Tanmay Reveals 0 to 1 Million Content Creator Path | Advanced Content Creation

I've written for television, film, radio, boarding, sprint ad. I've written all kinds of stuff. When did you start making money off doing content? When I was 19, there was like a three and a half lakh rupee paycheck that came in every month. Break down the anatomy of a video for me. What should I start doing? How should I think about the video? Being successful at long form content is the holy grail. If you could go to brands today who are trying to do YouTube and you can give them two or three pieces of advice, what would it be? I would tell brand managers to start off with short video. How much does a content creator of the 100k views make? with a million views make? But if you're a top tier YouTuber, you're making more money than most actors that you see. They launched this thing called the OnePlus AI music studio. It's going to just produce the track for you. Yeah, it makes a video also. Oh, that's cool. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to

the first ever episode of OnePlus Open Conversations. Everyone was asking me, am I ever going to do a podcast? I didn't like the idea of a podcast, but I said, why not a five or six episode limited series? And I'll tell you what we're doing here. Every other podcast, it scratches the surface. Everyone talks about surface level stuff. I said, what if we can go deeper? get the best people in each industry, go deeper, and ask them what the future in their space is going to look like? So, in this first episode, I brought on none other than Tanme. Tanme has been known for creating exceptional content over a decade. He's been in many different industries and it's very weird to see somebody win multiple spaces in content and I want to bring on Tan and I didn't want to do a surface level conversation of how is it to be a content creator. I want to go deeper and I want to ask him questions like exactly how do you make a video? What is the anatomy of a video? How do you look at retention in a video? How much money to the exact rupee can you make as a content creator? And you know some of these questions when I ask these questions I'm sure there's going to be some push back and exact numbers won't be told but I will dig for the exact numbers. There's also questions around how can you build creator businesses? How do creators monetize their businesses? How long do creators stick around? And how should brands think about content? We're going to go through all of it and much more in this video. So guys, why are we still recording me? Let's get to the part.

Usually me and Tan are sitting down doing an episode of Overpowered. We're talking about all things AI. But today, I don't want to talk about AI. Today, I have a dilemma. In the last year, I've been seeing every startup founder, every business start their own YouTube channel. Correct. Until like 2 years ago, YouTube was like a toy. Nobody ever took it seriously. Everyone said, "Huh, YouTube. " But this year, it feels like everyone's just taken it seriously. Everyone wants to be a creator. Businesses want to be creators, which is the most weird scenario to ever be in. Very 2023. But then again, you are the OG. You've been around for like OG is just a good way of saying old. I realized old and gold. You've been around for a decade. You've done this in repeated formats. You've won gaming. You've won uh streaming. You've won uh AI. I began with podcasting actually a lot of people don't realize you began 2010 we began as a podcast that's how we started interesting so tell me about the initial journey like how did you get in like why did you even decide to do content I started off as a television writer and then standup was happening in 2008 and n right out of college I started writing for television dude I've written everything from India's got talent to nach with sroj khan to uh mt what's up the voice of youngest I used to write all that stuff and then I watched Um I watched Russell Peters and I said hey I want to do that and I started doing that. How old were you when you were doing this? I was started writing for television when I was 18 19 and then saw standup and then I had some money left over from television. Then I met Kama while doing standup and Kamba was really inspired by this podcast called WTF with Mark Maron which was the original um comedy podcast where he would document comedians lives etc etc. Really cool podcast for those who want to check it out. There's an episode with WTF with Mark Maron where Mark Maron interviewed Robin Williams and Robin Williams spoke about his addiction issue for the first time on a podcast. Like at that point imagining a mainstream personality like Robin Williams talk about their addiction on television seemed unimaginable. And that's when the spark hit me saying yo this is like an alternative medium that doesn't confine to the rules of traditional media. So then I started listening to the podcast and I like this is really cool. We should do this for India. It was Kumba's idea and then I just joined him and we started off with no video audio only podcast is preje time uh audio only podcast sitting like this in a literally we used to be at a sound and did you call it AIB back then we called yeah that was the first thing and the logic with that was if people are okay with the name they'll be okay with the content uh which back in 2010 we started the podcast in 2010 I remember so yeah you was you were praising me please continue yeah no I was not praising you I was asking you for your story right there seems to be a big shift that's happened

in your life from hey I was doing television writing for a company now I want to do standup start my own channel what's the big shift to taking it seriously what's the point where you like I'm now starting to see some money out of this I think before money also there has to be PMF for enjoyment and what's PMF could you explain it product market fit uh sorry it's Bangalore terms that I now use uh PMF for enjoyment comes first then PMF or business comes right after. First question is, do you actually enjoy doing it? Cuz most people do it now cuz it's the thing to do, but most people aren't suited for podcast or even content creation. They don't enjoy doing it necessarily, but they think that this is the thing to do. Um, you don't want to do it for just the likes. Uh while the upsides of distribution are massive, uh being a full-time creator is as much of a job and a profession but more unstable and more like you you're not going you know you don't have a monthly paycheck so you don't quite know. So the way to jump into it I would say is first find PMF for passion and enjoyment. And when did you find that? as in school only. Dude, I always enjoyed I was um my English teacher told me that she loved my I was not a bright student until the sixth standard and the seventh standard something changed. My English teacher told me that she gave me the highest in my English essay. She gave me like whatever 10 on 10 and she made me stand in front of the class and she said that I want to let the whole class know that he has scored the highest because for originality and do teachers really make a difference actually when you're young and that impressional. He said he is the most original of everybody in class but he wrote something original and that's why that's when I like oh originality matters and I didn't even know that you could be validated for having bizarre thoughts and what about the paycheck like when did you start making money off doing

content like money where you were like hey at least gap you know I mean I was writing for television which back in the day in 2010 I was I would get paid um 12,000 rupees for story 12,000 for screenplay 12,000 for dialogue or some something. How much does that come out to per month? About eight or nine of these a month. So when I was 19 there was like a three lakh rupee 3 and a half lakh rupee paycheck all of a sudden that came in every month. So and I had this gig was like five 6 months. So all of a sudden I saw like 10 12 lakh rupees come in and that at that point like that was as much money as my dad was making. So it was insane. So it freaked me out realizing oh this is crazy. In fact, that paycheck helped me take the next leap to stand up where I was making no money, which was 2,000 bucks a night for a show at whatever, you know, bar in sake or whatever it is. But I was already writing content and I saw the big bucks, so to say, early on. And God bless the producers who also enabled me to take that kind of thing cuz they were also like, he's a young kid who's different from the rest and he's original or whatever, so to say. That's why they were able to pay me that much. I was writing a daily sitcom for Disney and AIB saw its first real check from our first live show. We started selling out 2,000 seater auditoriums around the country and do the math right 2,000 into roughly 3. 99 499 average ticket. How much is that? Whatever 6 lakh 7 lakh rupees split between the four of us minus costs. So that I think 2012 was the first year where I started seeing significant money. I think you probably made 10 12 lakhs that year. But it took you like probably 3 4 years to catch up to the paycheck that you were making at your previous company. Yes. My previous gig as a television writer took about 3 4 years. Uh but I had savings from my previous gig. That's why I was able to give that 3 four years of you know transition to new media. Um that's why even now I tell people saying first find if you enjoy doing it and if you're able to do it for three years without really feeling like I want to go back to my job unless you're doing it full-time and you're aggressively outputting so much you can really make content while you have another job. No you can it's not that hard. I think you're able to take time out. So I think that's the advice I would give most people. Take your time. Do it while you're doing a job and then once you think that okay I can go a year just doing nothing else but this then you take that leap. One of the things about creating content that I've seen right you've just been

around for very long but it's not been the same t like it's not today is not AI tan it's very different. Thank the Lord for that. Right. So it feels like and it's not like it's just one jump right. It's been several jumps. It's almost like you've never settled. Yeah that's true. So, so the question is what was the driving factor behind those jumps? A and B, do other people also need to do that to stay relevant long term? Oh, 100%. I think I got really lucky because dude, if you can write content really well, you understand the basics of how content works. And if you understand the basics, then you're able to the principles of making content don't change across mediums. I've written for television, film, radio, u I've written hoardings, print ads, jingles, songs, YouTube videos. I've written corporate shows. I've written all kinds of stuff. You know, it's a very interesting insight. I'll tell you why. The average person on the internet looking at Tan will think, "Hey, Tanma is funny. Tanma is a improv comedian. " But what I'm hearing is there's just so much writing behind what you do. years and years of writing like a decade of non-stop output dude I worked with in V's company weird ass where we outputed like seven or eight uh 90minute live comedy shows then I wrote like 300 sketches for AIB before that was 3 four years of daily sitcom writing for Disney before that was all the writing I did in college and school so really all of this put together is now me today where it feels second nature but it's years of writing that's what I'm saying if you understand how to write and construct then you can do this sort of stuff in your sleep um I I've said this before which is your ability to exercise judgment only gets stronger if your feedback loops are shorter and faster if you're able to create something out of thin air put it in front of an audience have the audience respond and then go reiterate if you do this hundreds and thousands of times over. Only then do you really get good at your job. Um, which most people aren't able to do that either because their job doesn't allow them to. But this is like as I heard say on Beer Bice podcast recently, which I thought was a good phrase. You have to spend your time just chewing the craft of whatever it is that you're doing. So if you're a good content creator, how much writing do you think per year the work entails? Like is it a book's worth? Is it two books worth? It's 10 books worth at least. So about 1,000 pages a year. Yeah. I would [clears throat] be outputting a,000 pages a year easy cumulatively. Yeah. Of off the thousand pages, maybe a 100 or 50 would be usable, but you got to put out that thousand pages. Is there scope for a content creator who can't write, who just wants to do everything improv? Yeah, there is. You can be that sort of a person, but know that if you're going to improvise your way through or make content, then you're not going to be really good until you make like a thousand hours of content. Like you just have to output that much for you to get really good at what you do. But why is it important to make content? What are the benefits of making content

today? Like why are businesses doing it? And should a business owner or should an employee of a business watching this make content either personally or as the business? First, let's talk about why individuals should make content. I think Nsay put this very well which is in the old day you could either be a doctor or you could be a lawyer right today is the generation of ands which is you can be a doctor and something else lawyer and something else and more often than not this is doctor and content creator with it for individuals the upside is very clear it's every piece of media that you output online could have asymmetric could have any asymmetric bet uh there's the novel tweet which is What are some things that have asymmetric returns? Reading a book has asymmetric returns. Going on a date has asymmetric returns. What is an asymmetric return for the which means most things in life have symmetrical returns which is if you do X then you get X returns. You keep doing this and there's linear growth. This is what most people experience in a job also which is if you're renting your time out every year the amount of rent increases. If you're working out then the more you work out the more your muscles increase. Asymmetric returns is where if you put in X, you could get any output. It could be really dramatically bigger than what you thought. So let's take an example, right? If you go out on 10 dates, going out on a date and meeting someone new has asymmetric asymmetrical returns. How? Only one out of these 10 needs to be so compatible with you, you could find a life partner. Imagine spending 15 hours and getting a life partner. Like that's a dramatically outsized return. like you got something insane. Imagine reading a book and you get a startup idea or you get a way to think that changes your life dramatically. Like live example is I read a book called the obesity code by Jason Fun. I read it twice three times over. Since then I've lost like 58 kilos. That one book just changed how I think and I probably saved myself five or six years. That's why making media gives you asymmetric asymmetrical returns because you don't know who's going to watch it at the other end. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, when media was centralized, if you made something, it would go linearly. Today, because media is decentralized, it's almost like veins arteries in your heart, right? Like you don't know where it ends up with. So imagine you put out a tweet about a certain insight about your profession. That tweet has say 900 views. M of those 900 one of them could be Vunaya or Tavat right and you see this and you go like oh this person is interesting I'm just going to follow so you can't control like you don't know who's going to be at the other end would a better way to put this be that a lot of success is luck like a lot of inbound deal flow is luck but creating distribution increases your surface increases your chances of luck AIB's example is really interesting

here how did we get access to movie stars as a shaky used to write a column for Hindustan Times. He humor one every week for years, right? And then Twitter happened and he joined Twitter and he started putting out these columns on Twitter. One day Khali followed him cuz he she just happened to read the article. She really liked it. Next week we wrote a sketch and we directly DM'd Kulki saying, "Hey, would you like to be in the video? " We made that video and that's another piece of media that we output that went viral. Next day we're on Burkhad's show that like an Arjun Kapoor or someone saw it and then followed us on Twitter. Then once Arjun and Ranir Singh followed us on Twitter that led to AIB knockout, right? Like it's you couldn't have predicted you couldn't have planned. There's just no way. There's just no way you could have planned it. But it wouldn't have happened if Ashish Shaka didn't write that column. He was outputting it every week. It me and Kamba would not have met if Kamba wasn't tweeting funny jokes. Dude, me and Rohan met because of outputting media. Rohan was a columnist at JLD and I used to love that magazine. So I followed Rohan and I followed his blog. Then one day Rohan spoke about um hey there's an opening here or whatever and then I applied through that and then me and Rohan met through that. M so I think a lot most of my um lucky um serendipitous moments all have happened because of someone has outputed something into the world and it just happened to reach me and I think every individual should have that opportunity by just put out your stuff in the world and the arteries will carry it to someone or the other and the algorithms are just trying to determine how fast you can your content can flow that's why you need to understand how platforms network so you can maximize your asymmetric better. Interesting. And do you feel like at bigger and bigger levels of scale at

your disealing level levels of scale? Do you feel like the compounding there is incredible like these lucky moments that you're pulling off? Do you think absolutely and how does that work for a brand? What is the usefulness for a company? Let's say I run a D2C company. What's the point? Your best hires could come from your content. Um Zumato makes really killer content, right? Like so Ashkar started off making continent Zumato. Now Zumato's team is so strong because there are creative people around the country who would see Zumato's work and be like they make really cool [ __ ] I want to work there. The same thing has happened with Cred. Same thing's happened with Cred. Now it's become aspirational to want to want to work there. So if a business makes good content, it has outsized returns just from a attracting quality talent. And it's not just that, you know, if you make good content as a company, it increases NPS of employees who work at that company. You know how cool it feels if you're if you work at a company and on your friend WhatsApp group, someone shares an Instagram posting, have you seen this is really cool? You get to be in that group and be like, "Yo, this is the company that I work for. " Money can't buy that. You can't run performance advertising and buy that kind of So you're saying content increases or improves culture, internal culture, 100%. uh employee NPS dude people feel proud of um when you work for a brand that makes good content. A good example is I was talking to Sashang who runs the whole truth right the whole company is so passionate about what they do uh it's because of so much

has to do with the content that they output it's not just that dude it's not just the content quality is really good when content is really good and the comments are really good when you start feeling pride in pride and joy in what you do if you feel you put in 120% it's all connected so having a cool brand uh that does cool content has effects that you cannot you like you can't put that on paper. It's hard to judge. A lot of companies will fret over like I keep telling them like okay if it's if the budget for something is like 50 lakhs ROI has to be 50 whatever it is and I'm like like you know having a good relationship with the people who are making the stuff for you all that stuff matters because relationships are everything like I would happily take a hit for FAX if I can work with a company where the process of working was way eas I actually can verify that because I've seen that behind the scenes. Stan doesn't think so much about the cash if he's looking at a company and he really likes the company. I'm just like it'll just be a breeze to work with these guys and like you want to you do you want to have minimal one night stands and more relationships with this sort of stuff. So let's move to the next piece. Right. I wanted this to be like a masterclass in making content. Break down the anatomy of a video for me. I think there are two kinds of videos roughly, right? There's a long form video maybe 10, 20, 30

minutes and then there are short form videos 1 minute. Yeah. I'm a new I'm a kid. I want to win at the content game. I have the ability to do long form and short form. Let's say I'm a I make for a daily u living. I go to school and I make some money on the side. Maybe I'm doing some freelance gigs or something. What should I start doing? What kind of content should I start making? How should I think about the video? Look, long- form content is being successful at long form content is the holy grail, right? Why is that the holy grail over short form? Uh it's pretty simple. You want people to watch you many times for longer periods of time. Okay, let's take I've seen 30 Shah Rukhan movies which means I've spent you know 150 200 hours of Shah Rukh Khan on the big screen. Uh I made the effort of leaving my house going to the theater paying for the ticket and then watching him which means I put in so much effort to watch this guy at the end of it. I really liked it. That's why now I if Shah Rukhan is in front of me I will palpitate. Right. Um now the friction to consuming long form is it's obviously not similar but there is more friction to con to uh convince people to watch long form videos. There's a time commitment. I have to watch it. I have to have context built up. I have to read. There's also double optin right with shorts. You just appear on their feed. Here you have to click. So if people put in effort to watch you a do getting them to do that is higher. So, if you get them to do that, they're likely to and if they do this three, four, five times over, they're likely to like you more. Plus, if someone watches you for longer, it just means that they like you more. Like, it's as simple as that. Short video, like you said, short video is a scrolling habit, which is you just happen to show up on their feed, you're editing them for 30 seconds, and unless that 30 seconds is so good, they're not coming to your profile and then watching 10 other videos. Even if you do short form video, if you're able to be a format that someone watches you once and they go to your profile and they watch 10 of those videos, then you truly make an impression. You make more of an impression if you last in front of someone's eyes for longer. It's as simple as that. Having said that, that is the holy grail of long form. But if you like I would optimize for finding PMF for passion and enjoyment, right? And you don't enjoy it if you're not doing well. If you make content and nobody sees it, you don't enjoy the process. You're like, what am I doing wasting my time? So, if you're going to start out, I would recommend short form because likelihood of you finding some traction and getting that first dopamine hit of ah, someone saw my [ __ ] that is higher in short form. So, if you're just starting out, you want to try and get your first, you know, thousand views on a short form video. and getting your first thousand views. Uh, you need to make a half decent video. Get all your friends to share it on their story and let the algorithm do its thing. How many friends if you had to put a number on it? Let's say how many of our friends like 10 20. Yeah. If 10 depends on how many followers they have, you know, but if one of your friends is Vunayan has 200,000 followers on Instagram, then that's just Vuna has enough. So, it's not how many friends. It's just about increasing your odds of letting the How many Sorry, did I get 200,000 wrong? Is it is how much is it? It's 400k. 400,000. Sorry, my bad. Um, so it's Dhoni said this recently. We I asked him on a thing saying, "Would you pick uh someone who's talented or confident? " He said, "I would always pick the guy who's feeling more confident because the odds of success or someone who feels confident is much higher. You can have a lot of talent, but if you're not feeling good, you're likely not going to succeed. " Um, so I think confidence inspires luck in some sense, right? So, if you're starting out, I want you to feel confident. cocky and feel like I got this. I'm actually going to crush it. Maybe cocky is not the right word, but I want you to feel inspired. And if you want to feel inspired, likelihood of success is higher in short form. So, start short form and then eventually see how you can pivot that audience into doing something long form. It's harder to build a strong community on short form. Have you changed your mind on short form? I have. Um, I wasn't a fan of short form stuff a couple of years ago. Since then, a bunch of things changed.

I had a big problem with doing short form on YouTube because there was no way for you to do short form and long form on one channel without it either looking ugly. YouTube suffers from a disease where a channel's purpose is undimensional. People subscribe to a channel because they expect a or out of this channel. So, you can't do multiple different formats on a channel. back in the day. Now YouTube changed it to you can literally each channel can do long form videos. They have a podcast button. So under the same channel you can also do podcast. shorts. Earlier when I subscribe to a channel I subscribed to a type of content. Now when I subscribe to a channel I've subscribed to this brand of content. So as a creator I now have more options. I will show up either as a podcast on the podcast feeds or as shorts on the shorts feed. So now the product is much better. So now I think if you're doing a 100k views for example um if you're doing 100k views and if you also do shots with it you your likelihood of getting that 1 million views is higher on a shot than on that 100k views. Again this is like the algorithm and all that stuff is like it's complicated and you know there are many variables to it but anecdotally this is what I sense. I changed my view on short form primarily because it's my sense is it's easier lower effort to bang out that 1 minute video um and your chances of hitting that one golden 50 million view is higher in short form because you get to take more shots if you can make five short form videos a day but really it takes you a week to make one long form video. You want to start off with short form cuz if you take 50 shots one of them is going to hit. So you change your mind on shorts because you did see outcomes and at the same time you feel like it's much easier to produce. So short form while you say why the reason why I said this was that quote unquote short form is not easy. It's easier than produce it's easier to produce like the barrier to entry to short form is a lot easier than producing a slightly higher quality long form video. It just takes lesser time to edit. Now on Instagram, like Instagram basically killed InShots, right? Like I don't know if you saw, but now you can make a reel and it's as good as InShots within Instagram. You can I remember in college, you know that editing timeline. It used to be, okay, this is video, this is audio, and transitions would be little things in the middle. All this is on your [ __ ] phone now. It's insane. Like I'm using basically FCP on my phone at this point. And you once told me something about the anatomy of a video. You used to give me the example of Buzzfeed Tasty. Yeah. where you said that actually I'll let you explain it. You should tell the

audience what makes a good video. What does the algorithm look for? At the heart of whether it's long form, short form, television shows, movies, at the heart of it, it's all the same. Can I retain the viewer till the end? It's as simple as that. The example that I gave was tasty. Tasty would begin with like it would be top down video of like the first a plate would come in and then you know that'd be the base of a pizza then the cheese would go on top of it and they chop the whatever pepperoni and it would go on top of it. Then the thing goes outside frame and you know it's blank. You see a shot of it going inside the oven. When it comes out it's finally ready and you're waiting for that golden shot of lifting the pizza like this and the [ __ ] cheese and all of it is there. From the beginning of the video, there was a promise that something cool is going to happen in the end. And this is what makes retention go up really high. Let's take overpowered as an example, right? The first two episodes of Overpowered was what? Us like theorizing about AI. And it was a lot of like just us talking until eventually I like just make this tasty, which is let's just demo AI tools because AI tools are inherently like making a pizza. At the start of it, it's like, hey, this tool promises you to do XY Z. Now, let's watch it in action. And that's the aha moment. The oven moment which like oh it's ready. Isn't that insane? It's a nice word. The oven moment. It's where you wait for the oh this happens. And if you notice every single trend on Instagram is basically this. The oven moment. The oven moment which is build up anticipation deliver on that anticipation. It's every single trend is this. Take moy. Like when a mo when a reel shows up and I see below there's this that moyo song thing is going on I just know that oh all this [ __ ] dialogue is going to eventually end up with like five people doing moy at the end of it like every single trend is basically this whether it is the thing above your head saying which movie character are you whether it is you know put your head on my shoulder where it flips to a silhouette of you in like whatever every single trend is something cool is going to happen in the end I feel like YouTube has gone from you know your subscriber numbers don't matter as much as they did back in the day because now I have subscribed to like 300 channels when I open YouTube

it's not going to recom on a Thursday evening if I open YouTube there are like 50 different things I've consumed on YouTube where the YouTube algorithm is like he's interested in these 50 different things very low on the priority is the channels that he has subscribed to maybe if I've subscribed to a channel and watched more than four videos, will it even continue recommending that video to me? Um, but yeah, packaging matters for retention. Like you can get someone to watch your video, subscribe, but if you want to retain them, you got to get them to click like three more times. Only then does you the algorithm feel like this person should be shown overowered video often. Oo could have 300,000 subscribers, but we have variable views, right? Like some episodes do 200k views, some episodes do 50k views. That has stopped mattering as much. It's the It's what happened with Tik Tok. On Tik Tok, you could have 10 followers, but you could have three 8 million plus view uh shorts, but your follower could go from 10 to just 300. It doesn't matter. I think that's slowly happening to YouTube as well. As platforms get more saturated, things get even more uneven, which is a good thing. I think variable rewards in life are to variable rewards is what makes uh the rat continue running on the treadmill. There's this really interesting experiment that was done at Sanford. They took like a bunch of rats

they put them in water and they was all like trying to swim, trying to make sure that they don't die. Then after 20 minutes, they took the rats out and they dried them and they made them feel like, okay, you're fine now. Then 5 minutes later, they put them back into water. Okay. How long do you think the rats kept paddling to be alive? How long? I assume the fact that they kept pulling them out gave the rats hope in a way. Yes. And the water restraint stress. This is called the water restraint stress test. So you keep dumping the rat into water. But if you leave it in the water, it eventually gives up. Yeah. But if you keep taking it out, the rat is still like at some point I'm going to be taken out. Why don't they survive for 5 days? 5 days they kept battling. Right. This is what variable rewards does. So, it's in every platform's interest to give the creator variable rewards because if you get one success, then you think that the next video could be the next success. The next video after that could be it. You just need to see one 10K views and then you're like, "Bro, this is golden. " I'm there. You just need that first one. Like, ever since we got 12 million on that one overpowered reel, every video you [snorts] wanted to be that. So, you just know that that's what's possible. How much money do content creators make? And I think you should tabulate it into how much does a content creator with 100k views make? a million

does a content creator with a million views make? And if you're working with brands, does your subscriber count actually matter? If you get 100k views on short video, either on Instagram, you make no money. If you have short video on YouTube, it's minuscule, right? Like you could get 10 million views and get a 2,000 rupee payout. Like it's short video doesn't the short video revenue on all the platforms is minuscule next to nothing. So you can't make a living based on advertising revenue through short video. on long form your RPM which is revenue per millle which is how much money are you getting per thousand monetized playbacks on YouTube can range anything between whatever 50 to 150 depending on the genre you are in. So if it's on the lower end, I suspect like um genres like gaming or vlogging would be on the lower end cuz the audience for that is more generic. Could be younger as well. So whatever, do the math, right? If you get a million views, then maybe you have whatever 500 600,000 of those be monetized. So 500 into uh whatever 50, 60, 100, 150. That's the kind of numbers you would see if you have a more premium audience, which is for example like if you have a if you have 100,000 subscribers, but say 2,000 of those subscribers are YouTube premium viewers. Uh then you get more. YouTube premium just means that someone who is paying to not have ads on YouTube, a view from that person generates more. So um so it really depends on what genre you're in. Like if you do finance stuff, I know finance stuff pays uh the revenue. RPMs on finance videos are a lot higher. Uh RPMs on podcasts are also pretty high. Uh because in an hourong podcast if someone if your average view time is 30 minutes which is multiple ads. You're getting multiple ads. So each view you generate a lot more you know 2x 3x. But tell me a rough number. No like forget about RPM. Tell me like a creator maybe in comedy who has a million subscribers or let's say in gaming who has a million subscribers. What can they expect from what do they see on their channel dashboard? If you get a million views uh on the higher end you'll make one lakh rupees is what I've noticed. So let's say they make they're putting out four videos a month. So they're getting making four lakhs from YouTube. They could if they are making if they're getting a million views they could on the higher end 1 million views one lakh uh one lakh rupees is on the higher end. uh but if you get like you should be able to make at least like 30 40 50 60k in that range you should be able to make that irrespective of the genre you are in but all it's like this is like I'm still talking about if you get these as an established creator because all this depends on you know is the sales team pushing your channel as something that uh whose inventory gets pocketed off if you are a partnered channel at YouTube if you fall in the right genre where for example, you're in um towards the end of the year, ad sales go up a lot more, brands have more money to push their products. Um then more channels have more inventory uh filled up. Uh but yeah, if you're generating a million views, then you're probably going to get more money from brand deals than YouTube ad revenue. Uh but if you get a million views in say a finance category, you can charge upwards of 15 20 lakhs per integration. This is not like YouTube paying you money. This is you going to a brand and saying I will talk about your thing for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. If you're an established creator and you do short form also like I know creators who are charging 15 lakhs to make even a real um I know creators who who've been paid like 35 40 lakhs to make a real like I've like the deals really depends on who you are what is your brand how premium are you who are the people who are managing you what so you're saying it's less about the views or it's a mix of the views and what people think of when they think about you what it's a mix of views what genre you're in And what is your perception as a creator? Like I know creators who don't do that many deals and they'll just be like, "Listen, I'm going to do like five deals a year and it's going to come at a premium and I'm only going to work with, you know, the Coca-Cas of the world, which is like top tier brand. " So, I know creators like that also, but I know other creators who are like, "Dude, I'm producing like 80 videos a year. This is inventory that's going uh that's going waste. I might as well monetize. Just take it deal by deal. " So there's no direct like oh if you do X then you get Y. Really depends on who you are, what your brand is. So at a million views a video, let's say four videos a month I'm producing and I'm producing maybe say 20 shots a month. You think it's possible for me to make a million dollars a year as if I was a new let's say 20-y old content creator from ad revenue? Unlikely. But yeah, if you're pulling I think if you're pulling in whatever upwards of 25 30 million views a month on YouTube, uh which would put you in like the top two three percentile creators. 0. 1 that's top 0. 1%. Yeah, top 0. 1%. I'm talking views which are not shorts driven views which are purely long form. If you're able to pull in 30 million views a month with an average watch time of you know five to six minutes, you are you will make a million dollars a year uh between branded content and ad revenue. It's possible. It's very much possible to do that. Um, but if you are a YouTuber scoring big numbers on long form consistently, then dude, you don't even need to be dependent on branded content after a point, right? Like you can pull in uh like 20 30 lakhs a month on YouTube if you're pulling in, you know, that many views. Uh you're basically earning the salary of a CEO comfortably. M um so it's possible to make really good money on YouTube but it's a grind like then your job is you're available 365 days you have to produce content whenever absolutely your life is on sale I've seen creators who get to the scale who just don't want to work with brands anymore really yeah like they make enough money just it's not about the money it's more about like sometimes it's difficult to work with brands right so many of those creators decide I want to start a business now yeah which is a smarter route to take but have you seen any successful creator business in India? The jump from creator to service businesses is pretty easy. I've seen fewer successes in D2C. It's because if

you're a very successful creator, the odds of you making so much money from just brands is higher. Uh whereas the odds of starting a business and really putting in the effort to make that successful, it takes a lot of commitment and effort. The model that I've seen work with a lot of creators is you know you become successful as a public brand then you find and team up with a co-founder who has the expertise in a particular business. So your job becomes more about creating network effects really leveraging your position creating topfunnel for the business. Uh but I think top of funnel is also diminishing. There's only so many times will your audience unless you keep generating newer audiences. Uh like someone like a Duvati will generate newer audiences all the time cuz he talks about basically what's in the news, right? And everybody cares about the news. So you see anything that happens in the news is a new audience that comes to watch him. Um but if you're like if you're a creator like me, I have a very loyal um low attrition kind of audience which is people will come watch like you know six videos by me every month. So if I tell you to click on one, it's unlikely you're going to click on it more than once. So really depend on the kind of creator that you are. But there are different models you can do. You can be a creator and monetize your audience, which is you can either sell courses or you can, you know, teach something. You can do whatever it is. You can be a creator and start a new business. This could be a D2C business. It could be a service business. Or if you're a creator and you find a partner and run multiple businesses like I fall into the third category which is um I now have a wide range of interests and I have access in different areas and then I find co-founders in different but that also works for you because you have channels in different areas that are all working. Yes, I have channels in different areas and more importantly my range of interest is fairly wide. I'm interested in content also. I'm interested in AI you know startups angel investing D2C brand. I'm interested in a bunch of things. Um, so I can speak the language and I can really communicate with founders that I work with in that language. But it's not for everyone. But if you're a successful creator that the part to making money there are many. As long as you're able to keep your public brand sustained. If you could go to brands today who are trying to do YouTube, I'm talking about companies and you can give them two or three pieces of advice, what would it be? Because you've worked with so many brand managers who get YouTube wrong. I would tell brand managers to start off with short video because I think uh you you're able to your

feedback loop is faster. Brand managers will really know you know what kind of content suits their brand. So I would say first start with dip your feet in short video. Create a dedicated team. How much should they budget? I mean it's at least five hires right you'll need one brain one or two brains either. What would you call that role? like a creator and residence. Let's say creator and residence or let's call them both producers. Talent and producer. Okay. Sometimes the producer is the talent, sometimes producer is separate and talent is so presenter and producer. Presenter producer. Um then I I'd probably say two editors and if you want an in-house camera production person then you can have that and or you can rent. So like a director of production or you can also rent that like the producer can do it. uh but it's tough for a producer to manage the content also and the production also like we are very lucky to have saga who can do bit of both but most people aren't able to do that uh depends on the kind of content you're doing if you're doing like finance videos for example your producer will really focus on what is the content that you're making the scripts really matter because you're talking about money and you want to be careful with what you say publicly uh but say you you're making food videos so a producer can think of formats and just set up the production in place and outsource the production and uh then really go ahead. So tell me the exact math. How much should I spend on a studio? Like I'm a brand. I need to produce a short form video every day. I would say if you're a brand starting out, you want to outsource production initially, do a pilot where you outsource production, but have the key

stakeholders, which is the producer, the five people. Yeah. Not the five people includes two editors, but you can outsource that also. But I think you need to have an in-house producer/brand custodian who will really think of what is the content that's going to go out. Um rest everything you can outsource in the beginning. You can use a company like AOS which is you know VU and I and a bunch of other cool people at AV are involved in. You can outsource it. Do a pilot. I think really what you need as a brand to make content is intent and one person to own it. be the brand custodian who has the best judgment on this content suits my brand. The rest you can outsource. How do you find that person? The best people to for this job are people who have built distribution themselves. I think they are the best people to be running this ship for you. Um if you haven't done content before, then you're going to make some bad decisions if you are responsible to deploy dollar on producing content. So I think creators would be a good bet. I think most companies eventually there'll be enough creators in the market who could not make big top dollars as creators. Um but they would make for killer uh content marketing people inside companies. Yeah, I think more brands should be hiring creators in house for sure. Uh even if it's if even if it's not permanently, I think even as a consultant uh because your content team really needs to think like a creator. It's not it's not something you can halfass. It's not making content is an always on job. It's not a IPL campaign, you know, December camp. It is all year long. So, it's not a halfass. You can't halfass it. You got to be on it all the time. That's why I think more people will hire creators. What are you What is your team composed of right now? What does your team look like? Primarily editors and one producer. I have two editors and one producer for my YouTube. So, three people. Three people is for my YouTube. And we doing uh like camera setup and stuff. The producer does that. I do everything on Zoom. So I don't got

to do I got to do nothing. Uh I have one producer whose job is to curate the content for me what I react to. But on the podcast side I have a producer and an editor. Then on the agency front there is you know couple of writers and me and Da who are the co-founders. Um and that's Moonshot. Then on Overpowered there's you know there we have two editors and a producer. Uh so they're all small teams like pods highly efficient you know sing single focus on what they're doing it becomes hard if you get one person to context switch with all the different things that I'm doing it's hard for one person to be able to do all of that um so yeah teams in silos with a singular focus on what they're doing interesting this was fantastic I learned so much and you know, I always keep saying this, right? I think proximity to a good creator makes you a good creator. Like I know there are creators who who've, you

know, gone solo and won really big, but I think that takes a long time. It takes like five, six years. But I think the minute you spend time very closely with a bigger creator and you see them do their thing behind the scenes, I think it accelerates your career if you ever want to be a creator or want to create content. Yeah. You are the product of the fight and people you surround yourself with. So, I think I've learned so much from being around you and I just wanted to make sure that the audience also got to hear some of our behind thes scenes conversation. Hope it was useful and if it wasn't then please write and I'm sure someone will upload that comment. So, by the way, we have a ritual here. This is the first episode and I want to make this like a habit for the next I just want to do like a five, six episode series and then be done. Okay, we give everyone a gift. Excellent. This is the OnePlus open. You're using the phone, right? What do you like about it? It has all the benefits of a tablet. phone. And if I ever get bored of the tablet view, like I'm I get bored very quickly. So, it's like I really like this. I love how it feels when you fold it. And there's no the crease is almost invisible. Like all the other ones like crease. This one's like invisible. It's really nice. And I heard the camera is stellar. This is a collaboration with Hustle Blood. Yeah. Check this out. M I can do this really cool thing on a on the camera. Okay. Oh, the dual view. You can have the back camera and the front camera. This is perfect for vlogging. I'm recording you, but you can see what's being recorded. Oh, that's cool. So, I can record as and you can also see it. Oh, this is great actually to shoot reals and stuff. Yeah. So, if your producer is recording you, you know exactly what's being recorded at the same time. You can do your job, he can do his job. It makes it just makes short form content easier. Yes, that was an exhausting conversation. But hey, I learned a lot and everything that I thought I could pull out of Tan that I thought the audiences need to know, I got and I'm very excited that TMA had the time to do

this and I hope you liked it. I'm going to do just five of these. I'm going to get the best in each industry and I'm going to learn from their insights, go very, very deep. All you have to do is like, share and subscribe. You know what I really like about OnePlus is not just the hardware, it's also software. Like they launched this thing called the OnePlus AI music studio. Okay. So, I can go I can select EDM, I can select romantic, I can select travel

and I just proceed and I can describe the V. Three genres that have nothing to do with you, but sure. Yeah, but whatever. Let's say under the city lights. That's the name of the song. I'm just writing something. Under the city lights, right? What should your song be about? And it's going to just produce the track for you. That's what I like about OnePlus. It's not just the hardware. It's also like really think through the software. So even their OS and all looks so cool. Oh, it's ready. No way. Wow. Really feels like I'm under the city lights. Ru is performing. I think they're doing a event. They're doing a festival. Dude, it makes a video also. That's sick. Sure. Look at this. It makes a video also. Well, that's cool.