Recession zine coming...

I started writing a small zine* the other day called, "How to Make the Next Recession Great."  From my own perspective, it looked like we're getting really close to the tipping point into the inevitable next recession (from Hell).  But these days, I try to make the most of opportunities.  Recessions suck for most, because people convince themselves that recessions will never happen again.  And then they happen.  But if you realize it's coming, and get ready for it, recessions offer a ton of opportunity. 

Oh yeah... the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 700 points or so today.  Imagine that.

* For any who don't know, a zine (pronounced zeen), is a small, self-published booklet, usually handmade and done on a photocopier.

The coolest thing I've ever seen in Winston-Salem

To nearly all the people in the world, if you say, "Winston-Salem," people will think of two packs of cigarettes.  Period.  This is one of the problems small and medium sized cities everywhere are dealing with.  In today's Information Age world, cities that build an name for themselves as being interesting and exciting places to be and live, attract the most talented people (aka Richard Florida's "Creative Class"), which attract more talented people.  Those cities are the ones where tech companies tend to set up because that's where the good tech people want to live.

To get to that point, Winston-Salem needs to get past the tobacco-centric past and become an interesting city in the minds of talented young people.  This video that I just stumbled across is the coolest thing I've ever seen associated with Winston-Salem.  Parkour is always fun to watch, and knowing where nearly every place in this video is adds to it.  The video is also well shot and well edited, which really helps.  Now, anyone out there who wants Winston-Salem to flourish in the future, make about 100 more videos of cool stuff like this happening here.

First you make your city known in the minds of college age people around the country, and around the world.  THEN you start getting the talented biotech scientists and engineers to move here to the new Innovation Quarter.  First things first.

Top YouTubers from 2017

The world has always been weird in many ways.  But now we live in a world where ten million men aren't working or looking for work.  Five million more are looking for a job (BLS stats).  Tens of millions more are struggling with one job, two jobs, or mountains of student debt.  Whole areas of the country are struggling. 

And there are these guys... and one gal.  PewDiePie has bit the dust from the YouTube top spot, and Logan Paul as well since this video came out.  But the rest are still making absurd amounts of money for making entertaining, or just plain weird, videos.  Believe it or not, "content creator" is a business a lot of younger kids are looking up to these days.  We are living in interesting times.

Yes, you can make money on YouTube... or at least your kids can

Got kids?  Got kids with Minions and Fart Blasters?  You probably will have after they watch this video.

In the last post, I shared a clip with tips for using You Tube to promote your music.  But are there really actual people who make big money on You Tube?  Yes, like these two kids above, Evan and Jillian.  I happen to know these two are for real, because their mom is one of my sister's best friends. 

As I understand it, the first YouTube channel started with Evan making things out of Play Doh or something when he was about 5 years old.  "Daddy Tube," as they call him in the videos, was a video producer, so he started making high quality videos of Evan trying out different toys.  EvanTube HD was born.  The channel took off in popularity, and before long toy companies were making deals to have Evan test out their toys in his videos. 

I first heard of these two kids a couple years back when visiting my sister.  She had just visited friends from way back, and I asked her how her friends were doing, since I they all were around our house while my sister was in high school.  She told me her BFF's son, Evan, was a YouTube millionaire.  I laughed.  Then my sister said she was serious. 

So I looked up Evan's channel, and this was the first video I watched.  Yeah, this kid, who was 8-years-old then, built the Lego Star Wars Sand Crawler.  I don't even know if I could build that thing without screwing it up.  Intrigued, I watched a few more videos, then Googled Evan and found the original version of this Huffington Post article.  Yes, at age 8, Evan (with his dad, mom and a few other helpers) was making over a $1 million a year from his YouTube channel. That blew my mind. 

So... how does a person, kid or adult, make big money using You Tube?  First you make good quality videos that connect with a large audience.  Second, you have to be real and entertaining on camera.  Third, you get tens of millions of views.  Yeah... no problem.  How hard can that be? 

EvanTube HD now has over 5.1 million subscribers, and one clip (giant gummy worm) has over 131 million views all by itself.  As Evan's little sister got older, she got into the act, and now has her own channel, as well as working as a team on Evan's original channel.  These channels are a full time business for the whole family, and a few other people, I believe. 

So where does the money come from?  Millions of views on YouTube earns people money from advertising, and when the numbers are huge, the paychecks can be huge, too.  Most smaller YouTube channels don't make all that much from the views their videos get.  Additional money comes from toy and game companies who work deals to have their products reviewed and tested by Evan and Jillian.  So in their case, before even reaching junior high, these kids have a serious college funds in the bank.  Heck, these two could probably buy their own college by the time they graduate high school at this rate. 

For all you parents out there, my sister, who has spent time visiting Evan and Jillian, says they're cool level headed kids.  Mommy Tube and Daddy Tube make sure all this success doesn't go to their heads.  I believe a lot of the toys get donated to worthy charities as well. 

So... making an absurd amount of money with YouTube is possible.  Can you or I do it?  Hey, I haven't been able to.  I don't even have an active YouTube channel yet.  But you'll see my Sharpie art on YouTube before too long.  But if you do something creative, YouTube and other video platforms are one great way to promote and show the world what you do.  Let's face it, it's unlikely that any of us will ever match the financial success of Evan and Jillian, but knowing that it is actually possible helps make building a good channel seem like a reasonable idea. 

How do you learn how to actually build up a channel?  How-to videos on YouTube, of course. 

Can you make money with music on YouTube?

While I'm not a musician, I'm always checking out ways to promote and make money with various types of creative work.  This 5 minute video has a ton of solid info on what it takes to make money with music (or other content) on YouTube.  If you bootleg music for your videos, you should watch this, too.  Basically, it's hard to make much money on YouTube unless you're in a decent sized niche and your stuff goes viral.  But there is money to be made if you can pull in the views.  For most people, though, it's better to view YouTube as promotion, and try to make your money some other way. 

Amanda Hocking: self-publishing success story

One of the first superstars of the Kindle/Apple e-book era, author Amanda Hocking talks about how she started and where it led in this clip.  She started writing vampire-type love stories, as I recall, and put in the work to both write the books, and to promote and self-publish them.  She got so successful, that traditional publishers started coming to her with offers.

I've been writing since my late teens, and have self-published 40 or so zines, written for BMX magazines, a newsletter, and typed up thousands of blog posts.  But publishing a "real" book has eluded me.  My artwork is bringing in money these days, but I'm more of a writer, and hopefully I can make a real book happen in the next year or so.  Amanda did it.  So have many others.  Knowing it's possible with today's technology helps.

Toys-R-Us: another chain bites the dust in the Retail Apcoalypse

DEFINITELY NSFW.  How does a kid fee when the biggest toy story is closing down for good?  Probably a lot like the kids in this classic scene.

As disruption in the retail store world continues, the best known toy store, Toys-R-Us has succumbed to the transition from the old Industrial Age to the building Information Age.  I call this in between time The Big Transition.  TRU will be closing all 800+ stores across the country.  Here's the story of how it happened from CNBC.  Might be a good time to go shopping for next Christmas.