Which Type of Creator are YOU?

Something I see quite often in the Adventure YouTube world is a channel that is doing a refit on their adventure machine (boat, camper, van, etc), and they post videos about the process. Some days they are changing the impeller, other days they are painting the ceilings, and the next day they are at the beach taking some much needed rest. Unfortunately, this type of content does not work for most of us. Providing a range of experiences as you go about your daily activities is vlogging in its purest form, and most of us do not have the formula to be “pure vloggers”, at least if your goal is to get paid to travel.

There are three types of creators on YouTube, and in order to fit into the pure entertainment circle (e.g. vlogging), you need to check as many of the following boxes as possible:

• Good looks
• Good personality
• Multiple people with either of the above
• A unique story
• A unique location
• A major life event
• Cinematic footage
• Good sense of humor
• High quality editing
• Compelling storytelling skills
• Gear or home that people desire (expensive or unique)

In the pure entertainment category, your primary goal is to influence how people feel, with inspiration and awe being at the forefront in the fulltime travel sphere. You are selling a dream.

In my case, I arguably only have the following:

• Good personality (I think so!)
• A unique story (Grew up in a cult, middle of 7, etc etc)
• A unique location (New Zealand)
• High quality editing
• Compelling storytelling skills

As is the case for most of us, I did not tick enough of those boxes, and as a result, I wouldn’t be able to grow as a pure entertainer. I had to go to either the edutainment or educator spaces.

I chose Edutainment

You’ll remember in my article on branding that I said all choices, such as the one I am proposing here, should refer back to the brand you have chosen. With that in mind, my mission that I chose for my channel included two actions that both have an end goal of allowing you to adventure more:

1. help you discover your highest purpose
2. grow an engaged and dedicated audience, and build a sustainable income

The first part of my mission required me to convey my message in experiential way. It’s hard to get across personal growth concepts with just telling people the concepts. I learned through personal stories and felt experiences, and that’s how I wanted to convey these messages too. That said, there still needs to be a bit of teaching in there, otherwise the concepts don’t have enough data to back them up. That put me in the Edutainment space.

I felt, though, that the second part of my mission is purely educational, with my personality being irrelevant to a large degree. I am teaching about making an adventure creator business, and my goal is feed people as much relevant information as possible. I also wanted to provide as many perspectives as possible to increase my possibility of learning something new, as well as yours! This part of my mission is in the Education space.

Pick One and STAY THERE!

If you watched the launch of my new YouTube channel, you would know that I took a bit of a risk. On this new channel, I provide both biweekly vlogs and, in the alternating weeks, podcast interviews with other travel vloggers. I’m going to write a post soon on the results of the new channel, but preliminary results are looking very good! And I think part of it comes down to ONE THING:

Once you decide which space you sit in, Entertainment, Edutainment, or Education, the most important thing you need to do is STAY CONSISTENT.

Yes, it’s not ideal for me to do both vlogs and interviews as they are very dissimilar content types, potentially attracting two different audiences, but as long as I stay consistent in my biweekly expectations, people will gain an understanding of what I provide and learn to rely on it. But I need to stick to this pattern and structure.

Takeaway

Going back to the original scenario of doing a boat refit, the problem I often see is a channel gains a reputation for being the go-to channel for said refit because they show all sorts of technical information. Then, when the refit is done and they start vlogging their locations and the travel lifestyle, the audience they attracted interested in the refit are not interested in staying with them anymore. Their views plummet, and speaking from experience, that is hard to recover from.

What I see as a better way is set your long-term goals NOW. Go through your branding and think about how you could record the refit process or other similar situations in a way that would attract the audience you want long term.

In my case where self-improvement is a big part of my channel focus, that would mean showing the emotional side of a refit. How to stay emotionally healthy amidst the stress, how to make sure I retain a work / play balance, etc. I would not show the technical side or manual skills I hold, as that is not relevant to my personal mission.

As always, figure out where you’re going, figure out what type of creator you are, and then stay the course! Stay consistent! We’re here for the long-haul, which means not jumping on short term gains that won’t benefit us in the long run.

Stay curious! 🙂