A lot of you guys as creators are hoping it to turn your YouTube channel into a full time career for you, but what happens if maybe YouTube goes downhill, and you lose all your audience and your job with it? Could that happen, and how should you maybe mitigate some of that risk. Let’s talk about that coming up.

ZeeBoyCrunchy tweeted me and asked this question.

My question is that if YouTube will ever die? Most people want this as a full time job, but what if YouTube goes downhill?

Good question. I have two suggestions for every YouTube creator out there, but first of all, let me preface it by saying number one, I don’t think that YouTube is going to go downhill anytime soon. They’re still a very major player, and so I don’t think that’s like a huge risk right now. Not saying it can’t ever happen because we see what happened to the Myspace and plenty of other social networks. You know, so it could happen, but I think for the foreseeable future, we’re probably pretty safe.

And my second preface is that what I’m about to share doesn’t apply necessarily to every channel, but I think it could, it’s just that some channels have different philosophies and models and things like that. So let me tell you what they are. Number one, basically, you need to diversify two things. You need to diversify one, your audience and two, you need to diversify your income. What does that mean? What I mean, how does that work?

Diversify Your Audience

So number one, you need to diversify your audience. So that means not just having all of your audience as a subscriber here on YouTube. That means also having your Facebook fan page and growing your Twitter following, and your Instagram following, and maybe your email list, which could arguably be the most important asset that you have as far as communicating with your audience directly.

In the example of the email list, I actually have one myself here at Video Creators, and maybe you’ve noticed that at the end of every single video here in my end card, I just show visually the picture of my book. It’s called “The Secret to Building Your YouTube Audience” and you can either click it, click on that card, or the link in the description below, or you can go and get that eBook for free, in exchange for signing up for my email list where I send you guys exclusive information, and tips, and ideas, and advice, that don’t make it here to this YouTube channel.

And so that’s one way that I personally am diversifying off of YouTube and growing my list, and getting permission to be like directly inside of people’s inboxes. So maybe that is helpful for you or not. If you want to learn more about that book, definitely go down there and click that link and go get it, and you’ll see how I do it.

Diversify Your Income

And then number two, the second thing to diversify is your income. Now a lot of creators depend solely on AdSense, and for some of you guys, again, that might make perfect sense and be exactly what you need to do. But if some of us want to make this like a long-term career, we don’t want all our eggs in YouTube’s basket, then you should definitely check out some of the other videos I’ve already done. They’ll be in a card around here or linked up below about how you can make 120 times more money on YouTube very, very quickly than you can make from AdSense. And I give you guys a lot of stats and numbers and practical advice in that video so go check that out.

But basically, what it comes down to is developing a business model around your content and around the value that you’re delivering, that goes beyond just simple ad revenue here on YouTube. And I would say that even goes beyond just product deals, and brand deals, and things like that. Because even in that case, you’re always just kind of searching for the next deal to come along. And so you get a chunk of change and now, you need another chunk of change. You’ve got to keep it going.

So again, more information in some of the other videos linked up down there. But you do need to diversify your income and your audience to mitigate the risk if YouTube collapses or goes away, or if you get a copyright strike, or a couple copyright– or something happened to your channel and you lose monetization. Like for me, that would be bad, I would hate that, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world because I have other streams outside of this channel for how I generate income from the value that I deliver.

But it’s is a good question and definitely one that you guys should be thinking about long term, like super long term, about your career, and your audience, and your channel, and everything like that. And I’d love to hear from you guys in the comments below. What have you thought about concerning this question? If YouTube goes downhill, what would you do? And do you have any advice for other creators are thinking about mitigating that risk as much as possible?

And if that’s something that you’re thinking about right now, read the comments that other people are leaving down there. I know you’ll find a lot of them valuable and helpful as I do every single week. And if this is your first time here, I would love to have you subscribe.