Should YouTubers Quit Their Day Jobs?

hello my dudes my name is Tiffany welcome back to my series internet analysis where I like to research and discuss things relevant to social issues and media for most youtubers the ultimate goal is getting to a point where you can quit your day job and make videos full-time so in this video I want to explore that phenomenon and the question should youtubers keep their day job is quitting your job a good thing because you'll have more time and energy to improve your content or will it be a terrible decision long-term first of all I think

most big youtubers have quit their day jobs they may not all make announcement videos about it but it is incredibly difficult to balance a full-time regular job and upload high quality videos frequently and still have time to relax and live your life at the same time though there are still some youtubers who have a career and do YouTube more as like a side job or a paid hobby Clancy Burke for example is a news reporter my friend Catherine works at Adobe and then you have simply no logical I think Christine is like the biggest example

when it comes to having a huge channel millions of subscribers and she still works for the Canadian government Christine actually has three jobs because she has her own nail polish brand how does she do it she's really made a big effort to emphasize to her viewers how important education is and that's putting all of your eggs in the YouTube basket can be very risky actually she just recently announced that she's taking a break from YouTube not necessarily because of the workload but more so that she's just kind of tired of herself you are down here

for hours just sort of by yourself at a desk a lot of the time I've always tried to see YouTube as a hobby that yes it happens to make money but I don't like training it as my job that I have to wake up and I have to do lately it's felt like I do have to film every weekend because I've kind of set this expectation that I promised videos every Saturday but just because some creators can do it doesn't mean that all would want to or be able to juggle two full-time jobs essentially also

internet relevance is fleeting like shouldn't we all take advantage of it while we have it take a risk be an internet person you might not have the chance next year so my first big question is is quitting your career to focus on YouTube irresponsible we all know internet social media fame is very temporary it won't last forever and I think because of that it can be really tempting to kind of drop everything else in your life that's like traditional if you're doing well online because you want to take advantage of this because it might not

be around for that long but you know I definitely don't approve of seeing young people like drop out of high school to be a youtuber I think you should definitely finish your high school education at least and again even for youtubers who may want to go to college don't decide not to go to college just so that you can focus on YouTube or social media I think it is possible to do both if that's something you're really passionate about you could even maybe go part-time big fan of education I know that college isn't right for

everyone and that everyone needs to go at their own pace but I think that that's important because I think all of us not just youtubers well we kind of feel like having a college degree is like a back-up plan and it makes you feel a little bit safer in life is that a false sense of security maybe probably but at least you have that piece of paper to show someone that you did something anyway generally I don't think people should quit their education necessarily just to pursue YouTube but should we risk trading a quote/unquote secure

job for a very unstable one and this doesn't just apply to YouTube this would be relevant to anyone who's considering you know pursuing a different career path or quitting or maybe trying to be self-employed or started business YouTube certainly is an unstable job but I also think that it has a very bad rap from certain people who see it as kind of illegitimate there's a perception that there are real jobs but that YouTube is not one of them but I think if you're working and earning money from something doesn't that make it a job so

when it comes to the question should you quit should you stay what should you do there's obviously a lot to weigh in this decision if you do quit your job and end up pursuing your passion project for a number of years instead of working your way up some corporate ladder are you gonna regret that are you gonna feel like you wasted that time will this hold you back in the future and what is life after YouTube what will your resume look like when you're out there applying for real jobs now I'll be honest I have

no idea how full-time influencer or YouTube content creator or however you want to put it looks on a resume I know there are definitely people who look down on this work and would basically see all of these years as a gap in your work experience but also because this is becoming more common and there are just more and more of us doing content I think that that stigma is probably lessening a little bit but of course this depends on what type of content you've been creating and also what type of job you are applying for

there are definitely some positions and companies that would probably see your social media experience as a big benefit because really honestly youtubers do learn and practice a lot of skills such as writing filming editing as well as having a lot of knowledge about and experience in influencer marketing for example so what are our priorities especially when we're young it feels like this is our time that we're allowed to be selfish that is making decisions only based on ourselves and our future especially if you don't have children or any other dependents this is the time where

you only really have to think about yourself by the way quickly it is not selfish to do that and also people of all ages can do this you can do this with children you can make major life changes at any time this is not just for the youth folks is our life's purpose to pursue the most secur highest paying job or is it to pursue our passions or is it possible to do both what about working the easiest simplest job and just chilling with the rest of your time is that acceptable in writing this video

I realized that a lot of this kind of just boils down to labor and how you value that and of course the capitalist system that we exist in where do we find our purpose where do we find satisfaction in life should we tie our self-worth to our jobs and our productivity I think at a bare minimum we live in a society and we all have bills to pay so we have to find some way to earn enough money to at least survive speaking of today's video is sponsored by fetch rewards thank you sponsor for helping

me pay my bills and allowing me to pursue my passion project of being a youtuber was that a smooth Segway or fetch rewards is an app that can help you easily save money on your groceries fetch rewards has thousands of participating products so you save every time you buy those specific products or from specific brands so all you have to do is scan your grocery receipts you will earn points and then you can redeem those points for rewards this is just an automatic part of my grocery shopping routine now it's like okay reusable bags check

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the description install the app sign up use code Ferg to get 3,000 points when you scan your first receipt shouts out to the sponsor now let's get back to the video so throughout the rest of this video I want to use a specific example of youtubers who quit their nine-to-five s to be full-time creators this group of youtubers make similar types of content and have similar audiences they've all had their YouTube channels for a long time they've made videos about their college experiences and then transition to post-grad early career videos taking their audiences along for

the journey once they got hired for their first adult job they've logged that process too they've made a lot of work week day in my life vlogs and other personal videos they've shared the highs and lows but generally viewers saw these beautiful young women with college degrees living in big cities working nine to five jobs with good salaries while still doing social media work and enjoying the benefits of being an influencer kind of living the early 20's dream life and then within a few months each of these women posted videos confessing that they had quit

their nine-to-five jobs I'm going to officially quit my job I quit my job I quit my job I quit my nine-to-five job in this small corner of YouTube it seemed like an epidemic another quitting my job video so why were they quitting essentially they all had pretty similar reasons such as it being too hard to balance two jobs that life that you admired of mine of me juggling all of those things was crushing me it was slowly killing me I was not getting enough sleep I was spiraling out of control I was working non-stop at

all times I would spend time on YouTube on other things that I'm working on for like six hours a day outside of work I was getting very very stressed a lot of anxiety I'm working in 9:00 to 5:00 I I felt very very limited because you only really have control over the hours of the day in the morning and at night you guys didn't see the times when I would come home at 7 o'clock from work and still have work to do for work but also have deadlines to meet for YouTube and people messaging me

you know why haven't you posted a video and me crying on the couch because I don't know which job to do if I was doing one fully I wasn't doing the other one fully I never felt fully present so then their content changed because they used to make vlogs about 9:00 to 5:00 work now they make vlogs that reflect their new lifestyle covering topics like being self-employed working from home freelancing finance girlboss videos now okay first of all I think people should feel free to make whatever decisions work for them I am happy to see

people do that I don't have any personal stake in these particular people having a nine-to-five job or not and obviously I myself am a full-time youtuber so clearly I am NOT opposed to doing this however the most interesting thing to me was seeing how their audiences reacted to the news that they were quitting their jobs or making a switch to something a little less traditional so generally there's been a lot of positive supportive responses I think most of their viewers are generally happy for them but I did notice a good number of more negative or

critical responses which I find very interesting again so many youtubers quit their jobs that happens all the time and a lot of them have the exact same reasons that these women did yet I feel like they got a little bit more backlash than other creators that I've seen my theory is that it's because they are vloggers I think generally if vloggers face a lot more criticism about their personal life choices because that is their content but it makes sense because viewers are more familiar with and connected to your life and then when your life changes

and your content changes some viewers feel compelled to give their two cents and don't even get me started on pair of social relationships but generally a lot of viewers feel very close to the people that they watch especially if they've been watching them for a long time so that can feel very powerful and viewers can feel like personally impacted by the choices that creators make anyway this topic was on my video list for months and then I was asked to be interviewed in this article link in description if you want to read it and a

few of the girls in this video are in that article as well but basically that is what reignited my interest in this topic so let's dive in let's see some of the responses to these women quitting their 95s to do YouTube a big issue that some viewers raised was relatability imagine you're a similar age and have grown up with this creator through high school college post-grad you can relate to so much of their content they shared their struggles with job searching or the stress of working full time and you experience - but now that they're

not working a nine-to-five you can't relate to being an influencer or working from home or one of those nice aesthetic co-working spaces do you have the right to be disappointed because you know when you follow someone that you relate to so much in the sense that they have a very similar work-life balance to you it gets upsetting when they sever that and you feel like they're not as relatable anymore I completely understand I am so scared of not being relatable anymore because so many people comment saying that they love my videos because I work a

nine-to-five because I'm relatable now of course not all of the viewers of these channels are going through the exact same things at the exact same time but generally I think that a big reason why this vlog II kind of personal content is popular is due in large part to relatability I think a lot of viewers find these videos or channels by searching for specific things that they are going through at the time this wasn't a good fit for me I was stressed overwhelmed and inspired exhausted in terms of relatability I think a lot of viewers

can relate to sentiments like these I think it's perfectly normal for young people to dislike their jobs or maybe change jobs frequently as they're trying to find a fit and also it's normal to not like a hundred percent of your job but as a viewer watching your favorite creator live this kind of dream life you know working a great job in a big city and it turns out that they don't actually like it and it's not making them happy and then you see other creators say the same thing that can be really disappointing as a

viewer because maybe you're thinking when I get a job am I gonna end up hating it too that's just pretty bleak so my question is are nine-to-five jobs just generally undesirable I feel like we hear that sentiment like I don't want to work in an office or sit at a desk all day a lot and it makes me wonder if maybe Millennials or Gen Z are just less suited to these kind of traditional or more corporate environments or maybe it's just that we don't hear a lot from people who love their nine-to-five maybe those people

aren't making as many YouTube videos I have a lot to say on that in higher topics so I'm considering making a video dedicated about that so if you have any thoughts or your own experiences I'd love to hear it I don't think it's as straightforward as you're either meant to be self-employed or you're meant to work a corporate nine-to-five job there's a lot in between next point sometimes when people quit their jobs to pursue their passions whatever that might be they end up spreading this message of like follow your dreams if you're unhappy just change

your life it's that easy and that's a bit of an oversimplification as nice as it sounds to say something like oh you should quit your job and follow your dreams most people can't afford to do that there can definitely be a level of resentment when youtubers decide to quit their jobs to do social media full-time because as a viewer you're like okay I hate my job too but I don't have a back-up plan I can't just quit my job I've got to pay my bills I don't have a social media account that's already making me

a full-time living so I totally totally understand that resentment or anger or just kind of frustration at the world it seems a bit unfair not unfair that these other creators get to do this but just kind of unfair that everyone doesn't have that opportunity however I must say in this situation these girls did specifically mention that they were not trying to make that point and I respect that I'm not trying to say like oh just quit your job everyone like if you're have if you're anxious just quit no not at all I'm not saying that

at all this video is not meant to inspire anyone to quit their job you know sometimes you have to work jobs that you don't like and I'm not making this video to tell you to be happy and quit the job you don't like that's not even the route that I'm trying to go it is a big decision and a personal risk for these creators to quit their jobs but also it's not that big of a risk because as many of them have mentioned their social media careers we're already making them even more money than their

salary jobs so that's a pretty cushy comfortable risk to take compared to the average viewer who does not have that kind of a thing to fall back on or immediately transition to where if they were to quit their job they would have no safety net for anyone to be able to quit their job and go travel or go work for yourself that takes a lot of planning and it takes a lot of saving to make sure that you won't be instantly broke and of course a lot of young people and just people in general are

already working and living paycheck-to-paycheck there's not even an opportunity to save because there's nothing left over every month and you also might be dealing with debt that's dragging you down to to be fair though I think all of these creators have specifically addressed these points they've acknowledged how lucky and privileged they are and acknowledge that this isn't a possibility for most people I recognize my advantage that I had YouTube and think it didn't have loans and I don't I'm not in debt and generally I think that privilege was probably the main element behind any of

the backlash or negative feedback coming from these videos as far as I've seen I think that these women generally came from families that could support them through college and they may have graduated with little or no student loan debt so that gives them an advantage and then they have found success through working hard on YouTube but they've found themselves with these platforms that are very lucrative and some of them have mentioned that they were able to save up an entire year's salary like maybe their whole salary job because they were earning enough money from YouTube

already so it's basically the ideal situation that you could be in to make that transition and again they have acknowledged their privilege and they shouldn't feel guilty in any way for their comfortable financial situations or their upbringing but it is very important to remember that most of your viewers probably did not have those same privileges or advantages or opportunities it can be hard to talk about privilege it can be really hard to admit your own privileges even though we all have privilege of different kinds obviously there are some of us who are much more privileged

than others privilege privilege it allegedly allegedly privileged moving on another issue was making nine to five jobs sound kind of undesirable I'm sure this wasn't intentional but when you hear people say I was miserable I can't stand working at a desk all day not that they necessarily said that exactly but people say this a lot as I mentioned but it does kind of perpetuate the idea that working a nine-to-five job in a traditional setting is this like soul sucking boring unfulfilled experience which is not the case for everyone though yes it is for some people

I think chances are if you're already a successful youtuber it might be that you're just a creative person by nature like there's probably a big overlap on that did not need to do that so it makes sense that we would hear this specifically from youtubers and other quote/unquote creative types because maybe we all hate structure I don't know maybe youtubers are just more likely to have entrepreneurial spirits let's go into a little tangent about me first of all I have never worked a nine-to-five job I'm still in college I'm in my senior year now but

obviously since I was 16 I've worked all kinds of different service jobs I've done a lot of babysitting and then I used to make little little amounts with money from YouTube even when I was younger and I've only been a full-time youtuber just in the last year so I'm still pretty new to this so I definitely don't want any of this video to sound like I'm criticizing these youtubers or anyone in a similar situation for making these choices because honestly they've done more than I have at least they worked a nine-to-five job for some period

of time I haven't done that and to be honest it doesn't sound desirable to me now hold on a second post-grad I don't know exactly what my plans are a long term but immediately after I graduate I'm just gonna be focusing on YouTube because it would be nice to have more time to do this you see the gap in my upload schedule it's hard I'd love to continue doing YouTube in some form as long as it's still a viable income source for me and as long as I enjoy it I can say though that most

of my extended family is self-employed my parents and grandparents have always owned their own businesses my sister has her own hair salon sweet business I'm self-employed so it just runs in my blood baby but to me and my family being self-employed is normal and I really do appreciate that I am so glad that I've never had any kind of pressure from myself or my family to do anything more traditional or even to pursue a more practical major than Media Studies because we're all in this we're all in the risky self-employed very stressful game my town

is very traditional like this is very non-traditional like for my parents to go around to be like Brooke doesn't have a real job like it's very shocking to people to hear and be like why like your kid doesn't have a job anyway again I still haven't even graduated so I can't definitively say what I'm gonna want to do for the rest of my life or even in the next five ten years so who knows maybe I end up a corporate Queen as long as I can wear my turtlenecks I'm cool with that anyway next question

why is the response different to these particular youtubers quitting their jobs versus other youtubers and other genres maybe quitting their job and that was my question is this like an issue of genre is it because these are vloggers and we care more about their personal lives then we have people like Cody Co Noel Miller Jarvis Johnson who I think we're all engineers who quit to be youtubers also I quit my job and I left to do this you know alright I'm unemployed the fact that I spent the last year burning myself out trying to do

two jobs in the workload of doing both became really unsustainable I wasn't doing anything but working my mental and physical health were deteriorating also call it that I'm extremely privileged in order to do this a lot had to go right in my life's Rube Goldberg machine for this to even be an option again though I think it's most relevant to the type of content that you make and the actual changes that happen after you quit your day job so if you're gonna say I'm quitting so that I can devote more time and effort to my

videos I want to make better videos then we hope to see a positive difference in your content so is the content better these complaints don't just apply to the group of women that I mentioned but kind of just in general for any youtuber who's gonna quit their day job to focus on YouTube these are important things to consider common complaints I got these from my Instagram followers thank you for responding to my surveys one complaint is when youtubers quit their job but then don't even upload as much as they did before let alone more second

question or complaint is your content going to change as in are you gonna move too and just drink smoothies not relatable but a question more specific to these creators is are you just gonna end up vlogging about vlogging because if you are making vlogs and all you're doing is making videos from home honestly being a youtuber day to day is quite boring we sit here on our computers editing that's it so I think it's very important to find other interesting or helpful things to throw into your videos so that things don't get a little bit

repetitive or stale so in this example a lot of those old work week videos we're kind of a mix of fun and productivity so they can kind of inspire your audience and a lot of the new videos try to maintain those values to productivity kind of content is actually very popular on YouTube people love like a work with me kind of video it gets you inspired it gets you motivated to get your own [ __ ] done once you're done watching this video and that's where I get stuck I just go to my watch later

and just keep going also I think it's important not to fall into the hustle culture content there's a fine line I've made a video about hustle culture but basically to me hustle culture is about putting way too much energy into your work to the point where it's unhealthy like if you're literally actually saying no sleep that's bad please sleep it's good for you you need to have a work/life balance you need to prioritize time for yourself that isn't only focused on being productive we are more than what we produce allegedly another complaint would be too

many ads because when you go full-time youtuber and that's your only source of income suddenly sponsors sound a lot more appealing which at me next time me I've been doing a lot more sponsored content way closer together than I usually would I try to space it out but I'm also terrible at time management so I apologize for the frequent sponsors but also thank-you sponsors anyway obviously I totally understand I have bills to pay other creators have bills to pay I want to see my creators get paid but I also totally understand why the audience might

get a little bit annoyed or bored of seeing too many sponsorships because obviously you want to watch the content and you don't want most of it to be a commercial last complaint is your quitting your real job for the lazy easy job of being a youtuber and this one gets me fired up because we're gonna talk about the struggles of being a youtuber and I know nobody wants to hear youtubers talk about how hard their jobs are I know there are a lot of jobs that are a lot harder than being a youtuber for a

lot less reward yes but I think what mike is hired about being youtuber your work is so tied to your own self-concept you know like what you're putting out into the world and what you're judged on the result of your work if people don't like it it's really hard not to see that just forever as a reflection of yourself it is not objectively a hard job but there are many challenges that come along with it but again I am very grateful to have this job I'm very lucky it's a privilege so some of my struggles

of being a youtuber also just apply to anyone who's self-employed in general such as the fact that full-time self-employment can be exhausting and very isolating being self-employed is not relaxing it's not easy unless you're slacking and not doing any work it can be actually more stressful than a regular job in that you're always thinking about it you can't really switch your work brain off you're not working a nine-to-five anymore but now you might actually work more hours total and probably work seven days a week you yourself are fully responsible for your paychecks you don't have

a reliable stable salary anymore and that can be very scary plus you miss out on the benefits of full-time jobs such as health insurance paid time off specifically though in being a youtuber especially a youtuber that shares a lot of your personal life having people weigh in on your major life decisions is really weird and very very difficult it is stressful enough making these decisions as a person without having hundreds and hundreds and possibly thousands of other opinions this actually happened to me a bit a few years ago before internet analysis I used to make

very personal con and I shared my journey going through the transfer process trying to transfer colleges which involved a lot of applications and then I was rejected from every college not clickbait I applied to different schools I was accepted to all of them but then couldn't afford them I was very very lost in general for like eight months it was pretty rough I didn't know what to do in terms of college or even work you know I tried freelancing which was a kind of disaster and waste of time I got hired on a daycare and

then realized it was a horrible environment and quit after a day it was a mess for me but I kept my viewers updated because I wanted to and also I wanted some advice and especially when my channel was really small my community felt you know very very close to me and generally everyone was really kind and supportive and that was great but I also got some comments that were like you need to get your [ __ ] together or like you shouldn't move to New York to live with your boyfriend and I'm just like I

don't need this feedback I was trying to be like real and honest and raw but like you can only watch so many depressing videos of someone's bad life before like you don't want to watch it and I understand that some of the viewers got tired of it and I got tired of sharing it I got tired of having to try to justify myself to other people so then I stopped sharing so much of me and you know what no regrets it is very good to create boundaries on this internet on this internet now on this

platform it is really hard to create and maintain personal boundaries and I think that it's a very important thing to do but this is where the struggle comes in in that a lot of us kind of make our lives our content and therefore it is really hard to make those boundaries because you got to make the videos how do you decide what to share and what to monetize what do you keep private related to this I was sent this book recommendation by someone on Instagram thank you for this I'm gonna read it it's called how

to do nothing resisting the attention economy by Jenny Odell she argues that taking control of our attention from the capitalist forces determined to monetize it and reconnecting with the world around us is a critical of resistance the attention economy has a financial incentive to keep us in a state of individualized anxiety and an obligation to constantly be reacting and producing so I was trying to describe a colonization of the self by capitalist notions of efficiency where all time is already money all of our activities are potentially economic and all experiences framed as capital for the

individual as entrepreneur we feel obligated to monetize everything possible in our lives and this applies to anyone like whether you have a hobby and you're trying to figure out how to make money from it but obviously if you're working on social media this is like the constant struggle turning your life into a commodity is a very strange thing because essentially you're selling your life to the viewers and then sometimes it feels like it's not even your life anymore it is a dream to be able to earn a living doing the work that you really enjoy

but also turning your hobby into your full-time job can ruin everything now I want to talk about not getting stuck in the YouTube bubble because it exists being a youtuber being on social media it is very easy to get caught in this bubble of Internet worlds where you know most of your friends are influencers you interact with people who are influencers content creators whatever you want to call it it's all the same you and everyone you know are always making videos and vlogging and that's normal but you forget that that's not what the average person's

life is like and as we all know and have probably experienced it can be very detrimental to your mental and physical health to be too focused on social media even content creators influencers we experienced this too and sometimes to a worse degree because again capitalism our entire financial well-being is tied to it so we have to stay in it and we can't leave it because it's our job this is the conflict I have all the time I have to say this is why I'm kind of glad that I am still in college even though it

is very stressful and is keeping me incredibly busy it is nice to have something that forces me out of the house and it forces me to focus on other than literally myself and my numbers and whatever else on social media and finally to end the video I just want to give some recommendations I guess you know if you want to be a full-time youtuber I have some ideas for you and for me because I could use these too I strongly think that youtubers should have something other than YouTube to do like not even necessarily for

a paid job but just for time and focus and energy maybe do some freelancing writing editing sure if you enjoy that why not but I also recommend maybe looking into getting a part-time job anywhere literally you like flowers work at the florist if you're not too famous to do that I miss being a barista I miss Starbucks sometimes some elements of the job the free coffee was great like getting in the zone of making drinks and it was interesting to be recognized at work a few times and that was when my channel was a lot

smaller so I can't imagine what it would be like now if I were to work somewhere and potentially get recognized more frequently so I know it's not an option for everyone to famous but you could work a more a low-key job that maybe doesn't connect with the public again just to have something else to do even if you don't need the money it's nice to have some obligation to other people maybe be a babysitter be a pet sitter or dog walker whatever having other structure in your life and other responsibilities is very helpful I think

I also think it's really good to have hobbies and friends that aren't involved with internet stuff at all so like for me recently I have been learning to sew and I've been getting into like board games and puzzles with my boyfriend and I keep buying books and I mean to read more and I haven't been reading more just keep buying books I will read more though I love reading I really have to give myself these interests and other things to get me out of my youtube head first of all because it can be toxic but

also to give my eyes a rest from screen time to do something that involves hand-eye coordination also I am socializing with people I invited people over to come over tomorrow night that's rare anyway finally this is the end of the video I hope it was interesting thank you so much for watching to the end once again if you're interested in fetch rewards please click the link in the description get those extra points you can follow me on Instagram for some mediocre picks you can follow me on Twitter for some political tweets Bernie 2020 let's get

this primary I also have a vlog channel where I post other content and I have a podcast called previously gifted where well it's very I got a review on iTunes recently that talked about how it's like too personal and chatty so just warning you it is nothing like internet analysis it is not scripted or researched it's just me talking for an hour about my life and about politics and personal finance and movies I've watched recently so if that sounds good to you check it out that's also the place that I get the most personal so

if you want some personal info you got to check out the pod alright that's all thank you so much for watching okay thanks bye [Music]