The Video Frontier: Alaskans stake claims in YouTube gold rush.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa
• Position: MEDIA & ARTS

You were TIME magazine's Person of the Year for 2006, thanks to a certain tube first established one year earlier. YouTube was one of several platforms from the early '00s that enabled, encouraged, and even demanded users to generate their own internet content. The video hosting service, acquired by Google a few months before TIME'S mirrorreflective cover, gave "you" a way to broadcast globally-and Alaskans have used its tools to bring their home state to viewers worldwide.

YouTube makes uploading videos easy, but counting on the platform for income is as strenuous as any job.

"I know some people who make good money on the platform, but they work harder than everyone else," says Jake, creator of the channel How to Alaska. "It's one of those jobs that people look at and idolize those doing it, but what they don't recognize is just how much work goes into putting out good videos and content and how much of a grind it can be. It doesn't come easy."

Another Jake, Alaskan videographer and photographer Jake Sloan, learned the same lesson after three and a half years on YouTube.

"It has taken a lot of work with almost no payoff until this last year. I did it every single week for three years without getting revenue and views to get where I am now," Sloan says. "People think it's easy: they post videos, and in six months, they have 100,000 followers. But it takes a lot of investment up front."

Sloan recalls how reality set in during his early grind. "Those first three years, I would spend a day filming, a day editing and posting, and then waiting for people to watch," he says with a laugh. "I might get three views--me watching it twice, and one from my mom."

The Guy Who Stands on Glaciers

Sloan's latest video (as of publication) racked up 535 views in its first day; the one before that tallied 24,000 in five days. His record is 616,000 views. More than 78,000 subscribers await each new upload on his eponymous channel. Sloan's videos are, in a way, metavideos geared toward helping other creators make their own content, such as reviews of filmmaking equipment, tutorials, and storytelling advice.

"What got me started was recording adventures with myself and my kids for our memories, and then I purchased a drone and posted something about that, and it got a lot of views," he explains. "That got me looking at the whole idea of the business model behind YouTube and how random people on the internet finding videos that you post can lead to bigger things down the road."

Sloan...