Benefits of creating educational content on YouTube

I recently wrote a post about how much it sucks to be an educator on YouTube. I have established there, that it’s not worth it in my opinion.

Especially considering how little money YouTube gives you, how problematic sponsorships are and how fleeting tutorial-watching audience is and always will be.

Reading the previous post first will give you a lot more context to what we will talk about today, so I would suggest starting there:

The problem with educational content on YouTube

Today, I want to talk about the exact opposite. I want to talk about all the benefits I have received by creating and posting educational content on YouTube for past 5 years.

I understand my expertize much better

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This is a strange effect I have noticed with all serious educator, people who honestly try to teach us something.

If you really try to teach someone, you will understand the subject itself much better. There seems to be different stages (depth?) of understanding a subject. Here is work-in-progress outline as it seems to me now:

• Surface understanding
  • You kinda know what it’s about
• Intuitive understanding
  • You know how to get what you want from it
• Real understanding
  • You understand how it works and why you get results
• Deep understanding
  • You can explain how and why it works

It seems to me, that the only time we truly understand a subject is when we can properly explain it to someone else with all the reasons why it’s done this way and not any other.
In short:

Making educational content forces you to really understand it.

Develop presentation skills

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Since you will spend time doing something, you will get better at it. It’s quite obvious that practice leads to improvement.

I have gotten much better at public speaking, distilling information, and presentations just because I spent time making tutorials on YouTube.

That’s just a tip of the icebreak, there is also SEO research, video editing, writing and many other supportive skills I was forced to develop.

Establish Authority

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This is probably the biggest indirect benefit. Publishing educational content establishes you as an authority on the subject, for better and worse.

It’s a double edged sword.
On one hand anyone can now share what they know with anyone else and people decide who to listen to.
Sadly enough, that seems to often lead to the loudest, not the most informed getting most of the attention.

Putting that aside, depending on what you are sharing and teaching, you will be likely contacted for contract work. Some of the most lucrative contracts I have done as a freelancer came from people stumbling across my UE tutorials and contacting me afterwards.

I would not underestimate this. If you are looking to establish yourself as a freelancer or public speaker… anyone who does contract work, publishing educational content for free will serve you well.

You need to be aware, that it’s a very long-term strategy. It takes years before people start finding you and it’s certainly not a reliable lead generator, but it can be very effective if done well.

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I don’t have much love left for YouTube, but I certainly don’t regret all the work I did.

I learned a lot, I have received a lot and I have helped a lot of people.

This whole post was written from perspective of all the benefits you get from publishing educational content but…

There is one main benefit that you won’t get, but everyone else will. You will help a lot of people, whether that matters or not, is up to you of course.

I don’t think there is anything wrong in acting completely out of self-interest in this instance. In the end, if a person produces a lot of educational content, that helps and teaches a lot of people, does it matter if the author did it only for the money?
Or for the prestige and fame?

That’s up to you to decide. In the end a lot of people will receive help and that’s the important part.

Last post in the essay series:

Current YouTube makes me sad