So you’re starting YouTube and you’re wondering whether you should hire people to do the video editing for you, do your thumbnails, the script writing, the SEO for your channel and all the different bits that have to do with managing a YouTube channel and creating videos.
Well in this article I want to address this very topic.
These are the 3 things to consider before hiring people to help you grow your Youtube channel. Get this wrong and it may cost you a lot of money.
Is it worth doing and when is the right time to do it?
And actually the decision is really easy to make because it boils down to three tick boxes.
Is your channel paying for itself?
Number one, is your channel paying for itself?
If you’ve separated your YouTube channel as a separate business that’s not really connected with your bank account, like I did for example. I created a separate company and a separate business bank account for my YouTube channel and when the YouTube channel starts to generate money, I will use that money to grow the channel without spending anything from my personal bank account.
On the other hand, if your YouTube channel is making you money and that’s going directly in your own bank account, then that means that when you’re hiring people to do things, then you’re paying them from your bank account.
So you might be paying those people with your money, so you’re spending more money than the YouTube channel has been making you.
So are you separating your YouTube channel revenue as a separate entity?
If you are, then that means that you’re only entitled to that pot of money that the YouTube channel has made you and you’re not going to spend anything extra from your personal bank account to hire people.
On the other hand, if you’re not separating the YouTube channel from your personal budget, then that means you’re spending money from your personal bank account to hire people, making the YouTube channel operate on a net negative, which is absolutely fine again, you just need to be aware.
Cost per hour
Number two is cost per hour.
Is it cheaper for you to do the piece of work or is it cheaper to hire somebody else?
Let’s say you’re looking for a video editor that costs $15 per hour and let’s say you have a day job where you make $12 per hour, or for example, you’re a freelancer and you work for $10 or $12 per hour doing something else. So you can see why it’s a better business decision for you to do the video editing, because it’s less costly for you to learn how to do the video editing instead of paying somebody else, because one hour of the time of that video editor that takes $15 per hour costs more than what you can make in your day job or in your freelancing job.
So it’s not really a good trade-off for you to sacrifice one and a half hours in your day job to pay one hour for the video editor. And hold on, hold on, you’re probably going to say the video editor is going to do a way better job than myself.
Well, in fact, a good video editor costs no less than $50 an hour, which makes you wonder, are you making enough at your day job to afford that or not?
I would say if you’re just starting out on YouTube, it’s really better off for you to learn the core skills of editing your own videos because it’s cheaper, and it’s a better choice of investing your time because you’re gaining the knowledge of how to do it, which brings me to the next point.
Know-How
Number three is having the know-how of all the tasks and the quality you’re looking for when you’re hiring people for your YouTube channel.
By know-how, I mean the knowledge of all of the tasks and processes that are included in your video production for your channel. For you to hire the right people, you must be able to accurately gauge whether the pricing point of their labour is accurate, which means that you can’t really tell if you’re being ripped off in terms of price if you haven’t had a go at that task before.
For example, with the video editing, let’s say you’ve never done video editing before and somebody asks you for $50. You say okay, and you start paying that video editor, and by the time of your 10th video, your YouTube channel has already made you bankrupt because you paid hundreds of dollars for that video editor, but your videos are below average and are underperforming, so you start to wonder what’s gone wrong.
Well, that’s because you took a decision to hire that person for the price they told you without you being able to say whether that price is okay or not, so that’s why it’s really important to invest some time in gaining know-how.
Having knowledge and experience in each step of the process of getting your videos live means that you’ve already had a go at it, you know what you’re good at, if something is really hard, if it takes a lot of time, you know the quality of video editing you’re looking for, you know the quality of thumbnails you’re willing to pay for, and who knows, it might turn out that you’re really good at making thumbnails, for example.
You can still outsource the video editing after some time if you’re finding it really hard or if you can actually afford it, but it’s really important to have some experience in each of those things so that you’re able to hire the right person to do it later on, which I think all in all is the right decision to do, and you know what else is the right decision to do?
Hope this helped!
Bye!