Navigating the Challenges of Video Content Creation: A Journey from Novice to Creator

xiaoqing included in category thinking

2024-08-29 2024-08-29 1727 words 9 minutes

Contents

Today, a gentle breeze is blowing on this cloudy day—perfect weather for fishing. However, I didn’t go out to shoot a fishing video. Instead, I’m sitting in front of the computer, starting to type this article, reflecting on my original intent for doing content creation. I’m questioning whether I’m receiving positive feedback, whether I’ve met my expectations, whether I’m suited for content creation, and whether I can stick with it.

Before venturing into content creation, I thought it had a low barrier to entry and would be relatively easy. But after trying it out, while creating content is indeed easy, producing high-quality content is difficult, and creating videos that generate traffic is even harder.

1 Why Is Video Content Creation So Difficult?

Below, I’ll explain why video content creation is challenging by discussing the video production process.

1.1 Choosing the Content Niche

Currently, the most profitable niches are finance, technology, and automotive. Even with a small audience, these categories can monetize through platforms like Knowledge Plan(知识星球), sponsored content, or live streaming sales. When choosing a niche, consider the potential audience range for that content type. For example, lifestyle vlogs can reach a broad audience, like popular creators Li Ziqi(李子柒) and the Huanuo brothers（华农兄弟）. On the other hand, niche categories like video editing tutorials, programming content, or industry-specific technical videos have a more limited audience.

However, there are exceptions that blend broad appeal with niche expertise. A prime example is Chef Wang Gang, who shares professional cooking techniques that are both essential for everyday people and demonstrate advanced culinary skills, making complex ideas accessible to everyone. Of course, you must also consider your own strengths, unique qualities, and available resources when choosing a niche. Ultimately, it’s a comprehensive evaluation of your skills, ease of monetization, ability to attract traffic, and competition intensity.

When I chose my niche, I didn’t think much about it—I had just started learning to fish, watched a lot of fishing videos, and felt I could try recording my own journey to document my progress. Some people suggested I consider the programmer niche, but I didn’t want to gain traffic by offering extreme opinions on various events. I’m not involved in those situations, and it’s easy to criticize from the sidelines. I also felt that I wasn’t experienced enough to focus on programming growth—after all, I’m still struggling with my own career, so how could I guide others? Moreover, the programming niche is highly specialized, meaning the audience is relatively small, with limited monetization options like ads or knowledge sharing platforms. However, I am considering creating videos about transitioning from a programmer to a freelancer—a journey I’m currently documenting in writing.

1.2 Equipment

In the beginning, there’s no need to purchase expensive filming equipment. Your smartphone can meet today’s video quality demands; all you really need is a good microphone. Lighting can be provided by regular lamps, desk lamps, or natural light. I bought a tripod, a neck-mounted phone holder, and a wireless microphone.

1.3 Video Production

The video production process generally includes scripting, writing, filming, post-production editing, and uploading (including title and thumbnail).

The script is the backbone of the video, guiding how the story is told. I’ve learned one narrative technique: start by stating the central purpose, then show the challenges and conflicts encountered along the way, resolving them through various turning points to weave the story together. The script and writing outline the structure and tone of the video. Filming brings the script to life through visuals, such as shots of someone leaving or arriving at a location, slowly entering or exiting the frame. Watching documentaries and videos from top creators can teach you many filming techniques.

For scenarios where filming isn’t required, like screen recordings or animations, the focus shifts to gathering materials, writing scripts, creating animations, and producing sound (voiceover or text-to-speech).

Editing involves refining the footage, cutting out boring parts, adding special effects, transitions, and background music to enhance the video’s appeal. At this stage, my skills are quite basic—I mainly use transitions in Jianying, add text, and occasionally include sound effects when needed.

Uploading may seem simple, but the title and thumbnail significantly impact a video’s view count. The thumbnail should highlight the video’s theme and aesthetics, essentially involving graphic design skills. The title needs to be compelling enough to entice viewers to click, similar to article headlines, with common tactics including using “what,” “how,” “why,” questions, and numbers. This is why clickbait titles exist. However, having an attractive title isn’t enough; it must also include keywords so that it can be found in searches.

For lifestyle vlogs, the script doesn’t need to be detailed, focusing on the content and quality of the visuals. My scripts usually just outline a few key actions, without specifying details like shots, angles, props, camera movements, duration, dialogue, or sound effects, as the desired scenes are already clear in my mind.

1.4 How to Promote and Gain More Traffic

Traffic can come from public traffic, private traffic, and external traffic. Private traffic is generated by subscribers. Public traffic comes from platform recommendations, including the homepage and related videos. External traffic refers to traffic from outside the platform, such as social media, embedded pages on external sites, or search engines.

To increase traffic, the video quality must be high enough to encourage viewers to subscribe after watching. Increasing your follower count can only be achieved through public traffic and external traffic. To increase public traffic, you need to encourage likes, shares, comments, and follows within the video to make the platform’s recommendation system recognize it as high-quality content, thereby recommending it to more users. You should also optimize the title and thumbnail to make users more likely to click when they see your video. Additionally, you need to optimize the title’s SEO so that users can find your video through relevant searches (including search engines). External traffic promotion involves sharing the video on social media, forums, and various websites to increase exposure.

1.5 What Kind of Videos Do Viewers Like?

Think about the good videos we watch—those that are interesting, entertaining, educational, or emotionally resonant. Ultimately, viewers are looking for emotional value, practical value, or entertainment value from the video. Therefore, when creating, consider what value the video will provide to the audience.

1.6 Monetization

Traffic on social media can come and go quickly, so it’s essential to monetize it early. I’ve seen cases like the “Zou Er Gou Couple (邹二狗夫妇)” who had millions of views but little income due to a lack of good monetization strategies, resulting in an imbalance between investment and return. Monetization methods for content creators include live streaming sales, ads, driving traffic to their businesses (for brand promotion), paid subscriptions, donations, and ad revenue sharing (through incentive programs).

If you want to focus on monetizing views (without focusing too much on commercialization and just making videos), YouTube is currently the only viable option.

1.7 Characteristics of Different Platforms

TikTok: Huge audience, short viewing time, low patience, primarily monetized through live-streamed sales.

Bilibili (B站): Younger audience, longer viewing time, higher video quality, primarily monetized through advertisements.

YouTube: Global multi-language audience, with Chinese users mainly using traditional characters. YouTubers primarily rely on ad revenue sharing.

My Personal Feelings About These Platforms

YouTube recommends videos based on user dimensions. To succeed on YouTube, you need to understand its recommendation algorithm. When you have no followers at the start, you can’t rely on the recommendation system to increase views—traffic will mainly come from YouTube searches, making title SEO critical. YouTube provides a rich data analysis interface, including impressions, clicks, click-through rates, view sources, and user sharing.

Bilibili recommends videos three hours after upload. During this time, the video’s click rate, likes, favorites, coins, and viewing duration affect whether it will be recommended further. Therefore, without followers, traffic mainly comes from public traffic, and if the thumbnail and title are good, you can get a lot of views. SEO in the title isn’t very important, and adding event tags can increase exposure. Bilibili’s analytics provide data on views, watch time, and audience demographics, but lack key metrics like view sources (only client-side dimensions) and impressions.

Douyin immediately pushes videos to users after upload, and stops recommending them after one day. Compared to other platforms, it has high views but low viewing duration. For new creators with no followers, the thumbnail, tags, and trending keywords are crucial, while the title can be ignored. Douyin only provides view counts, not click-through rates. It does offer data on views, watch time, completion rates, and audience demographics. To succeed on Douyin, you need to capture the viewer’s interest within the first 8 seconds.

1.8 The First 100 Videos Are Garbage

For beginners like me, who are just mimicking others and learning to make videos, compounded by subpar equipment, the quality of early works is usually not very high. So, I’m currently creating my first 100 garbage videos. I’m trying to maintain a level-headed attitude and accept this fact—I’m not extraordinarily talented or a prodigy, and it’s unlikely I’ll produce great videos in a short time.

I expect it will take at least a year, with a consistent weekly update schedule, to create videos with significant traffic. The most important thing is to develop my own unique style.

2 Reflection

It’s truly difficult to succeed as an independent developer or content creator.

Both require comprehensive skills. Content creators need to think of themes, scripts, filming, editing, uploading, and promotion (titles and thumbnails). Independent developers must consider product requirements, design, interface, development, launch, promotion, and customer support. I’m not particularly skilled in either direction—my scripting, filming, editing, and on-camera performance skills are lacking as a content creator. As an independent developer, I lack experience in full product requirements and interface design. I’m better suited to operations and promotion (SEO) and coding.

2.1 Will I Keep Going?

The things I’m doing now lack positive feedback, making them feel somewhat boring and meaningless. I might take a break to recharge and continue exploring. I could switch directions or keep going—time will tell.