The tenth, US based Vidcon, has come to its conclusion.

The conference has grown dramatically, from its humble beginnings – a few hundred people in LA – to tens of thousands of attendees filling the Anaheim Convention Center.

I’ve been to every Vidcon that’s been hosted in the US and its crazy to look back and see how much it has grown.  Brands now flock to Vidcon, and whole industries have been built upon the influencer economy.

This year I identified five overarching trends that really dominated Vidcon.

#1 CHINA, CHINA, CHINA

It’s been just under a year since China based ByteDance rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok, and in that short period of time they turned the platform into the most buzzed about social network.

While most big YouTubers were hidden away from throngs of fans at Vidcon, only coming out for meetups and panels, TikTokers were everywhere doing collaborations, and generally making their presence felt. It didn’t hurt that the platform also hosted the biggest bash of the event with a live performances from 2Chainz

TikTok wasn’t the only Chinese based platform with a presence at Vidcon. Haohao Xu, the Sr Director of Tencent hosted a fireside chat where he discussed Tencent’s push beyond China.

Seunghae Ahn, Product General Manager at Baidu also did a talk and highlighted Baidu’s video capabilities, and robust influencer ecosystem. The key takeaway being, that Chinese creators are expanding beyond their native platforms into YouTube (and beyond) and that there’s a massive MCN industry developing to help non-Chinese based creators develop audiences on Baidu properties.

#2 DIVERSIFYING REVENUE STREAMS

One of the hottest topics at Vidcon this year was how influencers can monetize their audiences beyond relying solely upon ad dollars.

For context, over the last few years the major platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc) have applied more stringent rules for what content can and cannot be monetized, and CPM’s for most creators have declined. As a result, a whole ecosystem has emerged to help creators diversify revenue streams so that they’re not solely reliant upon advertising dollars.

At Vidcon, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan announced the launch of ‘Super Stickers’ which fans can purchase and deliver to their favorite creators (at a price), of which the creators get a significant percentage. They also announced additional tiers to their Channel Membership program, which acts similarly to Twitch’s subscription features and offeres varying degrees of exclusive content in exchange.

Just ahead of Vidcon, Facebook hosted a number of creators up in Malibu and announced a number of similar updates.

Facebook announced that Stars, a tipping feature currently being used exclusively in gaming streams, is going to be rolled out beyond gamers as part of an expanded beta to a small group of video creators. Additionally, Facebook like YouTube is going to begin testing, paid subscription features.

#3 WHERE WERE THE MCN’S?

One of the most noteworthy trends was a lack of (most) MCN presence.

First and foremost it is worth noting the exceptions – Collab, AwesomenessTV and Studio71 all had their presence felt. Studio71 hosted their annual bash, always the best party at Vidcon. Collab had an exclusive lounge and parties as well, and AwesomenessTV was plastered across Vidcon with advertising and booths.

However, in years past MCN’s dominated the conversation at Vidcon. They were a hot topic at most panels and keynotes, and for years were amongst the biggest sponsors. A lot has changed – Maker studios is non-existent, having been purchased and then shuttered by Disney, both Machinima and Stylehaul shut down. Countless other MCN’s have quietly shut down or are puttering along, but without the fanfare they once had.

The only reference to MCN’s that I noticed at any of the panels and talks I attended was in Baidu’s presentation in reference to the development of a Chinese MCN ecosystem.

There were rumblings of MCN’s having side meetings with YouTube about the fact that they feel as though they no longer feel supported by the platform.  Beyond that MCN’s were hardly mentioned and there were no panels or keynotes where they were the primary topic of conversation.

#4 VOLUME OF PLATFORMS

At the first Vidcon, 10 years ago, YouTube was the only viable social video platform. There was no Instagram, Facebook hadn’t launched video, and Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc were already left in the dust by YouTube’s sheer scale.

Fast-forward 10 years and there are over a half dozen major players in the social video space each vying for the attention of creators. Linkedin now has video, there’s YouNow and Twitch pushing to dominate livestreaming, Snap, Instagram, and TikTok are battling each other over short form content, and IGTV and Facebook Watch are making real attempts at chipping away at YouTube’s scale. Even Pinterest has a video offering it was touting to advertisers.

#5 DAMAGE CONTROL

Social media platforms have had a rough couple of years; at Vidcon it was clear YouTube wanted to take the opportunity to spruce up their image.

YouTube emphasized all the good they’re doing. During their keynote Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer at YouTube went out of his way to highlight how diverse the platform is, and how they’re going to invest in education.  Hardly a word was mentioned about the recent controversies they’ve been embroiled in regarding censorship, de-platforming, radicalization, and demonetization. Other than a brief reference to updates to their terms of service coming out within the next six months you’d think everything was humming along smoothly.

I admire all the good that YouTube has done but the YouTube presentation felt like an attempt to white wash there image in front of an industry audience instead of addressing the real issues they’ve been facing over the last several years.

Regardless, as in years past Vidcon was a great way to get insight into what’s changing within the industry as well as connect with creators and other companies within the ecosystem. I’m also still shocked at how few brands and agencies invest in having a presence. Ten years in, I’d argue that Vidcon is the best, and most undervalued way to tap into the biggest influencers on the planet.

My latest interviewee is a YouTuber and director, he was among the earliest to adopt the platform and has been posting his videos online since before YouTube even launched.

Some of the highlights from our interview include:
– What the early days (ie 2006) of YouTube were like
– Why it’s best to use YouTube to build a career off platform
– What it was like being an early employee at an MCN

The Confessional is a series of anonymous interview with influencers, brands, marketers, agencies and MCN executives to get honest, no-bullshit opinions on working in the space – the biggest gripes, the toughest lessons, the most valuable advice.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You were among the first crop of creators on YouTube to actually build a following, back in 2006. How did you get into it? What was your very first video?

Well, my friends and I, we all took drama class together and started making videos together before YouTube existed.

So when YouTube came around, we decided to start posting there. And honestly it was slow for all of us at first.

What was YouTube like back then?

In the early days of YouTube the popular videos were lip-syncing videos or people that did their own parody songs. That was the big first thing on YouTube. You do one of those and doing well on YouTube.

YouTube was never supposed to be anything but fun. It wasn’t even supposed to be a launchpad for a career, which it ended up being (I always wanted to make movies).

You had one of the earliest ‘viral hits’, what was that like?

Well, when we first uploaded [Redacted – name of video] no one really cared.

It was probably up for a month before it got big, and then [Redacted – name of site] featured it, and just like that it was literally overnight. We went from nothing to millions of views.

How did that hit impact things for you and your friends?

So that landed me a meeting with pretty much every single major studio. It landed me meetings with Warner Brothers and Paramount. Everywhere.

But, this was 2006. It’s not like now where you can just take whatever you learn on YouTube and transfer it to some other medium and people understand the business and are ready to cut checks. People didn’t know what they were doing yet.

I had all these meetings and they weren’t quite sure what to do with me. I did get a small production budget from one of the traditional studies and got to direct, but that didn’t quite pay the bills so I went back to YouTube.

Were you guys making any money back then or was this all for fun?

When we started there was no partner program, so there really wasn’t a future, we weren’t making any money. There was no possibility of even thinking about making money on YouTube.

Companies didn’t know what to do with YouTubers.

Now companies, they’ll start you off with a Web series and the start to build you from there. We’ll do a Web series, we’ll put it on YouTube, and maybe we’ll build from there, do a Netflix series or a Yahoo series.

I started getting offers to do random Web commercials, and I did a bunch of them to help pay the bills.

All the friends you started with have gone on to be among the most famous YouTubers out there. How has your relationship with them evolved or changed?

I remember when they all really just started blowing up. They were focusing on their channels and developing their personas, and then almost out of nowhere there’d be people showing up on set (or wherever we were filming) just to meet these guys. It was a really weird transition.

Luckily we’ve stayed close and no one developed crazy ego’s, but there have been challenges.

It’s hard scheduling stuff  – they’ve gotten more popular and they sometimes are spread a bit thin.

You were with one of the MCN’s in the very beginning, what was that like?

Yeah, after I did some directing for a bit I was hired by [Redacted – Name of MCN].

It was awesome. I was the 15th employee they hired. I was so broke at the time, that I didn’t even have a cell phone, I needed a job and they saw one of my videos the next thing I knew, I was working there.

Over the years stuff started changing, and the company got huge.

When it got big and corporate I started to lose my shit with all the bureaucracy.

Where is YouTube headed?

Back in the day, it felt like YouTube was all about bucking the norm, now it feels like it’s all about keeping with the latest trends. On top of it all everybody and their fucking grandma has a YouTube channel, even if it’s just a YouTube channel where they put random iphone videos.

It’s changed to the point where there’s too much now and it’s hard to comb through it all and find anything good or original.

I think people are just putting out more content, and I think it really started that way because I remember these MCN deals where you would sign up with them and you’d have to put up a minimum amount of minutes of content per month.

No matter who the fuck you are, the audience gets bored and just churning out crap doesn’t help.

So what’s next?

I think there’s just going to be another platform out there, I think something else is going to come out. It’s happened now with Vine and instagram – you saw how those fucking just blew up.

I don’t see YouTube as a place to make money; now I see it more as a launching pad for something else. It’s a great platform to showcase yourself and your work.

How do you recommend people make a living off YouTube these days?

The only way you can really make money off YouTube anymore is with brand deals, because CPM’s are just too low.

In the early days the CPM’s were high – it was probably between $7 and $10. Now it’s averaging about $1.25. Sometimes it goes up to $3, but mostly it’s hovering around $1.25.

If you’re looking to act or direct YouTube comes in handy – everybody now looks at your social media numbers. Everybody looks at the numbers. You want to get an acting gig? They’re going to look at your Twitter followers before they look at how good you are. And I’m seeing that everywhere.

What advice do you have for people looking to get into the space and build a YouTube following?

I talk to colleges all the time and I get that question all the time. I always make a joke and tell them, “be good-looking.” It’s very sad but it’s very true.

There’s really no guarantees in this space. Even if you’re the hottest person in the world, you have the best content, and you’re collaborating with someone like Jenna Marbles, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to blow up.