The 21st century is an era of audio-visual revolution. The internet is the biggest revolution of this era. With its help, one can easily reach people with their thoughts. It is also used to reach people with their art and talent. There are various social sites available that prove to be very helpful in such works. Slowly and gradually, it has become a very big medium. YouTube has played a significant role in these mediums. With its help, people are trying to reach their big and lofty dreams. Many people are making YouTube their source of income. They are leading a comfortable life with the money earned from it. Many people desire and dream of becoming YouTubers.
YouTube is essentially a type of social site that primarily features ‘videos’. This site collects and hosts videos of almost every kind and all types of films that can be played and enjoyed through the internet. It is a video-sharing website located in San Bruno, California, United States. It came into existence approximately 12 years ago on February 14, 2005. Its significance has greatly increased, and it operates as a subsidiary of Google. On this website, even an ordinary person can create their own special channel and upload, post, rate, share, and report videos. If someone misses their favorite TV daily soap, they can easily watch the missed episode according to their convenience. The best part is that it does not require any special registration or account creation to use it. However, if a video is intended for adults only, proof of adulthood can be provided by providing one’s email ID. This website hosts various types of TV shows, reality shows, music videos, short films, documentary films, audio recordings, live performances, movie trailers, and more. You can learn how to create a website here.
YouTube is a company founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. All three were previously employed at PayPal. Hurley studied design at Indiana University, while Chen and Karim studied computer science at the University of Illinois. The incident involving these individuals has been mentioned repeatedly in the media. According to reports, during a party at Chen’s apartment, the two friends recorded some videos but were unable to share them with others. Frustrated by this predicament, they came up with a technique to easily share videos, which later became known as YouTube.
According to Karim, the idea for YouTube came to his mind in 2004 after watching Janet Jackson’s “Super Bowl Incident” and the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. In reality, Karim couldn’t find a video clip of either event, and it was due to the inability to find videos that he conceived of a site that would make sharing videos much easier. According to Chen and Hurley, the original idea for YouTube came from an online dating service website and the concept of “Hot or Not.”
This company started with a large budget. Its initial funding was approximately $11 million. It began between November 2005 and April 2006. Its early headquarters were located above a Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The initial domain name was www.youtube.com, which was registered on February 14, 2005. The website’s first video was titled “Me at the zoo,” featuring one of the company’s founders, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo. This video was uploaded to the website on April 23, 2005 and continues to attract significant attention even after twelve years. Around May of the same year, features were added to make it easier for the general public to watch videos. Nike created the first promotional video on the website, which received approximately one million views. In November of that year, Sequoia Capital invested $3.5 million in YouTube, making it even stronger. During this period, YouTube was receiving approximately eight million views per day. The website was growing rapidly. In July 2006, the company announced that it was receiving 65,000 new videos uploaded to the site every day. After that, YouTube videos started receiving nearly 100 million views daily.
In 2014, the company announced that approximately 300 hours of video were being uploaded to the website every minute, three times the figure from a year earlier. Surprisingly, about one-third of this content came from outside the United States. The website attracts approximately 800 million viewers every month. As of December 2016, YouTube is the second most popular website in the world and the number one television website in terms of usage.
YouTube Features:
• Playback: Initially, to play YouTube videos, the Adobe Flash Player plug-in was required. In January 2010, an experimental version of YouTube was introduced that did not require any separate software to play. This version made it much easier to use YouTube across different browsers.
• Uploading: Any YouTube user could upload videos of up to fifteen minutes in length during the early days. After considering the quality of their videos and user feedback, they were granted permission to upload videos of up to twelve hours. Initially, there was no limit, but over time it was observed that people started uploading meaningless videos and long TV shows. In response, in March 2006, a ten-minute time limit was imposed, and in 2010, the time limit was increased to fifteen minutes. In the modern usage of YouTube, videos of 20 GB or more can be sent.
• Quality and Video Formats: YouTube supports various video formats such as AVI, MP4, MPEG-PS, FLV, and more. In the early stages, YouTube presented videos in the resolution of 320 by 240 pixels with mono MP3 format. In 2007, YouTube also made videos available in the 3GP format for mobile viewing. In 2008, a high-quality mode was introduced, presenting videos with a resolution of 480 by 360 pixels. In November 2008, support for 720p HD was added. As a result, YouTube videos transitioned from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 16:9 aspect ratio and continued to perform well on wide screens.
In addition to these features, YouTube also supports 3D videos, 360-degree videos, and more.
The method of earning money from YouTube has become a very popular option. There are several subscription plans on YouTube through which YouTube automatically associates various video advertisements with a good channel, benefiting the channel owner. The method of earning money from YouTube is explained below.
1. First, you need to log in to YouTube and create a channel. These channels are personal and cannot be operated by anyone else. You can create a channel with a YouTube account. A YouTube account is similar to a Google account and can be connected to other Google services such as Google Drive or Gmail. You can give an interesting title to your channel, which will make it easy for people to find your channel. It is better if the channel name is related to the content of your videos. The username you use has a significant impact. A short and impactful name makes it easy for people to remember and mention it to others, which will promote your channel. If you don’t like the username later, you can change it.
2. The uploader should ensure that the uploaded content is of good quality and not too long. Regardless of how the start is, the effort should be made to make each subsequent video better than the previous one.
3. The quality of your videos can be improved in various ways. Having a good camera, excellent video editing, and proper lighting are essential.
4. Uploading videos consistently at regular intervals helps to attract a large number of viewers, which leads to better earnings.
5. The more viewers you have, the more income you will generate. Therefore, it is important to try to reach more people through your YouTube link on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
6. Responding to comments made by viewers helps to maintain an engaged audience. Implementing their questions, thoughts, and suggestions can be very beneficial.
7. The main way to earn money on YouTube is to allow YouTube to place ads on your videos. After uploading a video, clicking on the “Monetization” tab gives YouTube permission to do so. Click on the dollar sign ($) icon given in front of all those videos. Clicking on it makes the video “monetized.” Ads start appearing on it, and along with an increase in the number of viewers, the earnings also increase.
8. Along with that, you have to create an account on the Google AdSense website. This account is free. Here, you have to provide all the information requested by YouTube. Either a “PayPal” account or another bank account is required. With this information, AdSense determines who you are and where it will send the money. The amount of money earned per ad click by viewers is very low. That is why it is necessary to have a large number of viewers to earn money on YouTube.
9. If feasible, it is essential to build a small team to create videos. This makes the work much easier and can be done without any tension.
10. It is important to regularly analyze and evaluate the channel’s performance. If it seems that the content is not performing well or the channel is not becoming popular, it is necessary to change the content of the videos over time.
11. Starting on YouTube requires patience, dedication, and consistency. Initially, it may take some time to build an audience and start earning money, but with perseverance and quality content, success is possible.
