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Tanmay Reveals 0 to 1 Million Content Creator Path | Advanced Content Creation

By Varun Mayya

Summary

## Key takeaways - **First Paycheck: 3.5 Lakh/Month at 19**: When I was 19 there was like a three and a half lakh rupee paycheck that came in every month for writing a daily sitcom for Disney, which was as much money as my dad was making. [07:13], [07:23] - **Writing: 1000 Pages/Year Minimum**: If you're a good content creator how much writing do you think per year the work entails... a thousand pages a year easy cumulatively... Thousand pages maybe 100 or 50 would be usable but you got to put out that thousand pages. [11:59], [12:09] - **Content's Asymmetric Returns**: Every piece of media that you output online could have asymmetric returns... you don't know who's going to watch it at the other end... AIB's secret was Ashish Shakya writing humor columns leading to KY following, then viral video, then movie stars. [13:12], [15:41] - **Start Short-Form for Quick Feedback**: If you're just starting out I would recommend short form because likelihood of you finding some traction and getting that first dopamine hit... is higher in short form... your chance of hitting that one golden 50 million view is higher in short form because you get to take more shots. [22:26], [25:42] - **Video Anatomy: Oven Moment**: At the heart of whether it's long form short form television shows movies... can I retain the viewer till the end... Tasty would begin with... the thing goes inside the oven when it comes out it's finally ready... that's the oven moment... build up anticipation deliver on that anticipation. [27:10], [27:44] - **Million Views: ~1 Lakh Rupees RPM**: If you get a million views... on the higher end you'll make one lakh rupees... from YouTube ad revenue... but brand deals can be upwards of 15-20 lakhs per integration in finance, or 35-40 lakhs for a reel. [34:12], [35:19]

Topics Covered

  • PMF for Enjoyment Precedes Profit
  • Content Outputs Thousand Pages Yearly
  • Media Creates Asymmetric Returns
  • Longform Builds Deeper Loyalty
  • Oven Moment Drives Retention

Full Transcript

I've written for television film radio boarding Sprint ad I've written all kinds of stuff when did you start making money of doing content and when I was 19 there was like a 3 and half lakh rupe paycheck that came in every month break

down the anatomy of a video for me what should I start doing how should I think about the video being successful at long form content is the holy gra if you could go to Brands today who are trying to do YouTube and you can give them two or three pieces of advice what would it

be I would tell brand managers to start off with short video how much does a content creator of the 100K views make how much does the content creator of the million views make but if you're a top tier YouTuber you're making more money than most actors that you see they

launched this thing called the OnePlus AI music studio it's going to just produce the track for you yeah it makes a video also oh that's cool ladies and

gentlemen welcome to the first ever episode of OnePlus open conversations everyone was asking me am I ever going to do a podcast I didn't like the idea of a podcast but I said why not a five

or six episode limited series and I'll tell you what we're doing here every the podcast it scratches the surface and weone talks about surface level stuff I said what if we can go deeper what if you can get the best people in each

industry go deeper and ask them what the future in their space is going to look like so in this first episode I brought on none other than tan b t has been known for creating exceptional content

over a decade he's been in many different Industries and it's very weird to see somebody win multiple spaces in content and I want to bring on T man and I didn't want to do a surface level conversation of how how is it to be a

content creator I want to go deeper and I want to ask him questions like exactly how do you make a video what is the anatomy of a video how do you look at retention in a video how much money to the exact rupee can you make as a

content creator and you know some of these questions when I ask these questions I'm sure there's going to be some push back and exact numbers won't be told but I will dig for the exact numbers there's also questions around

how can you build creative businesses how do creators monetize their businesses how long do creators stick around and how should Brands think about content we're going to go through all of it and much more in this video so guys

why are we still recording me let's get to the [Music] Pod usually me and T sitting down doing an episode of overpowered we're talking

about all things AI but today I don't want to talk about AI today I have a dilemma in the last year I've been seeing every startup founder every business start their own YouTube channel

correct until like 2 years ago YouTube was like a toy nobody ever took it seriously everyone said H YouTube but this year it feels like everyone's just taking it seriously everyone wants to be a Creator

businesses want to be creators which is the most weird scenario to ever be in very 223 very 2023 but then again you are the OG you've been around for like

OG is just a good way of saying old old and gold you've been around for a decade you've done this in repeated formats you won gaming you won uh

streaming you won uh AI I began with podcasting actually a lot of people don't realize you began in podcast 2010 a began as a podcast that's how we started interesting so so tell me about the initial Journey like how did you get

in like why did you even decide to do content I started off as a television writer and then standup was happening in 2008 and N DED out of college I started

writing for television dude I've written everything from India's Got Talent to n with sarj Khan to uh Mt what's up the voice of youngistan I should write all that stuff and then I

watched um I watched Russell Peters and I said hey I want to do that and I started doing that how old were you when you were doing this I was started writing for television when I was 1819 and then saw stand up and then I had

some money left over from television then I met kba while doing standup and kba was really inspired by this podcast called WTF with Mark Marin which was the original um comedy podcast where he

would document comedians lives etc etc ET really podcast for those who want to check it out there's an episode with WTF with Mark Maron where Mark Maron interviewed Robin Williams and Robin Williams spoke about his addiction issue

for the first time on a podcast like at that point imagining a mainstream personality like Robin Williams talk about their Addiction on television seemed unimaginable and that's when the

spark H me saying yo this is like an alternative medium that doesn't confine to the rules of traditional media so then I started listening to the podcast and I was like this is really cool we should do this for it India it was kba's

idea and then I just joined him and we started off with no video audio only podcast is pre Geo time Audio Only podcast sitting like this in a literally we used to be at a sound did you call it

a back then we called it a back then yeah that was the first thing and the logic with that was if people are okay with the name they'll be okay with the content which back in 2010 we started the podcast in 2010 I remember so yeah

you were you were you were praising me please continue yeah no I was not praising you I was asking you for your story right there seems to be a big shift that's happened in your life from hey I was doing television writing for a

company now I want to stand up now I want to start my own channel what's the big shift to taking it seriously what's the point where you were like I'm now starting to see some money out of this I

think before money also there has to be pmf for enjoyment and what's pmf could you explain it product Market fit uh sorry it's Bangalore terms that I now

use uh pmf for enjoyment comes first then pmf for business this comes right after first question is do you actually

enjoy doing it cuz most people do it now cuz it's the thing to do but most people aren't suited for podcast or even content creation they don't enjoy doing

it necessarily but they think that this is the thing to do um you don't want to do it for just the likes uh while the upsides

of distribution are massive uh being a being a full-time Creator is as much of a job and a profession but more unstable and more like you you're not going you know you don't have a monthly paycheck

so you don't quite know so the way to jump into it I would say is first find pmf for passion and enjoyment and when did you find that as in school only dude

I always enjoyed I was um my English teacher told me that she loved my I was not a bright student until the sixth standard and the seventh standard something changed my English teacher told me that she gave me the highest in

my English essay she gave me like whatever 10 on 10 and she made me stand in front of the class and she said that I want to let the whole class know that he has scored the highest because for originality and do teachers really make

a difference actually when you're young and that impressional she said he's the most original of everybody in class but he wrote something original that's why that's why I like oh originality matters and I didn't even

know that you could be validated for having bizarre thoughts and what about the paycheck like when did you start making money of doing content like money where you were like hey at least G you know I mean I was ring for television

which back in the in 2010 I was I I would get paid um 12,000 rupees for story 12,000 rupes for screenplay 12,000 rupees for dialogue or some something how much that come out to per month what

eight or nine of these a month so and when I was 19 there was like a three lakh rupe three and a half lakh rupe paycheck all of a sudden that came in every month so and I had this gig was

like five 6 months so all of a sudden I saw like 10 12 lakh rupees come in and that at that point Point like that was as much money as my dad was making so it was insane so it freaked me out realiz

think oh this is crazy in fact that paycheck helped me take the next sleep to stand up where I was making no money which was 2,000 bucks a night for a show at whatever you know bar in sakeet or

whatever it is but I was already writing content and I saw the big bucks so to say early on and God bless the producers who also enabled me to take that kind of

thing cuz they were also like he's a young kid who's different from the rest and he's original or whatever so to say that's why they were able to pay me that much I was writing a daily sitcom for

Disney and ababi saw its first real check from our first live show we started selling out 2,000 CER auditoriums around the country and do the ma right 200000 into roughly 399

4.99 average ticket how much is that whatever six lak 7 lakh rupees split between the four of us minus costs so that I think 2012 was the first year where I started seeing significant money at you probably

made 10 12 laks that year but took you like probably 3 4 years to catch up to the paycheck that you were making at your previous company yes my previous gig as a television writer took about took about 3 four years uh but I had

savings from my previous gig that's why I was able to give that 3 four years of you know transition to New Media um that's why even now I tell people saying first find find if you enjoy doing it

and if you're able to do it for 3 years without really feeling like I want to go back to my job unless you're doing it fulltime time and you're aggressively outputting so much you can really make

content while you have another job no you can it's not it's not that hard I think you're able to take time out so I think that's the advice I would give most people take your time do it while you're doing a job and then once you

think that okay I can go a year just doing nothing else but this then you take that LE one of the things about creating content that I've seen right you've just been around for very long but it's not been the same tme like it's

not today is not a t it's very different thank Lord thank the Lord right so it feels like and it's not like it's just one jump right it's been several jumps it's almost like you've never settled yeah that's true so so the

question is what was the driving Factor behind those jumps A and B do other people also need to do that to stay relevant long

term oh 100% I think I think I got really lucky because dude if you can write content really well you understand the basics of how content works and if

you understand the basics then you're able to the principles of making content don't change across mediums I've written

for television film radio U I've written Holdings print ads Jingles songs YouTube videos I've written corporate shows I've written all kinds of stuff you know it's

a very interesting Insight I'll tell you why the average person on the internet looking at Tas will think hey tan is funny T is a improv comedian but what I'm hearing is there's just so much

writing behind what you do years and years of years of writing like a decade of non-stop output dude I worked with in V's company weird ass where we outputed

like seven or eight uh 90minut live comedy shows then I wrote like 300 sketches for aib before that was 3 four

years of daily sitcom writing for Disney before that was all the writing Ed in college and school so really all of this put together is now me today where it

feels second nature but it's years of writing that's what I'm saying if you understand how to write and construct then you can do this sort of stuff in in your sleep um I I've said this before

which is your ability to exercise judgment only gets stronger if your feedback loops are shorter and faster if you're able to create something out of thin air put it in front of an audience

have the audience respond and then go reiterate if you do this hundreds and thousands of times over only then do you really get good at your job um which most people aren't able to do that

either because their job doesn't allow them to but this is like as I heard son Nigam say on beer B podcast recently which I thought was a good phrase

chab you have to spend your time just chewing the craft of whatever it is that you're doing so if you're a good content creator how much writing do you think per year the work entails like is it a book's worth is it two books worth it's

10 books worth at least so about a th Pages a year thousand Pages a year yeah I would be outputting a th Pages a year easy cumulatively yeah off off the

Thousand Pages maybe 100 or 50 would be usable but you got to put out that thousand pages is there scope for a content creator who can't write who just wants to do everything improv yeah there

is there is you can you can be that sort of a person but know that if you're going to improvise your way through or if you're going to make content then you're not going to be really good until you make like a hours of content like

you just have to Output that much for you to get really good at what you do but why why is it important to make content what are the benefits of making content today like why are businesses doing it and should a business owner or

should an employee of a business watching this make content either personally or as the business first let's talk about why individuals should make content I think nsay put this very well which is in the old day you could

either be a doctor or you could be a lawyer right today is the generation of ands which is you can be a doctor and and something else you can be a lawyer and something else and more often than

not this is doctor and content creator with it for individuals the upside is very clear it's every piece of media that you output online could have

asymmetric could have any asymmetric bet uh there's the novel tweet which is what are some things that have asymmetric returns reading a book has asymmetric returns going on a date has as asymmetric return what is an asymmetric

return for the AUD which means most things in life have symmetrical returns which is is if you do X then you get X returns you keep doing this and there's linear growth this is what most people experience in a job also which is if

you're renting your time out every year the amount of rent increases if you're working out then the more you work out the more your muscles increase asymmetric returns is where if you put

in X you could get any output it could be really really dramatically bigger than what you thought so let's take an example right if you go out on 10 Dates going out on a date and meeting someone

new has asymmetric symmetrical returns how only one out of these 10 needs to be so compatible with you you could find a life partner imagine spending 15 hours

and getting a life partner like that's a dramatically outsized return like you got something insane imagine reading a book and you get a startup idea or you

get a a way to think that changes your life dramatically like live example is I read a book called the Obesity code by Jason fun I read it twice three times

over since then I've lost like 58 kilos that one book just changed how I think and I probably saved myself five or six years that's why making media gives you asymmetric asymmetrical returns because

you don't know who's going to watch it at the other end 10 years ago 20 years ago when media was centralized if you made something it would go linearly today because media is decentralized

it's almost like veins arteries in Your Heart Right like you don't know where it ends up with so imagine you put out a tweet about a certain insight about your

profession that tweet has say 900 views of those 900 one of them could be vun Maya or t right and you see this and you go like oh this this person is interesting I'm just going to follow so

you can't control like you don't know who's going to be at the other end would would a better way to put this be that a lot of success is luck like a lot of inbound deal flow is luck but creating

distribution increases your surface are of luck aib's example is really is really interesting here how did we get access two movie stars as a Ashish shakya used to write a column for

Hindustan times he used to write a humor column for Hindustan times he used to write one every week for years right and then Twitter happened and he joined Twitter and he started putting out these

columns on Twitter one day KY followed him CU she just happened to read the article she liked it next week we wrote A Sketch and we directly dm'd KY saying hey would you like to would like to be

be in the video we made that video and that's another piece of media that we output that that went viral next day we on badat show that like an Arjun Kapoor or someone saw it and then followed us

on Twitter then once Arjun and ranir sing followed us on Twitter that led to aibb knockout right like it's you couldn't have predicted you couldn't have planned there's just no way there's just no way you could have planned it but it wouldn't have happened if Ashish

Shaka didn't write that column he was outputting it every week it me and kba would not have met if kba wasn't tweeting funny jokes dude me and Rohan

met because of because of outputting media Rohan was a columnist at JT and I used to love that magazine so I followed I followed Rohan then I followed his

Blog then one day Rohan spoke about um hey there's an opening here or whatever and then I applied through that and then me and Rohan met through that so I think

a lot most of my um lucky um serender pitus moments all have happened because of someone has outputed something into the world and it just happened to reach me and I think every

individual should have that opportunity by by just put out your stuff in the in the world and the arteries will carry it to someone or the other and the

algorithms are just trying to determine how fast you can your content can flow that's why you need to understand how platforms work so you can maximize your asymmetric bet interesting and do you

feel like at bigger and bigger levels of scale at your diseasing level levels of scale do you feel like the compounding there is incredible like these lucky moments that you're pulling off do you

think absolutely and and how does it work for a brand what is the usefulness for a company let's say I run a d2c company what's the point your best hires could come from your content um zato

makes really killer content right like so akar started off making content zato now zomato's team is so strong because there are creative people around the country who would see zomato's work and

be like they make really cool I want to work there the same thing happened with Ked same things happened with Ked now it's become aspiration to want to to want to want to work there so

if a business makes good content it has outsized returns just from a attracting quality talent and it's not just that you know if you make good content as a company it increases NPS of employees

who work at that company you know how cool it feels if you're if you work at a company and on your friend WhatsApp group someone shares an Instagram posting have you seen this is really cool you get to be in that group and be

like yo this is the company that I work for money can't buy that you can't run performance advertising and buy that kind of in so you're saying content increases or improves culture internal

culture 100% uh employee NPS D it people feel proud of um when you when you work for a brand that makes good content a good example is I was talking to sashank who runs the whole truth right the whole

the whole company is so passionate about what they do uh it's because of so much so much has to do with the content that they output it's not just that dude it's not just the content quality is really good when when content is really good

then the comments are really good when comments are really good you start feeling pride in Pride and Joy in what you do if you feel pride and joy in what you do you put in

120% it's all connected so having a Cool brand uh that does cool content has effects that you cannot you like you can't put that on on paper it's hard to

judge a lot of companies will fret over like I keep telling them like okay if it's if the budget for something is like 50 lakhs Roi has to Bei has to be whatever it is I'm like

like you know having a good relationship with the people who are making the stuff for you all that stuff matters because relationships are everything like I would I would happily take a hit for five lakhs if I can work with a company

where the process of working was way easy I actually can verify that because I've seen that behind the scenes T doesn't think so much about the cash if he's looking at a company and he really likes the company I'm just like it just

be a breeze to work with these guys and like you want to you you want to have minimal one night stands more relationships with with this sort of stuff so let's move to the next piece

right I wanted this to be like a master class in making content break down the anatomy of a video for me I think there are two kinds of videos roughly right there's a long form video maybe 10 20 30 minutes and then there's short form

videos 1 minute yeah I'm a new I'm a kid I want to win at the content game I have the ability to do long form and shortform let's say I'm a I I make for a

daily uh living I go to school and I make some money on the side maybe I'm doing some freelance gigs or something what should I start doing what what kind of content should I start making how should I think about the video look long

form content is being successful at long form content is the Holy Grail right why is that the Holy Grail over short form uh it's pretty simple you want people to watch you many times for longer periods

of time okay let's take I've seen 30 Shah ruk Khan movies which means I spent you know 150 200 hours of Shah ruk Khan on the big screen uh I made the effort

of leaving my house going to the theater paying for the ticket and then watching him which means I put in so much effort to watch this guy at the end of it I really liked it that's why now I if Shah

ruk Khan is in front of me I will palpitate right um now the friction to consuming long form is it's it's obviously not similar but there is more

friction to con to uh convincible to watch long form videos a time commitment I have to watch it I have to have context built up I have to and there also double optin right with shs you just appear on their feet here you feet

here you have to click so if people put in effort to watch you a getting them to do that is higher so if you get them to do that they're likely to and if they do this three four five times over they're

likely to like you more plus if someone watches you for longer it just means that they like you more like it's as simple as that short video like you said short video is a scrolling habit which is you just happen to show up on their

feed you ting them for 30 seconds and unless that 30 second is so good they're not coming to your profile and then watching 10 other videos even if you do short form video if you are able to be a format that someone watches you once and

they go to your profile and then watch 10 of those videos then you truly make an impression you make more of an impression if you last in front of someone's eyes for longer it's as simple

as that having said that that is the Holy Grail of long form but if you like I would optimize for finding pmf for passion and enjoyment right and you

don't enjoy it if you're not doing well if you make content and nobody sees it you don't enjoy the process you're like what am I doing wasting wasting my time so if you're going to start out I would recommend short form because likelihood

of you finding some traction and getting that first dopamine hit of ah someone saw my that is higher in short form so if you're just starting out you want

to try and get your first you know thousand views on a short form video and getting your first thousand views uh you need to make a half decent video get get all your friends to share it on their

story and let the algorithm do its thing how many friends if you had to put a number on it that's how many of friends like 10 20 yeah if you 10 depends on how many followers they have you know but if one of your friends is Varun Maya and

has 200,000 followers on Instagram then that's just Varun Maya has enough so it's not how many friends it's just about increasing your odds of letting the letting the how sorry did I get

200,000 wrong is it how much is it it's 400 400,000 sorry my bad um so it's donon said this recently we I asked him on a thing saying would you pick uh

someone who's talented or confident he said I would always pick the guy who's who's feeling more confident because the odds of success or someone who feels confident is much higher you can have you can have a lot of talent but if

you're not feeling good you're likely not going to succeed um so I think confidence inspires luck in some sense right so if you're starting out I want you to feel confident I want you to feel

cocky and feel like I got this I'm actually going to crush it maybe is not the right word but I want you to feel inspired and if you want to feel inspired likelihood of success is higher in short form so start short form and then eventually see how you can pivot

that audience into doing something long form it's harder to build a strong community on short form have you changed your mind on short form I have I have um

I I wasn't a fan of shortarm stuff A couple of years ago since then a bunch of things changed I had a big problem with doing shortform on YouTube because

there was no way for you to do short form and long form on one Channel without it either looking ugly YouTube suffers from a disease where a Channel's purpose is unidimensional people

subscribe to a channel because they expect a or X out of this channel so you can't do multiple different formats on a channel back in the day now YouTube changed it to you can literally each

channel can do long form videos they have a podcast button so under the same channel you can also do podcast and the same channel you can also do shs earlier when I subscribed to a channel I was subscribed to a type of content

now when I subscribed to a channel I've subscribed to this brand of content so as a Creator I now have more options I will show up either as a as a podcast on the podcast feed or as shorts on the

shorts feed so now the product is much better so now I think if you're doing a 100K views for example um if you're doing a 100K views and if you also do shorts with it you

you're likely would of getting that 1 million views is higher on a sh than on that 100K views again this is this is like the algorithm and all that stuff is like it's complicated and you know there

are many variables to it but anecdotally this is this is what I said I change my view on short form primarily because it's my sense is it's easier lower

effort to bang out that one minute one minute video um and your Chan of hitting that one golden 50 million view is higher in short form because you get to

take more shots if if you can make five short form videos a day but it takes you a week to make one long form video you want to start off with short form cuz if you take 50 shots one of them is going

to hit so you change your mind on shorts because you did see outcomes and at the same time you feel like it's much easier to produce so short form while you say the reason why I said said this was that

quote unquote short form is not easy it's easier than to produce it's easier to produce like the barrier to entry to short form is is a lot easier than

producing a slightly higher quality long form video it just takes lesser time to edit just takes lesser time to edit now on Instagram like Instagram basically killed inshots right like I don't know if you saw but now you can make a real

and it's as good as inshots within Instagram you can I remember in college you know the editing timeline it used to be okay this is video this is audio and transitions would be little things in

the middle all this is on your phone now it's insane like I'm I'm using basically FCP on my phone at this point and you once told me something about the anatomy of a video you you used to give me the example of BuzzFeed tasty yeah

where you said that actually I'll let you explain it you should tell the audience what makes a good video what is the algorithm look for at the heart of whether it's long form short form

television shows movies at the heart of it it's all the same can I retain the viewer till the end it's as simple as that the example that I gave was tasty

tasty would begin with like it would be top down video of like the first a plate would come in and then you know that'd be the base of pizza then the cheese would go on top of it and they chop the

whatever pepperoni and it would go on top of it then the thing goes goes outside frame and you know it's blank you see a shot of it going inside the oven when it comes out it's finally ready and you're waiting for that golden

shot of lifting the pizza like this and the cheese and all all of it is there from the beginning of the video there was a promise that something cool is going to happen in the end and this is what makes retention go up really

high let's take overow as an example right the first two episodes of overpowered was what us like theorizing about Ai and there was a lot of like just us talking until eventually I like let's just make this tasty which is

let's just demo AI tools because AI tools are inherently like making a pizza at the start of it it's like hey this tool promises you to do XY Z now let's watch it in action and that's that's the aha moment the oven moment which like oh

it's it's ready isn't that isn't that insane that's a nice word the oven moment the oven moment it's it's where you wait for the oh this happens and if you notice every single trend on

Instagram is basically this the oven moment the oven moment which is build up anticipation deliver on that anticipation it's every single trend is

this take moo moo like when a mo when when a real shows up and I see below there's this that Moo song thing is going on I just know that oh all this dialogue is going to eventually

end up with like five people doing moo at the end of it like every single trend is basically this whether it is the thing about your head saying which movie character are you whether it is you know put your head on my shoulder where it

flips to a silhouette of you in like whatever every single trend is something cool is going to happen in the end I feel like YouTube has gone

from you know your subscriber numbers don't matter as much as they did back in the day because now I have subscribed to like 300 channels when I open YouTube

it's not going to rec off those 300 channels on a Thursday evening if I open YouTube there are like 50 different things I've consumed on YouTube where the YouTube algorithms like he's interested in these 50 different things

very low on the priority is the channels that he has subscribed to maybe if I subscribed to a channel and watch more than four videos will it even continue recommending that video to me um but yeah packaging packaging matters for

retention like you can get someone to watch your videoos subscribe but if you want to retain them you got to get them to click like three more times only then does you the algorithm feel like this

person should be shown overpowered video often overpowered could have 300,000 subscribers but we have variable views right like some episodes do 200k views some episodes do 50k views that has

stopped mattering as much it's the it's what happened with Tik Tok on Tik Tok you could have 10 followers but you could have three 8 million plus view uh shs but your follower could go from 10

to just 300 it doesn't matter I think that's slowly happening to YouTube as well as platforms get more saturated things get even more uneven which is a good thing I think variable rewards in

life are D variable Rewards is what makes uh the rat continue running on the treadmill there's this really interesting experiment that was done at Sanford they took like a bunch of rats

they put them in water and they they was all like trying to swim trying to make sure that they don't die then after 20 minutes they took the rats out and they dried them

and they made them feel like okay you're you're fine now and 5 minutes later they put them back into water okay how long do you think the rats kept paddling to be alive how long I assume the fact that

they kept pulling them out gave the rats hope in a way yes and the water restrain stress this is called the water restrain stress test ah so you keep dumping the rat into water but if you leave it in

the water it eventually gives up yeah but if you keep taking it out the rat is still like at some point I'm going to be taken out this survived for five days five days they kept paddling right this is what variable

rewards does so it's in every platform's interest to give the Creator variable rewards because if you get one success then then you think that the next video could be the next success the next video

after that could be it you just need to see one 10K views and then you're like bro this is golden I'm there you just need that first one like ever since we

got 12 million on that one overpowered reel every video you want it to be that so you just know that that's what's possible t h how much money do content

creators make and I think you should you should tabulate it into how much does a content creator of the 100K views make how much a content creator with a million views make and if you're working

with brands does your subscribe account actually matter if you get 100K views on short video either on Instagram you make no money if you have short video on YouTube it's minuscule right like you

could get 10 million views and get a 2,000 rupe payout like it's short video doesn't the short video revenue revenue on all the platforms is minuscule next

to nothing so you can't make a you can't make a living based on Advertising Revenue through short video on long form

your RPM which is revenue per melee which is how much money are you getting per thousand monetized playbacks on

YouTube can range anything between whatever 50 to 150 depending on the genre you are in so if it's if it's on

the lower end I suspect like um genres like gaming or vlogging would be on the lower end cuz the audience for that is more generic could be younger as well so whatever do the math right if you if you

get a million views then maybe you have whatever 5 600,000 of those be monetized

so 500 into uh whatever 50 60 100 150 that's that's the kind of numbers you would see if you have a more premium audience which is for

example like if you have a if you have 100,000 subscribers but say 2,000 of those subscribers are YouTube pre premium viewers uh then you get more

YouTube premium just means that someone who is paying to not have ads on on YouTube A View From that person generates more so um so it really really depends on what genre you're in like if

you if you do Finance stuff I know Finance stuff pays uh the revenue RPMs on finance videos are a lot higher uh RPMs on podcasts are also pretty high uh

because in an in an hourong podcast if someone if your average view time is 30 minutes which is MTI you're getting multiple ads so each view you generate a

lot more you know 2x 3x but me a rough number no like forget about RPM tell me like a Creator maybe in comedy who has a million subscribers or let's say in gaming who has a million subscribers what can they expect from what what do

they see on their Channel dashboard if you get a million views uh on the higher end you'll make one lakh rupees on the higher end is what I've noticed so let's let's say they make they're putting out four videos a month so they're getting making four lakhs from YouTube they

could if they are making if they're getting a million views they could on the higher end 1 million views one lakh uh one lakh Rupees is on the higher end uh but if you get like you should be

able to make at least like 30 40 50 60k in that range you should be able to make that irrespective of the genre you are in but all it's like this is like I'm still talking about if you get these as

an established Creator because L of this depends on you know is the sales team pushing your channel as something that uh whose inventory gets pocketed off if

you are a part Ned partnered Channel at YouTube if you fall in the light right genre where for example you're in um towards the end of the year ad sales go up a lot more where brands have more

money to push their products um then more channels have more inventory uh filled up uh but yeah if if you're generating a million views then you're probably going to get more money from

Brand deals than YouTube at Revenue uh but if you get a million views in say a finance category you can charge upwards of 15 20 lakhs per integration this is not like YouTube paying you money this

is you going to a brand and saying I will talk about your thing for a minute yeah yeah yeah if you're an established Creator and you do short form also like I know creators who are charging 15

lakhs to make even a real um I know creators who who who've been paid like 35 40 lakhs to make a real like I've like the the deals really depends on who

you are what is your brand how premium are you who are the people who are managing you what so you're saying it's less about the views or it's a mix of the views and what people think of and they think what people think of you what

it's a mix of views what genre you're in and what is your perception as as a Creator like I know I know creators who don't do that many deals and they'll just be like listen I'm going to do like

five deals a year and it's going to come at a premium and I'm only only going to work with you know the coca-colas of the world which like top tier brand so I know creators like that also but I know other creators who are like dude I'm

producing like 80 videos a year this is inventory that's going was uh that's going waste I might as well monetize just take it deal by take it deal by deal so there's no there's no direct

like oh if you do X then you get y really depends on who you are what your brand is so at a million views a video let's say four videos a month I'm producing and I'm producing maybe say 20 shots a month you think it's possible

for me to make a million dollars a year as if I was a new let's say old content creator from ad Revenue unlikely but yeah if you're pulling I think if you're pulling in whatever upwards of 25 30

million views a month on YouTube uh which would put you in like the top 2 three percentile creators 0.1 that's top 0.1% yeah top 0.1% I'm talking views which are not short driven views which

are purely long form if you're able to pull in 30 million views a month with an average watch time of you know five to six minutes you are you will make a million dollars a year uh between

branded content and AD Revenue it's possible it's very very much possible to do that uh um but if if you are a YouTuber scoring big numbers on long form consistently then dude you don't even

need to be dependent on branded content after a point right like you you can pull in uh you can pull in like 20 30 lakhs a month on YouTube if you're pulling in you know that many views uh

you're basically earning the salary of a CEO comfortably um so it's it's possible to make really good money on YouTube but

it's a grind like then your your job is you're you're available 365 days you have to produce content whenever absolutely your life is on sale I've seen creators who get to the scale who just don't want to work with Brands

anymore really yeah like they make enough money just it's not it's not about the money it's more about like sometimes it's difficult to work with Brands yeah right so many of those creators decide I want to start a business now yeah which is which is a

smarter rout to take but have you seen any successful Creator business in India the jump from Creator to service businesses is pretty easy I've seen fewer successes in d2c it's because if

you're a very successful Creator the odds of you making so much money from just Brands is higher uh whereas the odds of starting a business and really

putting in the effort to make that successful it takes it takes a lot of commitment and effort the model that I've seen work with a lot of creators is you know you become successful as a

public brand then you find and team up with a co-founder who has the expertise in a particular business so your job becomes more about creating Network effects really lever bridging your your

position creating top of funnel for for the business uh but I think top of funnel is also diminishing there's only so many times with your audience unless you keep generating newer audiences uh like someone like a duu raati will

generate newer audiences all the time because he talks about basically watching the news right and everybody cares about the news so you see anything that happens in the news is a new audience that that comes to watch him um

but if you are like if you're a Creator like me I have a very loyal um low attrition kind of audience which is people will come watch watch like you know six videos by me every month so if

I tell you to click on one it's unlikely you're going to click on it more than once so really depend on the kind of creator that you are but there are different models you can do you can be a

Creator and monetize your audience which is you can either sell courses or you can you know teach something you can do whatever it is you can be a Creator and start a new business this could be a d2c business it could be a service business

or if you're a Creator and you find a partner and run multiple businesses like I fall into to the third category which is um I now have a wide range of interests and I have access in different

areas and then I find co-founders in different but that also works for you because you have channels in different areas that are all working yes I have channels in different areas and more importantly my range of interest is fairly wide I'm interested in content

also I'm interested in AI also I'm interested in you know startups Angel Investing d2c brand I'm interested in a bunch of things um so I can speak the language and I can really communicate with Founders that I work with in that

language but it's not not for everyone but if you're a successful Creator then the part to making money there are there are many as long as you're able to keep your public brand sustained if you could

go to Brands today who are trying to do YouTube I'm talking about companies and you can give them two or three pieces of advice what would it be because you worked with so many brand managers who get YouTube wrong I would tell brand

managers to start off with short video because I think uh you you're able to your feedback loop is faster brand managers will really know you know what kind of cont content suits their brand

so I would say first start with dip your feet in short video create a dedicated team how much should they budget I mean it's it's at least five hires right you'll need you'll need one brain one or

two brains either what would you call that role like a Creator in Residence let's say Creator and residence or let's call them both producers talent and producer okay sometimes the producer is the talent sometimes producer is

separate and talented so presenter and producer presenter producer um then i' I'd probably say twoed and if you want an in-house camera production person then you can have that

and or you can R so like a director of production director of production or you can also rent that like the producer can do it uh but it's tough for a producer to manage the content also and the production also like we are very lucky

to have Saga who can who can do bit of both but most people aren't able to do that uh depends on the kind of content you're doing if you're doing like Finance videos for example your producer will really focus on what is the content

that you're that you're making the scripts really matter cuz you're talking about money and you want to be careful with what what you say publicly uh but say you you're making food videos so a producer can think of formats and just

set up the production place and Outsource the production and uh then really goad so tell me the exact math how much should I spend on a studio like I'm a brand I need to produce a short form video every day I would say if you're a brand just starting out you

want to Outsource production initially do a pilot where you Outsource production but have the key stakeholders which is the producer people yeah not the five people includes two editors but

you can Outsource that also but I think you need to have an in-house producer SL brand custodian who will really think of what is the content that's going to go

out um rest everything you can Outsource in the beginning you can use a company like AOS which is you know Varun I and a bunch of other cool people at AV are involved in you can Outsource it do a

pilot I think really what you need as a brand to make content is intent and one person to own it be the brand cust Stan who has the best judgment on this content suits my brand the rest you can

Outsource how do you find that person ooh the best people to for this job are people who have built distribution themselves I think they are the best

people to be running this ship for you um if you haven't done content before then you're going to make some bad decisions if you are responsible to to

deploy Dollar on producing content so I think creators would be a good bet I think most companies eventually there'll be enough creators in the market who

could not make big top dollars as creators um but they would make for killer uh content marketing people inside companies yeah I think I think more brand should be hiring creators in

house for sure uh even if it's if even if it's not permanently I think even as a consultant uh CU your content team really needs to think like a like a Creator it's not it's not it's not

something you can half as it's not making content is an always on job it's not a IPL campaign you know December campaign it is all year long so it's not

a it's not a half as you can't half as it you got to be on it all the time that's why I think more people will hire creators what is what is your team composed of right now what does your team look like primarily editors and one

producer I have two editors and one producer for my YouTube three people three people is for my YouTube andan you're doing uh like camera setup and stuff the producer does that I do everything on Zoom so I don't want to do

wait I got to do nothing uh I have one producer whose job is to curate the content for me what I what I react to on the podcast side I have a producer and an editor then on the agency front there

is you know couple of writers and me and Thea who are the co-founders um and that's moonshot that's moonshot then on overpowered there's you know there we have two

editors and and a producer uh so they're all small small teams like pods highly efficient you know sing Single focus on on on what they're doing it becomes hard

if you get one person to context switch with all the different things that I'm doing it's hard for one person to to be able to do all of that um so yeah teams

in in silos with a singular focus on on what they're doing interesting yeah this was fantastic I learned so much and you know I always keep saying this right I

think proximity to a good Creator makes you a good Creator like I know there are creators who who you know gone solo and won really big but I think that takes a long time takes like 5 six years but I

think the minute you spend time very closely with a bigger Creator and you see them do their thing behind the scenes I think it accelerates your career if you ever want to be a Creator or want to create content you are the

product of the fight 10 people you surround yourself with so I think I've learned so much from being around you and I just wanted to make sure that the audience also got to hear some of our

behind the scenes conversation hope it was useful and if if it wasn't then please write and I'm sure someone will afford that comment so by the way we have a

ritual here this is the first episode I want to make this like a habit for the next I just want to do like a five six episode series and then be done okay we give everyone a

gift excellent this is the OnePlus open this is the OnePlus open you using you're using the phone right what do you like about it it has all the benefits of a tablet it has all the benefits of a phone and if I ever get bored of the

tablet view like I'm I get bored very quickly so it's like I really like this I love how it feels when you when you fold it there's no the the crease is almost invisible like all the other ones

like creas this one's like invisible it's really nice and I heard the cameras Stellar this is a collaboration with hustle blood yeah check this out I can do this really cool thing on a on the camera okay oh the dual view you can

have the back camera and the front camera this perfect for vlogging I'm recording you but you can see what's being recorded oh that's cool so I can record as and you can say oh this is

great actually to shoot reals and stuff yeah so if your producer is recording you you know exactly what's being recorded at the same time you can do your job he can do his job it makes it just makes short content easier

yes that was an exhausting conversation but hey I learned a lot and everything that I thought I could pull out of tme that I thought the audiences need to know I got and I'm very excited that t

had the time to do this and I hope you liked it I'm going to do just five of these I'm going to get the best in each industry and I'm going to learn from their insights go very very deep all you

have to do is like share and subscribe you know what I really like about OnePlus is not just the hardware it's also software like they launched this thing called the OnePlus AI music

studio okay so I can go I can select EDM I can select romantic I can select travel and I just proceed and I can describe the vi three genres that have

nothing to do with you but sure yeah but whatever let's say under the city lights what that's the name of the song I'm just writing something under the city lights right what should your song be about and wait it's going to just produce the track for you that's what I

like about OnePlus it's not just the hardware it's also like they really think through the software so even their OS and all looks so cool oh it's ready no

way wow it really feels like I'm under the city lights yeah R is performing I think they're doing a event they're doing a festival dude it makes a video also

that's sick sure look at this it makes a video also oh that's cool

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