Creator Economy
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Envato Elements Review: How Does the Stock Asset Option Stack Up?
A few years ago, I discovered that incorporating stock footage into my YouTube videos made my job as video editor much easier while also adding more energy to my finished product. When I first started with stock video, I had a subscription to what was then known as Videoblocks and then Storyblocks Video. Unfortunately, when…
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YouTube Shorts: Creating My First Short and What I Learned
Over the course of the five years that I’ve been publishing content on YouTube, the platform has seen a number of changes. Yet, what is perhaps the biggest update to the site arrived stateside last year with the introduction of YouTube Shorts. Even more recently, the offering made headlines (including on this site) as YouTube…
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“Smart Brevity” Book Review — Can it Help Improve Your Writing?
I’m not 100% sure when it was that I first heard about the site Axios. Regardless, these days, I’m subscribed to several of their newsletters, regularly visit their website, and may or may not have already taken some inspiration from them when revamping the news style of the Disney site I write for. For those…
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Blogging Tools: AI Writing Generator Test
Previously when I kicked off my Blogging Tools series, I shared a look at some services you can use to improve your writing by fixing grammatical and spelling errors. Well, today, we’re taking things to a new level and looking at tools that will actually do the writing for you! That’s right, we’re going to…
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Blogging Tools: Writing and Grammar Tools
It’s been a while since I’ve written about writing. While this section of my site has sat up next to more frequently covered topics such as Travel, I haven’t explored the meta opportunities of blogging about the practice of blogging for far too long. So, today, I’m working to correct that by kicking off a…
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Stock Video Footage: Pros, Cons, and Options for YouTube Creators
This may shock you, but not everything you see on YouTube is 100% produced by the creator uploading the video 😉 Instead, in some cases, they may be using what’s called “stock footage” to accompany their talking head clips or voiceover. So where do these creators find such clips — and how much does it…
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4 Tools That Could Help “Level Up” Your YouTube Game
Amazingly, it’s now been just over five years since I uploaded my first YouTube video. What’s more, as I just learned by happenstance, I’ve apparently uploaded 200 videos to my channel. As you can probably imagine, since that first video, a lot has changed. Beyond changes to my scripting, structure, and skills, the past few…
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How I Create My Video Reviews for YouTube
Let me cut to the chase: this week, my YouTube channel officially surpassed 10,000 subscribers. This is something I never really expected when I launched my channel a few years back and, while I’m not one to wrap my self-worth up in such metrics, I am incredibly proud of this milestone. So, to celebrate, I’ve…
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YouTuber Brand Deals: My First Sponsored Video Experience
A couple of months ago, I reached what I think is a YouTuber milestone: I completed my first brand deal. Okay, “brand deal” sounds very influencer-y, but I did make my first sponsored video. Previously, I’d made a handful of videos about products or services I’d received for free (but with no promise of a…
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#FinCon21 Recap: My Virtual Experience
And just like that, another FinCon is in the books. As I mentioned in my preview, although this year marked the return to an in-person event (taking place in Austin, Texas), I made the last-minute decision to go virtual. Of course, with approximately 20% of conference attendees choosing this option, there were plenty of tools…
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#FinCon21: My 11 Most Anticipated Presentations
For weeks, today has been on my calendar as the day I was going to dive into the FinCon 21 schedule in order to prepare my annual look at the panels and presentations I was most looking forward to. Ironically, today also ended up being the day I canceled my trip to FinCon 21. Well,…
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Cameras for YouTube (2021): What I Bought and Why
It’s hard to believe that I’ve now been creating YouTube videos for more than four years. What’s even crazier is that my channel has garnered more than 1.6 million views in that time! I share this not to brag but because I honestly just learned this information. Since starting my channel, a lot has changed.…