I would like to talk about something I realized after creating educational content on YouTube for couple years.
My first tutorial was published on 11th March, 2019 so five years ago, currently (13th July 2024) I have over 300 videos uploaded, mostly tutorials for game development.
Photo by Kevin Ku on Pexels.com
I am somewhat ashamed to say, but a lot of them sort of repeat the same topics or they repeat topics you could find elsewhere on YouTube, sometimes released before and sometimes after my video.
That’s where most of my issue come from. The only way how you can make YouTube worth your time as an educator, is if you upload a lot and focus on SEO long tail traffic. There are of course creators who make bombastic, in your face videos, that sometimes happen to have educational value, but that’s a content I find personally very off putting and refuse to watch or create.
I could make it work if I wanted, I could make very clickbaity sensationalist videos about TOP 69 TIPS in UE5, CLICK NOW. But I find this content disturbing and unhelpful at best.
To give you some idea, my channel made less than $4k and gathered over 2 million views over past 5 years. The money was never a reason why I started posting on YouTube, but it’s still nothing in contrast with all the work I did.
There was of course many indirect benefits I got from posting professional tutorials, but let’s leave that for some other day.
Today I want to talk about why I believe it sucks to create educational content on YouTube.
What sucks
- If you don’t sell out, you are out
- Very much what we covered above. If you decide to make non-clickbait, above 4th grader level of content, you can expect only minimal views. Especially now since YouTube nuked search traffic. It has become much worse for me as both a creator and consumer.
- YT rewards you for posting more content, not good content
- This one is just a very sad trap I fell into myself. I posted too many videos that just repeat themself. Many tutorials cover very similar topics and from educational point of view publishing one well done tutorial would be much better. But from YouTube success (both views and growth) point of view posting 8 times a month is a lot better than posting 2 times a month. Why would educator create a thought through video covering in-depth topic, rather than bunch of videos covering same topic all over and over? The second option makes more money and will be seen by more people. Now you are at a dilemma… Will you repeat yourself like a clown and keep saying the same thing all over because YouTube will serve those videos to more people or will you record just one, that will be seen by few? Ignoring the boost of extra money. What’s the best move here? Your goal is to educate most people and to do that you need to dance as YouTube wants you to.
- People who watch tutorials forget you
- That is a sad reality of doing any tutorial based content. People will come for one video and then leave and never remember you. Unless you build your tutorials around your personal brand, people will forget you and have no loyalty.
- Complicated Incentives
- As an educator you have a responsibility to recommend only what you know will work. Where do sponsors fit im it?One of the few ways how you can earn decent money from YouTube without making your own product is to promote someone else’s product.The problem here is, that you have no way of knowing if the product is good. Hear me out here. Sure, you do your due diligence, check their reviews, talk with their marketing department and a lot more.But what makes you so sure you can actually tell? The incentives just don’t work. Why should I say bad things if saying good things makes me money?Sure we can pretend that we are morally correct and wouldn’t do that, except you would. I would. The problem is, we don’t know if we do that or not. There is just too much subconscious bias.We humans have really hard time judging things correctly if judging one way directly benefits us. I don’t think a person can honestly look at a situation and say to him/her self, that this decision was made completely objectively. I certainly don’t want to pretend I can do that.
Solution?
Bad news, I don’t have any. I don’t think it will get better on a platform like YouTube.
Let’s just look at incentives of our three parties.
- YouTube
Cares only about time spend on the platform (engagement) because more time on the platform, more ads can be served.In the end YouTube cares about revenue first and foremost, not the best interest of you or the creator. If the creator creates manipulative content that doesn’t add much value, but keeps the viewer watching —>YouTube wins. That’s of course true for any business. The design of a business is what matters. If YouTube was rewarded by income for providing the highest quality content, the incentives would be set right.
- Creator
Cares about what content will have highest impact. Impact can be relative, some creator may care only about helping small niche group, but since he/she is never rewarded for that externally, it rarely lasts.Generally reward will be either social standing or income. The optimal way for creator to get both is to create bombastic content of lower quality. Most choose to do so and I don’t blame anyone who does.
- Viewer
Cares about being entertained or educated. This should be served by creator, but unless YouTube incentives creator to provide that content, it’s never self-supporting ecosystem.
I think one of the fundamental issues is that content is provided for free. There has to be an exchange happening willingly. If it’s not, it happens unwillingly.
In YouTube’s case, viewer pays with attention and YouTube serves ads to generate revenue.
There are more suitable models for education, where you pay directly per course or subscription for example and in such cases the interest of the provider is to deliver the highest quality content.
I really hope we will figure out how to provide education for free to anyone and everyone while properly rewarding all of the creators of said education.
Sadly YouTube isn’t it.
PS: This is just the first part of this blog series, here is the next one: