Making YouTube videos seems so easy, which has resulted millions of creators trying to create videos on YouTube. But here’s why I think it isn’t the best idea to do so (if you don’t own good hardware and software, and also have creativity).

Making Videos vs Writing Blog Posts

I’m comparing blog posts to videos because they’re the second best alternative to watching a video. You can express most of what you can in a video, in a blog post with screenshots.

The video creation process is:

• Finding a good topic

• Coming up with a good title, thumbnail, intro (first 30-60 seconds)

• Record the video

• Edit the video

• Upload to YouTube

And the blog post creation process:

• Finding a good topic

• Coming up with a good title

• Write the article, adding in screenshots and other visuals where necessary.

• Publish the article

• (optionally, link to your article on other platforms)

While the difference looks minor, there are two major factors that make blogging an easier space to enter.

The Quality Factor

It’s challenging to create a good title, thumbnail, intro with SEO-optimized descriptions, nice presentation, good audio and more.

Writing a blog post requires that the blog is easy to navigate and that the content is good.

This is much easier than creating a YouTube video, especially considering there are many templates and tools to build your own blog (see the Creating a blog section of this article for more).

This blog (created using Hugo) looks really nice, but it’s just using the Terminal theme by panr. This blog is on Hashnode. I just had to customize it a bit and write. The same doesn’t go for videos.

People simply won’t stay around unless you have good equipment, software and creativity. But the problems of creating YouTube videos don’t end there. Posting on a platform as large as YouTube has another problem…

The Recommendation Factor

Even if you do make a video that has a good title, thumbnail and intro, optimized for YouTube search, etc., your video may not perform well, regardless of the effort taken. You’re fighting against an algorithm to show people your content.

On a blog, people come to see your posts. If they like it, they’ll share it, or they’ll add your blog to their RSS readers to read your blog posts.

You can even share your blog posts on dedicated communities (such as subreddits), who are more likely to read your content.

You also could put some ads on your blog, at the risk of making your site a bit less user-friendly.

Of course, unless you’ve been on YouTube for years on-end, making great content, perfectly optimized for discovery and recommendation, etc. and have already found some form of success.

Creating a blog

It is highly recommended to get a domain (like tercmd.com). However, some services offer subdomains for free (Wix, Cloudflare Pages, WordPress.com, etc.).

Then, you have to choose between two options:

• Dynamic site - Widely used, but requires either a database for self-hosted solutions (e.g. WordPress.org) or for you to use their platform (e.g. WordPress.com, Squarespace, Wix, etc.)

• Static site - Not as widely used, but are created automatically from files, requiring basic HTML serving capabilities. This also means you actually have a copy of your content on your device. (e.g. Hugo, Jekyll, etc.)

Once you choose a tool, you have to make the blog your own and start writing.