“A DIVE INTO HOW A BLACK KID STARTING A YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND MAKING HIMSELF WORLD'S NO:1 TECH YOUTUBER AND HEAD OF MANY OTHER PLATFORMS.”

By Maryem Sohail 

May 18,2023

MKBHD:

Marques Keith Brownlee known as MKBHD (MKB acronym for his name initials and HD for high definition) is a 29years old tech enthusiast, professional Ultimate Frisbee player, Podcaster and American Youtuber best known for his vlogs focused on reviews on technology as well as his podcast on Waveform. The former president of Google called Marques as the best technology revierwer on planet right now. He got his bachelor's degree from Stevenson Institute of Technology where he majored in business and IT. As of now he has over 15.5M subscribers on YouTube, 3.7M followers on Instagram and 136,618 followers on Facebook, 5.8M on Twitter and so on. He was listed on Forbes 2021, 30 under 30 as a social media category. 

HOW IT ALL STARTED:

So it all started back from when he was studying in a high school and had to buy a laptop so he  watched a bunch of videos to find which laptop is best. When he finally bought a laptop and saw some stuff that he couldn't find on any YouTube videos so, his first response was turn on a Webcam and talk about all those things which he couldn't find and thinking certainly there'll be other bunch of people wondering what to buy. 

That kinda instinct into when someone else is buying they can make a better decision make him  started his own YouTube channel and add a collection of information that he couldn't find at the the time of his purchase.

BEHIND THE SCENES:

Marques said “When lots of people think of YouTube channel don't think the workload behind it.”They putout over 130 videos last year on their Channel. So basically it was a team of 5 people in the studio Andrew, Vinh, Brandon, Micheal and Marques himself untill 2021 and that's a blend of set designers, cinematographers, motion graphic specialists and he himself in front of camera but of now they've added writing and editing talent into their team to get the little burden off of team and scale up. Moreover they have started a lot new channels on YouTube last year named as MKBHD shorts, the Studio, Waveform clips and so on.

BEING A CONTENT CREATOR:

Being a content creator is a bunch of jobs in one. Let's say you're a tech youtuber.. part of your job is editing, part of it writing, part of your job is being on camera while part of it shooting and part of your job is promoting, uploading, sharing and  content strategy so it's kinda like an octopus game where part of you seems like doing one thing the other part thinking and working on something else. So Marques said “now I'm looking suitable persons for hiring to cutoff my arms being more like a jelly fish rather then an octopus.”

SUCCESS:

Marques posted his first video on breaking down the internal working on Hp pavilion laptop he purchased with his saved allowance during high school. His channel took off after he graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology, and he's since made YouTube videos on smartphones, headphones, camcorders, smartwatches, tablets, speakers, Nike's self-lacing boots and Tesla's Cybertruck which have got 700M viewes in the last 12 months. More recently, he's scored sitdown interviews with such luminaries as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

RETRO TECH:

Retro tech is a YouTube original series produced by Vox Media released season 2 on 19April, 2019 where Marques Brownlee uncovers the origin and nostalgia of iconic tech. I was born in 20's and I could relate to thirst of knowledge with which Marque was exploring each device. In the series, Brownlee interviews fellow YouTube creators and celebrity guests and discusses iconic pieces of technology from the past which have had a major impact on modern life and culture

           I liked the structure of each episode _starting with unboxing, then diving into how the world was before the invention of that device, followed by interviewing related people then reviewing related items in the Dope and nope segment and finally concluding with the legacy of device. 

HOW to make money through YouTube? 

YouTube ads is the primary and fundamental source of income from YouTube. You upload a video there's a ad somewhere in it or on it and you get paid for the placement of those ads on your videos because you brought the impressions to the video. There's different types of ads forexample there are ads build on YouTube through Adsense which you can't control and there are ads which you can control like sponsored integrations built into videos then there's a merch stuff too. 

REVENUE:

MKBHD revenue is mostly about 40 percent from YouTube AdSense, typically those ads that get placed. Probably 50 percent sponsored integrations that we build into the channel and the videos. And the last 10 percent is miscellaneous consisting of merch, that includes licensing, that includes random other appearance fees and sometimes hop on another show stuff like that. It’s mostly those two big buckets.

Is YouTube a viable career path? 

Today ninety percent of kids when you ask them what you want to become when you grow up? They're like well yeah! I want to become a youtuber because they know the scope of the world today. They know how that works. But it's so difficult to stand out and as Marques said in an interview with verge:“if you are cool with starting and making 100 videos and never making a dime, and it’s just fun, that’s never been easier. So I’d say, do that”. Youtube is more kinda driving an Uber if you stop driving for week, you don't get paid. So I would say fundamental rule of any viable career path whether it's a content creator like Marques or anyother business as long as you really enjoy doing whatever you're doing, don't see yourself stopping.