A Talent for Driving Everything
“Oh, really?”
I heard the whole story from Choi Kang-san. After I took the video down, his fan cafe had turned into a little tribunal, with people congratulating one another for putting the offending party in its place and calling it a sweet, refreshing win. Then, once they belatedly learned the truth, all hell broke loose.
On top of that, when Choi Kang-san personally stepped in and cracked the whip, the fans came swarming in to apologize to me. Somewhere along the way, more and more of those people naturally became my subscribers.
With the view count surging so quickly, I’d been forced to row even though there wasn’t any wind in the sails. That, in turn, was what got the algorithm to notice me.
What began as an attempt to set the record straight had ended up creating a positive feedback loop instead.
No wonder my subscriber count had jumped so much.
About half of them were from Choi Kang-san’s fandom, and the other half seemed to have come in through the algorithm as new traffic.
Sure enough, when I checked the comments, there they were.
Everyone wanted me to put the video back up, if only to make up for how bad they felt.
Still, it did look like the views were solid.
The video has been made public.
“Okay, I just made it public.”
“No, I should buy. I’m the one who owes you.”
“Fine. Thanks.”
Since the subject had come up, I decided to ask him something else.
“Hey, Kang-san. You know Actor Kim Mu-hwan, right?”
“I worked with him not too long ago.”
The kid’s energy shot through the roof in an instant.
“No. I was just cooking Japanese food.”
“Anyway, I’ll explain the details later. The important thing is, I’ve arranged to have a meal with Actor Kim Mu-hwan at our workshop. He said he’d get in touch with you and come by after setting a date. I thought you should know in advance.”
“Probably.”
“Sure.”
“A ten-thousand-subscriber YouTuber really does feel different.”
In just one morning, my subscriber count had jumped by a huge margin. Of course, that didn’t mean you could rake in a mountain of money from YouTube.
YouTube Revenue
Last 24 hours: 46,400 won.
At best, I was making around fifty thousand won a day. And even that was thanks to Choi Kang-san’s fandom doing a coordinated push and driving the views up like a livestream raid.
Starting tomorrow, I suspected it would fall off even more.
Making money from YouTube was never easy in the first place.
They said you needed at least 100,000 subscribers before you could make around 3 million won a month, which meant my channel had only just started to toddle on its own feet.
Still, it’s good that I caught a wave.
The growth had seemed slow for a while, but thanks to the unintended noise marketing, I’d finally ridden the algorithm. Not only the recent video, but the rest of my uploads were also seeing higher view counts across the board.
Of course, my subscriber count still wasn’t exploding any further.
Once I passed 10,000, the surge leveled off sharply, and the number started climbing at a painfully slow pace.
I looked it up, and apparently that was how YouTube worked unless you were a celebrity running the channel yourself: growth came in steps.
You’d get one big jump, then hit a plateau. If you held on and pushed through that, it would start climbing again to 20,000, then 30,000, and so on.
Still, once you reached 10,000, they said momentum kicked in and it got easier from there, so all I could do was trust the process and keep going.
Come to think of it, it really is different once you cross ten thousand subscribers.
...
Formal proposals connected to business had started coming in.
Compared to the way they’d been pouring in from the blog like weeds after rain, the sheer number was still much lower, that much was true.
But the quality of the offers is different.
Most of the proposals I got through the blog were sponsorships. In plain terms, they’d provide me with a particular product or service for free and ask me to review it.
YouTube was different. It wasn’t just about giving me the service itself; they were also paying an actual fee on top of that.
So for a single video, I’m seeing offers from 500,000 won on the low end up to as much as 1 million won?
Considering the time and labor that went into a video, it wasn’t a bad offer.
That’s fairly high compared to ordinary channels, too.
Probably because my channel leaned heavily toward handicrafts, and the audience skewed more toward people in their thirties and forties than teens or people in their twenties. That likely pushed the rate up.
People say YouTube makes more from ad revenue than from view counts these days, and now I can feel it for myself.
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t tempted.
If I shot a video and just worked in about a minute’s worth of content about the product, a few hundred thousand won would land in my account.
But for now, I’ll hold off.
Right now, instead of cashing in immediately through YouTube, I needed to grow the channel.
As a viewer myself, when a video has an ad inserted, I can’t quite put it into words, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Setting aside skipping it, I hated when it broke the flow, and I disliked how blatant it felt.
Besides, with my personality, I don’t think I’d be able to weave ads in naturally anyway.
It would be hard for me to just declare that something was unquestionably a good product.
Unless I were desperate for money, I don’t think this is the time.
Besides, I was already making enough money through my other side hustles.
I decided not to get greedy.
For now, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing and just upload videos.
After all, the channel had already caught a current.
As long as I didn’t start acting out of character, the climb would keep going.
“Hey, Ten-Thousand-Subscriber YouTuber!”
“...Shut up.”
“Hah-ha-ha! Congrats.”
“Please don’t make a scene about it at the company.”
“I know. I made sure nobody was around before I started teasing you.”
Deputy Manager Park snickered as he thumped my back a few times.
“Still, I’m glad the controversy got sorted out.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I hadn’t expected the crisis to become an opportunity.
“So what are you doing today?”
“Writing reports... nothing special, really.”
“Then come with me on a business trip.”
“You’re not taking me somewhere weird again, are you?”
“This time it’s domestic.”
“Where?”
“Asan.”
“In Chungcheong?”
“Yep.”
He pulled out his phone and showed me a photo.
“You remember that agricultural machinery ad that got assigned to our department last time, right?”
“Yeah, the one that was supposed to go out with a catalog, too?”
“Right. We’re heading out to shoot that, but I figured two people should go. Nothing hard about it. We just need the basics.”
“All right. What time are we leaving?”
“10:30. Just drive there.”
“Okay. I’ll get ready.”
The huge field in Asan was bathed in warm sunlight.
Massive agricultural machines stood in a neat row.
“Sir, out here we need the tractor’s elegance to come through. Something powerful and imposing, you know? You get what I mean, right?”
“Yes. I’ll get started right away. We can review the work and talk again after that.”
“Sounds good.”
The staff member from the agricultural machinery company’s promotions team, the photographer, and Deputy Manager Park were all immersed in the shoot, discussing every detail with care.
Following the concept they’d planned and prepared in advance, they kept adjusting the machinery, changing the angle, and even adding decorative elements to the exterior as the shoot continued.
As for me, unlike the three of them, I’d only come along to support them for the day.
Nice weather.
I enjoyed the warm afternoon while pretending not to be idling too obviously.
It wasn’t my project to begin with, so there honestly wasn’t much I could do.
It was better to step back and watch than to shove in an opinion about something I didn’t understand.
Then, while I was enjoying the weather, it happened.
“Hey, Kang Assistant Manager.”
Deputy Manager Park called me over carefully.
“Yeah? What is it? Need help with something?”
“Could you climb up on the tractor for me, just once?”
“...Me?”
“It might look better if someone’s sitting on it. If you wear a straw hat, your face won’t show anyway. Just once, okay?”
“Sure.”
This was the sort of thing that happened all the time.
When you were preparing an ad, even if there was a model, it was often employees like us who ended up stepping in.
Actually, was it the year before last?
I’d stood in as someone near the model and even appeared in a magazine.
Of course, nobody recognized me.
“Be careful climbing up. It’s pretty high.”
I walked toward the tractor, and up close it was even bigger than I’d expected.
Still, I could see the steps clearly enough, and getting up there wasn’t difficult.
I sat down, grabbed the steering wheel, and asked, “Is this okay?”
“Yep. Just sit there comfortably. It’d be better if you rested one arm on the wheel.”
“Okay.”
I adjusted my posture, then shifted around a few times until it felt right.
Looking down at the photographer and the staff talking earnestly below, it seemed they’d found a new angle they liked.
While I sat there by myself, something suddenly caught my eye.
Huh...
The tractor’s steering wheel came into focus, along with the dashboard and a few buttons and levers below it.
That one moves the bucket up and down, and that one controls the tiller. And that switch next to it is the PTO button.
Everything snapped into place at a glance.
Hold on. How do I know this?
I had never once operated a tractor in my life.
This was, in fact, my first time even riding one.
“Kang Assistant Manager, let’s move over here!”
At Deputy Manager Park’s call, I shifted over to the side.
“Do I get on there too?”
“Yeah, just ride on the combine for me.”
This time, the same thing happened.
I can see exactly how to operate it?
Nobody had taught me, and I’d never studied it, but somehow I could understand it instinctively.
And it wasn’t just those two. Every time I got on a rice transplanter, a manure spreader, or any of the other agricultural machines, the controls were all laid out in my head as if I’d known them forever.
Even when I was handed the drone controller, which was used a lot for farming these days, I could perceive the fine details of its operation in an instant.
The same went for the excavator that required a license.
Wait a second. Could it be...
Was this the effect?
Reading it again, I realized it wasn’t limited to driving cars.
If I can operate any vehicle perfectly...
In other words, if a person can ride in it, then I can control any machine at all.
Then does that mean...
I hurriedly pulled out my phone and searched for “how to operate an aircraft.”
A photo taken from the cockpit view.
That’s the rudder pedal, that’s the trim wheel, that’s the reverse thrust and the autopilot panel, trim, altitude setting system, landing gear, and navigation controls.
Not only could I read the panels, I could also understand exactly how to operate them, right down to the last detail.
Which meant...
Not just cars, but planes, helicopters, yachts, and ships too. I can operate all of them?
It looked like I’d picked up a talent far more astonishing than I’d ever imagined.