How I Became a YouTube Partner (A Teen’s Experience)

by David Posted on March 9, 2012

A lot of people ask me how I make money from YouTube and I simply tell them “I make videos.” Now I know that sounds simple, but it really is easy – the complicated part was how I got there.  On Spring break in 2010, I was staying in a New York City apartment with my family. It was late at night, everyone else was asleep – and I was up on my MacBook. I was on YouTube, watching tech videos. I recently just got this MacBook and I was trying to figure out a few things on the MacBook– so I used YouTube as my teacher and resource. I really admired what these tech reviewers did and I wondered if I could do this myself. So I scrolled to the top right hand of the page and clicked “Create an Account”.

Now the first thing I struggled with was creating a good, catchy Youtube name. I always knew that in high school my grandpa was named “bellix” and I thought that was pretty neat. But I needed to make that name more interesting, so I put an “I” in front of it like the Apple products did, I of course for Internet.  After I had the Youtube channel created, it was uphill from there.

What I started doing was giving tutorials on how to use Apple computers. I made videos talking about how to change the screen saver, how to make your computer stay awake for a while – really basic things. I kept constantly making videos because I really enjoyed it. I started interacting with other techy YouTuber’s on social media sites and building relationships with them. I started becoming more and more involved in the YouTube community. Now at this point in time, I roughly had 100 subscribers, and 1,000 views. If you don’t know, a subscriber is a person with a YouTube account – who subscribes to your video feed. This means that every time you make a video, it appears on their homepage. Having subscribers is very crucial to the YouTube partnership. Like I said before, I constantly made videos trying to get more and more viewers. I enjoyed interacting with them in the comment section of my videos and helping them with their technology problems.

After about 6 months of creating YouTube videos, I decided that I was going to apply to the YouTube Partnership Program. Now at this point and time I had 500 subscribers and roughly 20,000 views. I was very naïve applying so early, but I did anyway. The YouTube Partnership Program is a program that you apply for and if you are accepted it allows you to have advertisements appear on your videos which then generate revenue. Now there is no trick or scheme to be accepted to this program, you really just need a constant stream of quality YouTube videos, along with fan base behind you (roughly 1,000 subscribers, 100,000 views).  While I wasn’t a YouTube Partner, I made the videos for free, and I had no problem doing that because I really enjoyed doing it.  I got denied the fist time for Partnership but decided that I would apply in another 6 months.

Six months later, I had 1,500 subscribers and 120,000 views; so I applied again. This time making sure that all my answers on the application form were quality, as well as no grammatical mistakes. I clicked that send button, and waited for a very long time. The typical wait for you to find out if you were accepted was 2-4 weeks. After 4 weeks, I didn’t hear anything and was super bummed.

Then 2 months later at school, I heard my iPod buzz, so I made sure the teacher wasn’t looking and I checked to see what the new email was. I thought maybe it was a comment on one of my videos, or a new subscriber. But out of the blue, it said “Congratulations iBellix, you are now a YouTube partner”. I couldn’t tell you how ecstatic I was. I was now going to be making money off all my videos and make even more money for the future videos I was going to create.

I’ve been a YouTube partner for quite some time now. I’ve made over 200 videos; have 5,000 subscribers, and 2,000,000 views. I’ve kind of veered away from YouTube as it’s not my passion like it use to be, but I still put up the occasional video review. I have been very lucky and blessed to be a YouTube partner, since it has provided me with a steady stream of income. Now I know that you are most likely wondering how it pays. I’ll keep it generalized as this, some months I can make $150.00, others it can be $500.00. It all varies on how many views I’ve gotten.  It’s a really fun thing to make YouTube videos and I’d recommend it to anyone.

If you have any more questions feel free to send me an email: ibellix@gmail.com. You can view my videos at YouTube.com/iBellix – and follow me on Twitter  @thedavidbell. Thank you very much for reading!

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The Internet Soap Opera: SOPA

by David Posted on January 20, 2012

If you haven’t heard of SOPA in the past few weeks, you must be living under a hard drive. SOPA has been all the Internet rage as of late. It’s been talked about non-stop and for a lot of people it hasn’t really been clear as to what it even is.  SOPA – stands for the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ and it is a bill that is working its way through the US congress. The bill’s intention is to “fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods, initiated by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (Republican).” SOPA is a counterpart of the Protect IP Act (S.968), PIPA.

So you’re probably thinking, “how will this whole SOPA and PIPA non-sense affect my everyday web browsing?” If this bill were to be passed, movie studios and record labels would have the ability to tear down foreign websites that have a copyright infringement against their firms. So say for instance that Warner Brothers had reported that a site is making their movie Where the Wild Things Are available to be torrented (or illegally downloaded) they could demand that Google remove everything from that website off their search engine, make advertising companies no longer deal with that site, but most importantly have that site no longer be able to be visited.

The SOPA bill would not only target illegal downloading sites like PirateBay or uTorrent, it would affect common sites like YouTube. In fact, this past week site MegaUpload has been removed from the web. If you didn’t know, MegaUpload was a site where you could download limited movies, music, TV shows and user submitted content for free – or you could buy a membership and have access to their vast selection. The founder of this site Mim Dotcom, CMO Finn Batato, co-founder Mathias Ortmann, programmer Bram van der Kolk, graphic designer Julius Benko, head of business development Sven Echternach and programmer Andrus Nomm have been accused of taking home a revenue of more than $175 million while causing $1 billion in damages.

 

MegaUpload and affiliated sites have hosted prime content like movies, TV, ebooks, and software for more than 5 years. The timing of this website being shutdown couldn’t have been more perfect. MegaUpload being shutdown proves that we don’t need the anti-piracy bills such as SOPA and PIPA.

Essentially SOPA would be creating an “Internet BlackList”. “The bill’s “vigilante” provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the Internet.” I think that the scariest thing about this bill is that, it’s written so that if they were to blacklist YouTube – they could just do it, and they wouldn’t even have to have a court date. YouTube couldn fight back, but at great cost while there business was essentially stopped.

SOPA could also hurt your social media life. If you created a Facebook status that linked to torrent, or an illegal download, Facebook would be legally inclined to remove it from Internet existence. Think about all the fantastic blogs that you read, all your favorite people you follow on Twitter, all those Tumblr accounts you follow…they could all be removed just because they posted a piece of content that has infringed someone’s copyright.

Rage and uproar about this bill has been expressed by my many tech and social media moguls evidenced by Twitter and Facebook pictures now how have a black bar underneath them that says “STOP SOPA”. In fact, web entrepreneur Kevin Rose tweeted this: “didn’t shower today, avoiding all things SOPA sounding.. #StopSOPA”.  So where do I stand on this?  I am completely with Kevin.  The Internet is supposed to be a place of freedom in my opinion; but not everyone agrees with me.  GoDaddy – the domain and web hosting company announced that they were supporting SOPA and very quickly an Internet event was organized, 72,341 people transferred their web domains off GoDaddy onto other competitors. GoDaddy CEO Adeleman later that week announced his company is in full opposition of SOPA – that was quick!  Not only have people protested, but large companies like Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Word Press and Twit Pic all shutdown on January 18th to protest SOPA.

Well I guess with all of the social media protests and all the websites “going dark”, helped as SOPA has officially been defeated; but who knows when the next anti-piracy claim will come ‘a knocking’.  But I know that when it does, people will be ready. Stay strong internet, stay strong.

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Dragon’s Den Experience – A Teen’s Perspective

by David Posted on May 27, 2011

As none of you know, this past week I flew down to Toronto to participate in one of Canada’s most popular television programs, Dragon’s Den. Let me tell you about my experience.

This Christmas I came up with a fantastic idea that I knew would work, and I had that feeling that I need capital to pursue it somehow. So my neighbour called me one day telling me that the show Dragon’s Den is coming to town looking for young entrepreneurs to be on the show. So I thought, this is my chance to fund my idea and I knew I needed to audition.

So I put together an entertaining pitch and put my best foot forward and went to the Winnipeg auditions and met with one of the show’s producer and told her what my product was all about. She loved my charisma and the professionalism I carried throughout my pitch at only 14 years of age. Even though my business idea was still in concept form, she said I did very well and that she would be considering me and 70 other people who auditioned in Winnipeg to fly down to Toronto and pitch to the real Dragon’s. At the time, given the state of my business it was a longshot.

Three weeks later, I received a phone call from CBC congratulating me on my success. I was very happy and thought I needed to get serious about preparing. I stepped up my efforts and spent countless hours doing research, putting together a business plan, creating revenue projections, having meetings with executive experts in the field my business was and so on.

About a month before I was scheduled to shoot I had weekly phone calls with my lovely CBC producer Katie Cumby. I would rehearse my pitch over the phone and she would give me pointers and the benefit of her show experience with respect to my business valuation. Since my product had no sales and was a concept it took some extra preparation. Katie Cumby was awesome.

On May 25th, my Mother and I flew out to Toronto hoping to come back with some cash. After relaxing a bit on arrival I moved to nervously rehearsing my pitch over and over at the hotel. On the big day,I woke up, ate some breakfast and headed on down to the CBC for 11am. I had to sign a contract that released CBC from most everything and basically said “we can make you look stupid if we want and televise it in front of millions”. I also agreed to keep the outcome of the show a secret until it airs in the fall. If it airs; as not all pitches that are taped make it to the TV show.

They then took us upstairs to a large staging room where myself and the other pitchers and had our props checked and the director and producers reviewed each pitch to ensure everyone was coordinated for the TV shoot. After that, we headed up to the studio where we took a tour of the set.

My initial impressions of the set was that it seemed a lot smaller than you perceive on television. By the way, the stacks of money on the tables between the Dragons are fake. I was disappointed too. After the tour, I sat in a room for about 4 hours rehearsing and waited to be called. As bad as the wait sounds, it was an awesome time. I met some really smart people and also got to spend some time with some really good looking models that were part of another pitch for a hangover cure. The models were there to ‘spice up’ the inventor’s presentation. They were very nice.

After I was taken out of the holding room and I was brought down to hair and makeup.

The stylist said my hair was perfect, but I needed some powder on my face so my sweat wouldn’t appear on TV. After that, I got to wait some more and then I was finally called to walk to the top of the stair case. I was about to enter the ‘Den’.

At his point, my nerves were running absolutely wild. I kept practising my pitch and took huge breaths. 5-4-3-2-1 and then I received a tap on the shoulder and I was sent down the stairs to walk into the Den. As soon as I got out in front of the Dragons I was very star struck. I saw what these people looked like in real life and I was in awe. I set up my props and began pitching with authority and confidence. The Dragons didn’t believe I was 15, they thought I was 24. But after they got over that, they loved my personality and the way I presented myself. Similar to the comments as the producer at the Winnipeg audition expressed.

As soon as I began talking to them and answering their questions my nervousness dissipated. You begin to realize that these are real people, with lives just like you. Except theirs may be a little more luxurious. Kevin’s doesn’t come off as arrogant as he’s perceived on television. Arlene is very pretty in person and the nicest by far. Jim is the most understanding and gives you a chance to speak. Robert is smart and overall a great Dragon. The new Dragon Bruce Croxon (Co-founder of Lava Life) did a lot of thinking about whether my idea was good or not. They were all nice to me and I have nothing but good things to say about them. It was a great to present my idea to such amazing business people.

After walking out, you are immediately interviewed. Questions were asked about how the experience was, how you felt, what it was like to present etc. Then you are brought to another producer to thank you for coming and he gives you some Dragon’s Den swag. I thought that was a very nice touch. Then you take the elevator downstairs and you leave the CBC building. Your moment of stardom is over.

Now according to my contract, I can’t disclose whether or not I have received a deal. I guess to find out you’ll have to tune into CBC this fall. I’ll keep you updated when or if I will appear on television.

This was the best business experience of my life and I met some great people and made some great connections along the way. For any entrepreneurs looking to get capital, audition for Dragon’s Den in Winnipeg next year. You will not regret it.

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