"At Some Point That Reality Will Arrive "- Payal Banerjee

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1. Tell us about your background and journey.


My journey started off as any normal kid on the block with high aspirations and dreams to be anything but, "Successful" in life. I had always been the creative types and dreamt of being an artist or a fashion designer to pacify that creative hunger in me. 

Reality check came when, I saw the competition, the rat race all around. Suddenly, my focus shifted to financially stable career options and decided to pursue engineering, putting an end to all those aesthetic pangs of inbuilt talent. After a successful completion of software engineering and MBA (Marketing), I was working with one of the biggest and best corporate giants, financially stable and leading a life which was no lesser than a fairytale, still something was amiss. 

Maybe, that ingenious kid inside me still refused to grow up or that passion to reinvent myself started knocking doors. I started vlogging out of curiosity to explore the process but ended up loving the activity. Currently, I am in the initial stages of launching my own YouTube travel channel and vlog which will provide an insight into my travel itinerary and life to all my followers and subcribers.


2. When did you first decide that you wanted to create content and how did you start?


I never decided to create content, rather I started creating content as an experimental process to find my self worth at it because of dire curiosity. I was facing a difficult time coming out from a bad phase of my life during that period and staying busy was the only alternative I found, to come out from that tough situation. 

Initially, the content I created wasn't even worth it in my own eyes and I jotted down points on how to improve it the next time. I started reading a lot of blogs on content creation, followed the work of some of the already established and successful content creators/vloggers and started differentiating between their work and my own for self improvement. 

Few of the beauty websites who are always on the lookout for content creators, influencers, bloggers and reviewers for their brand, saw my work, contacted me, and inquired about my interest to try and review few of their products and I instantly said yes. Soon, I started landing a lot of offers and it pushed me to perform more. 

I started taking a keen interest on this topic and the whole concept excited me. I decided to follow my passionate instincts of content creation/vlogging during my free time of the day and especially on weekends because I started loving the art of positive influencing and till date there's no stopping. 

Gradually, I took to fashion, lifestyle, food and travel vlogging along with just being a beauty brand influencer and currently I am working on a lot of collaborations and promotional activities for the same. I am so elated to have managed my professional life along with being a blogger/vlogger and trust me it really isn't easy balancing both on the same scale together.


3. Is vlogging and YouTube content creation a financially sustainable career?


Vlogging and YouTube content creation isn't a career option or an alternative to making fast cash at all, it's a passion that drives the creator to present his/her version of content strategy and social media communication strategy. Content creation, in all together is not an easy task and requires a proper vision, approach and presentation to deliver a good, better, best content that urges it's channel subscribers to stay connected and like, share and comment to create a bigger chain for newer audience.

In most cases it will pay more than a part-time job, and in some cases more than a full-time job. You can use your channel as a body of work. This is not practical or sustainable because YouTube in and of itself is not a “Job” whether you make money from it or not. Nor is it in and of itself a “Career” its a platform/venue. 

You can’t put YouTuber on a resume, at least not yet. If you are able to be successful in YouTube it typically requires certain skills, such as video editing, video production, social media, and so on. You should probably utilize and market those skills outside of YouTube and cash in on them whenever possible and build a brand that lives beyond YouTube. 

Additionally, YouTube only monetizes 30–60% of views on average. Also consider 20% of users are now reportedly using Ad-Block, meaning these creators aren’t getting ad revenue from those viewers. Even with a 100K subscriber channel, depending on the average views per video, sponsorship fees range to a particular amount depending on the brand and on your niche. 

There are exceptions that can be, but not much higher until you break a fixed target of subscribers or unless you are getting a very high level of average view per video. The exceptions being popular micro-niches or a product that has a high enough price point that the ROI is easy enough to turn around. 

This also assumes you can secure sponsorships for you channel, and it also assumes that your audience doesn’t react negatively to you doing sponsored videos regularly, which many are vocal about.


4. Who is your favourite creator and why?


Well, I don't have any particular favourite creator but I feel each and everyone in this field is doing their best and catering to the interest levels of their audience perfectly. I get inspired by most of them and follow their content posts on a regular basis so that I can improve and better my work from time to time. Naming only one out of so many talented people would be an utter injustice. (Lol)


5. How and where do you find inspiration to churn out content?


In general, people are my source of inspiration for great content. Whenever I am low on my creativity levels and don't get the zeal for new content creation, I simply look around and observe. There are plenty of things that inspires me if I look carefully and usually end up discovering the stories I was searching for. Inspiration is all around us. 

I get ideas from items I read or broadcasts I see on TV. It might be from a reader’s comment on my feed or a question posed by one of my followers. I actively keep on thinking about story ideas, record it and then methodically capture them into a content. Frankly, inspiration is everywhere, if you are willing to pay attention to find it.


6. What does your typical day look like?

Hectic... Hectic and hectic is all I can say whenever I need to talk about my typical days. Right from the morning to night, my daily chores of activities include serving my organization with a nine hour shift along with training my juniors at work about software projects. 

In between all this, I need to manage my social media accounts by posting contents, making new contacts for collaboration and keeping a tab on the existing ones. 

7. Which is your favourite book and why?


Actually, I don't have one but three favourites which have totally changed the perspective of life and how I see myself.

1. The Art of Happiness, by Dalai Lama.

This book will encourage you to practice the discipline of self-reflection.The more you reflect on your life, the deeper you look into your inner self (your soul). This is where you discover what happiness truly means to you. 

Knowing what happiness means to you, gives you purpose. With purpose, you’ll have clarity, focus, and a vision. These are the foundations that will empower you to embark on the journey to change your life.

2. Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How To Create A New You, by Deepak Chopra.

According to this book, personal transformation not only involves the mind, but also your body and soul. You cannot transform your mind without transforming your body and soul. 

Reading this book will encourage you to think about the potential energy force and power you hold within yourself. This energy grows when you are connected and aligned to your mind, body, and soul.

3.The Greatest Salesman In The World, by Og Mandino.

This book doesn’t really tell you how to be a great salesperson. It will; however, give you some fantastic tips on how to be an entrepreneur, how to self-motivate, and how to think like a successful person. 

The underlying message is the power of positive thinking – that you become what you think, say, and do. This book has great tactics for those of us in the process of change.


8. What piece of advice would you like to give to future and aspiring creators?


If you have the passion and skill to understand the factors of creation with narration, quality over quantity and want to bring around a positive influence through your matter of work then social media is the perfect platform to showcase that power through "Content Creation". 

It can initially be a slow and annoying process where, you shall be disappointed after not getting a positive or any response from the target audience. Adjusting time to create content, posts or stories from your daily schedule of activities, especially if you are a working professional managing to balance both the tasks simultaneously, can be simply challenging. 

Sometimes, it might take years for people to notice your body of work or efforts but, once you get the recognition, then there's no stopping for sure. Just like a ladder, you have to climb the stairs of being a successful influencer/content creator slowly but gradually, to reach that satisfactory level of increasing audience who would view your content and like it too. 

The advise is simple - Be creative and stay focused. Your YouTube channel should follow a specific niche—a very specific niche, which makes you unique from other creators and finally, have a plan for beyond YouTube, understand there is a real possibility that somehow you may not be able to operate on the platform. 

Think about your brand, your identity, your life and your career with that very real possibility in mind and who you are after YouTube, because at some point that reality will arrive in one form or another. 

- Payal Bannerjee, Blogger

- Interviewed by Kedar Lalwani

- Edited by Shilpy Sharan