Its not mystery to say that for a few years, I have followed some of the top vloggers on you tube, partly because at one time I really wanted to be like them. I mean come on you wake up in the morning to a camera, basically you live your life in front of the camera, and you build an audience and hopefully get paid...right? Right!

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Well wrong...Because you tube changed all that with its terms of service.

So vlogging really started to become a thing 2011 and 2012, we started to see the creation of people springing to life on camera delivering entertaining content. From Gaming to Food, from Art to Makeup reviews, its pretty much all on there and we can related to it in someway.

Pretty much self explanatory, when we have a problem and we need some help we fall back to you tube.

But what happens, when you feel you have reached your peak with what you have done, where do you go next?

This article, we are going to look at a case study ,of someone who I am still subscribed to and I have not watched any of her videos for a while.

The case of Bunny Meyer aka Graveyardgirl

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Meet Bunny Meyer, who has had a you tube channel since 2010. When she first came on to you tube, I was interested due to her strange interest in the afterlife. She actually spent time in graveyards, talking about long forgotten headstones and the people who lay beneath the ground, covering ghost boxes and ouija boards I was hooked on her content.

Here is one of her earlier videos

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The video was uploaded 7 years ago and still gets views today, why because the content was interesting and specific about the content of supernatural. That is how I personally found Bunny in the first place.

Bunny covered a lot of interesting content, she also talked about her love of thrift store hauls. She began to teach people about buying fashion for a fraction of the price, this in turn helped her expand her content and she began to move away from the paranormal, and into the makeup fashion line. This of course did not really interest me, but I found Bunny to be funny and interesting, and she launched two video series called follow me around and *Does this thing really work.

• Follow me around, was basically Bunny going to a store to buy products, but you could see it would take her out of her comfort zone. It was fun and interesting to watch her walk around checking out different products, my personal favourite was the halloween walk arounds.

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• Does this really work was a wonderful feature because Bunny would order as seen on TV products and test them out. So when you saw those TV adverts and thought hmmm that could be good, I would go straight on you tube to see if Bunny reviewed it first.

Here is the review of the Soda Stream she did.

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By 2014 Bunny was doing amazingly well, with her tutorials and videos that she had reached 4 million subscribers. She made national TV news who ran a feature about her being a vlogger and the massive influence she had on you tube fans. Each video that she uploaded was reaching in excess of 1 million views, which is a lot.

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Bunny was a true success, which continued when she launched her own make up line and beauty equipment. She had created an amazing brand, not only talking about the brand but showcasing clothing styles and looks for the everyday woman.

But with success comes a fall.

When you tube came out with their algorithm, before vloggers would not think about the views, or the amount of subscribers or even the likes. But the algorithm changed all that, and people like Bunny were becoming more aware of that. Of course they were it was all connected to how much money they would make from their advertising revenue.

So understandably what were fun video's before, turned into more high pressure focus on quality produced videos. Rather than vloggers just being themselves, and doing what they did most of the time. Suddenly Bunny's video views started to decline, where before she could get a million views, started to turn into one hundred thousand.

A huge difference in the ratio, and by this time I had stopped watching her, because the Bunny I had wanted to see, didn't want to share that part of her life with people. She suffered hugely with anxiety, and would often say something had happened but she did not want to talk about it.

It was in the last 12 months ,that her numbers were dramatically falling and her content became very similar. She had moved to a new house, yet she never showed it off. She would often do the same videos in the same room, showing off a new product or a haul. The content never changed, people were getting tired and just stopped watching.

Bunny's you tube channel was in trouble.

So there I was just reading some blogs tonight, when a notification came up about Bunny crying??? Intrigued I headed for popcorn and settled to watch the video when suddenly I did not see Bunny appear but Shane Dawson?

Meet Shane Dawson.

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Shane has been a vlogger also since 2010 who now has a huge following over over 13 million subscribers. Personally I don't really watch many of his videos as I never seemed to connect with him. He just seemed like some camp guy, who liked to swear a lot and talk about things that were not really worth talking about.

However I was impressed when he called out one of his haters a couple of months ago, and met him, helped grow his you tube channel and bought him a car.

Don't believe me check out the video.

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I admit that I was impressed that he would do such a thoughtful thing for someone else, as I had learned that vloggers or at least a lot of them tend to make it about them and what they have... but we will talk more about that afterwards.

So I started to watch Bunny's video and seeing that Shane was giving her some feedback, I thought I ought to check out what Shane had been doing.

It would seem that a week ago Shane had filmed kind of a documentary where he went to Graveyardgirls, house to chat to her and help her to find out what was wrong with her channel. It was on the very first footage when graveyardgirl asked for her house not to be filmed, that we knew there was a problem.

So he filmed a three part documentary, where he chatted with Bunny about the problems she was having, I confess I watched and had a severe lump in my throat, but warning still a lot of campness in the video.

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By the end of the second video, I learned that Bunny was hiding so much, because she did not want to focus any attention on her for fear of trolling and bad comments. She has moved to a beautiful mansion in texas, she owns a porsche convertible, a tesla, she has an arcade in her home and she has not shown any of it.

For fear that people might give her bad comments about the success she has made of her own life. Shane literally had to convince Bunny that it was ok to have the life she was having, and to be able to share it with her loyal fans.

We also learned that part of the problem was that Bunny was thinking about such things as how many viewers she would get, how many likes and how many subscribers. Shane explained by opening up a little more to her viewers would attract a whole new audience, and possibly bringing back the original subscribers, from when she was most popular.

Kudos to Shane

After watching Shane's video and Bunny's recent video she did, it was like a sigh of relief to see that she came to her senses, and that vanity has nothing to do with vlogging, and those that believe it does do not count.

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Shane has really grown up and dedicates to help others more on the channel now which is really good to see, because of the help he is giving it shows also that content is not dead, there is a potential for people regardless of what they want to do, be it vlogging or blogging that if they work hard enough they can do it.

Conclusion

Content is not something we throw together and prepare a fifteen minute piece on, it should be well thought of and well planned, but the most important thing is if you don't like it then no one else will.

I mean what is the point right? Do you write or record yourself now, for the purpose of what the viewer wants to watch or read. Or what you want them to watch or read. Viewers are not interested in that they are interested in you!!

They are interested in your passion, your interests and your thoughts, so asking yourself the questions do I count, should never be a question that comes into your head in the first place, because you need to let your audience make that decision for you.

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It took Bunny four years of constant work to reach success, which was with hard work and persistance. She had a goal she set to achieve and she did it because she remained focused, but when we lose that focus then we lose our goal, so focus is the key here readers.

We can accomplish what ever we choose to do, but we must stop doing two things. We must stop seeking the permission of others if its ok to do, and secondly we must keep the goal in mind. I would encourage you to take stock now, and reflect on what you have been doing and ask yourself, did you enjoy making it and if you didn't you need to stop and go back to what you love to do.

It does not matter which platform you choose to use as long as you are comfortable with it, understand that it will take time for you to grow and learn and finally stick with it, there are so many examples I can give where I have watched persistance pay off, but the problem we hear so many times is how long will it take?

And with that now go and make your week amazing.

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