Evenin’ all. I thought I’d wade in here with my big DeWalts and kick around some responses to a few of the common rhubarbing from this side of the fence on the subject of YouTube... for anyone interested.
Personally, I never figured there would be an international audience for jobbing electricians; I saw it just as a way to tout for local business on social media – a place to perhaps show off one’s work and talk turkey regarding the regs in order to (hopefully) come across as not being a cowboy outfit for prospective punters.
Nonetheless, an audience is there for this content, limited though it may be, and someone’s always going to tap it. Those that are able do so successfully are on the big bucks. Take Jordan’s meteoric rise and the rapid expansion of his business. That’s all off the back of YT. Nick Bundy is another one whose advertising revenue and sponsorship through vlogging I'm pretty sure exceeds what my business makes doing its day job of on-the-tools electrical work.
If you get the formula right and play by YouTube’s rules, there’s some serious dollar to be made.
To attract a high number of subscribers and the sponsors with deep pockets, you need certain factors on your side:
It’s got to look like you’re honest, know something of what you’re doing and show enough professionalism in your work.
You need to be clearly spoken, explain what you’re doing and use no foul language.
It helps if you’re young and pretty. The camera has to love you dahling.
Editing should be professional enough to make it engaging to watch.
Uploads have to be frequent and at regularly timed.
Like most others, I don’t make the grade, but that’s okay; I don’t want some tool company’s marketing department dictating what I can say and telling me when I should be burping out a new video to show off their wares.
For those at the top, Nagy, Jordan, Nick, Chris etc., – like ‘em or loathe ‘em, they’re doing very well out of it and all the best to them. As Nick once told me, his goal is to make as much money as he can to support his family, and if he can rake in thousands for his business’ bottom line by waving a camera phone around, then all power to him.
Tapping into this isn’t for everyone. Some create channels because they want the ‘fame’ of a million subscribers and easy ad revenue rolling in, however it ain’t that simple. You have to be showing something interesting, different and engaging and you have to do it frequently to grow a subscriber count that will attract the sponsors. Showing a run of the mill CU change or the umpteenth EV installation as you ermm and ummm through disjointed sentences isn’t going to cut the mustard. Myself, I find the subscriber count to be a distraction, so I turned mine off last summer. Those doing it for the numbers rather than out of enthusiasm for the subject will likely remain at the shallow end of the pool.
I think it’s also getting harder to break into as there are a lot of channels out there now and the professionalism of the editing is improving with the top chaps using dedicated camera operators and/or editors. I myself am not after anything slick. I’m an electrician who happens to make the odd video (very odd in some cases), and I think if that ever switches around then something will be lost in the honesty of the presentation. I suspect too that the top chaps are a little trapped in promising regular content for a job where there isn’t that much which is new, different or interesting enough in the industry to steer clear of accusations of samey content or that can attract a wider audience.
I admit, I don’t tend to tune in to other YT sparks, mainly because 90% of my time is running the business and the last thing I want to do with the scrappy remnants of my evening is watch some other poor fool dragging in cables after I’ve been at it myself all day.
I’ve seen comments here that YT videos show DIY’ers how to do it. Well, here’s news for you: I looked into this and found that DIY’ers were fiddling with their electrical installations long before YouTube existed! No kidding, it turns out amateur installations, additions and alterations have been going on since the dawn of the industry! Who knew?!
If anything, I would like to think Joe Homebase is largely put off by some of the maths involved, the flashy test equipment being used which he knows he doesn’t have, discussion of the regulatory reasons that pertain to an installation which he knows he’s ignorant of and the videos showing the consequences of poor workmanship (generally the likes of us getting paid to knock holes in someone’s house to right some wrongs). Hopefully, Joe recognises his inadequacies, but ultimately, while Joe may well pick up some pointers, Joe’s going to go ahead and do whatever he wants to do regardless.
When it comes to commenting and any accusations of comments being sanitised, well a democracy the UK still (supposedly) is, but my social media space is my own and I’m not about to let just any idiot turn up and mouth off. I imagine everyone else is the same. Personally, I delete comments very rarely and even then, only because they’ve either said something totally out of order (as in overtly racist), or because they’ve said something I don’t want aired out in the wild, like revealing the address of a customer’s house where filming has taken place. If I’ve said or shown something that’s technically wrong and it gets pointed out, I’m more likely to pin that comment or make a follow-up video addressing it as I don’t want to put out incorrect information. If someone wants to pick fault with my workmanship, I’ve no problem with that and will happily enter discussion. They may be right – or maybe I had reasons why things were done in the way shown. I’m old enough and ugly enough to take valid criticism on the chin. If someone cowering behind an anonymous account like a nonce wants to have a personal pop at me, that’s okay too so long as they don’t cry too much when they get a shovelful of verbal right back at ‘em.
One thing I have found is that YT itself removes comments containing certain words. “Tranny” for example is a no-no, even though I was referring to my Transit van when replying to someone recently. Sometimes comments or replies are automatically excised by YT shortly after they’re posted which is nonsense – it’s a channel for adults and we should be able to converse without Google acting as a nanny. Some comments are also automatically withheld pending approval, often for no rhyme nor reason that I can fathom, but they don’t appear publicly unless I go into my admin interface and personally okay them (which I always do eventually, although I don’t log in to find them very often). I find there’s a good group of people who make regular comment contributions and engaging with them brings up new ideas, alternative ways of working and corrections to things I may have said or done wrong. Lord knows I make mistakes as much as the next guy, especially on non-scripted videos filmed off-the-cuff. Sparky Ninja and JW may have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the blue book, but in my hungover haze I often forget bits or say something that’s downright wrong.
On the subject of foul language and the absence of such in ‘normal’ people’s content, it’s inclusion very much present and correct in mine, when I see the comment that I swear too much, I always wonder for whom? I present myself how I wish and answer to absolutely nobody… except the wife (of course). I never asked anyone to turn up, tune in and take offence. If you don’t like it, go watch Jordan and Nick with their clean cut, nicely polished, sponsor friendly content. Some of this stuff takes a long time to research, prepare visual or practical aids for and to edit together, all put out with the advertising minimised, then some random maroon turns up in the comments with CAPS LOCK on screaming that they want the information but are furious about how it’s presented. Well, they can go and do their own bloody research. It’s not like I invited anyone along and charged them for it!
I see Delroy’s getting a bit o’ stick for workmanship and procedures being shown that aren’t always by the book. The real world isn’t by the book and we all of us find ourselves in situations not of our making. On fault finding videos, I often get comments about just ripping it all out and starting again – like that’s a practical option. Sometimes I violate safe isolation by working on a CU which is still powered on with the cover removed. I often omit the GS38 ends on my probes. I neglect donning the correct PPE such as ear defenders, goggles and masks when drilling. Such things do send out the wrong message when shown on camera, and for that I can only apologise, but who here can claim to always do everything perfectly and by the numbers? It’s very hard to present a sanitised video of real-world electrical work because we are there to get on with a job and we have developed bad habits that have become the norm for our way of working, wrong though that may be. But these aren’t how-to videos, they’re how-we-happened-to vlogs with rights and wrongs, warts an’ all. There is literally nothing stopping anyone who thinks they can do better from doing better, but most critics have anonymous channels with no content of their own. One particularly vocal chap told me once he could provide “…a master class in inspection and testing” to show up my amateur efforts. He didn’t of course; he was all mouth and trousers. I called him out on my next video and he skulked away forever.
The likes of Sparky Ninja, JW, GSH and eFixx all show the right and proper way to do things, but when was the last time you saw any of them on a customer site being asked to fault find whilst on the clock on a forty-year-old electrical installation some muppet has made ham-fisted alterations to? How you work and what mental risk assessments you choose to apply to your working method is ultimately up to you even if it defies best practice. I choose, for example, to eschew my GS38 ends because they get in the way and stop me poking my probes where I need to stick ‘em. That’s not right of course, but just because I’m seen doing that doesn’t make it big, hard or clever for others to copy me. I would expect those watching this sort of content who are getting into the game to also be suitably trained on they way they should be working before they end up elbows deep in anybody’s electrical installation.
As to the the question of whether I’m charging customers for the time taken filming and seeking their permission, it’s very hard to swing a video camera around without the client noticing (and for us it is a camera, not the mobile phone). As for time on site, a deduction is made for filming. That puts me out of pocket on every video before any time even goes into editing, not least because I’m paying Nigel’s wages and those hours lost on site could have been put to chargeable use performing honest electrical work. Generally, the overheads of making videos perhaps about breaks even with the beer tokens coming back in from the few adverts I allow, but the value to the business is more to do with advertising and reputation building. Despite the trademark bad language and occasional stupid skits, this stuff pulls in punters.
Ultimately, my reason for making videos is the same as for writing the blogs on my website: it’s purely selfish and serves as a means for me to get my head around the twists and turns of BS7671. If I need to look up a long forgotten reg, I’m more likely to open a blog on my website or flick on a video I made where I know I blabbed about it in the past rather than opening the blue book to try to find and decipher it all over again. Take AFDDs for example. I put a lot of time, money and research into those things back in 2018 and 2020 for my own benefit only. By the time the brown book comes out, I may have forgotten much of it and will need a refresher, so by compiling it into videos or blog posts I can go back for a recap. Why not share that with the wider world where others may also find it useful to save them duplication of effort? I’m happy to do that so long as some grunting moron doesn’t swing by complaining about it like they’ve somehow been personally scammed.
I’d also say that producing content for public consumption gets anyone down eventually. I take less of a kicking than most simply because sponsor friendly content precludes the others from responding how they would really like to the screaming critics, trolls and nutcases, whereas I’m more likely to parade them on social media and accuse them of interfering with small animals. I almost preferred it when I had just a handful of subscribers and the video hit counts only trickled in as there was less pressure and more fun involved when nobody noticed! Over the past year, it’s all been too much like hard work. Not that I’m hanging up my McHat and ancient camcorder just yet, but I might go back to written blogs more often as nobody reads them, nobody can comment on them, and the information contained therein sits where I need it which is juuuust fine by me.
Anyway, I trust that stream of consciousness mops up some queries on the vlogging front. Or maybe it raises more questions than it answers? Whatever. All I know is I'm tired and tomorrow is another working day.
Oh, and I know I look like Mr Gilbert. What can I say, he’s a handsome chap!
