Moses comes from a family whose business for three generations is in photography & computer education. Moses however was more interested in videography and that passion made him become Goa’s first YouTuber (Blogger) to achieve a landmark figure of 100 thousand subscribers in just one year. How Moses managed to achieve this is a story one must read. Let’s take a look at this journey of Moses Saldana.
The Journey as a YouTuber
Moses stated that being a YouTuber is his passion and he is not doing this just to make money. “Yes, I must say that there is a good amount of revenue in this but I do it out of passion and it was never my goal to make money,” said Moses adding that he started his YouTube channel 3 years back. “My wife and I would travel to different countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and many such places, and on every trip, I started making small videos sharing my experiences.”
Moses started his career by helping his father in the business of computer education and photography before entering full-on into video-making for YouTube. “In fact, my background in teaching helped me a lot on my journey as a YouTuber. It would become easier for me to explain about the places and things I was filming in the same way I used to teach my students,” said Moses. Moses said that initially he would make videos and travelogue out of India. “I never thought of making videos in India and this occurred to me while we were travelling to various countries. It never came into my mind as I assumed that India may not be so accepting of the YouTube culture and that is why I never took video-making in India seriously,” he added.
The Paradigm Shift
Lockdown was the turning point for Moses who said that “the Covid lockdown brought a huge change in my life and career. Due to Covid, international travel was completely stopped and I had nothing much to do so while sitting at home I started watching lots of videos about Goa,” said Moses.
“There are many videos about Goa and most of them were created by either tourists or bloggers who are not from Goa. I realised that those videos were more about their personal experiences rather than the actual places, culture, history and custom. Besides that, the information provided in those videos was often wrong and that made me take up the challenge to make my own more accurate videos about Goa,” he added.
Moses knew how best to portray Goa and what tourists look for. He had done his preliminary education abroad and that way he made many friends who were from different countries. “I have many foreigners as friends and when they come to Goa I would take them around showing them many places and off the beaten track areas such as Anjuna & Vagator where few Indians go. These new experiences show a more real side of Goa and it gave me an opportunity to explore places I’ve never seen myself.
The Goa Series
Moses has always kept his approach very simple in every video that he’s made. Hiss approach is very simple and down-to-earth which prompted him to create ‘Goa Series.’
“I started my YouTube journey with “Goa Series” in September 2020. I had seen videos made by the other YouTubers on Goa and they sent a wrong message with inaccurate information about Goa,” said Moses adding that is something he personally wanted to change “I didn’t want Goa to be associated with all these vices that were being shown and frankly there are so many beautiful places in Goa and this is the perspective I wanted to change.”
Another thing that Moses saw while doing the Goa Series was the suffering of the local businesses during the Covid lockdown and that motivated him to make videos on their plight also. “I started creating videos on beaches, and during the 2nd Covid lockdown, I started creating more video content on Covid testing, how to enter Goa, procedures & SOPs, and all such information that I had procured with the help of my contacts with the Authorities and the network of like-minded individuals. Even the viewers would update me on the things that I might have missed and these gave me more content ideas,” said Moses. As of now Moses has nearly 500+ videos on his channel and out of them, 200+ videos are based on Goa alone. “I have a schedule for posting videos every day,” he said.
Video Creation Timings
Moses said that he spends around one hour daily on creating his videos. Of course, that can vary but this is just the average time it takes.
“I usually travel to a lot of places around Goa, so for example, if I do North Goa, I would cover 3 places such as Baga, Calangute and Candolim. This way, I would get all the necessary footage that was needed. I work on an Apple laptop which is really fast in terms of productivity with my editing and compiling and this is unmatched with other technology. I use Adobe Premiere Pro software for all my editing and video content creation which is quite fast. It takes me around 15-20 minutes to go through all the edits that need to take place, and I was always familiar with Adobe software so it helped quite a lot.,” says Moses.
Video Making is an Expensive Affair
Moses today runs a very successful YouTube channel but all that video-making is not cheap to create. You need the right equipment, drones, DSLR cameras which all come at quite a cost. “The moment I started making some money from the YouTube, I reinvested it into more equipment,” says Moses adding, “my parents always told me to work and make my own money and support myself.”
A couple of weeks ago, Moses hit his first 100K subscribers and now he is aiming for 1m followers. “My channel is growing very fast and around 300-500 people subscribe on daily basis,” he said. Now Moses started making money from his YouTube channel but there are a lot of expenses and outgoings like transportation, food, repairs of equipment and so on.
Moses’ take on becoming a YouTuber is that one needs to sacrifice a lot. “First thing is that you lose out on quality time with your family. You also need to invest a good amount of time and dedication into something as tedious as YouTube. Some people can become an overnight success if they are really lucky, but the others have to struggle and persist. People tell you different things when you start off, and often there are a lot of misguided comments and information which one might naively listen to, but then you don’t get anywhere. Even when I became somewhat famous, I never let the fame get to me and it never changed my path. Now instead of calling myself a businessman, I prefer to refer to myself as a YouTuber because it was my passion and the day I stop enjoying YouTube, I will leave the platform. So naturally, I would tell all these youngsters and aspiring people to give YouTube a try.”
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