Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The vast majority of content creators on the internet make little to nothing from that content creation. This includes podcasters and YouTubers. I could probably make more playing kazoo on the street than I do with this blog. I think people would pay me to quit playing. But I digress. . .
The newsflash for content creators is that you are unlikely to earn enough from your content creation to allow you to quit your day job. It is a lottery with 1% winning the jackpot and 99% taking the bait. YouTube has to pay a few people big money to keep everyone else producing all that free content. It works.
I never took the bait. I am glad to have the opportunity to publish my content. Only a few people read these posts. If 100 people read this post, I consider it a hit. Blogging is better than YouTube and podcasting because it takes less time, equipment, and energy to write a blog post than it does to make a quality video or podcast. My favorite YouTuber, Van Neistat, scripts his videos with a clanky typewriter which is why the videos have a blog like feel to them. Good writing makes good videos. I don't know about podcasts as they tend to be freestyle interviews.
If you're going to be writing, why not publish that writing? Why make the video? I enjoy the videos, and I am glad they get made. But I have to admit that it takes less time to read content than to watch or listen to content. It also takes less time to write and edit written content than to write and edit audio/visual content. A good screenwriter with a bottle of scotch and a pack of smokes can bang out a screenplay in a weekend. That same screenplay will then take years to be made into a film.
The other thing I like about writing is that it is low cost. I just need a notebook and a pencil for writing and a computer with a durable keyboard for blogging. With YouTube and podcasts, you have to buy cameras, microphones, computers, and editing software. Some folks do this on the cheap by not editing but just posting crap from their smartphones. You can tell the difference between sincere effort and that crap.
I thought about becoming the "king of all media" for about 5 minutes once upon a time, and I am glad that I decided against it. Quality podcasts and YouTube videos take too much work and money to be any good. Now, it is all I can do to publish one post per week. I will stick with blogging. I hope that you, Gentle Reader, will stick with reading.
