YouTube & Etsy Q&A: Filming & Editing, Business Advice, Making Money, Marketing
i'm not going to be like every single person watching this needs to start a youtube no hey guys welcome to the Sewing Report i'm Jen this channel is all about making sewing and crafts fun and approachable and i'm taking a little time today because i wanted to answer some of the questions you have about what it's like to operate a youtube channel and also an etsy shop i also got a few business related questions so i hope this is helpful i did get quite a few inquiries so i put out a call and said hey what do you guys want to know and you definitely delivered so let's go over some of these there were quite a few questions about what kind of gear i use and also how i edit my youtube videos down below in the description box you will find a link to my entire youtube gear kit everything from cameras lights this microphone everything else so if you really want to get all of the details you will find it's on kit.co and i've changed the way i've done things over the years and if you're thinking about doing a youtube channel i would tell you don't run out and buy a bunch of stuff right off the bat you're not really going to know exactly what you need until you've been doing the videos in your channel for a while and i also don't think that the type of gear you have should inhibit what kind of videos you're making if you only have a phone use that if you have a gopro use that but don't feel like because you don't have all this fancy stuff that you can't be on youtube that's not true at all i've seen some channels that have gotten to a million two million million subscribers and they just literally have an iphone so don't let that stop you i got quite a few editing questions and inquiries i use the program adobe premiere pro and i do have the full adobe creative suite it is fairly expensive i believe it's about 53 dollars as of the time this video is coming out they do have student discounts so if you are a student or if you have students in your family like maybe like a high school or a middle schooler you get a pretty substantial discount on the suite since i don't have kids i can't take advantage of that but they do have better pricing also i believe if you're a teacher i really do like this program but if you're not aware i did used to be a television producer and i do have some editing experience as far as the professional basis goes in my opinion i think a lot of these non-linear editing programs are pretty similar so once you learn one switching over or transitioning to another one so the workflow is a bit different but the concept of the editing programs for the most part are pretty similar now if you don't have the budget for adobe don't worry there's a couple other ones i would recommend i've heard really great things about davinci resolve i believe there is a free version there is a paid version and from what i understand they do have mac and pc versions and i've also personally used imovie and i think it's a really great program for being free so if you're just getting started and you have a mac or you have an ipad or an iphone i think imovie is a really good basic editing program to get you started i mean if you're not really experienced with editing you're not going to be using all of these special effects and crazy features that adobe premiere pro has i'm considered i would say kind of an intermediate editor i'm not cinematic level but i'm also not a beginner i do use some special effects i'm i've dabbled a bit into after effects which is the special effects program that comes with the adobe creative suite and i do like it but that that program is not real catered towards beginners but if you are looking to get some training there's so many courses and there's so many resources out there whenever i'm trying to learn a new editing technique i usually just look on youtube for tutorials and i'm almost always able to find something that fits my needs so if you are new to editing don't don't sweat it there's a lot of resources out there for you and another thing i would say is besides just the editing program you're using the computer matters a lot and i i'm not a mac person i know a lot of people are crazy about max i'm just not personally i feel like you can get more computer for your money if you build your own pc so all of the computers we have here are are built by my husband and the computer he uses is i'm not joking over 10 years old and the computer i'm using is about six or seven years old both are blazingly fast the reason i like this setup is because you can upgrade and change out the components so if say your video card is a little outdated you don't have to buy a whole new computer you can just change out the video card and we've upgraded both of our computers several times some of the components are a little bit pricey but i personally feel it's worth it because no matter what editing program you use if your computer is doesn't have the specs to match the program editing is going to be a nightmare it's going to be really laggy super slow the program might crash on you a bunch so i would say it's almost more important to have a computer that can handle the editing software and not just the editing software itself if you're not super tech savvy you almost need a computer that has like gaming specs the video card i have is for gamers and a lot of the other components are typically marketed towards people who do a lot of heavy gaming and i find that works for me because it's a very fast computer i have a lot of memory a lot of ram and all that stuff and a video card that can handle it i will also insert a clip here so you can see at my workstation the tower we have is enormous and i think i've shown it in a few previous videos also i i know a lot of people like to edit on a laptop i can't i can't edit on a laptop or a phone or anything i have to have a real computer and i have to have two monitors so having dual monitors will really help with your workflow because you can have your editing thing in one monitor and then something else like i'll have a script or something else on my other screen it just makes your workflow a lot easier i also upgraded my keyboard and mouse a while ago to some really nice logitech models and both of them what's cool about them is that they have all of these keys that you can program so i have been able to program in a few shortcuts on both the mouse i use and the keyboard it's been super helpful and i think they were well worth the money so again just be on the editing software i find it really helpful to have a beast of a computer that is super helpful and i'm also going to insert a clip shot on my gopro so you can see what kind of setup i have here out on my quote unquote set as far as the lights go i usually use this set by mount dog it's available on amazon i shoot on a canon 80d which is a camera i've had for quite a while and again everything's linked down below in the description box i think the lighting is really important and i've made some mistakes in the past and i've upgraded i started out with the on the channel with like i think no lights eventually i did get a ring light which was really hot at the time but i personally found that the ring light i felt like the light was a little too like concentrated and not like soft enough so i don't really like the look of ring lights anymore i did use one for quite a while here on the channel but i've since upgraded and if you don't know i do have a couple other youtube channels one is called xtv producer and i did do a few videos about some of my video production techniques so i do have a video a couple videos like i have one about my lights i also have one about how i shoot with two cameras i use a pretty honestly it's not an expensive setup it's just this lavalier microphone and then i plug it into this audio recorder and then i actually record the audio separately and sync it up later in post uh which again that's something that the video is about so if you're interested in checking those out definitely look for the xtv producer channel got a few questions about how long it takes me to edit and shoot it really depends on the video some videos are really quick and like this one will probably take me about an hour to shoot other videos might take me days or weeks to shoot if it's like a longer project and it slo someone asked if it slows me down to have to shoot sewing and quilting projects and craft stuff while i'm making it and the answer is yeah like a hundred times yes i would say it probably takes me at least two to three times as long for me to make a project while i'm also having to shoot it because i keep having to move the camera around start recording making sure the shot's lined up and it takes me way longer to make anything if i'm shooting it so it because i have to keep moving things around do you know make sure that everybody can see what i'm doing so it takes me a lot longer to do that and as far as the editing time goes it really depends for instance this vid this video probably won't take me very long because it's a very kind of simple video it's what i call talking head video and it's gonna have some graphics in some b-roll laid over it so if you're not familiar with a lot of video stuff a-roll is like your main shot so the a-roll for this video would be me talking the b-roll is the supplementary element so that would be if i like throw a picture up or some b-roll say of my workstation something like that it really depends if i'm doing like a full-out tutorial or something with a lot of footage like the sewing projects those take me a lot longer sometimes those take me a week two weeks because there's so many different clips i need to use i also have to color correct the footage and also have a script to go along with it so it really depends on what it is and i also use several different shots like i usually use my panasonic gh5 to do the overhead shots and i will insert a clip of what that looks like because i have a separate table and i usually do all my overhead shots over there i'll switch between this craft table and then the table it's actually right in front of me as far as how it's oriented in the room someone asked me about productivity tips a lot of people in the youtube community will say batch shoot videos and on one hand that can be helpful for the type of videos i make sometimes here it's just not possible but what i will do is for a lot of videos i'll have a lot of b-roll that i shot of say a project and then i'll have an on-camera part with me where i'm maybe introducing the video and then also shooting like the outro for the video and sometimes i will try to bat shoot those i might change my outfit or something and like say today i'm probably only going to shoot one video but since i already have like my makeup done and stuff i could technically shoot another video especially you know for the ladies wearing makeup it can be kind of hard it takes me a while to get ready so if i can shoot more than one video in one day i often will it depends on what types of videos you're making if you're just doing talking head videos it might be really easy for you to shoot 10 in a day it would be a little hard for me to shoot 10 sewing projects in a day because they just take so long okay this is an interesting question should you give all your trade secrets away for views i'm inclined to say yes for this and let me explain why i feel like when you are creating content you get what you give and i think people appreciate that if i did a youtube channel about say something and i didn't give any helpful information no real insight just very surface level stuff and say i was trying to sell like a course for something i don't think i would really be able to grow much of an audience because i would just be constantly hocking whatever i'm selling and there would be no value to the content or very little value and i see a lot of channels doing that where they don't want to give away like the good information because like the other stuff is behind the paywall as a viewer that really annoys me i don't really want to watch the videos because i know that all of the information that's actually good is behind a paywall if they gave me some of that information and i saw that it was awesome advice i would probably be more willing to buy a course they had or paid for their patreon to get more information but if you're not even giving people a reason to get value out of what you're putting out then it's gonna be a lot harder i think for you to build your credibility and trust with an audience and for example i do work on the side uh with my friend who's a realtor and when we were first doing her channel she was kind of afraid to give away all of her secrets because she was like if i just give them all of my knowledge they could just use it and not use me yes that is a concern she has had the opposite experience of that people are finding her channel seeing that she's giving great information and that's making them more likely to call her more likely to email her and want her to represent them so she has been hugely successful with her channel and it's still a fairly small channel she has about 21 000 subscribers but for the most part she's getting tons and tons of people who are thinking about moving to florida and find her videos about florida and have really appreciated what she's doing and as far as giving away say your trade secrets for making projects like say you have an etsy shop and you sell wallets if you were to do videos on how to make your wallets i feel like the people who would watch those videos are different than the people who would buy handmade wallets the people who want to buy handmade wallets aren't really diy-ers they don't want to make stuff themselves they have the money to pay someone else to do it versus the people who want to learn how to make a wallet they might be on a budget they might not be able to afford a handmade wallet and they want to be able to do it themselves so the way i see it is you're expanding your audience rather than constricting it or keeping it to one type of demographic the people here i'm sure you watching you want to make stuff you want to be able to sew your own projects so it'd be kind of weird for me to just start selling you guys like stuff i made because you're here because you want to learn how to make it yourself now if i had another etsy shop and say started to sell finished items that would probably be an entirely different type of clientele i would say yes i think maybe in certain instances i would say maybe be more careful you know if you have something super proprietary you know like if you're collecting like government secrets or something you probably don't want to share those on youtube but as far as like you have a great technique for making something you you get what you give so if you're not giving anything you're probably not going to get anything in return what are the positives for running a youtube channel is it worth it absolutely for me yes i love having a youtube channel i think this is the perfect avenue for me in terms of creativity and just something that i really love to do i don't think youtube is necessarily for everyone i'm not going to be like every single person watching this needs to start a youtube no there are certainly some downsides and it's also a ton of work if you do not enjoy this type of work this is probably not something i would recommend you do i love youtube because i love making videos i love sewing and i also really love having a voice here on the platform i think youtube is one of the best things that has come out of technology and uh the social media world and i really love being a part of the community and also being able to know that if i've got something to say i can make a video about it and people might see it i think that's really cool so for me i absolutely think the benefits of youtube certainly outweigh any negatives but i know not everyone's the same so i wouldn't just say blanket statement youtube is great for everyone i think it's it really depends on the person do you ever get recognized not really i think i'm at a level where safe to say i can go about my day-to-day life pretty anonymously and i like it that way i think i've only had someone come up to me in public once and say hey are you jen from the sewing report but it was at that uh tampa bay etsy crew craft show and i had already posted that it was going to be there but for the most part i'm you know nobody nobody knows who i am and i sort of like it that way i think i would be fairly uncomfortable with a level of like fame or household recognition where i couldn't go out in public and have people come up to me i sort of like not dealing with that i've also worked with a lot of people who were uh local celebrities from tv stations and stuff and it there's definitely some downsides to it uh some of my co-workers have had stalkers some of my co-workers have had people harass them when they're you know out with their families so they're especially with the whole journalism thing some people just don't like the media right now so having a public face can have some benefits but it can also be sort of uh annoying sometimes or sometimes even scary or dangerous so i'm really happy with the level this is at now and i like being able to live my day-to-day life i know you don't do sponsorships but if you did what criteria would you look for i love this question i think i mentioned this a little bit but it would have to be a company that was that i knew about like maybe one that i had already owned products with or used or recommended in the past if you're not aware i do not do paid reviews here or paid videos so if you're a company or somebody watching and do not approach me and say hey i'll send you this product if you do a video on that i don't do those and i'm not considering those types of things and moving forward i've made the decision not to definitely not to have any anybody send me products from one of those random companies that just sells on amazon that i've never heard of before i've decided to just stay away steer clear of those and not even accept free products from those like third-party resellers of course i do buy those types of products but i'm i'm not going to be accepting those as freebies just because i don't i don't know i just feel like there's a less legitimacy with them and i just don't i i don't really want to promote companies like that that might not be around in a couple years or just literally i came out of the woodwork i would consider sponsorships where it was more podcast style where again it was a company that that was reputable and well known been around for a while and just wanted to say hey we wanted to sponsor four videos here's our ad read nothing to do with the content so almost like just the ad reads like you see on podcasts those are the types of sponsorships that i i would be mostly likely to consider as far as a more integrated video i'm not sure i would be open to to it if it was like a a really interesting idea or something that i like just really liked but i haven't gotten any types of offers like that so it hasn't been difficult to turn anything down kind of a weird note too i did get approached recently by joanne's to promote the qriket maker 3 and i said no to that they were offering me a cricut maker 3 bundle and like a 100 gift card to joanne's i also don't think the person who reached out from the marketing department had really seen my channel much because if she did i don't think she would have been reaching out to me just based on the cricket videos i've done in the past so that was kind of funny and i do get a lot of correspondence like that from people who who i don't think they really vetted me very well so i just find that kind of funny oh yeah and i did get somebody asking me if i was gonna do some sort of youtube course definitely not that's just not something that's really in my wheelhouse i like making this type of content mostly and i don't really want to get into the youtube guru area but if you want to know more about youtube not to sound this is not sponsored by the way i would highly recommend this book called the youtube formula by derral eves derral eves is like the youtube guy to follow i've been watching his channel for years he has really great insight into how youtube works the algorithm and this book i finished in a couple days excellent excellent read really great applicable information the forward is written by mr beast of all people and if you really want to know more about youtube and even if you're just interested and you don't even care about starting a youtube channel i would still really recommend this book especially if you have anything to do with marketing there's a lot of higher level concepts about video marketing how much it can really change the face of your business and i just thought this was one of the best books i've read so it's available pretty much everywhere i'm going to link it down below as well but the youtube formula book pick one up and let's talk a bit about etsy because i did get quite a few questions about that part of what i'm doing so i've had the etsy shop for probably about 10 months now i'm kind of just about breaking even on it so i wanted it just another avenue to be able to stock products i really liked be able to share things and just kind of give it a shot i know when you're into sewing everyone's always like oh you should start an etsy shop and i just wanted to know what it was actually gonna be like so i decided to do that i sell a few sewing supplies i'm also working on some fabric stuff so that'll be coming to the shop pretty soon i just have to get my act together with that i have all these bolts of fabrics i'm just trying to figure out the best way to uh package them and be able to present them as far as the listings go so i'm still a little unsure about that yet the first question i got that i want to answer is etsy even worth it anymore i see so much of the same posted and most just get lost never to be given a chance to be seen not to mention all the people selling items that are not handmade it's discouraging i think if you're gonna do etsy the first thing you have to realize is that the first debate is should i sell stuff on my own website or should i use the etsy platform or another platform like i know there's amazon handmade and there's also like ebay and whatnot whatever avenue you end up doing you're gonna have to do your own marketing for it whether it's selling on your own shopify site or on etsy i would definitely not count on etsy to bring you traffic from the time i started my shop i checked the analytics recently and about 70 of all of all of my etsy traffic i generated and etsy was about 30 and that was kind of going into it what i thought i was like well hopefully the marketing for me will be a little bit easier because i am promoting it through the youtube channel and that has absolutely been true the etsy traffic has been pretty minimal and as far as the actual sales from people that are already on etsy that aren't familiar with the selling report just very low so just know going in if you're gonna go on etsy you need to become good at marketing on social media or in like fake yeah pretty much anything but you have to drive the traffic yourself a lot of people and one helpful place to go is r slash etsy on reddit that community has been pretty interesting there's buyers there's sellers on there sharing all kinds of experiences i know etsy certainly has some problems there are a lot of people on etsy that appear to be selling items that are infringing on copyrights it's just stuff they got on alibaba or amazon that they're reselling and passing office homemade and etsy does seem to have some challenges to combat all of that type of activity and i know a lot of sellers are becoming a little bit disheartened because a lot of the the sellers on etsy now are there it's not what it's intended to be which is people who are selling handmade items so no etsy is not this perfect platform it has some issues and i i'm thinking about doing a separate video on this because a lot of sellers are very pissed off about the star seller program etsy is introduced and i know etsy has a lot of like like i know people are really trying to like game the algorithm with like stuffing all these keywords in their just listing title and all this seo stuff and i'm just like i'm not even really focused on that aspect that much it is quite a bit of work though to to even list an item it's not even just you coming up with the metadata for the item itself but you also have to know in the packaging how much the item weighs what are the dimensions of the package so that you can accurately calculate the shipping for i had to get all the shipping set up for booch by the way i would recommend pirate ship and get a rolo printer i did do a video a while back on everything i had to do to set up my etsy shop it was a lot so it wasn't a super simple process and the bookkeeping for the etsy shop is quite a bit so there's a lot to keep track of especially with the inventory and whatnot and getting all like my business licenses and everything so you know not like exactly like a weekend thing but if you're going on etsy just be prepared to be your own salesperson and do not rely on etsy's like seo or organic traffic to get you a lot of sales if you're gonna be selling more long-term you need to build up your own social media i think that's super important if you're selling anything whether it be on a facebook page or on etsy or on your own website you're gonna need to drive traffic somehow so no matter what you're selling you need to be a good marketer best items you have sold on etsy i checked this and the top selling items are the clover hot roller which actually is one of my favorite sewing tools and the little two ounce glue basting bottles i've been selling i think because the the price point is really low and i use this glue bottle all the time so those are actually the top two items i'm trying to add some more inventory to the shop i'm still a little unsure on what to do but so far i think having an etsy shop has been a really interesting case study for me just to see what works what doesn't and also so i know firsthand now what all is involved in having an etsy shop i think it's been pretty interesting do you think it's better to start on etsy building your brand and then starting your website or start your website and build from there i don't really think it matters you could do either one i just think a lot of people who go on etsy and think that that's gonna bring more organic traffic i think you're gonna be kind of disappointed just from my own analytics it really hasn't happened also i i don't know how many people it depends on what people are searching for too so if not a lot of people are searching for say the clover hot ruler then i'm probably not going to get a lot of traffic i think the organic traffic i have had is from the uh Seraflex thread i'm one of the only sellers of seraflex thread on etsy and i do think people seem to be finding that listing organically i think if you if you're comfortable building your own website build your own website if you're not and you want it to get up fast i would recommend etsy that's why i chose etsy because i didn't really want to have to build out that part of sewingreport.com as like a shop page or whatever i know etsy does have fees and a lot of people complain about them but there are monthly fees to having the shopping portion of the website too so like there are trade-offs either way and i just felt etsy would be easier and and it has been so far so i've been pretty happy with the platform but i'm also not relying on etsy for driving traffic to my listings best ways to make money as a sewing influencer i think it's not necessarily like the best way but you just need lots of different ways of generating income so right now i probably have about six or seven at least different streams of income some are smaller some are a little bit larger and in full disclosure i am i'm not like baller status here on youtube i still have a pretty small channel and in fact i've shared how much money i made so if you want to see how much money i make go to my gen talks forever channel i do have a complete breakdown of all of my income and the etsy shop again has been kind of breaking even so i'm not losing money but i'm all that's also not been a huge money maker i enjoy doing it and i just thought it would be a good experience to have so that's why i decided to do go that route i also work on the side for helping my friend with her youtube channel so that's been a really good side income i just think if you wanna have longevity as a sewing influencer you can't rely on just one or two sources of income you have to constantly be thinking about new avenues you can take new opportunities take advantage of all of them and i don't again i don't really do sponsors here so that's not even an income stream for me but i'm still able to do this and also kind of stay true to myself and be able to have the freedom to make the videos i want to make so i'm very happy with my situation and i also think it really depends on what your lifestyle is like if you have very few living expenses it's going to be easier for you to make a living as a content creator or an influencer if you have 200 000 in student loans and you have a mortgage of 5 000 a month you're going to need to generate a lot more money so it really kind of depends if you're going to again you need several as many different streams of income as you can one of them or more of them could go away at any time even tomorrow youtube could stop the partner program and then none of us would be making money off the ads on the video you really just have to realize that as an influencer a content creator you are relying on outside factors for the income so as much as you can control try to keep that within something you control like that's why another reason why i'm glad i'm on etsy because i'm controlling the inventory i'm gon you know like it's not like an affiliate commission that will suddenly like amazon the program has gone the commission rates on amazon have really kind of been slashed in more recent years for a while ever you were making like 10 on most sales then they went to 8 now it's down to 3 so a lot of these income sources that you may have banked on in the past might change and that's very likely and you just have to roll with the punches and try to figure out what your next move is if you can come out with your own product say your own you know courses or something else that that might help you a lot i follow a comedian named tim dillon he's not for everybody but i think he's hilarious and this guy is making about two hundred thousand dollars per month on patreon and he only charges five dollars a month on patreon so he's not even charging that much money for his content but he's just gotten the volume he's gotten a lot of a lot of people who are willing to pay that five dollars so i think it's going to be different for everyone there's no like cookie cutter answer i think if this is your goal though i focus on your you need to be authentic too like don't sell out for a buck don't just do anything for money create content that you really genuinely believe in and feel is valuable and i believe that the money will come later but if you're just doing youtube and the influencer stuff for money i think you're more likely to fail so don't think of it in terms of how can i make money but think of it in terms of how can i bring value to the community and how can i benefit other people and i think you're gonna find that you get a lot more of a response that way do you plan on living in florida forever probably we do really like it here why don't you ever show pictures or video of your husband i don't know if you're new here but my husband james has made quite a few appearances here on the sewing report not so much recently but we did do a video that he was in where he helped me put up these ikea skadis panels so that was the last video he was in he used to have a little bit more time to help me out with the youtube stuff he doesn't really anymore so that's why he hasn't really been involved in the production he also really hates to have his picture taken even though he has his own youtube channel by the way it's called more approved and he does like home improvement type stuff and fishing stuff i wouldn't say he loves the camera so he's just not like jumping in here all the time so but he has been in here quite a bit i have nothing to hide here and he's a great guy that was a lot of talking thank you guys for sticking with me and i really appreciated everyone who submitted a question i hope these answers help you if you did find this video valuable be sure to hit that like button and feel free to subscribe to the sewing report i have a lot of other videos here about sewing crafts and diy projects and i'm jen with the sewing report i'll see you guys again in the next video and remember whatever you're doing make it fun
2021-09-06 12:26
