Creating when you don't feel like it is not a mood problem for me, and I don't think it should be one for you either. My answer is that professionals go to work whether they feel inspired or not, and amateurs wait for a good day before they touch the camera. If you want to be a full-time creator, you build a system that produces every day and let that system carry you through the bad days, instead of hoping inspiration shows up on schedule.
The part that surprises people is that some of my best material came from my worst days. In my August post, Professionals Create. Amateurs Wait for Inspiration., I explain that I kept filming vlogs while I was miserable over a relationship that fell apart, including one called The Queen Goes Cold. Some of those dating videos pulled two to three times as many views as my older videos, and one of them had something like a 15-minute average watch time. Feeling bad did not stop the work. It became part of the work.
My view sharpened across these posts. In YouTube as an Amateur vs Professional: What I Learned, from June 2026, I drew a hard line. If you are an amateur, just have fun, upload whatever you want, don't build a system, don't sell anything, and don't obsess over views until you know whether you even like uploading. Professionals are doing a different job with no job security and no benefits, where, in my experience, the money and the views can both shrink over time. I still think the amateur-first advice is right. What changed by August was my focus: once you have decided to be a professional, the thing that separates you is showing up every day, whatever your mood.
The August 17 post, Your Content System Should Work When You Feel Terrible, gets specific about the machinery. My system is one long video every day across my channels: a vlog, a dating video, a gaming video, a YouTube coaching video, and crypto videos on my two crypto channels. The crypto channels are my main paycheck channels, because that is where people come to my website and spend money. So on the days I don't want to talk crypto, I warm up with a vlog, make some dating videos, and then film the crypto video that pays. Most of my other channels are what I call passion channels, and they keep the creativity alive so the grind doesn't burn me out.
I track all of it on a spreadsheet, and the numbers are the honest part. In the August 5 post I had published 418 videos since May, which is 79 days, about 5.3 videos a day, or roughly 75 minutes of content a day, adding up to about 99 hours. I do take days off, but a day off means views I never get back, so I would rather fill the sheet on a day I feel awful than leave it blank. Quality is subjective, but quantity is not, and the spreadsheet is where I hold myself to that.
I want to be honest about the cost. Burnout is the biggest risk I see, and it usually starts when you cannot even get past creating on a bad day. As a creator you don't get sick days the way an employee does, which is why so many creators burn out and why I think the system matters more than the mood. A routine does not remove the pain. What I am telling you is that for me, doing the work has made me feel better more often than it has made me feel worse.
Below this opening is a contents list, then all three posts in full, newest first. Read the June post if you are still deciding whether you are an amateur or a professional. Read the other two if you already want this as a job and keep stalling on the days you don't feel like it. For the cadence side of the same argument, see my one-video-a-day strategy, and for the resistance side, read self-sabotage and creative resistance.
If you are stuck on this in your own channel, you can get a personal video review from me.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Your Content System Should Work When You Feel Terrible (August 17, 2026)
- Creating Content When You Don't Feel Like It: Jerry's Answer (August 5, 2026)
- YouTube as an Amateur vs Professional: What I Learned (June 17, 2026)
Your Content System Should Work When You Feel Terrible
From my video published August 17, 2026.
One of the biggest things I see creators struggling with is feeling like you have to be inspired to create content, when what you need is a content system that works no matter how you feel. That's one of the biggest challenges with being a content creator: you need to live your life in a way that you can crank out content no matter what else is going on in your life. I did these vlogs on my website where I fell in love with this girl and I was all excited, and then it all went downhill — partially because I was so excited and I communicated that to her — and I was just in agony some of those days. I was on some of my videos crying and talking about messages I shouldn't have sent and all this stuff. And people are like, well, how do you do your videos? On some of those same days, I went through and filmed ten different videos that day. People ask, you feel so bad — how do you keep creating videos?
You Don't Get Sick Days as a Content Creator
Here's the truth: if you're a content creator, you don't get sick days. You don't get to feel bad and skip doing your work. If you have a company job and you need a mental health day, you can take it. But if I take a mental health day as a content creator — and this is why so many content creators burn out — I don't get any of the views that I would have gotten if I had actually created my content. So it's important as a content creator to set up your life and your content creation around being able to always produce.
And yes, I take days off. I keep a spreadsheet with my actual video publishing schedule, and it tells the story. I've had days when I took a trip and didn't film any videos — but even so, I was on a trip all four of those days and I still filmed. I had some days that felt miserable, like the 26th of July. Miserable. I had just realized things were not going to work out with the woman I was dating, the queen. And I filmed a 26-minute video after that. I was in agony that day, and I'm like, I've got to film a vlog at least. So I filmed a vlog. The day before the trip, I filmed three videos for 55 minutes. The day I got home, I filmed two videos, including a livestream for an hour. Some of those days I was still hurting over her, and I was grinding out videos. Then the other day, I didn't really feel like I was doing anything — I didn't feel like creating anything — and I filmed 120 shorts. Those are getting like a thousand views each. And yesterday I was a bit down for a little while. You know where I felt better? Once I started filming my videos and I did my vlog. Then I'm like, okay, I feel better.
A lot of content creators think, well, I've got to wait until I get inspired. No — some of your best videos are going to be when you feel like crap. It's like being a professional piano player. You play the piano, and that actually helps give you some stability. It doesn't matter if you wake up and don't feel like playing the piano that day. You play it. Because if you want to be a professional, you do it.
My System: One Long Video Every Day on Six Channels
The key behind this is having a system. My system is that I crank out one long video every day on all my channels — all six of my channels. On my Jerry Banfield vlogs channel, I crank out a vlog every day. Doesn't matter how I feel. I have a dating channel — I crank out a long-form dating video. Doesn't matter how I feel. Jerry Banfield Games — crank out a gaming video. I'm going to get back to doing some music too; I haven't put a new album out in a while. I have a YouTube coach channel and I crank a video out on it every day, no matter how I feel or what mood I'm in. And I have two crypto channels.
Some days I'm not in the mood to do crypto content. But the crypto channels are my main paycheck channels. Those are the main channels where people come to my website and spend money. I just set up a leaderboard on my website that shows it. When you spend money for the lifetime chat — which is awesome, because if you're a YouTuber, you can just talk with me and ask me any questions anytime, and you know who you're talking to; in my experience as a buyer, a one-time payment like that is a great deal — you show up there. The guys that paid for the chat within the first week of launching it are followers from my crypto videos. So I made hundreds of dollars in the last week with a soft launch, just starting my own website. And then people have also dropped some tips. Some of those came from the vlogs.
Paycheck Channels and Passion Channels
If you want to make money, you are going to need to have some channels that are paycheck channels, and you do those channels like a job. But if you want to be sustainable and not burn out, you can't have all your creativity be about just grinding out content on something you're only doing to make money. That's why most of my channels are passion channels, like my YouTube coach channel. It's a passion channel that also makes some money — it's a channel where people go to my website and schedule one-on-one calls with me to talk about YouTube and content creation. But I'm passionate about it because there's so much garbage advice out there, and so many people selling courses that have nothing better in them than what I have to offer. I could rip you all off with a several-thousand-dollar course and convince you why you need it. But a lot of the people doing that are stressing themselves out and burning themselves out doing it. What I do is create every day in a way that allows me to make content that makes money and to have fun. You need a system where you can have fun, love and enjoy your content creation, and make money off it. And what's essential is that you do it every day, no matter how you feel. In fact, some days when I feel bad, it's creating content that makes me feel better.
Catching Feelings From All Directions — and Filming Anyway
Yesterday I was kind of down. I wanted to go to this event where there's a bunch of single women wearing wristbands — a bunch of easy, cold approaches all in one place. And my ex-wife's boyfriend asked her to go to that. So I'm ending up at home with the kids, and I'm catching feelings from all different directions. I'm sad that I'm not enjoying the time with my kids as much. I'm jealous that my ex is out with her boyfriend instead of me. I'm jealous that I'm not out with a girlfriend instead of her. I'm annoyed that I wanted to go — I've been trying to go to that event for months — and then she goes to it, and I can't go to it without running into her. So I was catching all these feelings. And on top of that, I had just gone on a date that was really nice the night before. I got really, naturally, euphorically high going out on that date. It was an awesome date. Fantastic connection. Beautiful, intelligent woman. Very sweet. She seemed to really like me. We exchanged numbers and we're planning a second date. So with all of that swirling around, yesterday I was down.
And as soon as my kids left, I turned the camera on in my studio. I turned the camera on, stepped up, and started filming videos. If you watched the vlog from yesterday — which is not out publicly yet, because I do my vlogs a few days in advance so people can't snipe my life anymore and know exactly what I'm doing in real time, and so I have a little leeway if I can't film a vlog one day — you could tell I wasn't in the mood to film a video. I didn't feel like talking about my life. And I talked for 30 minutes. By the end of the video, I felt fantastic. I was back to myself. My full power flowed back through.
Again, it's the same if you're a professional football player. You get out there and lift weights, you run, you do your practices — you do what you need to do every single day, no matter how you feel, no matter if your body's hurting. Obviously, if something's seriously injured, they work around that. But you get out there and do your work every day. And often, it's doing your work that helps you feel better. So many content creators have a hard time with this — managing your emotions and your feelings around creating content. For me, creating content helps me feel better. It helps me want to do more.
Warm Up With Passion, Then Get the Paycheck
But here's the thing. In 15 years on YouTube, I've learned that I can't do anything I'm not used to. If I had only done crypto videos on a day like yesterday, it would not have gone well, because I need my vlogs channel. That channel I just applied to get monetized, and I should start getting hundreds a month in ad revenue from it within the next few days. I need to get to a thousand subs on that channel too, so I'll start pitching it more on my other channels that are already monetized, like my crypto channels, to pick up more subs and get over the threshold. Up until now it has been mostly a fun channel. But if I didn't have that channel, I would burn out, because when all I have are crypto videos and I don't feel like doing videos, the thought of doing a crypto video is like — ugh, I can't stand to talk crypto right now. So I warm up by doing a vlog. And I don't care how bad your life is — you can talk about it every day and it'll help. Then after doing the vlog, I was like, all right, let me talk about dating. So I filmed some dating videos. And after the dating videos, it's all right, let me do these crypto videos and get my paycheck. Then I cranked out a crypto video — and my crypto videos get the most views of anything I make, and they funnel people over to the other channels.
So when you've got a setup where your bad moods, your down times, your apathy, the days you don't feel like it — where your well-rounded content system supports you in creating when you don't feel like it — then it just becomes a habit. And I have a spreadsheet to track what I'm doing, which keeps the habit honest. I'm concerned with maximizing the numbers and the time on that spreadsheet. To me, the number of videos I record is important, but the raw amount of minutes I put out is important too.
Shorts Are Extra Discovery
I'm mixing up some shorts now as well, because shorts are just extra discovery. Some of these shorts are simply getting extra discovery, and on average, over time, they'll get at least a thousand views each. Occasionally you'll get one that does 10,000-plus views. So I do these shorts, they get people over to my long videos, and it's a system that's sustainable.
But my whole life is also set up to run this system. I have a lifestyle built around it. I got my own house, so nobody's bothering me. I literally borrowed money so I could set all this up and get in position, because there's no better way I'm going to make money than doing YouTube. I'm really good at YouTube — especially with getting everything set up on my website. I'm in position and I'm all in on YouTube. I've committed to this because out of everything I've done in my whole life, I'm best at YouTube, and I give the most value to the world doing YouTube.
Hobbyist or Professional — You Choose
Burnout is one of the biggest risks. But burnout only happens if you can even get past creating when you're not in a good mood. So I hope I've shared something here, because this is the kind of thing people don't even address in the courses they pay all this money for. It's very important to know how to manage your emotions and to set up your system if you want to be a professional. You can just be a hobbyist and do a video every week — who cares? You can do a vlog every day of your life. But if you want to be a professional like I am, if you want to do this full time and not have to work another job, this is what you've got to be handling. It is an assembly line of cranking out video after video after video, no matter how you feel, no matter what else is happening in your life. I hope I've helped you see how to do that.
Where to Keep Going From Here
For the best experience, you know where to go already: go to jerrybanfield.com and join the chat, so you can talk with me and everybody else in there. I just launched it. You can go in and be represented — you create your name and your profile, and you can be represented on the leaderboard. If you want to send a message, you can drop a tip.
If you want to talk to me and have a call, you can jump in for a one-on-one Zoom call. Or, whenever I'm available, you can use Talk to Me Now — a cool feature I've been able to build on my website where I can set that I'm online, like when I'm filming videos. The last guy that bought it, I was talking to him face to face on WhatsApp within six minutes of him buying it. He bought it, I messaged him three minutes later, and he talked with me real quick for ten minutes. If you're in a pinch with your YouTube channel, you can talk to me for ten minutes or thirty minutes right then if I'm online.
I'm also setting up to sell everything on my same website. Because as a content creator, it's very important that you crank out videos to get the audience, but then you need to get people somewhere they can keep going — somewhere you've got control of the platform.
I do have a Skool community as well, where you can DM me in there if you want.
If you want more of my honest lessons from 15 years of doing this full time, watch my YouTube Coaching playlist. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you on jerrybanfield.com soon.
Creating Content When You Don't Feel Like It: Jerry's Answer
Originally published August 5, 2026.
Creating when you don't feel like it is not a mood problem for me, and I don't think it should be one for you either. My answer is that professionals go to work whether they feel inspired or not, and amateurs wait for a good day before they touch the camera. If you want to be a full-time creator, you build a system that produces every day and let that system carry you through the bad days, instead of hoping inspiration shows up on schedule.
The part that surprises people is that some of my best material came from my worst days. In my August post, Professionals Create. Amateurs Wait for Inspiration., I explain that I kept filming vlogs while I was miserable over a relationship that fell apart, including one called The Queen Goes Cold. Some of those dating videos pulled two to three times as many views as my older videos, and one of them had something like a 15-minute average watch time. Feeling bad did not stop the work. It became part of the work.
My view sharpened across these posts. In YouTube as an Amateur vs Professional: What I Learned, from June 2026, I drew a hard line. If you are an amateur, just have fun, upload whatever you want, don't build a system, don't sell anything, and don't obsess over views until you know whether you even like uploading. Professionals are doing a different job with no job security and no benefits, where, in my experience, the money and the views can both shrink over time. I still think the amateur-first advice is right. What changed by August was my focus: once you have decided to be a professional, the thing that separates you is showing up every day, whatever your mood.
The August 17 post, Your Content System Should Work When You Feel Terrible, gets specific about the machinery. My system is one long video every day across my channels: a vlog, a dating video, a gaming video, a YouTube coaching video, and crypto videos on my two crypto channels. The crypto channels are my main paycheck channels, because that is where people come to my website and spend money. So on the days I don't want to talk crypto, I warm up with a vlog, make some dating videos, and then film the crypto video that pays. Most of my other channels are what I call passion channels, and they keep the creativity alive so the grind doesn't burn me out.
I track all of it on a spreadsheet, and the numbers are the honest part. In the August 5 post I had published 418 videos since May, which is 79 days, about 5.3 videos a day, or roughly 75 minutes of content a day, adding up to about 99 hours. I do take days off, but a day off means views I never get back, so I would rather fill the sheet on a day I feel awful than leave it blank. Quality is subjective, but quantity is not, and the spreadsheet is where I hold myself to that.
I want to be honest about the cost. Burnout is the biggest risk I see, and it usually starts when you cannot even get past creating on a bad day. As a creator you don't get sick days the way an employee does, which is why so many creators burn out and why I think the system matters more than the mood. A routine does not remove the pain. What I am telling you is that for me, doing the work has made me feel better more often than it has made me feel worse.
Below this opening is a contents list, then all three posts in full, newest first. Read the June post if you are still deciding whether you are an amateur or a professional. Read the other two if you already want this as a job and keep stalling on the days you don't feel like it. For the cadence side of the same argument, see my one-video-a-day strategy, and for the resistance side, read self-sabotage and creative resistance.
If you are stuck on this in your own channel, you can get a personal video review from me.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Your Content System Should Work When You Feel Terrible (August 17, 2026)
Your Content System Should Work When You Feel Terrible
From my video published August 17, 2026.
One of the biggest things I see creators struggling with is feeling like you have to be inspired to create content, when what you need is a content system that works no matter how you feel. That's one of the biggest challenges with being a content creator: you need to live your life in a way that you can crank out content no matter what else is going on in your life. I did these vlogs on my website where I fell in love with this girl and I was all excited, and then it all went downhill — partially because I was so excited and I communicated that to her — and I was just in agony some of those days. I was on some of my videos crying and talking about messages I shouldn't have sent and all this stuff. And people are like, well, how do you do your videos? On some of those same days, I went through and filmed ten different videos that day. People ask, you feel so bad — how do you keep creating videos?
You Don't Get Sick Days as a Content Creator
Here's the truth: if you're a content creator, you don't get sick days. You don't get to feel bad and skip doing your work. If you have a company job and you need a mental health day, you can take it. But if I take a mental health day as a content creator — and this is why so many content creators burn out — I don't get any of the views that I would have gotten if I had actually created my content. So it's important as a content creator to set up your life and your content creation around being able to always produce.
And yes, I take days off. I keep a spreadsheet with my actual video publishing schedule, and it tells the story. I've had days when I took a trip and didn't film any videos — but even so, I was on a trip all four of those days and I still filmed. I had some days that felt miserable, like the 26th of July. Miserable. I had just realized things were not going to work out with the woman I was dating, the queen. And I filmed a 26-minute video after that. I was in agony that day, and I'm like, I've got to film a vlog at least. So I filmed a vlog. The day before the trip, I filmed three videos for 55 minutes. The day I got home, I filmed two videos, including a livestream for an hour. Some of those days I was still hurting over her, and I was grinding out videos. Then the other day, I didn't really feel like I was doing anything — I didn't feel like creating anything — and I filmed 120 shorts. Those are getting like a thousand views each. And yesterday I was a bit down for a little while. You know where I felt better? Once I started filming my videos and I did my vlog. Then I'm like, okay, I feel better.
A lot of content creators think, well, I've got to wait until I get inspired. No — some of your best videos are going to be when you feel like crap. It's like being a professional piano player. You play the piano, and that actually helps give you some stability. It doesn't matter if you wake up and don't feel like playing the piano that day. You play it. Because if you want to be a professional, you do it.
My System: One Long Video Every Day on Six Channels
The key behind this is having a system. My system is that I crank out one long video every day on all my channels — all six of my channels. On my Jerry Banfield vlogs channel, I crank out a vlog every day. Doesn't matter how I feel. I have a dating channel — I crank out a long-form dating video. Doesn't matter how I feel. Jerry Banfield Games — crank out a gaming video. I'm going to get back to doing some music too; I haven't put a new album out in a while. I have a YouTube coach channel and I crank a video out on it every day, no matter how I feel or what mood I'm in. And I have two crypto channels.
Some days I'm not in the mood to do crypto content. But the crypto channels are my main paycheck channels. Those are the main channels where people come to my website and spend money. I just set up a leaderboard on my website that shows it. When you spend money for the lifetime chat — which is awesome, because if you're a YouTuber, you can just talk with me and ask me any questions anytime, and you know who you're talking to; in my experience as a buyer, a one-time payment like that is a great deal — you show up there. The guys that paid for the chat within the first week of launching it are followers from my crypto videos. So I made hundreds of dollars in the last week with a soft launch, just starting my own website. And then people have also dropped some tips. Some of those came from the vlogs.
Paycheck Channels and Passion Channels
If you want to make money, you are going to need to have some channels that are paycheck channels, and you do those channels like a job. But if you want to be sustainable and not burn out, you can't have all your creativity be about just grinding out content on something you're only doing to make money. That's why most of my channels are passion channels, like my YouTube coach channel. It's a passion channel that also makes some money — it's a channel where people go to my website and schedule one-on-one calls with me to talk about YouTube and content creation. But I'm passionate about it because there's so much garbage advice out there, and so many people selling courses that have nothing better in them than what I have to offer. I could rip you all off with a several-thousand-dollar course and convince you why you need it. But a lot of the people doing that are stressing themselves out and burning themselves out doing it. What I do is create every day in a way that allows me to make content that makes money and to have fun. You need a system where you can have fun, love and enjoy your content creation, and make money off it. And what's essential is that you do it every day, no matter how you feel. In fact, some days when I feel bad, it's creating content that makes me feel better.
Catching Feelings From All Directions — and Filming Anyway
Yesterday I was kind of down. I wanted to go to this event where there's a bunch of single women wearing wristbands — a bunch of easy, cold approaches all in one place. And my ex-wife's boyfriend asked her to go to that. So I'm ending up at home with the kids, and I'm catching feelings from all different directions. I'm sad that I'm not enjoying the time with my kids as much. I'm jealous that my ex is out with her boyfriend instead of me. I'm jealous that I'm not out with a girlfriend instead of her. I'm annoyed that I wanted to go — I've been trying to go to that event for months — and then she goes to it, and I can't go to it without running into her. So I was catching all these feelings. And on top of that, I had just gone on a date that was really nice the night before. I got really, naturally, euphorically high going out on that date. It was an awesome date. Fantastic connection. Beautiful, intelligent woman. Very sweet. She seemed to really like me. We exchanged numbers and we're planning a second date. So with all of that swirling around, yesterday I was down.
And as soon as my kids left, I turned the camera on in my studio. I turned the camera on, stepped up, and started filming videos. If you watched the vlog from yesterday — which is not out publicly yet, because I do my vlogs a few days in advance so people can't snipe my life anymore and know exactly what I'm doing in real time, and so I have a little leeway if I can't film a vlog one day — you could tell I wasn't in the mood to film a video. I didn't feel like talking about my life. And I talked for 30 minutes. By the end of the video, I felt fantastic. I was back to myself. My full power flowed back through.
Again, it's the same if you're a professional football player. You get out there and lift weights, you run, you do your practices — you do what you need to do every single day, no matter how you feel, no matter if your body's hurting. Obviously, if something's seriously injured, they work around that. But you get out there and do your work every day. And often, it's doing your work that helps you feel better. So many content creators have a hard time with this — managing your emotions and your feelings around creating content. For me, creating content helps me feel better. It helps me want to do more.
Warm Up With Passion, Then Get the Paycheck
But here's the thing. In 15 years on YouTube, I've learned that I can't do anything I'm not used to. If I had only done crypto videos on a day like yesterday, it would not have gone well, because I need my vlogs channel. That channel I just applied to get monetized, and I should start getting hundreds a month in ad revenue from it within the next few days. I need to get to a thousand subs on that channel too, so I'll start pitching it more on my other channels that are already monetized, like my crypto channels, to pick up more subs and get over the threshold. Up until now it has been mostly a fun channel. But if I didn't have that channel, I would burn out, because when all I have are crypto videos and I don't feel like doing videos, the thought of doing a crypto video is like — ugh, I can't stand to talk crypto right now. So I warm up by doing a vlog. And I don't care how bad your life is — you can talk about it every day and it'll help. Then after doing the vlog, I was like, all right, let me talk about dating. So I filmed some dating videos. And after the dating videos, it's all right, let me do these crypto videos and get my paycheck. Then I cranked out a crypto video — and my crypto videos get the most views of anything I make, and they funnel people over to the other channels.
So when you've got a setup where your bad moods, your down times, your apathy, the days you don't feel like it — where your well-rounded content system supports you in creating when you don't feel like it — then it just becomes a habit. And I have a spreadsheet to track what I'm doing, which keeps the habit honest. I'm concerned with maximizing the numbers and the time on that spreadsheet. To me, the number of videos I record is important, but the raw amount of minutes I put out is important too.
Shorts Are Extra Discovery
I'm mixing up some shorts now as well, because shorts are just extra discovery. Some of these shorts are simply getting extra discovery, and on average, over time, they'll get at least a thousand views each. Occasionally you'll get one that does 10,000-plus views. So I do these shorts, they get people over to my long videos, and it's a system that's sustainable.
But my whole life is also set up to run this system. I have a lifestyle built around it. I got my own house, so nobody's bothering me. I literally borrowed money so I could set all this up and get in position, because there's no better way I'm going to make money than doing YouTube. I'm really good at YouTube — especially with getting everything set up on my website. I'm in position and I'm all in on YouTube. I've committed to this because out of everything I've done in my whole life, I'm best at YouTube, and I give the most value to the world doing YouTube.
Hobbyist or Professional — You Choose
Burnout is one of the biggest risks. But burnout only happens if you can even get past creating when you're not in a good mood. So I hope I've shared something here, because this is the kind of thing people don't even address in the courses they pay all this money for. It's very important to know how to manage your emotions and to set up your system if you want to be a professional. You can just be a hobbyist and do a video every week — who cares? You can do a vlog every day of your life. But if you want to be a professional like I am, if you want to do this full time and not have to work another job, this is what you've got to be handling. It is an assembly line of cranking out video after video after video, no matter how you feel, no matter what else is happening in your life. I hope I've helped you see how to do that.
Where to Keep Going From Here
For the best experience, you know where to go already: go to jerrybanfield.com and join the chat, so you can talk with me and everybody else in there. I just launched it. You can go in and be represented — you create your name and your profile, and you can be represented on the leaderboard. If you want to send a message, you can drop a tip.
If you want to talk to me and have a call, you can jump in for a one-on-one Zoom call. Or, whenever I'm available, you can use Talk to Me Now — a cool feature I've been able to build on my website where I can set that I'm online, like when I'm filming videos. The last guy that bought it, I was talking to him face to face on WhatsApp within six minutes of him buying it. He bought it, I messaged him three minutes later, and he talked with me real quick for ten minutes. If you're in a pinch with your YouTube channel, you can talk to me for ten minutes or thirty minutes right then if I'm online.
I'm also setting up to sell everything on my same website. Because as a content creator, it's very important that you crank out videos to get the audience, but then you need to get people somewhere they can keep going — somewhere you've got control of the platform.
I do have a Skool community as well, where you can DM me in there if you want.
If you want more of my honest lessons from 15 years of doing this full time, watch my YouTube Coaching playlist. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you on jerrybanfield.com soon.
YouTube as an Amateur vs Professional: What I Learned
From my video published June 17, 2026.
Let's talk about doing YouTube as an amateur versus a professional, because this is where I see a lot of confusion. I was talking to my massage therapist recently, and she's saying, "Oh, I need to do a video on YouTube every day. But I just started my channel and I haven't done a video yet." I'm like, hold up. The first thing you need to think about is this: are you a professional YouTuber, or are you an amateur YouTuber?
To me, I'm a professional. I've made tens of thousands of videos on YouTube. I've deleted at least 10 YouTube channels. I've been uploading since 2011. I've gotten something like 40 million views on YouTube, plus lots of stuff on other platforms. This is what I do full time for work. I'm not just playing around or hanging out here. Right now I'm live streaming and recording a video at the same time, and I have a four-monitor setup. I'm a professional. This is what I do for a living and for money.
But when I started out, I was an amateur. I was just having fun, throwing videos up whenever I wanted. I think you need to make it really clear for yourself which one you are. Are you an amateur, or are you a professional? And if you're an amateur YouTuber, just have fun. That's all you need to do: have fun and try to help somebody.
The trap of getting away from fun
Even at my level, what I've struggled with is getting away from having fun. It becomes, "Let's get money. Let's get views. Let's take over the world like Mr. Beast." That got me away from what I loved. What I loved when I was an amateur on YouTube was that it was all about having fun, making people laugh, being silly, and coming up with crazy video ideas.
When you're an amateur at YouTube, you don't have to worry about consistency. You should absolutely minimize any kind of editing or professional polish. Just go for real, raw, easy-to-make, authentic content. What you do not want to do is try to build some system. My massage therapist was talking about, "Oh, I'm going to sell people courses." Hold up. You haven't even uploaded a video yet.
People will say, "Well, I want to help people." Okay, then just come up with a video. Come up with a video idea, upload it, and make it as fast and as easy as possible. Don't bother editing it or polishing it. Just come up with a video idea, make that video as fast as possible, and upload it. And then don't worry about getting views. I have a friend who is another massage therapist, and she made a video that was really helpful for me. Her entire channel has gotten 16 views. But the video she made was super helpful for me. So when you're an amateur, you don't even need to be thinking about viewership. You should only be thinking about: is this fun for me? Is this making my life better? Is this helping someone else?
Don't take pro advice before you're ready
You don't need to be taking advice from professionals on how to be a professional either. You might think it's awesome to be a professional YouTuber. It has its ups and downs. It's a job, just like everything else. I've been so aggravated the last couple of days because I feel like such a failure. I've got all these views, but I made only a thousand or so dollars this month, and I'm just feeling like an utter failure.
As a professional, in my experience, you don't want to depend on YouTube for your income unless you absolutely have to, because doing YouTube as a professional is a whole different thing than doing YouTube as an amateur. A lot of you take advice from professionals and immediately try to jump from being an amateur to being a professional, and it's too soon. You need to just be an amateur first and see whether you even like YouTube.
Because if you don't like uploading videos that get no views, or one view, or two views, then you're not going to be successful at YouTube. If you don't like doing YouTube just for fun, if you're not willing to do a live stream where nobody watches or comments, if you're not willing to upload a video that doesn't get any likes, or that gets one dislike, then you can't handle being an amateur YouTuber, and you shouldn't try to be a professional. You should not even consider trying to sell stuff when you get started.
A lot of you are getting way too far ahead of yourselves. You're listening to people telling you about launching courses and all that. Hold up. You need to see if you even like being a YouTuber first. You need to see if you like the actual activity, because being a YouTuber is hard. I'm in my studio in my house just filming videos, and you can't tell if you're really doing any good or not.
Who is actually winning on views
A lot of the people you see on YouTube who are getting lots of views are, in my view, exploiting people. They're cheating people of their time and programming people with bad ideas. A lot of the top YouTubers in terms of views are setting a really bad example. They're not people you want to emulate. By their own definitions, they're insane. They obsess over YouTube views, and it's never enough. You don't want to copy that.
I have a nice setup for YouTube. I have fun. I help people. And most of the time, I'm not obsessing over my views. Most of the time, I feel like it's good enough. Most of the time, I'm having fun, and to me, that's success. I get recognized here and there. We went to Cheesecake Factory a couple of months ago, and the waiter, well, I used to be a police officer, so I pay attention to people's body language and the little signs they do. I could tell this guy had an unusual reaction to me right away. I asked him about it, and he said, "Hey, I recognize you from YouTube." I said, "Oh, nice, cool. What videos do you recognize me from?" Because I make a lot of different kinds of videos. He said, "Your Gods Unchained videos." I'm like, really? I wouldn't have figured it would have been Gods Unchained.
The over-optimizing problem
Here's another tricky thing with YouTube. Almost everybody will try to get you to do this, and it's where a lot of you are messing up: before you've even uploaded a video, you're trying to pick a niche. You're trying to box yourself in, and you haven't even uploaded a video, but you're already trying to over-optimize, even though, from my view, you have nothing to optimize yet.
One of my biggest challenges as a professional YouTuber has been over-optimizing. Instead of considering what was fun, and instead of following my heart and having a good time, I was constantly over-optimizing. "I have to just do gaming videos." "I have to just do crypto videos." "I have to just sell online courses." You really can't afford that as an amateur, because you generally won't have any audience and you won't have much positive reinforcement. You can't afford to be over-optimizing from the very beginning.
What you need to do as an amateur is just see whether you would like to upload videos for fun. Would uploading videos be a fun activity for you to do? Because I just love doing videos. I just love doing live streams. I just keep doing videos over and over again, no matter what's happened, no matter how bad things have gone on my YouTube or how good things have gone. I keep uploading videos. If you're an amateur, that's all you really need to find out: do you like uploading videos? Would you like to keep uploading videos? That's all you need to find out to begin with. You don't need to know about anything else. Is uploading videos something you would do for free, for fun, with no positive reinforcement?
The reality of depending on it
A lot of times you'll find it's not. My brother has a great job, and he's like, "What you do sucks." I've had months where I made $100,000 in a single month. And I've had lots of months where I've lost money, where I've spent more than I made. My brother's like, "What you do sucks. You have no job security. You have no benefits." And he's right that there's no job security. The algorithm can leave me behind. I can get banned or demonetized, as I have been on some platforms, for literally no reason at all, just because they didn't like what I said.
I feel like I'm a slave to technology a lot of the time. All I do is serve this system. My one massage therapist friend messaged me and was talking like, "Yeah, I'm going to be free on YouTube." I'm like, really? Because I feel like a total slave here a lot of the time. I'm just working, and I'm not even getting paid a lot of the time. You're trading. If you think YouTube is going to set you free, it may set you free from one set of limitations, but you're going to inherit another set of limitations. Don't get it twisted. You're going to go from serving a boss at work to serving the algorithm god. You're going to go from saying you don't get paid enough at work to not getting paid anything on YouTube. Or you'll get one big payday and you'll think, all right, this is how it's going to be from now on, and then that's not how it is at all. The money gets less and less. The views get less and less.
YouTube is a cruel, tough environment to be in a lot of the time, and it's not a good place. I've seen so many people I know who tried to put all this energy into making videos and buying these online course platforms and email lists, and all they do is quit. Almost everybody who started doing YouTube since I did has quit. Almost everybody who was creating YouTube videos back when I started in 2011 has quit. This is not rewarding a lot of the time. I just love it, though. There's nothing better I can think to do with myself at this point. So if you've got better ideas, you might want to consider some better ideas.
YouTube is isolating, so your real life has to be solid
If you can do things in person and be with people in person, you may find that a lot more rewarding than doing YouTube, where you're in a room with a screen by yourself. If you want to do YouTube successfully, in my experience you're going to need to be able to have a great social life outside of YouTube, because doing YouTube is often very isolating. And it is extremely intellectually challenging too.
I'm intelligent. I've got all those scores on tests and everything. I got really high test scores when I was a kid. I got a scholarship to do my PhD, but I quit at the master's level. Long story short, I'm smart. And this is the hardest thing I've ever done intellectually by far. It's brutal. What makes it hard is that you need to be skilled in so many different areas. If you're weak in one area, it shows, because you need to have at least basic general-level proficiency across so many areas to do YouTube. You just have to be able to do everything yourself.
You have to do it all yourself, and you have to stay lean
With YouTube, you have to do it all yourself. You have to be able to do your marketing. You need to be able to make the videos. You have to be able to public speak. There are so many things you need to be able to do, and if you can't do something yourself, there's no backup. And you don't want to hire people either. Some of you are like, "Oh, I don't want to edit videos, I'll pay for an editor." No. If you want to do YouTube, you really want to stay lean. You do not want to have expenses, because even if you have income, you need to be good with money to do YouTube, or have a wife that makes money like me.
You need to be good with money because here's what's going to happen with YouTube: even if you do make some income, it's going to be really inconsistent a lot of the time. There are going to be a lot of stretches where you make no money, and you're going to need to be prepared for that. You're going to need to have some money saved. Ideally, you'd live somewhere where you can live for free so that you can afford to do YouTube without having any financial pressure on you.
The glamour versus the reality
So that glamour you see with some people on YouTube, where it's like, "Yeah, I'm going to get rich, have this great lifestyle, and be famous" — I've come to believe the reality of it is more like you're going to live in your mom's basement and hope she can pay the rent for you, and then maybe she kicks you out, or you keep making YouTube videos. And you might do that for years and years. The reality of what you think YouTube is versus what it actually is for real is just way off.
So I'm here to tell you, if you want to be a professional YouTuber, it is a whole other level of commitment than being an amateur. And I'm happy to make the commitment. But if you're an amateur, just have fun. Don't worry about views. Don't worry about money. Have another source of income. Upload whenever you want. Don't sell anything. Just focus on your videos.
And if you want to be a pro, well, I would follow somebody else who is a pro and who has the kind of life you want. I've got a nice, regular life. I'm not someone like Mr. Beast, who has essentially ruined the regular life over YouTube, where he can't go anywhere or do anything. If you're going to be a full-time YouTuber, you want to pick a good role model. I hope I can help out with that, and you can find more of how I think about this in my YouTube Coaching playlist. Now let's get into this Warzone game.