My Place In The Weird World Of YouTube

Kids are often asked by teachers, parents, and basically all adults what they want to be when they grow up. Answers I'd often hear from my classmates when I was a kid were astronaut, president, fire fighter, police officer, doctor, and lawyer. Occasionally I'd hear singer and actor, myself falling into the actor category.

Fast forward over two decades later, my son and his classmates almost all have the same answer to that age old question: Youtuber. The idea of entertaining while earning a ton of money by making seemingly simple videos has a ton of appeal. I know because it's the very reason I started my YouTube channel, AngieTalks.

And let me first tell you, it's not simple and the road to making big money is hard to get to, let alone cruise. But I am thankful to have found some success that has afforded me some cool opportunities.

My first foray into the medium was through my dear friend, Qbanguy, whose channel already boasted nearly 1 million subscribers. I acted alongside him in various comedy sketches that helped expose me to viewers who then followed me when I started my channel.

I started with comedy shorts like this one:

I was sure I'd be an overnight success (misguided and cocky). But the YouTube audience is fickle. What works one day on one channel doesn't work the next on your channel. So it's been a long game of changing up the type of content over the years: spicy food challenges, mystery box challenges, storytelling, mystery animal challenges, mukbangs, party games. And it's a lot of work with not as big a monetary payoff as you'd hope. But it's still so fun to entertain!

I've been on hiatus from it this year, but I'm coming back and having Moug join me for some of the fun. What would you like to see us do? We're game for suggestions! In the meantime feel free to get acquainted with my channel, YouTube.com/AngieTalks, and subscribe!