Over 40? You should start a YouTube channel and here’s why

I want to talk to anybody who's over 40 I almost said over 50 over 60 but a friend of mine who I've been talking to about this said well you know Kevin if you say over 40 that gets everybody um and it's really about convincing you um to get into video to do video uh and specifically YouTube in case you didn't know which probably don't because if you don't know me by the way my name is Kevin Colby um as of recording this uh do I want to tell you my age yeah what the heck

I'm 63 at the day I'm recording this I'm 63 well actually I'll be 63 for for a whole year I started my YouTube channel uh in 2017 I I hate math I think I was 57 my position was eliminated I was a creative director at a television station and had been with the company for 24 years actually have been in television had been in television past tense for over 30 something years and ironically I started my YouTube channel of January in 2017 and then that March is when they said hey we're going to eliminate your

position the company I worked for uh was fantastic and and took care of me but it it got into this what do I do what do I do what do I do and it wasn't until a couple years later that my channel got audited that I really started getting serious about YouTube and when I say got serious I stopped trying to figure out the other platforms and grow and I just started looking more into YouTube and started doing a lot of howto stuff as I've gotten older uh as as I am you know I've realized

that dang there's there's so much to offer when people will say you know that video really helped me or they want to reach out or they want me to help them and and I've done coaching and I've consulted with businesses and nonprofits and other creators and and it it's fun to be able to help somebody The more I've just thought about it I thought you know I really want to help more people over 40 or 50 or 60 or however old you are or 70 I don't care uh really do video and do more with

video video's been a a large part of my life for a long time I I hate the word expert I know a lot about video I don't know everything about video I shoot my own stuff um I edit my own stuff absolutely love editing absolutely love editing um I'm kind of self-taught um but I love editing I I do all my own stuff I do my own thumbnails I upload and and everything like that and uh air conditioning is kicking in but I thought you know one of the things I I haven't done is share

my experience that much with other is it is it okay to say like-minded people that are 40 plus 50 plus 60 plus but I'd love to hear you know what's your age when do you start and if you haven't started kind of what's holding you back and that's what I want to do more of on this channel just be very transparent I'm a solo content creator meaning I work for me this is what I do for a living um and there's a lot of different ways I've earned a living and it's insane how many connections

I've made off of YouTube so part of this video is just trying to uh encourage you I started I don't like the word inspire here's why I don't think I can inspire you I mean if I do that's nice but I I want to encourage you and I want to help you if you're thinking about it's like man you know you you watch one of these YouTube videos and you're like dang I can do that then I want to encourage you and help you to do that why would you start a YouTube channel well there's

a lot of reasons one is it it can be a source of income there's so many different ways to earn money on and off YouTube and if you would like to see a video about that I mean I can I can do a more in-depth one of of ways I've earned just full disclosure I I don't enjoy sharing numbers I don't know why maybe it was the way I was raised is you know you never tell anybody what you make um I can tell you this I made a very nice salary in television and it's

taken me a while to get even close to that over years uh it's not consistent but it is what it is God God's taking care of of my family so I'm I'm certainly not complaining but if you if you want to see like another video that gets more into ways that you could possibly you know make money on or off YouTube you know I'll be happy to share some things I've done and some ideas and heck learned from you as well but that is a way of of that that is a benefit of YouTube it

allows you to to not even just make money it's called AdSense if you don't if if you haven't heard anything about that when at certain point you can you have the opportunity you're invited by YouTube to join the partner program and the partner program you have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time and if you haven't started your just starting you may think dang Kevin there's just no way I'm going to get there and it can seem like a struggle and I there's too many guys there's too many people out there that

want to just pretend like oh you just do X Y and Z and you'll just grow and blow up and I want to say that it's not that easy but YouTube doesn't have to be that hard either you have to decide what you want to do when you get 1,000 subscribers 4,000 hours of watch time you can join the uh YouTube Partner program and what that does is it unlocks a lot of of different features for you as a YouTuber and then YouTube can put ads on your videos without being in the program but once

you're in the program then you get a cut of that and you know what I should know what the cut is and I can't remember different um niches as you've heard different uh types of content will earn more um you know I personally wouldn't chase that to try and make money off that AdSense can be good money but it's also very inconsistent it can be seasonal it can be based on your content but that's just one of the many ways if you have your own business or let's say you create something let's say you're a

crafter and you sew um you could actually use YouTube to maybe sell patterns my wife's a seamstress so I'm going to act like I know anything about sewing I triy to sew a button whats it it I it couldn't even you couldn't get the little hole through it you know cuz I don't about someone I showed it so tight on there so I won't be doing any videos about how to be a seamstress but if you wanted to be a seamstress or you are a seamstress there's ways you could do that you could start a

newsletter you could start a group you could sell patterns um you could do coaching and Consulting so there's different ways you can do that um the other thing about YouTube is that if you haven't heard this I mean it's it's the second biggest search engine owned by Google which is the biggest search engine when you go to Google and you search something if there's a video related to that topic YouTube will serve that up you've probably seen that um some of my videos have shed up in Search and that has helped those videos to grow

Google's not going to serve up videos from LinkedIn or Facebook or Tik Tock or Instagram they're going to serve up videos If it relates to what you may be looking for from YouTube and like I said I've had videos that have been boosted if you will organic I didn't put any money in fact I've never paid for ads for my channel for anything I've done and it it will help bring more traffic if you will more eyeballs more viewers to your video um and sometimes it's it's over time there's one video I did that I

mean for a long time it just didn't get that many views and all of a sudden just took off the last time I looked the video right now 50% of the audience is coming from from people searching for this on YouTube I think it's about how to how to share big video files or something like that and and then like 50% is coming from Google search which is kind of cool I mean I'm not going to lie when when you go to Google and you see your video on there you're like dang that's kind of

cool when you look at the platform YouTube is there's there's there's really no other platform like this uh I like Facebook I've been on Facebook a long time I use it more for personal I do have a page but I don't do anything with it as much much as I've made connections on Facebook I it's not searchable Instagram you know I stopped posting on there like over a year or so ago I think I did something around Easter if I never post on there again I'm fine I do play on Twitter X whatever it's called

right now and and and I'm and I've done some stuff on LinkedIn I've never ever though ever had any um level of Engagement success you have to find what your success is that I have had on YouTube um and so I throw that out there um if you start a channel and I'm going to encourage you to especially if you're over 40 there's so much you can offer but if you start a channel what I'm going to encourage you to do based on my experience uh take it what it's worth is focus on YouTube don't

start a YouTube channel and then think well okay well I've got to start another uh social media channel because that's how I my YouTube channel somebody said this and I think it was somebody worked at YouTube once that said let YouTube do YouTube or something like that probably made more sense basically what they were saying is you know YouTube YouTube doesn't promote channels what YouTube's job is is when anybody goes to YouTube they're trying to find videos they think you're really interested in based on what you've seen before based on what other people that they

feel like may be kind of like you was watching and then they're also tracking things that you've watched so like if I watch you know camping videos never camped then I'm going to get some of those sometimes but I'm telling you there's no platform like YouTube so if you start a YouTube channel and I hope you do just focus on YouTube just focus on YouTube whether you're uploading once a week once a month you know just focus on that and don't worry about all the other platform forms that you think you need to be on

to grow your YouTube channel if you want to be on Instagram because you like Instagram Do It um I will say this there's no other platform that has the the opportunities that YouTube does in terms of reaching out and connecting with people the types video you can make and the ways you can earn um it is the most Creator friendly if you will when it comes to that they give you so many tools so let's talk about the types of content like this is just a produced video you can do long form video you can

do short video not to be confused with shorts which is a vertical video it has to be under 60 seconds YouTube is added podcasting and you know and it's really made for more video podcasting but if you have a podcast you can bring it into YouTube as well and now YouTube music is part of that so it's another way that your channel can get discovered you can do live streams which by the way um hang on let me grab it sorry I'll do a plug I I wrote a book called live streaming Made Easy there's

the book I I didn't do this for a plug but again talk about doing something I wrote this when I was 62 my first book ever 62 and I'm G lay it over there um and it was fun and I'm actually working on another book now with a friend of mine um I love to write uh video comes more natural for me actually I love to write too so I take that back and then they have Community posts I don't know if you've seen these but think of it as like updates and things like that

you can do polls and stuff it's a little Instagram is if you will and Facebook is um at a certain point you could have a a shop you can connect to a shop you can sell things so like you may see under some of my videos where it will have products that I have mentioned in the video but let's go back to the monetization thing another thing you can do is in the description of your videos you can link to things that maybe you're selling or your affiliate link so like for this video I will

list the gear I'm using for this video and and let me tell you this it's not as fancy as you may think I'm using a camera on a monopod which is basically a tripod with one leg there's a mic connected to it and I've got one light right there just to give me a little bit more brightness that's it that's all I'm using for this video but I'll give give you an idea of that but YouTube makes it really easy to start I mean literally I mean chances are if you're watching this you already are

on YouTube but you may have not gotten serious about a channel you have to start have a Gmail account it's tied to your YouTube channel don't ever give that Gmail account out and then you can start posting and you may say well what do I create videos about well it could be about anything if you're in business for yourself let's say you're a real estate agent this could be a great way way to share your knowledge about real estate whether it's selling a house buying a house things to look out for the market maybe you're

into Financial stuff maybe you're a crafter maybe you're a baker there's a buddy of mine that I that I finally convinced to get into YouTube and he's a DIY guy brilliant that way I mean he's done everything from build a Murphy bed to just you know show you how to change the trimmer on on a weed whacker thing but his full-time job is being an it guy he does this on the side and he's actually had very good success um because it's even got him on Amazon as well and he has companies send him things

so my point is is that there there's so many things you can do I wouldn't try and be something you're not but I think that's the advantage to being older I mean I'll be honest um I like to be liked but I don't I don't really care I mean this is me this is my hair um I have long hair at my age I don't really care um since I work for my myself and I work out of my home so i' I've done another video on this room it may be a little dated because

I've changed some things up but this room that I'm in is a former bedroom if you want to know the specs it's 11 by 13 it's not even that big and I changed it out to be my office studio so this is where I edit this where I shoot my videos this is where I do clients or watch videos or or whatever and you know so this is this is my space this is where I create from um but you you could you could do almost anything um and if you don't know what to do

but it's like I want to do something then make that your first video here's another idea and I thought about this the other day have you ever watched a video and you think oh I could do a video about that not necessarily better but I could just do a video about that do a video about that some of my video ideas have come with from people asking questions how do you change a thumbnail how do you do this how do you do that and I still want to teach but I want to not just be

a how-to sorry I got itch I just don't want to be a how-to channel I want to be that that channel that hopefully you look and say hey this dude's over 60 and and he's making it work or he's struggling being a solo content creator I started my own business I'm a business of one and so I think sharing more of that hopefully would help you and we can learn from from each other and just so you know um I got three kids two are older and moved away and married um our youngest has special

needs and my wife stay at home as well and so you know I have to balance that um I've had to rearrange schedules um and and and be and look I'm not he is our first priority and because he has special needs and and if you know anything about special needs some times you know his schedule will dictate my schedule I've had live streams I've had to cancel thankfully I've had some clients in the past that I've had to move some things around and they've been very understanding life happens you don't have to go crazy

on YouTube you don't have to like man I've got to post every day I got to post three videos a week and stuff like that what I would suggest to you is if that's the advice you're getting to ignore that the fastest way to burn out the fastest way to not enjoy something is is if it becomes a job you know you can post as much as you want you can post as little as you want I will say the more you post especially as you're starting out the more you may discover man I like

live streaming better or I I just like I like doing shorts better if you do that's fine you know you're going to find out those things and you're going to you're going to grow and if you're brand new to creating you'll you'll start learning what you like and don't like and what the audience resonates to as well what if you don't know anything about gear Kevin I I you know all I've got is my phone use your phone the only reason I'm using my can and if you're interested this is a Canon M50 Mark I

uh Canon discontinued this camera and I would still bite in a heartbeat love this camera but I have an iPhone I have um a DJI osmo Pock I'm looking because it's over here on the Shelf pocket three if you've got a phone use your phone and I'll probably do future videos on my phone just to say I I don't want to be one of these guys say just use your phone I never use my phone you don't need a lot of fancy gear at all at all just use what you have use your phone uh

if you don't even have a tripod you probably ought to get some kind of little tripod just you know put it up on a stack of books or something like that um I would get a mic if you could you know spend a lot of money the light I'm using here is it's not a cheap light it's about $100 light I think but it's one of my favorite lights um but you could stand near a window or something I have a window right there that I have a like a sunblock shade on so use what

you have seriously and if you've never heard anybody say that then then there let me be the first if you've heard somebody say that it's true it is true you have a big Advantage we have a big advantage in the fact that we have life experience whatever it is and whatever you decide to do and I really hope you do you may say well Kevin there's other people doing that same thing on YouTube that's right but there's something different between them and you and it's you did that make sense you have experience that they don't

have you have knowledge that they don't have you have a take on something that they don't have let's say that you love music from the 80s or you know old classic movies and you want to talk about that do a YouTube channel about that because you never know if your hobby or something you're just in doing or you're doing on the side that you really like can turn into something that becomes big I mean there's a guy on the internet I think he goes by Sean Chandler talks about and he was a former youth pastor

Loves Movies he and his wife went to see some movie he decided to upload a video talking about it and now guys that's his full-time job is he reviews I I don't think he does TV shows now I think it's mainly movies and he talks about that and that's what he gets to do he's doing something he loves he gets paid for it he gets to touch lives people have him speaking and he's and he's doing that there's no absolute guaranteed success but I can guarantee you this if you don't start you don't share your

gifts you don't take a chance and hit record and upload that video no one will ever know what you could possibly do and possibly share you may be surprised at the connections you can make I mean it's amazing I have I have made friends with people around the world that I would have never known otherwise I would have absolutely positively never known had it not been for YouTube I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and and some other ideas I mean if you have some ideas for other videos take to to make and get

into this that's great because I think the more that that we present I think it's going to be just great so I uh I appreciate you and I appreciate you watching and uh have a great day