Don’t reinvent the wheel – watch others & repeat in your own way

It took me a while to realize the importance of learning from others as opposed to trying to come up with stuff on my own (in many aspects of life).  It’s much easier and smarter to watch what other people are doing who are successful at what you want to do than to try to just completely go at it on your own.  And then you can add your own flair and still do your own thing, while utilizing what you’ve learned from their successes and failures.  And that is definitely true when it comes to getting famous online (and hence this blog)!

When YouTube first started there wasn’t really anyone to learn from because let’s face it, before YouTube the amount of fame that anyone had online was minimal.  There weren’t online video stars like there are now.  But now YouTube has been around for 4 years and there are people who are well known on it and make a good living off of their videos.

Michael Buckley is one of them.  I first started watching him back when I first started going on YouTube and I think he had about as many subscribers as I do now (and I had under a hundred).  I wrote a nice comment on one of his videos and I soon got a nice comment back from him on one of my videos and he subscribed to me, so I subscribed back.  Well, fast forward about 3 years and he’s now got over half a million subscribers and has hundreds of videos.

By watching his videos as his popularity rapidly grew, I learned a few tips and tricks.  Sometimes he would share something like “wow, I’ve learned how important it is to just ask people to subscribe” or I’d just notice something like how he always added a “5 stars for —” bubble in every video.  Well, recently Buck did a webinar (aka a 26 minute informational video) with his top tips on how to be successful on YouTube:

I watched it and thought it was great, but I’m surprised to see how few views it has (under 150,000 as I write this).  Considering how many people whine about their videos not being seen by enough people on YouTube I would have thought that more would take the time to listen to someone who’s accomplished what they want.

I think it just goes to show that a lot of people are talkers, but few are doers.  And also that people often think they know everything or can come up with a “better” way of doing things on their own.  But I think it’s the people who learn from others who did it before them AND put in the time and effort who become the most successful.  Just like the people who come to this blog and read it on a daily basis.

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YouTube comment of the day:

KissMyDonkeyEditing has made a comment on Comfortable Stick (Comfort Wipe spoof):