I’ve Been A Car YouTuber For A Year Now. Here Are All The Weird Lessons I’ve Learned

About a year ago, I lost my job to a layoff. It was one of three layoffs in 18 months for me, and it made me realize: There isn’t a stable enough future for me, or many other people, in digital media. When I started car blogging at Jalopnik a decade ago, things were generally fine. We worked hard, but we got to have fun and be creative. I drove a Monster Jam truck; we read our hate mail on video; and some of our staff even drove a McLaren 570S on a dirt oval. Our audience had fun with us, and they rewarded our creativity — and our website that wasn’t inundated with ads — with loyal visits.

A decade later, the digital-media landscape is far different. Websites are plastered with ads and infinite scrolling. A lot of them are owned by investment firms that hire and fire staff at six-month intervals. A few companies have stability, either due to their tenure (Hearst Autos) or enthusiasm (the Autopian).

It was after the second layoff that I decided I didn’t want to be washed up to shore and out to sea every six months. I wanted to do my own thing and feel like I had control, so I became a YouTuber. A year in, I’ve learned a lot.

Becoming a YouTuber Takes A Lot Of Money, A Lot Of Luck, And/Or A Lot Of Risk

My husband and I run a two-person YouTube channel. I write, edit, and present the scripts, as well as coordinate our loaner cars, trips, and sponsorships. I also find historic footage, edit and record voiceovers, and write all the descriptions for the videos based on search-engine optimization. My husband, who likes to be anonymous online, films and edits the videos. He also photographs everything, makes our YouTube thumbnails, and writes most of the titles because he has a good grasp on what’s clickable on YouTube.

We also do a lot of research and fine-tuning together. I mostly read car content for years, but now I watch a lot of it to see what other people are doing.

We knew going into this that it wouldn’t be super profitable, at least for a long time. YouTube ad rates vary, but they’re not a livable wage unless you’re raking in views — and to get there takes years, especially if you’re not a YouTube-native personality. (Even then, the wages come with no full-time benefits.) I’ve seen people have near-immediate success on YouTube, but that’s because they came from big video-native brands like Hoonigan and Donut. I’ve always been a writer, so the YouTube crowd is less familiar with me. That makes the runway longer.

Our plan going into YouTube was to freelance and scrape by on our channel’s income, and it’s working. I don’t have a consistent salaried income coming in, but I also don’t buy a lot. My expenses are low, which allows me to focus on building our channel.

For a lot of people, foregoing salaried income is a non-starter. For us, the risk was: What if we try to build this, “fail,” and miss out on years of income? Will we regret it? My answer was no — failure is subjective, and I don’t consider things a failure if I’m able to live comfortably and have fun. I’ve enjoyed my life, and that’s not a failure.

Past the money and risk, YouTube takes strategy and luck. You’re not just building an audience there. You’re learning an algorithm — thumbnails, titles, topics — and trying to get the most out of it. You’re also trying to ensure you don’t get too many “quick” subscribers from one viral video; if they don’t watch the rest of your videos, they’ll hurt you in the long run because their lack of engagement will count against you in the algorithm.

Algorithmic platforms like YouTube are a fine balance of doing well but not too well, until you’ve grown enough to do “well” every week.

You Have To Pick A Lane, Even If You Don’t Want To

My least favorite part about YouTube is that it’s not good enough to make quality videos; you have to make videos your audience wants, which means you have to pick a lane. My husband and I mainly do car content, and some of my favorite videos lately have been the McLaren 750S, Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, Lamborghini Revuelto, Hyundai Elantra N, and Acura Integra Type S.

I also love motorsports, and two of my favorite racing videos — about becoming a NASCAR spotter and why oval racing is so hard — did some of my worst views. That’s because even though my audience generally likes me, they’re more willing to skip a video about something they’re less interested in. That counts against it in the algorithm, and unless those videos magically find an audience outside of mine, YouTube will stop feeding them to people. (This similarly happens with cars that “car people” are less interested in, but sometimes, Google views will counteract that. Our audience didn’t go wild for a hybrid Toyota RAV4 Prime, but Google searchers? They loved it.)

This means every video opportunity is a conversation: Do we want this to do well? If so, how do we frame it? We recently hung out with Mazda at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix, and knowing our audience isn’t big on motorsports (unless we’re driving on track ourselves), we did a review of the Mazda CX-70 instead. In the middle, I talked about where we were and why we had the car. We put a snippet of motorsport content there, and it flowed perfectly.

As our channel grows, we’ll branch out more. But for now, we want to get the most out of each video, both to grow our channel and justify our car loans. That means staying in our lane, at least temporarily.

You Have Freedom — Use It

Starting a YouTube channel was my husband’s idea, and it took him months to sell me on it. I was almost exclusively a reader at that point, and I thought all of automotive YouTube was explosive headlines and shocked faces. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to put out educational, fun, well-produced videos, and I didn’t know at the time if that was possible.

A year in, I’m thrilled with every aspect of our YouTube channel. The production quality is high, the videos are so much fun that even I enjoy watching them back, and I spend almost every day of my life either filming, driving, or traveling with my husband. It’s perfect.

We also have so much freedom. There’s no heavy-handed editing; we barely comment on each other’s work, because he enjoys what I write and I enjoy what he sees through his camera. The only time he’ll cut one of my sentences is if he can’t find B-roll that matches, and the only time I’ll ask him to make a video edit is if he forgets color correction on a clip. We work in harmony.

We also have the freedom to do and write weird things, without having to justify them. Last year, I asked the singer from my favorite band, Craig Mabbitt, to drive a manual Ford Mustang Dark Horse with me. I thought it would be fun to show what a non-car reviewer thought about the car, and the only permission I needed was from Ford for him to drive the car. They said yes.

I spent the whole weekend thinking about how it would have gone if I’d pitched this at a “normal” job. Most editors would say: “Your favorite what? Who? You’re the car reviewer, not him. You review the car by yourself.”

Instead, I needed no permission, and our audience loved Craig’s perspective. It was relatable to see a normal driver get excited about a car, not just hear the “This is good, this is bad” ramblings of people who drive different cars every week.

We’ve also learned that we have the freedom to write weird headlines, and that they do well. Our Dark Horse review with Craig is nearing 100,000 views, and the title is: “The Mustang Goes Emo.” Is the Mustang really emo? No! It’s inanimate! But does the Dark Horse’s front grille look like eyeliner, or a raccoon, or a bank robber with a black mask? Yes! And people liked that silly title enough to click!

YouTube is a blast. I’m making less money, but having more fun than ever. You can’t take money with you when you die, but you can die with the knowledge that you had a good life. Right now, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Top graphic images: Alanis King; JVC