Joe Binder, Cambridge based Vlogger

How did you get into vlogging?

I was in Germany on a Work Placement but I was bored of the work I was doing, so it was initially an idea to have it as a side project which I could put all my excess time into. It quickly progressed into something that I realised could be used as a kind of career path.

What's great about what you do, what do you find challenging?

I love the fact that there are actually real people who are happy to watch what I put out there – and that's literally anything, which is just bloody awesome. And those people are explicit with wanting to help me and support me with whatever I'm doing online. There's now this thing, #mossgang, which is effectively a way to refer to myself and everybody who watches my videos as a collective.

At the moment I have just over 6000 subscribers, and there are a few hundred within that who say they're part of this #mossgang. So if I say 'Guys can you help me out by commenting #mossgang on this photo', there are hundreds of people who do it which is just mad. That's definitely one of the pluses! Those people are there, and they're rooting for me, which is nuts.

One of the downsides for me is just time with uni. If I had it my way I'd be doing this every single day. But it's just not possible. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of each video, which is around 3-8 hours editing. It's just not feasible to do over these past few months which is why I've gone down to one video a week.

After finishing university, do you plan to continue vlogging?

Yeah, I'll be putting all my focus on vlogging and actively trying to make good content and try and expand #mossgang.

Do you see vlogging as an art form?

I definitely do see it as an art form. It's quite interesting to see where it started and how it's progressed. I think it started where you'd have a bad phone camera that you'd take around, hold it in one hand extend it away from your face and vlog from there. You'd very much say just what you're doing and how you're feeling.

And I think recently you have people who really pave the way, merging the ideas of blog to the idea of something else like a TV series, which is currently what I'm trying to do with Planet Cambridge.

What people are doing now is creating much more entertaining content visually. It's not just typical, boring vlogs which just have cuts in. But rather you have time lapses and GoPro footage and lots of other creative things.

Who are your arts inspirations?

Tyler The Creator – he is honestly the most nuts person, he just doesn't care about anything. I think he started off as a rapper but he does everything. I like him a lot just for how little he cares about everything and how he manages to channel that into his art and all the visual stuff as well.

For example, if you ever watch an episode of Family Guy and you just wonder how the hell do people come up with this sh*t, that's kind of the same thing you get when you watch his music videos. It's just the most random things thrown together to create something that's pretty cool.

Other inspirations would be Sacha Baron Cohen, again for the same reason, he literally just doesn't care. I think that's really valuable and also important to have as an artist as people aren't always going to like what you do. I admire people who just don't give a f*** and just do it because they know they're going to get to where they want to go.

What advice would you give to young people trying to get into vlogging?

Just start! It's very easy to say to yourself you'll start when you get the new camera or the new laptop so you can edit better, but the most difficult thing is just putting yourself out there and creating any kind of content.

I was at a YouTube conference MCM Comic Con, speaking there a couple of months ago on how to create a YouTube channel. Somebody asked, 'Can you give me advice, I don't know whether to start. So far I've got 200 videos, all perfect and ready to be uploaded, and I want to get that up to 365 so I can post one a day'.

And the problem there is if you're putting that much effort into content, you assume that when you put one up it's just going to explode. So that's really, really not the case. It takes such a long time, especially on YouTube now, to get an audience as it's so hard to get exposure. And so if anybody were thinking about it then absolutely go for it. Create something you're proud of, no matter how good or bad it is, and upload it.

You can find Joe on...