This week I spent an enjoyable evening with my Tuesday night wine group. Ten of us meet weekly to imbibe on the delicacies of grapes fermented and allowed to become what we fondly refer to as wine. The youngest among us is fifty-seven a mere child, and the oldest I am proud to proclaim was me at eighty-three. We started out slowly as usual, but as we began tasting the various bottles like Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, our psyches began to open up and we began to brainstorm. One among us told of his son who wanted to find himself with a career on Youtube. We all looked rather stunned and questioned how in the hell is someone going to make a career out of Youtube?
I turned to Kay who a few meetings back had told me about her grandson and his girlfriend who were making money on their Youtube channel. “Look up Mariah and Bill” on Facebook and you will see their antics. I did. They are a cute couple who specialize in video taping themselves doing various dumb pranks none of which are more than a few minutes long. I thought to myself they have a following that nets them a five figure income every month. It is hard to imagine for an old goat like myself as to how someone can make money on Youtube, but it turns out to be rather simple. If you were to create a Youtube channel for your videos and get people to watch it you could indeed make money at it. I’d say that maybe twenty percent of the people who try this are successful and eighty percent are not. It is a matter of building audience. Every time I watch a video on Youtube the presenter asks me to like his channel and to follow him. When a presenter’s following reaches a certain number, Youtube begins earning money from advertisers, and that is when you begin to get fraction of the advertising income from Youtube. So the simple steps to success are to 1. create content, and 2. build a following.
Getting back to my wine club meeting. I interrupted the conversation to ask Kay to tell us about her grandson’s experience with Youtube. She proceeded to amaze us with the story of Mariah and Bill on Youtube. Bill is now twenty years old, but he began this endeavor when he was eighteen. Today, she said he makes sixty thousand dollars a month doing these stupid funny videos. Then it happened. the focus of the meeting was a discussion on how we could do the same as a group of seniors making money of Youtube. Our friend John piped up, “we could start filming old people in their underwear.” we all laughed hilariously, then began to offer ideas for clips like wearing thongs and speedos, or vintage versus modern, etc. I piped up that I’d like to see the women in the group in their thongs, they all moaned. Then I said “I have a vision of us all wearing TENA diapers.” another longer and louder moan.
The night went on for several minutes of new ideas and lots of laughter. Although it began as a stupid idea, I thought why not? Instead of “Mariah and Bill” about two twenty year olds we could film “Kay and Joe” about two eighty year olds mimicking their grandchildren’s antics and posting them on Youtube and TicTok. Maybe we could supplement our meager retirement income with a shot of new money. If nothing else we would offer the viewing audience some serious laughter. At worst we would have a lot of fun doing something out of the ordinary for senior citizens.
Take a look at the linked videos and tell me if you think Kay and Joe have a chance to be stars of Youtube and TikTok
Filed under: Aging, Biography, Humor | Tagged: Monetizing, Stupid stuff, TikTok, YouTube | Leave a comment »
