Transcription
We can often feel invisible in a world that seems built for young people. Three weeks before I turned 73, I published my first YouTube video. I knew I wasn't ready to slow down or fade into the background. I wanted to build a community. I wanted to share my life. We all need a reason to stay visible. YouTube was my path.
Hi, I'm Toby. Welcome to the channel. On Simply Retired, we talk about retirement, uh, mindful living and spending, simplifying, and self-care. And if you're new here, welcome. I'm very excited to tell you this story today.
I published my very first YouTube video on January 29th of this year. And then I published some more. And on March 13th, which was a Friday the 13th, I published my 13th video, which was called nine items I cut from my budget to thrive in retirement. And that video unexpectedly went viral. And then on um March 25th, 12 days later, I was accepted into the YouTube partner program.
Before I put up that first video, I spent a month preparing. I had recently moved back home to Long Island. I was looking for something to anchor me and ground me. I was looking for a new sense of purpose in my life. I had been watching YouTube videos for a couple of years. One of my grandchildren turned me on to them and I mostly was watching um creators who talked about minimalism or cleaned houses. I watched a lot of cleaning videos and I did not watch any videos that talked about how to start a YouTube channel. I found it very intimidating. So, that was not even on my plate. I didn't seriously think about starting my own channel for probably a year and a half or longer because I had a lot of fears about it. I mainly had a fear of appearing on camera. I worried a lot about how I looked. I was very self-conscious about how my face has changed as I've gotten older. I guess this was really a lot of it fear of aging.
I had to do a lot of work behind the scenes before I was actually ready to put up videos. So, what I did during the month of January was a series of exercises. The main one was that I would put up my camera. I had it balanced on yoga blocks. I had no equipment and my camera is my iPhone. So, I would balance my iPhone against these yoga blocks and I would sit there and just turn on record and let it witness me, let it watch me. I did that every single day. I tried to sit for at least a minute allowing the camera to watch me. I also did some exercises in front of the mirror in the bathroom. At the very beginning, I actually just read emails out loud that I had written and then I began reading like little paragraphs from books into the iPhone camera and I started watching them. And what that accomplished for me was it desensitized me to seeing my face and to seeing what I actually look like these days.
Advice I picked up from other YouTubers. What they all said was, "Go ahead, make a video and put it up. Don't worry that you don't know anything. Don't worry that you have no idea how to edit or how to compose your video frame. Don't worry about any of that stuff. just turn on your camera and record a video and publish it." So, I did my first video completely off the cuff. It was about moving back to Long Island and I put it up and I can tell you that immediately I felt like a different person. I had no idea how to edit. I left all the ums in and I just put it up there and nobody watched. And then I said, you know, let's see if I can do it again. Let's see if I can do it. And I created another three minute video and then another one. And then little by little, I learned how to do a few tiny things like how to take out the ums, how to, you know, splice a couple of sections together. And I was off and running. My thumbnails for at least 10 videos were just screen grabs. And later on, I began taking photographs. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The fact is that when I started, I didn't know how to do anything and so I didn't do anything except record and publish. This is what happens. You learn as you go along.
After the um nine items video went viral, I found myself with a community to talk to, which was just fantastic. I'm going to tell you about my earnings. Um, I started in January and when I was made a YouTube partner on March 25th, I began earnings right there at on that date. For the month of March, um, for which I was paid the third week in April, I earned about $760, a little bit more than that. And for the month of April, which I will be paid for the third week in May, um I earned about $640 and change. So you can see that the amounts that YouTube pays varies. It can be a couple hundred, it can be more, it can be less. It depends on so many factors.
I would like to show you some of the simple equipment I use. As I mentioned, right now I am speaking into the camera lens of my iPhone 16. It's not a pro. It's just the regular iPhone 16. It's um got a very nice camera. I'm going to bring my little work basket up here so you can see what I've got. That's just my script that I took out. I'll show you a better picture of what I actually have here. But when I first started, the very first thing I bought was this Manfrotto tabletop tripod. I love it. It's very sturdy. It is It is wonderful. It sets up just like that. You can put it on the table. Um, it is not very high, so if you need something higher, you can put it on top of yoga blocks like I do or a box or a pile of books. Um, and it will hold a phone. Um, I used that for a number of videos and then I started wanting a little bit more versatility and I bought this very cheap um, selfie stick. It's a Hokco I'll show you the label if you can see that. And I'm going to provide links to everything below so you'll be able to look more carefully, but it's a selfie stick with a little thing on top to hold your phone right here. It'll hold a phone. You can also take off this clamp. And there is a screw here. So, if you want to mount a camera, I suppose you could. But this is not very sturdy. So, I would not set it up as a tripod and leave a heavy camera on top. Not sure I would want to do that. The bottom of it opens up into a little kind of a quadripod actually. And I often use this around the house on a piece of furniture. It extends to um I don't know, I think about 4 feet. Um, and I use this all the time in the house. And then I wanted a better tripod. Um, and I will show you a photo of it later. It's in use right now, but I bought a Benroe slim tripod. It's made of aluminum. It's very lightweight.
As far as a mic, I'm using the um Holland Lark A1, which I believe is the um basic mic in their package. I think it cost me around 38 or $40 when I bought it. It comes with two mics and a receiver. And of course, I lost one of the mics already, but I haven't seen any reason yet to upgrade it. Um, it seems to be doing well. As far as editing my videos, I use iMovie. It came with my Mac. It's free and it's very basic. There were other free editing programs. I have heard of Cap Cut. I've heard that's very good. I haven't tried it myself. Um, I thought about trying it, but iMovie is working fantastic for me, so I just use iMovie. There are advanced programs like Final Cut Pro, which is $299. I'm not really feeling the need for it.
What I will say about YouTube, the benefits for us is that it takes almost no investment. The costs are extremely low and they never have to get high. You never have to have all this high tech gear. Uh you can certainly do it the way I've been doing it. And look, you know, I mean, I got monetized. I'm doing videos. I'm reaching an audience. I now have over 7,000 subscribers. And I'm doing it with my iPhone and my Holly Landlark $40 mic and my free iMovie editing. And I'm doing it and you can do it too without investing a lot. You can also do it on your own time, your own schedule. You can do it at night. You can do it during the day. You may have noticed I didn't even talk about lighting. I haven't bought a single light for my setup. Um, I use the window or I sit outdoors on my patio the way I am today. You can make a video as long or short as you like. You can make a little B-roll or take some photos to go with it, but you don't have to. You can just sit down and talk to your camera and look into that little lens. And at first you'll be thinking to yourself, I'm talking to a camera lens. But after a while, you might find yourself talking to actual people the way I am. I know I'm talking to you now.
I would urge you to stay true to yourself, to your interests, to the message you want to bring. Those of us in our age group have a lot of wisdom, a lot of years of experience behind us. We have a lot we can share that is so valuable. Our perspective on life, our wisdom that we've accumulated is powerful and other people want to hear it. So if you're thinking of YouTube, go ahead and do it. I am so glad you joined me today. I can't thank you enough for being here and being part of the growing Simply Retired community. And we will talk down in the comments. That's all for now. Bye-bye.