Lauren Bateman started YouTube with just a phone and tripod. She recommends two upgrades that matter most: good lighting and a lapel microphone like the Pop two ($13-15). One of her early phone videos got over 1.5 million views.
Now people ask me all the time, laurem, what kind of equipment do you need to get started on YouTube? And I personally don't think you need a lot of equipment, but there are a couple things I would recommend to you based on my experience as a YouTuber.
So right now I have a lot of fancy equipment. I've got nice lighting, I've got lapel mics and other microphones. I got back lighting you can see there. But really nice HD camera. I used the Canon Ti7. So what was I doing before? So when I First started on YouTube, this is what I used. I used my phone and that was it. I didn't even have a lapel mic. Actually, I can put a video up over here of one of my first videos that I put up. It's very dark, it's very graining. I was just using the overhead lighting in the room and I don't even think I had a microphone. It wasn't the greatest thing at all. But I got started and eventually one of those really crappy videos that I shot with my phone got pinned, picked up and it has over 1.5 million views and keeps getting views for me every single day. So the most important part with YouTube is not to worry about what equipment you're using. A phone with a tripod. Tripod will just get you started. You don't need fancy equipment to get started. I invested in that stuff later. But there's a couple recommendations I would recommend if you're going to get started and you can afford to put a little money into your budget. The first thing I recommend is lighting. Having good lighting can even make a crappy camera or even a phone look so much better. What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to turn off the lighting for my video so that you can see how it affects the quality of my camera. Here you go. I've turned off all of my lighting and yes, I could adjust some of the settings and functions on my camera, but you can see how the quality has greatly decreased. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put on one light for right now so you can just see. By just turning on one of my lights, I have greatly improved the quality of my video. Now you don't have to go and get expensive $200 Halo lights like I have. Amazon has some great light boxes, you know, 60, 70 bucks that you guys can go buy. But you can see just having one light does plenty. Now, I particularly like my videos pretty bright, so I use Two lights. One. One is a little bit brighter, one is a little bit duller. And on the background, I throw in a little up lighting in the background just to give a little feature. Some people like to use like a color lens. It's just like a little plastic piece of lensing. And then you could have a piece of color coming up the back wall. I don't do that, but I just. I just like it this way. But you can just see by adding some lighting how I went from really crappy video quality to much better video quality. So if all you can do is invest in one piece of lighting, I would high, highly recommend doing that. It won't break your bang. The other thing I highly recommend is getting a good microphone, a good lapel microphone that you can clip on. I've actually got one clipped to my microphone here. You guys have noticed this mic. This mic's not on. The mic's right here. Hear that? So I actually have a microphone here. I could attach it to my. My clothing, but I'm Italian and I talk with my hands a lot, so I have a very bad habit of like hitting the microphone. So I try to put it on something stat. Now with the microphone, the closer you are to the speaking. So, for example, if I had this microphone back there, it wouldn't sound. It probably wouldn't sound the greatest. So I try to put, you know, I try to speak as close to the microphone as possible because you'll get a better sound pickup. This is a pop two voice lapel microphone. It'll work with the smartphone. I think this was only like 13, 14, 15 bucks, not very expensive. And you'll get a much better audio quality. So those are my two biggest recommendations. You don't need to go out and buy a $700 camera like I have. If you start there, I think you have. You know, that's a great start. And you can improve over time as you get more and more money to invest in your equipment.
