How to become a Youtube Vlogger

Last updated on October 9th, 2023 at 11:36 pm

We often get asked for tips on starting a Youtube channel. We don’t class ourselves as professionals at this, which is probably why we get asked. We are proof that anyone can pick up a camera and make it work (although it’s not quite as easy as it sounds)

It seemed like a good idea for a Blog post so we can share how our journey on Youtube started and what tools, apps, and programs we started with, and which ones we use today.

Firstly, a little background information on how we started on Youtube and what the motivation was.

The year was 2015 (where does the time go?) We were knee-deep in running our business and spent a lot of weekends looking after our little niece. She was, at the time, obsessed with watching surprise toy opening videos on Youtube. They are surprisingly therapeutic once you start watching them. We sat and watched hundreds of them together. We have watched more Kinder eggs being opened than most adult people ever do 😊. Anyone with young kids will surely have lived through something similar.

The views these toy channels were getting kept popping up on the screen. They were in the millions.

We were working most hours of the day so the next logical step was to add even more hours of work on top obviously 😐 (we always struggled to do nothing) So we turned an empty garage conversion (which had been where we ran our business from before we moved out into a dedicated business property) in our house into a Youtube studio. Table, floodlights, tripods, shelving for toys. We went all in.

In terms of cameras, all we had was the smartphone we had at the time. We purchased an adaptor to fit the phone onto the tripod and filmed our first few videos. Opening toys on the desk. Only our hands were shown and not our faces.

Nick soon got bored of opening toys and I carried on with the channel on my own. It became a bit of an obsession. We would arrive home late at night from the business, have a takeaway and I would go into the Youtube room and film vlogs. I wanted to release one every night. I really wanted one to take off and get millions of views like the ones we watched with our niece. I opened Kinder eggs and nick ate the chocolate from it.

I won’t go on too much about that channel, it lasted for around four years, alongside the Lodge Guys for a while. The channel is still on youtube and you can watch all the videos if you are interested. Below is my most-viewed video with over 700,000 views. I was very impressed with that one

The few years working on the toy channel taught us how to edit videos, thumbnails, etc so we had a starting point for a vlog channel. We bought the lodge as a place to retreat to at weekends. With no spare rooms to convert into a Youtube room, it became harder to continue with opening toys so I decided to end that channel. I still yearned to create something in my spare time so I suggested vlogging. It was an off-the-cuff comment and we both weren’t really sure about it and had no idea where it would lead.

So, to cut this part of a long story short, we started vlogging and you can go back to our first vlogs and watch all 1400+ of them if you fancy it (the first ones are a little on the cringe side now with the lovely old opening music)

This brings us to what we used to start a youtube channel and products and apps we had at the time and what we recommend now for beginners

What is the perfect vlogging camera?

This is a question we are still asking ourselves almost six years after our first vlog. There are two answers to this;

1. The perfect vlogging camera doesn’t exist. You will always find something wrong with the camera you have and something you wish was better.
2. The perfect camera is the one you have (assuming you have an up-to-date mobile phone)

You may want to go all in and splurge on the best camera you can afford such as a Sony A7 III or IV which will set you back a couple of thousand pounds. If that’s what you want then great, research the reviews and get one of those. They are great cameras and they will make your vlogs look great.

As a beginner though, do you really want to be spending that kind of money. It all depends on what you want from a channel. If you are going out to film stunning scenery, landscapes, and travel vlogs you may want to go for top specs.

If, however, you want to start out with vlogs as we do, something much more compact will probably suit you better.

Our filming locations are wherever we are at that particular time of the day or night, if we nip into the local supermarket we don’t want to be carrying around a huge two thousand pound camera on a gimbal, looking like a BBC filming crew walking down the bread aisle.

We have always gone for the best quality we could without going too HUGE

For the first year or so, all our vlogs were filmed on our phone camera. It wasn’t a top-end phone, just whatever we had at the time. Yes, looking back on those first vlogs, the quality is terrible. But it’s what we had at the time without spending any money and most phone cameras, even on the cheaper end phones are much better now than they were back when we started.

We used the Canon G7X mark 2 for a few years. We thought it was almost the perfect camera. As with any camera though, it had its faults. The lens used to get particles of dust behind it which showed up on the screen on sunny days. The autofocus was pretty terrible. Lots of Youtubers still use this camera but we would no longer recommend it. The G7x Mark 3 is a no go also as Canon really messed up the autofocus on that one.

We now use the Sony Zv-1. The autofocus is superb, and the sound is pretty decent without the need for an external mic (again, the way we vlog, we don’t want to be walking around with a huge mic attached to the camera). The only real downside to this is the 4k crop is way too tight so we have had to add an external lens to it, which makes the camera bigger. (in simple terms this means when we film in 4k the picture zooms in closer to our face which shows less of the background. If you aren’t going to film in 4k then that isn’t an issue)

So, back to the “the perfect camera is the one you already have” comment. If you have a decent mobile phone you’ve probably got a very good camera on that. Start there. Why not? If you want to get a feel for vlogging and see if it’s for you, then use the camera you already have. We did it for around a year and it did us fine for getting a feel for vlogging.

Using a phone also makes it a little easier to get used to holding a camera out in front of you whilst out in public. That’s one thing you may or may not be easy with. It took us a long time to get used to vlogging in public. Most people have a mobile phone these days and a lot of people walk around in public while using them. So it’s not too much of a next step to be out and about filming on your phone.

People WILL stare at you like you are carrying a parrot on your arm or something. When you see someone walking around talking to a camera it makes you curious as to what they are doing. It’s something you will need to get used to. Some people like to be on your vlog so you’ll get people waving and jumping behind you to get into your shot. It’s just something that happens.

If you prefer to jump straight in with a camera then we do recommend the Sony ZV range.

We have a blog article HERE that shows you all the equipment we use at the moment for vlogging.

What Software do we edit our vlogs on?

We edit on Adobe premiere pro. It’s the program we started way back with the toy channel and it’s the one we continue to use. It’s very powerful if you are into high-end videos but also great for the vlog-style ones we do. It can be a bit overwhelming and six years later, we have only scratched the surface of what it can do. There are thousands of tutorial videos on Youtube, you can spend weeks and weeks looking up what it can do

You can get a free 7-day trial of Premiere pro then a monthly subscription which costs £19.97 (we subscribe to Adobe creative cloud which comes with other Adobe software but its not something you need when you start out)

If you prefer to start out with editing software which is more beginner-friendly then we would recommend Filmora. (Download Filmora free here) Filmora has the benefit of being totally free to use for as long as you like. The only caveat is there will be a watermark on your exported video. It’s a great way to try out an editing program and get used to the basic features. If you decide it’s the program for you then you can make a one-time payment for the software or subscribe to a yearly plan which includes upgrades throughout your time on the subscription package.

Filmora makes complicated editing techniques much easier. We think it’s a great starting place to get used to editing videos.

Ok so you have your camera, and you have your editing software. What else do we use that we think will be of benefit to a beginner vlogger?

Canva – For Thumbnails and photo editing

We have used Canva for a few years now. It’s free of charge for everything you need to create great thumbnails for youtube and do some photo editing for your social media accounts. Canva has templates for Instagram posts, Facebook, Tiktok, etc. There is a paid tier if you want any extras. We started off using Adobe photoshop and we still do from time to time but find Canva so easy to use that it’s our main go-to for thumbnail creation. It’s very simple to use and you’ll be creating projects in no time.

Where to get music for your vlogs

When we first started out we used the free music library which Youtube offers. These are totally free of charge, and you can use them as many times as you want, sometimes you have to put a disclaimer in your video description for certain songs. The songs are ok but not great and you’ll probably soon find yourself outgrowing them and wanting more professional-sounding music.

After a while, we moved over to Epidemic sound. They have a wide range of professionally-sounding songs for most occasions. We have been using them for a few years now. They have a monthly subscription cost which we think is worth every penny.

Fivver

Fivver is a great site if you need something digital created without having to lay out a massive amount of money. If you aren’t too artistic and want someone to create a logo or a Youtube opening scene, voiceover, merchandise designs, etc, then Fivver has someone who will do it for you. It’s a very easy site to use, just pick the category you need (logo creation, etc) and then look at people’s work and see what they charge. You can give them an idea of what you want and any images you want in your work and in a few days they will email it to you.

We now design all our own logos, opening scenes, and merchandise but at the start, we used Fivver to get started.

A few other things to consider before you start

Is it too late to start a Youtube channel?

A lot of people ask this question. Is Youtube over-saturated with vloggers, a lot of them doing the same thing? We would say no. There are around 250 million hours of videos watched on YouTube every single day. And those hours are spread across roughly 5 billion videos watched every day.  There are enough viewers on Youtube to watch many many channels. If you have good content which people find interesting then people will eventually find it and come and watch. Some will stay, and some won’t. We are a world of content devourers and we all want more. There will always be someone who wants to watch what you create. It’s usually never too late to start anything. Just do it and see where it takes you.

How to deal with negativity toward you

This is an area that anyone starting out in social media needs to be aware of. Every Youtuber or social media person who becomes popular will receive negative comments at some point. You may think you are a really nice kind of person posting lovely positive vlogs, but people will find something to pick apart and potentially make you feel down and anxious. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t respond well to criticism and have any form of mental health issues then life on social media may not be for you. We are old and wise enough to know who we are and what we look like so any negative comment which isn’t true “constructive criticism” gets the block button. It’s a simple, effective way to deal with negative people. At the end of the day, each of your social media channels is your space, and you can uninvite someone from your space at any time with the block button. It’s easy to do but the negative comments can be a problem if you are that type of person. Think hard about it before you start.

Youtube isn’t the only option these days

Youtube can be a lot of hard work. The channels that make it look easy are usually the hardest working ones. Editing can take hours, finding the right music, and thumbnails, promoting on social media, building an online presence, and answering comments on various social media platforms. It can quickly turn into a full-time job if you are successful. You have to ask yourself if you actually have time for this to be a success.

There are more accessible routes these days to have an online social media presence and they don’t take up quite a much time. Maybe you could go for being on Instagram only. Doing photos, reels, and stories. It’s much easier as there’s not as much editing and it can all be done on your phone if necessary. The same with Tiktok, that’s another easier route. Maybe try those first to get a feel for being on camera and see how you get on. You may find you don’t need Youtube at all. You can see our Tiktok below.

Final thoughts

Anyone with a mobile phone can be up and running on Youtube and other social media in no time at all. Whether you have an end goal of making it a full-time career or just a fun hobby. You can also start a Youtube channel and set all your videos to private and only share them with people you choose, family and friends, etc. If you wanted to create videos but not show them to the world, that’s also an option

It’s a fun hobby to have and it’s a great online video diary of your past to look back on whenever you want. We have years of videos with family and friends to look back on and remember great times from our past

Just remember: You will get negative comments even if you are the nicest person on the planet. It’s harder work than it looks and you WILL hate your own voice at first (you’ll get over that before long) and just go for it

If we have missed anything you would like to know about, please drop us a comment in the comments section below and we will either update this blog article or reply to you.

Thanks for reading.

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