How to make your fortune on YouTube

As far as equipment is concerned you can start with just your phones. In fact for our first two years of making video, we only used our phones, with the Clipper Race being filmed exclusively on phones. It was at this point that we decided we needed a camera with an optical zoom, so we bought one which was also water proof and shock resistant, because if you live on a boat, getting wet is par for the course. Since buying the camera with the optical zoom, we have since bought some GoPro knock off's that come in at £40. We have also bought a selection of clamps to go with these so that we can attach them to the frames in and around Salty Lass. From our point of view, if we loose one of these cameras, as far as money is concerned it should not be a problem, the footage on them is the thing that we would miss. Now the camera that has cost us a lot of money, is our drone. Now because it is so expensive we have only ever used our drone when we were firmly on land.

One of the little pieces of equipment that we use all the time is lapel microphones that we use in conjunction with our phones. So, we set up the phones to record, then place the phone in a zippable pocket then place the microphone close to our mouth and protect the microphone from wind noise by standing with our back to the wind and having the microphone under a coat or something.

In general we leave people out of our videos. It is for this reason that we tend to not use other people. When it comes to boat names, we leave them out as well because you can identify a person from the boats name. We have had people on Salty Lass, who have requested not to be on video and in those case we simply do not video them, there might be the rouge leg or something, but they are not identifiable. On the other hand we also have people who love the camera and when they are fine with that, then we do use them.  If we do use people, we ask for their permission and any video that does use people we have to make sure that they approve. One video that we made that included children took three months to get approved. The one thing that I really hate is when they have given permission and then they look at the video and withdraw their permission.

When it comes to storage there is really on one question to ask and that is:- Do you record in 4 k or 1k. Buzzy Lass our drone is 4k, 2 of our knock off cameras are 4K, while the camera that was donated is 1k. Our phones can be set up to record in either 4k or 1k. We tend to use 1k because a lot less storage is needed to store 1k videos. We put our videos out in 1 k because the vast majority of people are watching in 1k. 4k takes a lot more storage, they take longer to render and they take a lot more power and when you are out cruising power is a major concern.

We have hard drives on Salty Lass. In fact we have about 8 terabytes which is 8,000 gigabytes. Having the hard disks on Salty Lass is useful, so we can slot in old footage when we want to. The only thing that we would recommend is plug then in every now and then to rebuild any memory issues.

For us we have two main types of content

Summer - The passage video. Film as you are leaving, film the entrance and film things that happen as you are sailing. You might see some interesting wildlife, so talk about that, something might happen, so deal with that, but in general just let the passage happen. The story is then very easy, as you just stitch the video together in the order that it happens.

Winter - We talk about various topics, these can come from our viewers, so we will have viewer question of the week, we might have a project that we are doing, so we film that. Every now and then we do a technical video and they take a lot of time planning, because you need to know what you are filming, you need to know what points you want to make and you need to make sure that you are giving accurate information.

With a passage video, we never storyboard. We let the story develop as we go along and the story is what happens to us and how do we react to what is happening to us.

With a more technical video then we have bullet points to highlight the points that we want to make and then we talk about those points. We do not have a script, as that restricts conversation, but we do discuss the point we want to make beforehand, so that we might say. You talk about that point, I'll talk about this one. We always talk about the thing that we know more about and if we have a passion about a particular point then that person always gets to say that point, because passion is infectious and will make the point more watchable.

We are the worst people to ask this question because we are coders, so we wrote our own platform and host it on our own server.

We would recommend that you do not use WordPress, because although the core project can be good, the plug-ins can be buggy and it is not as intuitive to use as some other systems.

We set up the channel once seven years ago. The interface will have changed since then, but there are videos out there telling you exactly what to do, so watch these and give it a go. There are lots of people who have done it, so give it a go.

We have not used Windows for over 20 years, because we use Ubuntu Linux as our operating system. This means that the software we use is for Linux. The package we use is called kden live and you can get it for Windows and Mac. Other products are final cut pro or premier pro or Da Vinci Resolve. For sound editing we use Audacity which comes on all platforms. We also use a product called Gwen view, which is a light table type product to rename all the videos, so we know what the clip is and what type it is, like piece to camera PTC or Cut for Cut. We keep the dates and times so we know the general order everything is going to be in.

When you start out, just use the YouTube audio library for sound clips, so that you avoid any copy write issues. The other advantage of using YouTube audio is it is free. If you do use audio from other sources, leave it up for at least a week so that any copy write issues are resolved before the video goes live.

Our phone package is unlimited data, so we are able to upload whatever content we like. The only issue we have is getting a strong connection, because if the connection fails while we are doing an upload, then the upload fails. We aim to produce about 15 minutes of content, and we only produce videos in 1k so that the time we take to upload the videos is not too long

You will need a computer, but you probably have one of those. The software we use is free, so use that to start. Do but a lapel mike which cost about £10 and if you want extra cameras buy the knock off rather than the expensive ones.

Do not put your videos in the cloud, because you might not have an internet connection. Also the about of storage you need for video is a lot which means that your cost go up quite quickly. We have our storage on the boat and we have a back-up at the flat in Liverpool. We take the videos off the cameras as we need them. The one thing I would say, is do not leave clips on the camera for too long because we have lost video that way

How long is a piece of string. With passage videos, you have the length of time that the passage is, then there is about three or four hours of editing time, While a talking video will take less time to film but a lot longer to edit say 10 to 12 hours

So hopefully that has answered a lot of questions about making YouTube Videos