Gadgetory

what's up everybody and welcome to probing Paul episode number four this is my monthly Q&A series I do every month towards the end of the month so for April these are the questions that you asked and my answers to them true to form this is the history of probing Paul going all the way back to Episode one as well as the inception of the name of the title which came from Kyle bless his heart let's jump into it with question number one though this is from Sid from last month's video and he asks how do you earn a living doing this and I have to assume that he's asking about how do I earn a living making YouTube videos that's that's what I do full-time job the answer is three primary ways I have three main sources of income one is directly from YouTube that's what the ads that get served up at the beginning of the videos as they are monetized if you guys see an ad then I get a few cents I don't know how much I get when you guys watch an ad but it's a little bit YouTube bread falls into that category as well if you subscribe to YouTube bread and you watch my videos then I get a little cut of that so that's kind of the the main source of income secondary source but also very important so that I probably can get by without would be Amazon affiliates as well as other affiliate sites that are out there so if you click on one of my Amazon links and you go to Amazon and then you buy something Amazon credits me as having directed the traffic over there now there's a thank you to me they give me a little cut depending on what you bought the cut can be bigger or smaller to that kind of thing there's a third primary way and I've actually been doing that less this year which is for me to actually sell ads that I personally put within the videos for that I'll work with vendors I've worked with like gigabyte and fractal and Coolermaster before and that's just direct sponsorship for me which is a good way to do it and I try to keep those shortened and straightforward and at the beginning of the videos and get them out of the way quick so you guys can you know spot a product if you're interested but then move on and get to the video if that's what you're interested in anyway that's that's pretty much how I make my money it's definitely not something that you could do easily starting out with a brand new channel but more on that with the next question did I did I put these in the right order I think I kind of did all right from phantasm gaming a two-part question which is what advice do you have a con for a content creator who wants to get into tech reviews and doing PC builds so the questions this month had a lot to do not necessarily with the tech directly but with how to do YouTube tech stuff so you know I'm answering them anyway what advice for a content creator who wants to get into doing what I do tech reviews and PC builds secondary question is how do you get companies to send you products to put in builds and reviews both are very good questions the first advice I would give you is not to attempt to start a brand new channel right now especially in tech and expects to immediately or even in the near future make about a lot of money off of it or make that your full-time job I find that the mentality that you go forward with with something like this is very very important and just staying positive all the time is like the primary thing so if you say alright I'm going to start a YouTube channel and it's going to be my job that's what I'm gonna do no matter how passionate you are no matter how good your videos are out of the gates there's a long lead-up time I've been doing this for eight or nine years now my channel less than that four or five years but I did Newegg TV before this so I already had a bit of a following some people who knew who I was and that really helped me get going also there's just a lot more people making this type of content now so it's a little bit harder to get recognized that said my big my biggest thing that the most important piece of advice is do it because you enjoy it do it because you love it and don't do it with the expectation that it's gonna make you money second question which is how do you get vendors or companies to send products to you that is a tricky one the main thing to do is to have lots of subscribers and many viewers but since chances are you don't necessarily have that right out of the gate there are a few other ways to go about it you can sign up for something like the Amazon vine program that gives you you know free samples that you can use sometimes you keep them sometimes you send them back that's a great way to do it try to find companies that are looking for smaller creators that they want to seed products to a lot of companies have kind of a a list of the reviewers that they like to work with and they'll send them products all the time and it'll be harder hard to kind of break into that inner circle of who they work with but there are companies who actively want new and fresh faces looking at the products so like I know AMD RTP is just a one that comes to my mind red team plus and they work with a lot of content creators and and people who do reviews who you know they have websites they have YouTube channels but you know they don't have huge followings and ambi wanted to work with people who were maybe a little bit less experienced a little fresher maybe a fresh perspective I guess would be the best way to put that the other thing I would suggest is just as far as getting products would be not to rely too heavily on getting them directly from an manufacturer seriously consider something like the vine program that I already mentioned there's other retailers that have I think Newegg has a program that's similar like that egg expert one last thing would be to consider buying products and returning them as long as the company you're buying it from has a return policy sometimes you'll be stuck with a 15% restocking fee but then you'll have a product to do a video on versus not having a product to do a video on and that's where I would go with that actually one last suggestion try to find a local a local like CPU repair or Hart a local computer repair shop and see if you can work with them and you know get products to borrow or something like that there's lots of different ways to go about it but yeah definitely having this something to do a video on is very important so stick with that all right here's not a question but I included it anyway this is from Siddharth Sharma and he says I really like your channel your videos are very thorough and critical about stuff and I think you're very honest and giving your views about the products and thanks for making them and keep them coming I included this to make myself feel better because you know everyone can use a pick-me-up from time to time but also kind of a follow-up to the previous two questions when it comes to making videos on YouTube making tech videos and I like the way I make videos is to hopefully get responses like this I guess that's that's what I'm trying to say I like that that Siddharth was so complimentary of course you know you can never argue with that but he likes that I was critical and thorough and those are the things that I try to do in my videos too you know hopefully make him stand out from something that's just you know maybe a little not as in-depth I like to take the product use it as much as I can you know do do everything I can to use it in different ways and give you guys my real announced opinions so I guess going back to the previous questions that's another thing that maybe you could focus on is you know try to be honest trying to be upfront and don't try to like I never try to be overly showy about anything or get really excited like oh this is awesome because I'm bad at getting excited anyway but done alright enough for that let's move on to probably the tech iasts question that I have for today's episode this is from flippin Fred he says okay so Paul why haven't you done any reviews on any fan text cases I'm sure you're gonna say cuz Kyle is taking care of those but I was trying to see if you had comments of your own on them let me know your take all right fan ticks cases I like and though I have not done what I would call directly a review on one I have done a build in one the fan text into pro I've actually done two builds in it now because I took the first build out of it and I did this build in it which is behind me that I did for the msi xin god-like gaming motherboard review I really like fan tax cases they do a crap ton of accessories in them I like the design and the style of a lot of them the look feels you know it's a good look without feeling like it's ripped off from somebody else or like it's to just you know like a box that's sitting there and that kind of thing I will say that having worked with lots of different cases before I can sometimes see where fantex cuts their costs when it comes to certain things like you know how thick the steel is that you use in a case a manufacturer by making that you know just just ever so slightly thinner can save a bunch of money over the entire run of cases that they produce it seems to me like the fantex cases while they have are very rich on features the build quality is not always theirs especially when you compare it to something like you look Coolermaster cases which are built like tanks most of the time I will actually give you a working example right now if you can hear this you guys hear that okay if you can't tell that's the side panel and the side panels on and it's got a thumb screw in it in the back but it still rattles it doesn't sit flush and you know it's not the end of the world when the case is just sitting there it's no big deal a lot of people can deal with you know slightly thinner gauge steel on everything and I do not by any means mean to say don't buy fantex cases I just wanted to point out in my experience working with them since you asked that's the sort of trade-off you get tons of features but maybe not the top tier build quality but still very well-made and still very viable cases and I've recommend them recommended than many times before the yak has done more review on the reviews on them than I have must be rolling in that fantex money okay next apparently my keyboard just stopped working next questions from William build in 55 Burgoon he says can someone please tell me how he switches between the computer screen and the camera and I will actually show you that right now William because I'm using OBS and although I got to shrink the screen down look there's OBS right there in the middle it's capturing you can see what I'm doing and I've set it up with the shortcut keys so I can hit 2f keys and jumping back and forth between them of course ideally I don't have OBS visible on the screen that I'm capturing and okay now that I've moved it off I can show you one other thing that I like to do with it now that I have the capability which is I use another capture card so right now my camera is capturing straight to the computer via Blackmagic intensity Pro card I've also got this L got two elgato game capture hd60 which is an external card so this I can connect up to say a little computer you can't see this computer there's a little computer right here and I did this when I was benchmarking this system so I could be running benchmarks on the on the system passing that through this capture and then to the monitor where I can see it this is capturing over to the system my capture system and then I can capture exactly what I'm doing while I'm running benchmarks without affecting the performance of the system that I'm benchmarking at all I was able to use this method to show you like MSI combustor running at the same time as a full CPU load test and show you real-time temperatures and reporting on the screen and that kind of thing which I would not be comfortable doing and saying here's the results if I was also capturing straight from the system so I find that to be quite handy and yeah OBS is great software I'm not even using the there's a new version that has like a fancier UI that's supposed to be easier to work with but I haven't even tried it yet but really like OBS I use xsplit to here's another kind of production oriented question from gentes jente Stewie 1 2 3 what lens though this is a follow-up to the when I was talking last month about my camera which I use a gh4 and I just got a second gh4 he's asking what lens do I use 12 35 2.8 is so expensive and that's what I have right here also think about 25 millimeter 1.7 the primes are harder to work with he's doing video could I share what kind of lenses I use I understand your pain considering prime lenses prime lenses that you can adjust the focal length so you can't zoom in or out basically you get a fixed thing and that means that in order to get closer or further away you have to move the entire camera unless the camera is on a tripod and you're shooting video well that can be kind of a pain in the ass so here's the lenses I use and also please bear in mind that I have a second gh4 so I got this GH for another gh forever the gh for that I'm using right now dude for that I'm using right now is using canon EF lens that's the lens that I got for my 5d mark ii back when I first started doing YouTube channels or my own YouTube channel I really liked that lens it's an L series 17 to 40 millimeter so it's wide angle f/4 I think is as fast as it gets so I really like that lens and I decided I wanted to keep using it even though I have sold my 5d mark ii so for that lens I have a Panasonic or a Micro Four Thirds mount to EF mount adapter it's made by my Metta booms it's an active adapter but it's not a speed booster they do have a speed booster for it as well but it's like 200 bucks more so I didn't get that anyway so that's the lens that you're viewing me through right now I also have this which is the aforementioned fairly expensive 12 to 35 Panasonic lens that's made specifically for the Micro Four Thirds mount and the gh4 other lenses that I got because I do like having other lens this is a macro lens I got this still when I was using my Canon camera this is made by Tamron and this basically has the mixture of features in that it is an EF mount lens it is a macro lens which is made for focusing really really close in on things like that that would be a good thing to get them use a macro lens for and I wanted super close-ups of you know parts of motherboards or you know keyboard switches or that kind of thing so I needed the F EF mount and I need you to not be terribly expensive so this does a good job for me it's also kind of funny when you move all the way it extends quite a bit it's a grower not a shower anyway that's my that's my macro lens for getting extreme close-ups and this is my brand new lens that I literally have not even used yet I have used this lens but not personally I got this because it is the YouTuber lens this is a extremely an extremely popular configuration for youtubers so if you want to do YouTube and you want to do 4k and you have somewhere in the two thousand dollar range to spend on a camera and the lens solution I highly recommend going for this and you know what I didn't even bring the adapter all right this requires a meta bones adapter the meta bone speed booster and this is a different lens mount than EF so I'm actually rocking three different types of lenses when it comes to the mount which isn't that great but this being the YouTuber lens and me having seen many people use it and also reading some articles on it recently that explained all the all the reasons why this lens works so well particularly in conjunction with the meta bone speed booster and the Lumix gh4 because the the way that the just the light coming through the speed booster hits the sensor it hits it at a really ideal point so you don't it doesn't crop as much even as a standard lenses and it turns out really nice this goes to F 1.8 and I believe what the speed booster it gets down to like F 1.2 this is the Sigma 18 to 35 pro art lens and it's really nice this was about this goes for 800 I got it from about 650 bucks on eBay because I think it's an international version I don't know if my us warranty will work with it but hey you know I'm 50 bucks off right sure I'm sure it will be fine a couple more quick questions this one's from Zhi Hao Yu Zhi Hao Yu I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong what kind of desk you're using in most of your videos is it a DIY solution it is a Kia hammer countertop birch is the finish there are three of them they're the eight foot long versions and yes it's kind of DIY look at my garage work log series and you can see when I installed all of these I'm using the IKEA table legs that you can just buy and I installed them in various places to give it both support and allow me to scoot in to the desk when I needed to and sit down comfortably and everything do you often search for things that are directly in front of you says asks Viper tail 78 yes yes I do actually constantly it's really sad sometimes getting down to the end max Patera asks a very nice question you know Paul I work at hinterland brewery in Green Bay what up what up Green Bay Wisconsin hypothetically if I were to send you some beer to try it would you a I'll drink it on awesome hardware I would say max yes I'd be happy to drink your beer on awesome hardware I'd be more than happy in fact here's my p.o box Paul's Hardware Apia box for three to five and you can ship me stuff there if you are going to ship me anything that is edible I would prefer that it was sealed just for anyone who has any ideas out there but you know got to be safe and everything since I'm publishing APO box a shipping address on the web but yeah we already got some fudge that came all the way from Devon in the UK and it was absolutely delicious so I'd be happy to taste some Wisconsin beer as well that would be amazing but guys that is all for probing Paul this week no this month I hope you have enjoyed it I know I rambled a bit but you know ask me questions and I just start talking stay tuned for another video coming up this weekend's actually a garage work log is what I have in store for you if you hadn't noticed there's new and colorful lights going on behind me I I've managed to do lighting along this top row here and the bottom row and I also painted I did painting underneath there and other manual-labor things and I did a garage work log out of that so stay tuned for that hit the thumbs up button on this video if you enjoyed it leave me comments in the comment section below because that is generally where I have been going to grab the questions for next month and if you want to buy stuff and help support my cause oh you know what I totally forgot to even say that when I was talking about ways I make money on YouTube that's the other way I make money on YouTube is merchandising so if you want to help me out with the merchandising I have mugs plank glasses as well as shirts on store pulsar Burnett you can buy them there and get yourself some swag and then you will also help me you know eat food and pay the mortgage and all that kind of stuff anyway thanks a lot for watching again guys we'll see you next time you