Is It Worth Paying for Subscriptions?

I spent roughly 118$ every month to create YouTube videos, and that's on service subscriptions alone. That's not including the price of the camera gear and other accessories. As of today, my channel is not yet monetized, and I don't make any money from YouTube. So the return on the investment is zero. So the million-dollar question is, does it make sense to spend this much money? Does that make me a lousy investor? Before I answer that, we will first look into which subscriptions I use. And then, we will come back to whether it's worth paying for them.

Hey, If you are new here, my name is Srijith. Here, we are all about practical tips to effectively manage our finances and achieve financial independence. For ease of understanding, I will categorize all the subscriptions into three stages based on the content creation process 1. Gather, Create, and Store.

Gather

Every content I make begins with collecting ideas and doing further research on them. And my three most significant sources of information are books, blogs, and Youtube.

Reading is one habit that I think can open up one’s views and make a massive difference in a person's life. I read for 30 minutes daily, which has changed my life for the better. And for most of my reading, I use Kindle now. Because I can highlight specific areas for future reference, and ebooks result in fewer dead trees. Kindle Unlimited, which is like an online library for eBooks, costs 9.99$ monthly, and you get access to their vast collection for a fraction of the cost of a physical copy. Do I need a subscription to read on Kindle? Maybe not. But then, having a subscription saves me the extra step of processing the payment and getting the book, making the whole process easier and faster.

But there will be situations where reading an ebook or a physical book, for that matter, might not be feasible. For example, when you are driving or working out. But with audiobooks, you can listen to a book and do something else simultaneously. Truly speaking, I was a bit skeptical about audiobooks at first. And I still use Kindle for the most part, when it comes to non-fiction reading. But then, like in the situations I mentioned earlier, audiobooks can come in handy. And the service I use is audible, which gets you one audiobook/month for 7.95$.

Now when it comes to video content, YouTube is the go-to place, and I took their premium subscription last year. And if you are wondering, who pays for YouTube? It's free. Trust me; it wasn't an easy decision to start spending that 11.99$ per month to get the premium service, but now there is no going back. I consume a lot of content from other content creators on YouTube, and having an ad-free experience makes the whole thing a pleasant experience.

Now all the content out there is not in the video format. A vast majority of helpful information is written on websites in articles and blogs. I use a free service called Feedly to subscribe to RSS feeds from websites I am interested in. However web articles need time and attention to read, and there would be cases where I am running short of both. That's why I use a Read-it-later app called Instpapaer that does a simple job. It lets you save web articles, download them to your phone, and then read them at your convenience in a friendly, simple, minimalistic format. Service costs 2.99$ per month, and another cool thing about Instapaper is it works seamlessly with my next paid service in the Gather phase, Readwise.

Readwise is my information collector. It doesn't matter how many books we read or how many YouTube videos we watch. These are only the first step in a larger process where you capture the information. Ideally, you need a system for transforming what you read into meaningful action. You need a workflow. And that's what Readwise helps to bring. For example, while reading a book on Kindle, If I find an interesting quote, I will highlight it. Then through integration between Kindle and Readwise, it automatically ends up in my preferred note-taking app. Readwise also has a daily review feature that helps you remember the ideas you read. They have a lite version which is U$ 4.99, but I use the Pro version, which costs around 7.99$.

Create

Now when we come to the actual process of creating content, I am someone who writes down the whole script before I press the record button. And since I am not a native English speaker, Of course, I do make a lot of mistakes while writing. And Grammarly helps me correct them and make my writing clear and effective. Grammarly reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes. A monthly subscription to Grammarly costs around 30$.

If there is one tool I would recommend to every content creator, that would be Canva. Canva revolutionized the content creation space by giving users access to a host of design tools and millions of bundled graphics, photos, and videos for a minimal monthly fee. I use Canva for designing all of my Insta content and YouTube thumbnails. The features are effortless to use, even if you don't have any graphic design skills, and the monthly subscription costs around 12.99$.

I am an Apple fanboy. I use Apple tools as much as possible because of how efficient they are and how well they integrate with the whole ecosystem. That's the reason why I use Final Cut Pro to edit my videos instead of the more popular editor, Adobe Premier. But when it comes to editing photos, Adobe still rules the space. So I use the Creative Cloud subscription that includes the two most popular photo editing tools from Adobe, Photoshop, and Lightroom. Although I don't take many photos other than for YouTube thumbnails, this is one service I intend to use more in the future, and a subscription costs around 9.99$ per month.

Now making the video engaging with stock videos and sound effects is as essential as the content itself. Two services that help me notch up my editing level are Motion Array, my one-stop shop for stock video graphics and sound effects. And Artlist, where I get the soft, gentle music you hear now in the video's background. Motion Array costs around 29.99$ and Artlist costs around 14.99$.

Store

Now when It comes to the final stage of the content creation process, I have only one subscription service that helps me to back up and share my content. There are many cloud storage options available out there, but I settled on the solution from Google because of the reasonable price and ease of use. The service costs 9.99$ for a 2TB storage, which gets the final total to 118$.

The actual value is a bit less than that because some of them I pay with annual subscriptions, which is a bit cheaper. But still spending around 100$ a month for a YouTube channel that doesn't make any revenue may sound like a bad idea. But I don't regret it a bit because I love the whole process of creating content, and these tools help me to make that easy, efficient, and stressless. I am of the personal opinion that if something brings more value to my life, and saves me time and effort, then it is worth paying for that. You can find links to all these services here. This was a bit different from the typical content that I created. I hope you liked it.

Disclaimer: The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. It is important to do your own analysis before making any investment.