#dearvtubers:
You're probably getting "sell yourself better, treat VTubing like a proper business/job if you wanna grow and succeed" wrong.
"Urgh RAINA, this whole business and selling thing is just sleazy as fuck. Plus the economy is ass and my viewers are broke too - I can't just keep milking them. Can't I just be a girl/guy on the internet?"
I get it - I thought that for the longest time as well. Totally not helped by the fact I used to work with some REALLY pushy hard-selling types.
But we live in a society and you and I need to eat while not being miserable, so stay with me while I reframe a few things.
Yes, you CAN just be a silly anime waifu/husbando on the internet! If it's a hobby, you don't owe anyone anything.
But the moment you want growth or money, you're already in business - whether you call it that or not.
Business is simply an exchange of value between people, and content like VTubing is no different - just that the value being spent may not be money, and what the paying customer receives may not be a product or a service (like a course or a networking server).
I spend time watching you, I get your "company" - and maybe learn something, or get a laugh out of it.
I spend money to subscribe to your channel, I get to spam your googly-eyed emotes/stickers when I chat with my friends - AND the feeling that I contributed a bit towards your journey.
But just because you're selling your presence/content (and it's free) doesn't mean I HAVE to buy by consuming it - and most of you know this! And that's what separates it from milking, which is taking without giving.
Your job is to make an offer - in this case, your content - worth choosing and repeatedly showing up for. And to make sure it's coherent.
(You might need more time to figure out what your offer truly is before you see a consistent audience, and you might lose some people as you try and pivot around, and that's okay.)
It's the same thing for me: the offer I'm "selling" here, if you choose to follow me and spend time reading my work, is my thinking, my experiences, my stories. They come from the near-decade I've spent as a professional creative producer and manager, and they're packaged in posts on this platform. And it's Free.99 to read (though readers can tip me on my bio if they so choose).
But I can't just tell someone "I'm a creative producer who brains a lot on industry things and how 2 vtuber lore with equal parts logic and empathy, you should follow me" - I've got to prove that.
And the writing I put out aims to prove that yes, I provide what I claim, and I'm worth the follow. (Or at least, that my posts are worth a few minutes out of your doomscrolling routine.)
"Alright, how do I make content worth staying around for - and worth paying for?"
The short and crude answer:
Skill issue. Multiple of them.
And the good news is skill issues are something you CAN fix! But the reality is that you most likely have at least something you need to work on - and either you already know what it is, or it's something you haven't discovered yet.
If you know it: maybe it's your audio, dead air, messy thumbnails, or mixed messaging in your content. If you don't: maybe it's figuring out which streams people keep coming back for, or what your clips get shared for - and whether you like/want to keep doing them.
How-to guides on YouTube et al can fix the skill issues you already know about. The ones you haven't discovered yet will take time and your own legwork - and that's the part most people skip.
(I never said skill issues were easy or fast to fix. I also can't diagnose them or offer solutions through a one-to-many post alone - this bit is personal to each creator.)
Just remember: having skill issues, or not having people stick around for your content, is NOT a measure of your value or worth as a person. (There are, sadly, plenty of skilled assholes out there - they're also very good at NOT looking like assholes.)
"But RAINA, success in content creation is a luck based thing. You yourself mentioned how 'corpo vtubing is pretty much gacha', didn't you?"
Yeah, I'm not going to downplay the luck element.
But I also firmly believe in making your own luck and upping your odds, and that's by doing as much as possible that's within your control - and what's in your control looks different for everyone.
And if you think there's a lot that's out of your control, then maybe the first step is finding ways to get back more agency - one bit at a time - so you can work on your skill issues as a creator.
Even if you're neurospicy, chronically ill, or exhausted from your full time job.
(Getting that agency back actually matters even more if you're in any of these groups. I was all of the above for years - I only just improved the last two things over the last year.)
And for a final business "parallel":
Finding and removing bottlenecks is pretty much the norm in business - I do that day in day out for our artists when they don't know what's next, so they can keep working and improving on things.
It's no different for you as a VTuber/content creator: growing your following and income means actively hunting down and clearing up those bottlenecks - whether it's things that eat up your time and energy, or all the possible skill issues you have as a performer-slash-solopreneur.
To sum it up: business isn't a dirty word - but only if you're looking to do it honestly.
So, over to you - what's one "business-y" thing you've been avoiding because it felt sleazy?
#RAINArambles