THINK NEW, THINK YOUNG

Ranjit Kumar, an expert on technology reviews,shares his opinion on gadgets and their use in our daily life. His YouTube channel ‘Geeky Ranjit’ has become one of most viewed tech channels in India. He was a programmer who got bored and he began to review gadgets. A writer turned into reviewing gadgets through videos on YouTube.

He fostered his true passion in programming in his teens. He tried his hand on all types of applications, programs, and making games. After B.Com Hons., he pursued a course in programming from Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Maharashtra. He was a programmer and out of boredom, he started his gadget review channel initially through text, later to be evolved into properly crafted videos.

What started as ‘just like that’ has now turned into his full time job. His channel has more than 8.5 lakh subscribers. As per industry estimates, monthly earnings, after a channel hits a million views and one lakh subscribers, can range between Rs25,000 in a poor month to Rs 80,000 in a good month. As views and subscribers go up, so do the earnings, but not necessarily in that proportion. 

There are various other youtubers who have just adopted it as a full time job with a huge potential in income growth. BB ki Vines, Tanmay Bhatt of TVF and Arunabh Kumar of TVF are some such people who have gained a lot of popularity through YouTube. 

Arunabh Kumar is a well educated alumnus of IIT kharagpur. He hit the entertainment industry and is a well known personality all over. Even highly qualified and settled people are coming into it and have established themselves in the industry, both professionally and financially.   

Anyone can start a Youtube channel just through a google account and it’s free to start. Smartphone camera have become very good and you can start off by shooting with a smartphone and can move to digital cameras and other shooting equipments as you progress.“Success measure differs from creator to creator but I feel crossing the 1, 00, 000 subscriber mark for a channel is a good milestone that means a ton of people care what you are posting on your YouTube channel. Don’t try to spam or trick YouTube. It is owned by Google and there are very smart people working there, just use normal tags that you would use to search your content for promotion. Use proper descriptions, there is no big trick and also use proper titles,” advices Ranjit. 

Youtube leaders talk a lot about their personal life and the build up process, but one thing quite unknown to the viewers is the money they generate from it. Youtube has become a career for many, generating a steady and more income than in certain mainstream careers.

Depending upon the effort an artist puts in and gains popularity, YouTube can betreated just like a business it might take about 1-2 years before it will start giving very decent amount of revenue. Promoting a YouTube requires regular effort. Just produce content on a regular basis and it willbuild audience with time. It takes time to build your audience and community on Youtube.

YouTube has seen robust growth in the last few years. There is a huge explosive growth in YouTube viewership and new creators in the last 1 year and it is fast turning out to be a suitable carrier option.Being a Youtuber is becoming a new profession in India. 

SatyaRaghavan, entertainment head, YouTube India says, “India is witnessing a content creator revolution. While our comedy creators were the first to taste success in 2015, 2016 saw newer creators become household names emerge across different categories like music, tech, and food. With YouTube’s growing reach, their popularity is not just in big metros, but across many tier 2 and tier 3 cities as well. 

In 2016, we saw over 500 creators across India get over 100k subscribers which are about at least 1 channel crossing this threshold every day.”

An artist can apply for verification after the channel crosses 1 lakh subscribers; your content gets monetized and needs good volume of views to generate a handsome amount of money. YouTube would send you acheque when your earnings cross $100.

Earnings vary from day to day, depending on the rate advertisers bid for the channel and those adsdon’t have any fixed metric out of the advertising shown on the channel. YouTube takes 45% cut and the content creators get 55% of the share.

YouTube is like any other creative medium and so requires fresh content to be put out on a constant basis and also should have an understanding of the target audience you are serving. The artist can also experiment with some new stuff, who knows might get very adaptable.

Growth of YouTube has brought people to showcase their talent and stand a chance to enter various industries. This is the new medium where people can express themselves and getting noticed by millions of people and thus noticed by the so called industry experts. 

YouTube is doing a number of things to build on this strong momentum of the creator ecosystem in India. With online video consumption going mass in India, there is a huge appetite for local language content in India and that will continue to supercharge YouTube’s growth in India.

YouTube has significantly ramped up creator community events across the country with big focus on south of Indiato harness the local talent across India. Thanks to programs like Next Up, which is our development program for emerging creators, we’ve seen new talent emerge from across the country and we will continue to invest further on it. Earlier in the year, YouTube launched ‘SeeSomethingNew’ campaign, featuring 8 Indian creators across a variety of genres. This campaign is one of the ways YouTube is helping audiences discover the breadth of creator content that they can enjoy, and also help creators build on their success and inspire other creators as well.

Growth of YouTube has brought people to showcase their talent and stand a chance to enter various industries. Improved internet connectivity is leading to massive growth in content consumption in online video in India. Combined with more accessibility on mobile and tariffs, India is just entering a period of explosive growth.

With more people coming online especially in tier II and tier III cities, YouTube is observing more hunger for YouTube content across all genres. And just as we have seen in other mature markets, YouTube is India’s home for all kinds of niche content. 

Efforts and investment in supporting the young and dynamic creators in India have started to bear fruit. YouTube today has reached 180 million Indians on mobile alone and now has more than 10 Indian creators who have reached 1 million subscribers. All these are across a variety of content and genres. These creators represent India’s dynamic and vibrant content culture and its growing rapidly inspiring 1000s of new content creators across the country.