Vtuber Consulting

A friendly reminder to amateur artists who want to succeed: QRTing professionals with “they charge THIS much while I charge 20$ for 2 weeks of work!!!” is NOT a flex you think it is and if you’ll keep such mindset you’ll never be able to get big. It’s okay to have art as a hobby but if you want to make it your career, stop disrespecting professionals AND yourself

Agree with every point here. Problem is, most creators hiring an editor can't evaluate any of it. At most, they can feel when an edit works or doesn't, but can't fully say why. That's not enough to hire on. This list is all craft knowledge and skill: intention, communication, reading the room - and being able to show all of that through video. It's mostly senior stuff that needs time and experience. And there's a catch-22: Can't evaluate editing → you have to trust your editor → the editors worth trusting cost real money → the cheap ones, you can't evaluate. Toxena's bonus tip in the replies is a good example. Knowing the Kuleshov effect is a great sign - but to check for it, a creator has to know what it actually means and why it matters. And plenty of editors already apply it on instinct, without even knowing that it's got a fancy name. If you treat knowing the name as a box to tick (easy to do when it's on a checklist), you'll miss good editors. You might also end up hiring bad ones who are essentially "posers", simply because they can spew fancy editing jargon to sound smart - without being able to deliver on it. (A test edit helps, admittedly - but only if you can judge it. Told you it was a catch-22.) "But RAINA, I CAN evaluate editing!" Okay, then - there's a high chance you've edited for yourself in the past. And if you don't have the time or ability to teach an editor your taste + judgement, you need one who already gets it - which means weeding out the good from the bad on VGen/in your replies/in your DMs. Half the time, it ends in “I might as well do it myself.” (That's a trap, btw. It's a delegation and documentation problem: spend the time once writing down what you want, instead of constantly fixing what you didn't get during every video. Refine it as you go.) Or you haven't actually edited video before, and you might not understand what it takes to execute an edit well. Spoiler: it costs more time and money than you expect. With cheap editors, the time cost climbs even higher: they're still learning the tools, so they end up manually rawdogging what a plugin could do, or burn hours trying to wrangle one they've never used. Then there's your end: all the revisions and notes you gotta do. This knowledge gap is why audiences for shows, games and the like sometimes get called "entitled": they may be right about taste and quality, but way out on what's reasonable for production volume, speed and cost. An editor who’s built that craft knowledge - AND can reproduce it consistently, on a schedule - is not going to be cheap. If they are, they’re underpaid AF. (Yes, even by VTubing standards - where rates for quality editing and audio are already undervalued.) I've seen listings asking for editors who can "produce without guidance" for ~$20 a short. That's editor + creative/marketing director at editor rates. Someone still has to make the director calls (judgement, taste, what the video's actually for). If you're not providing guidance, you're outsourcing all of that to your editor-slash-director. And no, "make it more grand/cinematic" isn't direction or guidance. (If your editor can understand that, I sure hope you're paying them properly.) Poaching works to a degree (so does the "more ethical" option of asking for recommendations), because you're borrowing another creator's judgement on who a good editor is. But that judgement was tuned to their channel's goals, work style and skillset - not yours. You still have to know what you want from the editor. Hiring a band's drummer doesn't automagically get you the band's sound - that's made up by the whole band, not one player. And just so we're clear: not even Travis Barker (of Blink-182 fame) can save a lead guitarist who can't play in time, or an off-key singer who hits notes only dogs can hear. That’s kind of what happens when someone wants an editor to produce without guidance, then keeps saying “not good enough” without saying why. (Ask me how I know.) One more trap, and it's about the math: When budgets are tight, it's tempting to judge a video by what it makes back in ad revenue (which is a painfully tall ask given CPM rates for things like shorts) - but that's rarely where its value is. Some videos are designed to attract new/cold audiences, some to nurture existing ones, and some to convert them into long-term paying customers: channel/Patreon subs, merch buyers, customers of your product or service. In plainer language: Attract = are new people finding you? Nurture = are they staying and coming back? Convert = are they clicking, subbing, buying? That makes editing a marketing cost, and it should be budgeted and measured like one. And no, "why I no viral" isn't how you measure whether a video worked. Surprise: this whole essay boils down to "I can't find a good editor [on a budget that doesn't break me]" actually being a marketing skill issue on your end as the creator. Plus a few more: delegation, documentation, and communication. At a base level, you don't need to learn editing to hire well - but you DO need to learn what your videos are for, and how to measure them properly. That's how you get out of the catch-22. Those parts are on you, and thankfully, it's all learnable. Lowkey curious whether @GeneralGEEGA's team at Level One Talent will be tackling this issue (or already is!) She said "YouTube" was the top topic in their manager sessions, and that members said editors were the hardest hire - which sounds like the same problem from two directions. With audio and voice pros already coming in month 2, it feels like a natural fit - so fingers crossed! (For the record, Toxena's list is really useful to know. I'm just here to fill in the gaps on actually putting it to work.) #RAINArambles

Discord Server Owners & Admins Please remember to disable the "web landing page" feature on your server. This prevents your server's public messages from being shown on a searched webpage Instructions for how in comments.

🚨 MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: YouTube will start prioritizing original content and reducing re-uploads (RIP clipping) YouTube has just announced one of the most impactful changes to its short-form algorithm. Its recommendation systems (the algorithm) will start to further prioritize original content and reduce the reach of content re-uploaded from other creators without adding anything of your own. They highlight this shift toward originality, where channels with primarily re-uploaded content will see less distribution within the Shorts feed. It also seems like they’re really trying to put the focus on content with real value, while highlighting that YouTube doesn’t want as many “minor technical edits” or “template-based” changes. Which is basically all that clipping was in this industry. Overall, while this will piss off some people whose entire careers were built on the premise of other people’s content (mostly clippers), the change itself is amazing and will finally address the overall quality issue we’ve been seeing.