This story was published in The Times of India. Here is a link to the story: Lights, Camera, Cash In

A new community of amateur film-makers shoot videos of their hobbies for the second largest search engine in the world. And now, their channels are not only drawing global audiences but moolah too

It’s a gathering of a motley group of people: Musicians, actors, cooks, college students, housewives, fitness trainers… Their modest demeanour belies the fact that each of the invitees to the Wednesday afternoon workshop at a Mumbai pub is a “star” with their own video channel. These are people who’ve successfully produced YouTube videos and are monetizing their content through advertisements placed on their channel.

In a revenue-sharing program that took root in India last year, YouTube has signed up over 1,000 independent video producers. And while hundreds of partners around the world are making more than $1,00,000 per year and thousands are making more than $1,000 per month, here—in this fledgling market—the incomes range from a few thousand rupees to over a lakh a month.

The youngest among the indigenous ‘video entrepreneurs’ are 21-year-olds, Sonal Sagaraya and Rishabh Shah. The duo has produced 32 makeup tutorials for their channel (www.youtube.com/user/sonalsagaraya) that boasts of 817 subscribers and over 91,000 views.

“We started our own company called Hello Tubers and now ideate, script and produce our own films fulltime,” Shah says.

In sharp contrast to the youngsters, 65-year-old Surendra Singh marks the other end of the age spectrum. The veteran violinist and Bollywood music composer, who has arranged background scores for films like Kaho Na Pyaar Hain, Karan Arjun, Koyla and King Uncle, now makes music for his internet following.

His channel (www.youtube.com/user/originalmelodymusic) has received over 14 lakh views and has a subscriber base of over 3,000 users.

“YouTube lets me interact with my fans directly,” he says.

At the venue, while the video stars interact with each other, the organisers ready themselves for the presentation. YouTube officials have invited this group to a workshop that will provide them with tips on how to get more eyeballs and promote their channels.

“Talking to the camera is a means to drive more traffic to videos on your channel,” says Vanessa Pappas, head of audience development at YouTube. “It’s a good idea to engage with your audience and reply to comments they post,” she advises.

Some participants start taking down notes as the presentation progresses, and hands are raised and questions are asked. After all, these tips can actually result in extra money.

Lights, camera, action

One of the successful Indian partners, third year BCom student, Shivam Choudhary reviews gadgets and games on his channels ‘itouchfiendsdotcom’ and ‘iTFiends’. The 21-year-old gets about 15,000 views a day, enough to make him $15 a day.

“It’s not enough to be my primary job, but the earnings are decent for a college student,” says the amateur photographer who owns a Canon 7D camera, which he uses to film himself in a home studio setup.

But you don’t need a very expensive equipment to make it big on YouTube. Candid videos—shot on a compact Canon IXUS 9515 camera and edited on Windows Live Movie Maker—by Moradabad-based Dr Vikram Singh Yadav is proof.

Dr Yadav’s channel ‘Medical and Surgical Educational TV’ (www.youtube.com/user/ shaziajafrey8) has 785 videos, most of which are amateur clips of his patients displaying symptoms of medical conditions.

“Before YouTube, I would write articles which were more time consuming and less expressive,” says the doctor who wants to provide knowledge to medical students, patients and doctors.

Some of the most popular videos on his channel include, ‘How to use a female condom?’ (30,942 views), ‘Dermoid Cyst Excision Surgery’ (77,301 views) and ‘How to treat cracked heels?’ (28,680 views).

Pulling in audiences and advertisers

Interestingly, YouTube has also given a shot in the arm to documentary and DVD makers by helping them revive audiences online.

“DVD sales have been declining and this is a good way to make some money,” says R Satish Gupta, proprietor, Magic Box, a five-year-old Chennai-based animation company.
“We now have a dedicated team of 10 artists that create content for YouTube,” adds Gupta whose earnings from the site fluctuate between $75 to $125 a day.

“It’s a win-win situation. The audience gets free content and we get compensated by the advertising.”

But making money through videos, no matter how good, isn’t as easy. The key is to appear in the results whenever people search for specific content – and here, keywords play a vital role.

Kandivali-based homemaker Gayatri Vantillu, for instance, has identified a need and accordingly tailors her videos and descriptions to meet that requirement.

The 45-year-old’s video channel illustrates food recipes that bear simple keywords like ‘plain rice’ and ‘tomato dal’. And already, her channel boasts of 4,013 regular visitors—including a large number of bachelors, students living abroad, and newly-wed couples—most of whom are based in US and UK.

While some months are lean, Vantillu manages to make about Rs 40,000 a month on an average.

Then, to draw in viewers, Dr Yadav also makes How-To videos about random subjects including: “How To Make 3D Glasses At Home”, “Quick tip to repair a zip,” and “How to tie shoe laces”.

But building a subscriber base can take months, sometimes years and helping artists attract more eyeballs are companies like Mahim-based YoBoHo.

“We’ve been making money on YouTube for years now,” says Hitendra Merchant, founder CEO of YoBoHo New Media that scouts talent to make them YouTube stars.

“If you are talented and can do 50 versions of anything, it’s enough for us to help you start a channel,” he adds. His company produces and manages 40 YouTube channels on a wide range of topics including food, fitness, Indian jokes, lifestyle, education and entertainment. YoBoHo’s monthly revenue from YouTube is in excess of $1,20,000 and an inspiration for many vloggers looking to make a living on the site.

Making most of the program

To know if you are eligible, log on to www.youtube.com/partners. Once you sign up, you can refer to the YouTube Creator Playbook for tips on building an audience. Here are a few:

1. Using the right keywords in your title and tags will help users find your content faster.

2. Use annotations, overlays and the video description box to ask the audience to subscribe to your channel.

3. Interact with your audience. Reply to comments. Abuse is commonplace but comments mean your video is popular.

4. Collaborate with other users. If you’re a fitness channel, collaborate with the best fitness channel on YouTube. That’ll help you find more audiences interested in the same subject.

5. Make attractive thumbnails that visually describe what your video is about.

6. Add subtitles. They’re useful for people who do not have sound.

Keyur Shah wasn’t happy with the stereotypical image of a Gujarati that he saw in Bollywood films. “We are more than just fafda, dhokla, kem cho and su cho!” exclaims the 19-year-old. So he started Gujju Tips, a page on Facebook highlighting the eccentricities of members of his close and extended family. 
“We go to the movie hole and take outside snakes for refreshment,” is one tip for example, that takes a dig at Gujju accents. And then there is a tip about the common Gujarati salutation that believes in forming a relationship even before any transaction, hoping that the new professed relative will ofcourse give his best bit: “Every autowala, taxiwala, grocerywala, chaiwala is our ‘kaka’”.
Like Gujju Tips, a host of virtual ‘Tips’ groups that post funny one-liners are making communities laugh unabashedly at their own idiosyncrasies and traits. Some of the most active groups include Bong Tips, Sindhi Tips, Bihari Tips, Lucknow Tips, Marathi Tips, Nagpur Tips and Hyd Tips.
Taking inspiration from BroTips, an online website with a collection of advice by a man for a man, the Tips groups give advice to outsiders on what it takes to be an insider. 
One of the first Indian groups to start a Tips page was BawaTips. Founded by Victor Daruwala and Hormuz Bana in July last year, the group did what Parsis do best: Make fun of themselves. And in the process, they became a viral hit.
The most popular BawaTips strike at Parsi food (Before KFC, there was chicken farcha), language (Saanti Rakh doesn’t mean you get to keep Saanti) and behaviour (It’s okay to burp loudly, we only want to say how much we loved the food).
While some of them are a play on Gujarati words that mean something completely different in English, others are the unique quintessential qualities that make a bawa a bawa.
“The page in a way got people from the community together. Now there’s an active group who met on our page online and have regular meetups offline too”, says Daruwala, a promo producer with VH1. 
In a similar attempt to ‘promote and celebrate the unique cultural awesomeness of the state of Assam’, Bhringraj Hazarika started Assam Tips. “We are not just about small eyes and hard rock… we are much more than that,” says the About section on the page.
Hazarika a masters’ student, who started Assam Tips for his classmates who were curious to know more about Assamese culture says, “I’ve used several words that are popular in the rural parts of the state.”
He gives the example of Tip 59: Why do you bring water every time I ask for Lao Paani? Here Lao Paani refers to rice beer. 
“And then there are tips that give trivia about lesser known facts in a funny way. Like Tip 76: 60% of people cook their food in Engine Oil. Don’t panic, it’s the name of the brand,” adds Hazarika who collaborated with Kaushika Hazarika, an NRI with roots in Assam, who helps him edit the tips before uploading them. 
With over 15,000 Likes on Facebook in less than two months, Punjabi Tips is another page that grew popular after netizens started giving it a thumbs up for its gems. These include tips like, ‘If it isn’t a Patiala Peg it isn’t a drink,’ ‘When we say Cloney we don’t mean George Clooney. It might mean Defence Cloney’, ‘‘Oye, koi nahin yaar’ is our reply to ‘Shit happens’,’ and ‘Whether you’re a boy or girl, for your parents you’re puttar’.
24-year-old Angad Manchanda, who writes the tips along with his Punjabi colleagues Satwik Khanna, Nishtha Kanal, Esha Matta, says the group is popular because it is an archive of the little details in the day-to-day life of a hearty, boisterous Punjabi family. Today they get tip suggestions from fans spread across 33 countries.
“We upload user-generated content that is quirky giving credit to the person who suggests the tip,” says Manchanda.

Archiving city secrets
‘2 boys on a black pulsar? Yeah, hide your phone and gold chain,’ ‘Yeh cheez, Chandni Chowk mein half-rate mein milti hain. Tell everyone. Everyday,’ and ‘Ustaad is a car mechanic. Always,’ are just a few of the local secrets being archived on the Delhi Tips page by 17-year-old Tushar Sagar. “The purpose of the group is to share facts about my city,” he says.
Debjyoti Roy, a 25-year-old software developer and creator of the Kolkata Tips page describes tips as “minor occurrences that we come across everyday but tend to ignore”.
“I like reading the tips because they tell you things only a true Kolkatite would know,” says Sudipta Basu, a regular reader of the page. Her favourite tips are: ‘If you want to date a Kolkata girl, you have to love Fuchhka’, ‘If you don’t find a book on college street, it probably does not exist’ and ‘Hyderabadi biryani might be world famous. But for a true Calcatian there is no alternative of Arsalan biryani’.
And while most tips get shares and Likes, there are some that generate controversy too. Ensuring to stay on the safe side, admins of these communities have posted disclaimers that read, ‘This page is not meant to hurt anyone. It’s just an honest effort to bring a smile on your face through witty one-liners about our culture and life. We don’t want to promote a division among Indians as a nation’.
Cashing-in on the popularity of their tips, owners of the groups have started merchandising their quirkiness by printing tips on tees. Keyur Shah and Zubin Sheth, the admins of the Gujju Tips community have started their own website where they allow fans to order Gujju Tips teeshirts.
“We’ve printed 13 designs including popular ones like, ‘Chaas is our beer. Cheers!’ ‘We can do garba on Summer of 69’ and ‘Masala Chai is our Red Bull’,” he says. 
BawaTips have their own tees and now a funny music video too.
“The song is just an extension of the Facebook group,” says Daruwalla describing the spoof video called ‘I’m bawa and I know it’ that plays to the tune of ‘I’m sexy and I know it’.” 
For those looking to sample the video, be warned. It’s peppered with colloquial cusswords in Parsi Gujarati, giving you cultural eccentricities in their purest format. 

Geeks have their own brand of esoteric humour. Their jokes revolve around comic books, sci-fi movies, videogames and make semi-obscure references to complicated mathematical equations, Venn diagrams, computer hardware and scientific terminology. The average self-effacing and trivia-obsessed geek derives LOLs by poking fun at noobs (newbies who are considered inferior because of their lack of understanding about how tech works) and cracking inside jokes about Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Matrix. With humour that encompasses one-liners, web comics, memes and that odd to funny images with spello-ridden captions, tech comedy has enough to tickle the digital funny bone of bored techies at work.
If lines like ‘Raspberries are sweet, blueberries are fitting but blackberries are addictive,’ and ‘In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?’ had you grinning, you’re probably semi-geek cause they are some of the most popular geek one-liners being passed around on the web. You qualify to be a prime geek if haikus on system errors, conversations between clueless computer users and tech support and autocorrect gaffes cause you to guffaw.
It is true that most of these jargon-loaded jokes are often incomprehensible to people outside the tech community.
“Geeky humour does involve a little amount of figuring out, so it is easier for techies to get them,” says Tejas Shyam, an engineering student at IIT-B and regular reader of tech comedy sites. His favourites are sites like techtales.com, techcomedy.com and rinkworks.com/stupid that archive computer stupidities, technology mishaps and email blunders.
Like the time when a technician trying to help a customer asked, “To the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the ‘OK’ button displayed?” After which, the confused customer replied, “Wow. How can you see my screen from there?”
But not all of this humour stays confined to tech circles. Some jokes acquire cult status after being passed around by millions, making them memes.

Memes and image boards
Before a funny image or odd news story emerged on your Facebook or Twitter feed or became a meme, it was probably discovered on sites like 9gag, 4chan and Reddit, the pages geeks visit to post things that amuse them.
Mumbai-based Keyur Barad visits 9gag—a website that allows you to post funny images and vote for your favourites—almost every day. The site hosts a huge base of images and comic strips that acquire glory and a meme status as they get passed on overtime.
“There’s Derp and Derpina, a funny strip that highlights a boy-girl relationship and ‘Forever Alone’ a comic on how a guy has his hopes raised to be with someone only to go back to being forever alone again,” says Barad, CEO of Gecko Worldwide, a marketing agency.
Barad’s other favourite is the ‘Y U NO…’ guy who asks an angsty question every day. Like, ‘I TXT U… Y U NO TXT BACK?” and ‘WISDOM TEETH… Y U NO MAKE ME SMARTER?’
“Everyone can relate to these characters because their story lines cut across boundaries bringing basic human emotions and situations to the surface. Besides, their facial expressions are apt for every situation, making them even funnier.”
The anonymous nature of image-board sites like 4chan make them geek haven, ensuring they become a natural breeding ground for memes.
“Geeks are a small community. They are universal in their choice of humour,” says Vineet Pandey, a researcher.
“And because you can be anonymous, all kinds of humour including racist jokes or jokes that openly insult popular celebrities are circulated on these sites,” adds Pandey who gets his quota of geek humour reading webcomics.

Webcomics
“Geeks, nerds and dorks enjoy reading comics because they aren’t really social. They take refuge in reading comics to create a fantasy world of their own and web comics are just an extension of this interest,” says Pandey, a web comic fan.
His favourite is Dinosaur Comics, a 6-panel comic strip whose artwork stays the same with only the text in the voice bubbles changing every edition.
“We enjoy reading things that make us flex our mental muscles to understand it. Anything that is not mentally stimulating is not challenging,” says Pandey who points out that the comic could also interesting if it talks about topics of geek interest like science, physics or math.
In fact, some of the most popular web comics are being created by computer programmers, techies and scientists.
Most notable among these is former NASA roboticist and programmer Randall Patrick Munroe’s xkcd, a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. Using mainly stick figures and without any recurring storyline, the comic is famous for its clever use of jargon in creating jokes. Then there is Chinese roboticist Jorge Cham’s PhD Comics, which focuses on the humor surrounding the life of a graduate school student. A good portion of the strip’s lifetime has been dedicated towards highlighting the difficulties of scientific research, the perils of procrastination, the complex student–supervisor relationship and the endless search for free food.

A LOL for every theme
If you’ve laughed at the funny and out-of-place Facebook status posted by your mom and the embarrassing message your dad wrote on your wall, then (http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com) will serve up similar Facebook activity that’ll humour you.
www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com, a site that allows users to post family photos that didn’t turn out right. Funny family portraits of families in forced poses with bad hair and wearing matching outfits.
http://www.smartphowned.com an archive of really funny phone SMS exchanges.
Another favourite find is http://dontevenreply.com, a database of one man’s emails to classified advertisements.
One of the oldest humour-for-techies sites is www.Failblog.org, an archive of pictures depicting unsuccessful events or people falling short of expectations with FAIL superimposed on them.

Warning: Some of the comics on the sites mentioned above contain explicit content.