Last year I asked site readers for comments about what I do, how I was doing it, and what they wanted me to do that I wasn’t doing.
Almost every time I do that there’s a small sub-response that says “make videos and share them on YouTube.” Given I have clear experience in television broadcasting and training videos, it seems strange to some of you that I don’t do such videos on camera gear. I thought it time to list some of my problems with doing video as opposed to writing.
First and foremost, I can write something, edit it, and post it far faster than I can create a video saying the same thing. I tend to value productivity over most everything else. My days on this planet are limited, so why would I want to be less efficient?
Second, words convey information faster and more efficiently. You can input and retain data faster via reading than via video. You can scan an article faster (and much more efficiently) than you can a video. It’s easier to clip and build your own set of useful info via the written word than with video.
Third, YouTube is a middle man, and I’ve learned to avoid them. In “return for” hosting your video and perhaps promoting it in some way, they push advertising on your work. Heck, if you’re popular enough they’ll even give some pennies back on the dollars they earn, so they’re being generous, right? While I still own a few shares of Google stock (Google owns YouTube), I’m not interested in putting huge efforts on my own into making Google richer.
There’s also a subcomponent of this third notion that’s troublesome: you essentially need to go viral to get visibility this way. The most common way to “go viral” on YouTube is say or do controversial things. I’m not interested in controversy, I’m interested in information flow.
Fourth—while you might not believe this from someone who branded himself—I’m actually an introvert and on the shy side when it comes to the rest of the world. If I wanted to be a television show host, I had my chance at that decades ago, but decided that I much prefer the other side of the camera, where no one sees me.
All that said, I have done a few presentations via Creative Photo Academy, and I will continue to do a few video/streaming things in the future. But in the end, the real issue is that as a one-man shop, video simply takes me more time to do.
