production. Whoever is narrating and starring in the vlog is also the videographer and oftentimes the editor as well. You can think of a vlog as the video cousin of a selfie.
Because of this, vlogging can help humanize whoever is speaking or attempting to sell or promote something. In contrast to big TV commercials, vlogs make you feel like an old friend is talking to you.
This is an invaluable advantage in 2021 when most people distrust advertisements and instead rely on word-of-mouth recommendations.
Whether you’re a person with something to say or a brand with something to sell, vlogs can help you effectively market to people who are not as receptive to traditional advertising.
Here are some ways in which steady vlogging can help you and your brand.
Growing an Audience
People watch more than a billion hours of YouTube every single day. That’s billion with a b! It would take you more than 40 million days to watch as much YouTube content.
So, needless to say, the traffic is there. People LOVE watching YouTube videos.
All you need to do to grow a YouTube audience is to put out content that is well-written, well-produced, and appeals to people’s interests.
Building Connections
As mentioned earlier, vlogging can be a very intimate experience. Developing a vlogging channel that captures an audience is a sure way to humanize a brand, even nebulous tech brands that tend to give off very corporate vibes.
Believe it or not, a great example of this is Adobe. You know, the makers of Photoshop and Acrobat who constantly nag at you to pay for their enormous license fees? Them.
Take a look at this vlog from Adobe’s Creative Cloud official account.
How to Plan A Photoshoot | Part 1 – Pre-Production | Adobe Creative Cloud
The first thing you’ll notice is that the vlog involves just two people casually sitting on what looks like their living room couch. It’s not even a particularly nice couch—it just looks like a casual Thursday night at your friendly neighbor’s.
And that’s the whole point of a vlog. Adobe, a multi-billion dollar company, is leveling with us and talking to us like we’re one and the same!
Though it may sound patronizing, this creates a connection and trust between companies that cannot be overstated.
Engaging A Loyal Following
When vlogging is done successfully, it helps us—the consumers—build trust in brands. Vlogging can help us see that brands understand us: they understand what we like, what problems we have, and what we are looking for.
This can increase our loyalty to brands tremendously. If brands don’t have their finger on the pulse, they can come out with incredibly tone-deaf advertising, like the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial. Yikes.
People Are Outraged By This Pepsi Ad Starring Kendall Jenner
Difference Between Blog and Vlog
As we know, vlog is short for video blog. Blogs and vlogs serve very similar purposes: to share information with consumers. The main difference is the way in which the information is presented.
Besides that, vlogs do have a very strong advantage over blogs: more and more people are choosing to watch videos instead of reading. In fact, 72% of people would prefer to watch a video than to read.
Could it be because of low literacy levels in the US? Could it be because of the rise of TikTok and other apps that thrive off of short videos? Or perhaps online content has been SEOd to the point where people prefer watching videos instead.
Whatever the case, vlogs are here to stay. If you have not made a move in the vlogging realm, there’s no better time to start than now.
How Much Money Do Vloggers Make?
If you want a hard-and-fast answer to this question, you’re not gonna find it. Vlogging monetization is very versatile, and you can find a million and one ways to make money off of your vlogs.
On top of that, the content of your vlogs will greatly influence your money-making potential. Are you vlogging about finance and real estate, or are you vlogging about sugar cookies? While both can be lucrative, some niches can be very profitable.
Here are some of the ways in which vloggers can make money.
The Check from YouTube
Google owns YouTube, and Google Ads is in charge of playing ads before, after, and during YouTube videos.
Video creators make up to 68% of ad revenue, so Google only keeps about ⅓ of the video advertising revenue generated by your video.
A more important factor behind how fat your YouTube check is is the type of advertisers who are willing to pay for advertising space on your videos.
People who make vlogs in lucrative niches will make more ad revenue than those who make vlogs about less lucrative endeavors.
In other words, you might make a little money making vlogs about obscure Japanese folklore, but you likely won’t make more money than the guy talking about credit cards.
Corporate Sponsorships
Sponsorships happen when a brand wants to collaborate with a vlogger and sponsor the video. This is a way of doing native advertising, where the whole point is to make an advertising video that looks just like any other video from the creator.
This way, brands can plant products casually, thus making it seem more like a genuine recommendation than a paid ad.
The following video is a great example of what a corporate sponsorship looks like. The content of the video is also something we are very interested in. If you watch the first half of the video, you’ll see that it looks like a genuine vlog or like something that his subscribers would be interested in.
How YouTube Revenue Works – 3 Mistakes YouTubers Make
However, once you get to minute 9, you’ll see that the vlogger strays a little bit to talk about the video’s sponsor. After a quick shout-out to the sponsor, he then goes back to regular programming. This is how corporate sponsorships are usually done in 2021.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you refer people to different brands or products. This could be either through a custom discount code or through a referral link.
Custom discount codes are very popular because they entice the viewer to make a purchase through that code. If you’re watching a video from Bobby the Marketer, and he tells you to use promo code BOBBY for a 10% discount, then Bobby’s gonna make some money off of that purchase.
Similarly, people may insert custom Amazon links to products they refer to. This is usually through Amazon’s Affiliate Partners program, where people generate unique links to a product and earn a cut of every sale made through that link. That’s why vloggers tend to emphasize the “links down below!” part instead of letting you navigate to the item yourself.
The Best Chair for Programmers… (as an ex-Google tech lead) | Aeron vs Embody, Steelcase, Hyken…
This video is an excellent example of what affiliate vlogs look like. The vlogger first establishes his expertise and why you should trust his recommendations, and then he recommends a bunch of expensive office chairs for programmers.
Most of the links in the description below are Amazon Affiliate links. Thus, he will earn a percentage off of every sale made through his links. At close to a million views, we can guess that he has made quite a bit of money off of affiliate earnings!
If you’re interested in adding vlogs to your digital marketing strategy, we fully support you. Raw Access Media is in the business of helping people develop brands through unlimited marketing strategies. Yes, we mean that: unlimited. Contact us today to see how we can help your brand.