Can Older YouTubers be Successful? Why Age is Your Superpower

I started my YouTube journey when I was 61 years old. I've been doing it for roughly 19 months. I built my channel out to over 4600 subscribers. This post is specifically to talk about the traits that somebody older has that they can bring to YouTube and help them be successful.

The one thing that I want to make clear, is that as an older person, you have something to bring to this platform that younger people don't have. And nothing against younger youtubers, there's some great ones out there. I just think the space is for everybody. And I think if you're older, you have something to share. And I think as we talk about these traits, you'll start to see where you fit in and how you can get started.

The 7 Superpowers of Older YouTubers

So let's go ahead and start looking at these 7 traits that I want to call superpowers, because why not? We're older. We've been through a lot. So I think we've got some superpowers that younger people don't have. And I'm going to go ahead and jump right into the first one.

Life Experience

So superpower number one is life experience. And that's one of the cool things. When I watch older creators, they have a lot of life experience to draw on, which means when they're creating content, it's very nuanced. It has more to offer because they just have a lot of life experience to draw on.

So they have a lot of things that they've gone through, a lot of, you know, ups and downs in their lives. I think that comes through when they're creating their videos. And I think that's very compelling and I think people are very attracted to that. I do think that demographic of older viewers are attracted to it as well.

And you know what? A lot of people are watching YouTube videos now, not just younger people. So that's where we fit in and we can share our life experience with each other and use that to our advantage when we're creating content.

Established Expertise

So the second superpower that older YouTubers bring is their established expertise. So this means older YouTubers, when they pick their niche and they start talking about it, they don't have just years of experience, they have decades of experience in a specific topic.

And so that's what's so compelling is, you know, people have spent their time doing different things, honing a craft, honing a skill, and that's expertise that they can bring to the table that, you know, a younger youtuber just wouldn't have.

And they're able to tell stories about their craft. They're able to just really paint a much more complete picture about certain topics just because they've been involved in that area for so long.

Patience / Persistence

So the third superpower that you're going to have as an older content creator on YouTube is patience, or maybe I'll call it persistence. But the point is, you're not so interested in instant gratification because, you know, life doesn't work that way. You've been around the block a few times, so you realize, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is a YouTube channel.

So that patience, that persistence that you have is really going to work in your advantage because you know that your channel is just not going to blow up with one viral video. Take my channel. The growth of my channel has been this long, slow, steady grind.

And so it might have been easy for me to just go ahead and quit, you know, early in the ball game, but I just knew that I just needed to tough it out, I needed to hone my craft, I needed to get better at it.

And so patience or persistence, whatever you want to call it, that's a superpower that you have because you've just gone to work every day for years and you know that, you know, sometimes there's good days at work and sometimes there's bad days at work, and you've been through enough in your life now that you're not going to quit as easily maybe as a younger person would. That's a superpower, take advantage of it and that's going to help you grow a YouTube channel.

Unique Perspective

The fourth superpower that you bring is your unique perspective. If you just look at YouTube at a cursory level and you jump in, it seems like it's very dominated by younger creators. But the cool thing with older creators is you're bringing something to the table that young people can't bring.

And that's a unique perspective just by virtue of the fact that you've lived 40 or 50 or 60 years and so when you're creating content, your approach and your perspective and the way that you share stories is just going to be a lot different.

And so from a demographic standpoint, you'll probably find your channel attracts older viewers because they're more in tune with you and that's going to really help your channel growth. And for younger viewers that might find your channel, you're sort of a mentor. It allows you to be a mentor and I think that's really cool too.

Authenticity

The fifth thing that I think is a real superpower for older YouTube creators is authenticity. I think once you reach a certain age, you just get to this point where you don't really care as much about what people think about you.

So you're more apt to speak more truthfully and just lay it on the line. Realize that there's going to be some people that like what you have to share and there's going to be other people that don't and it's just not going to make that much difference to you at this point in your life.

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So being authentic is obviously being truthful, but it's also being willing to sort of put yourself out there and not really care too much about what some of the negative comments might be. You know, you're just doing your thing, it's your channel, you can do what you want with it, you can talk about what you want to talk about and you just do it.

And being authentic is part of that. That's a real superpower. And the fact that you can be authentic and not really worry about what other people think about you and you can tune out maybe some of the negativity. I think that's really important.

Occasionally you will get negative feedback. I think being an older youtuber, I just look at negative feedback and I go, you know, okay, whatever, somebody's having a bad day or they didn't get what I was talking about, I get it.

That's okay. I just move on and I go to the next video. And so that authenticity that you offer is going to do a couple of things. When you're really authentic with people and you're transparent with people, they understand you're doing the best job that you can.

Work Ethic

I think the sixth (and this may be the biggest superpower that you have as an older creator is work ethic). So most of us at 40, 50 years old, 60 years old, we've been showing up to jobs for decades. We show up day after day, month after month, year after year. We have to meet deadlines.

We have to deal with difficult people. There are just all kinds of things that we have to do in our jobs. And I think the fact that many of us probably had jobs early on in life as well, even before we got into college, is huge. I mean, I've had some kind of job where somebody's been cutting me a paycheck since I was 14 years old.

So I'm sure a lot of you were in the same boat. You know, you worked early. A lot of younger people don't work that much in high school anymore because unfortunately, people don't hire a lot of high school students. And the other thing is, many times their very first job ever is maybe if they're a college intern or something or they've graduated high school and they go get that first job.

So for a lot of us, we've been working longer than that. We know what work ethic is. We're going to show up week after week and continue to create our videos, look for ideas, build our channel, build our community around our channel. And that work ethic is really going to help you in the long run because there are a lot of highs and lows in YouTube.

Some videos hit it big and it's exciting. Lots of people watch your video. Other videos, not so much. And, you know, to really get to the point where you have a lot of viewers watching a lot of your videos all of the time. We're talking about subscriber bases that are like 50,060 and 70,000, and it takes a while to get there.

I'm not even close to that. And so I would have given up a long time ago, but I've just never been one to start something and then give it up if I don't see immediate results. That's where your work ethic and all the times that you've had to put up with junk at work and still slog through it, that's going to help you with your YouTube channel.

Resilience

So the seventh and last superpower that I want to talk to you about is resilience. Resilience is loosely related to work ethic. And here's what I mean by resilience. And here's why I think it's your superpower.

If you're 40 or 50 or 60 years old, you have enough life experience under your belt that you've gone through really difficult times, you've gone through good times, but regardless, you didn't give up. That's what being resilient is about.

When you release a video, it doesn't go the way that you want it to go. It doesn't matter. You step back and you look at that video and you go, okay, I see what I did wrong. I see what worked. I look at my analytics, it says my engagement wasn't very good. My hook to this video just didn't draw people in. I'm going to do better next time. That's resilience.

Going through, examining the videos that you do, looking at your growth, looking at your popular videos and finding other ways to capitalize on those and keep creating more videos like that, looking at your analytics and determining, hey, I've tried that kind of video in the past. It didn't work very well. I'm not going to do that anymore. But that's what resilience is really about.

Resilience is that capability to just bounce back from setbacks. And YouTube is just one of those things.

Resilience is that capability to just bounce back from setbacks. And YouTube is just one of those things. Like anything in life, there's times when things are going great, times when things aren't going that great. So resilience is a superpower. Take advantage of it. I think resilience comes with age.

And so I think the older you are, the more resilient you are because you've just been through so much in your life. And so that's an advantage that you have that younger creators don't have. And I think it's going to really be one of those crucial things that'll serve you well as you create your YouTube channel.

Conclusion: Final Thoughts for Older YouTubers

So I hope you found this information helpful. I hope you found it encouraging. I wanted to help you think about all those things that you gain from life experience and how those are going to be beneficial for you as you create your YouTube channel. I'm glad I had a chance to meet you. And until next time, take care.