Emotional Volatility in YouTube

This post focuses on ways to deal and live with volatility in your YouTube career. Now we’re not talking about market volatility and all the technical mumbo-jumbo that no one really wants to think about. This discussion is about the general feeling and notion that YouTube is a fickle social media god and that many times, even though you may put in exactly the same amount of effort as always, the results you’re getting are just not the same. We’ll also touch on motivation and emotional volatility, which seems to be an occupational hazard for most creators.

Results vs. Improvements

The first idea we’d like to bring forth is the difference between a results obsession versus an improvement obsession and which of those actually helps you manage volatility. Put in the simplest way, it is very risky to always bet on and hope for results (results obsession), because there are other elements apart from just the work you put in that determine what kind of results you get. You might make the same effort on two different videos and they will probably get a difference in the number of views they yield. This could be down to current social climate, algorithm preference, coinciding with other creators and having more competition or a lot of other things! There is no denying that unpredictability is part of the game.

If you focus on making every video better than the last, however (improvement obsession) there are no other elements at play there. In the end, what forges a career is consistent, internal growth – and that is something that you are fully able to control yourself. This is why focusing on improving your content rather than on how your content does out in the world is a much healthier and sustainable way of dealing with YouTube volatility. After all, dedication is an antidote to volatility.

Keep Learning

Another well-known antidote is preparation. In this case, that means constant learning, studying, and analyzing. Although it is not possible to fully understand or predict what will happen in the near future, approximation is a very real alternative. Even if you don’t do so well with the prediction part, you can still learn how to mitigate or make up for the results of volatility.

Know Your Brand

On a different note, a lot of creators fear the “turn of the tides” in their audience. What if they stop liking what I’m doing? What if they get bored? What if someone else does a better job than me?

While these are unavoidable concerns to have along your career, there is a way to put your mind at rest, and that is basically by switching your focus and understanding your own brand. If you know why your viewers like your content and what makes you uniquely you as a creator, then you don’t have to worry about the meat of your content not being attractive enough. Once you know what the foundations of your brand is, then you can work on reinforcing them and building and creating upon those foundations. If your videos stand on the pillars of your defining qualities, the winds of trends and audience demands will not be able to knock them down.

Reach Out to Peers

There are even social ways to deal with volatility, as with most things. YouTube is, after all, a community, so why not seek out your tribe and fellow creators? As far as support systems go, it doesn’t get much better than a circle of people who are going through exactly the same experience as you. Talking to people who have survived what you’re nervous about does wonders for motivation, so don’t be shy!

Create More Baskets

Not strictly related to YouTube, our next suggestion for dealing with volatility and uncertainty in YouTube has to do with diversifying your forms in income so as to, excuse the expression, distribute your eggs among several baskets. Even when you know exactly what your brand is and you work to improve and not get results, realistically, there is still a chance that the platform could fail you. It happens to the best creators.

So, to avoid those internal risks altogether, the best external measure you can take is to grow other businesses or forms of income (even if they do depend on your channel, like a merch store, for example). This is one of the oldest tricks in the book of entrepreneurship: nothing is really risk-free, so protecting yourself with different enterprises will take a huge weight (and creative pressure) off of your shoulders.

To recap, volatility is an unavoidable part of being a creator. And yet people (and careers) survive. This shows us that there are several ways to counteract the effects of the unpredictable elements that affect your results, it is simply a matter of taking a proactive approach and finding ways to reinvent yourself that work for you as a creator.

We hope this helped – check out our previous posts to see if there’s anything else we can help you with.