If you know a pre-teen or teenage video game enthusiast, you may have heard about the concept of home-based broadcasting. If you haven’t, you’re missing out on an entire genre of communication in which people don’t just spread their ideas to their audience, they frequently make money doing so, too. Internet video platforms like YouTube are filled with a variety of different videos people make for any kind of reason imaginable. Some YouTubers make a good living recording themselves playing video games and then editing the footage of the game and them playing the game into a short film that others follow, like, and to which they subscribe. Advertisers then pay the gamer so the subscribers see their ads when they’re watching what the gamer puts out to their fans. It sounds crazy, but this works for all kinds of things like recipe blogs and product review sites, too. How do you get in on this if you don’t already know?

Pick Your Poison

What are you looking to share with people? You can choose to broadcast from the comfort of your home just about anything you’d like to put out there on the web. Do you have a hobby you’d like to impart? You can put together a tutorial on how to do that hobby and different uses for the finished product. Your knowledge of home finance and your practical, successful budgeting ideas would be helpful to many. Footage of a rare bird species you know things about would prove fascinating. There is so much you could share that would be of interest to others.

Equipment

What you’ll need to record yourself depends on what you’d like to put out there on the web. If you’re planning a series of videos on fun craft projects to do with kids, you’ll need a camera and some easily acquired editing software. If you’re looking to take your show on the road to illuminate what’s great about your hometown or favorite location, you may need a teleprompter to deliver your script as well as a camera with a tripod and that editing package. Radio requires headphones, a microphone, a mixer, a sound recorder, and soundproofing for the room in which you’re working. You’ll need all that, plus the computer and an audio interface if you’re going to delve into the realm of podcasting.

Wait, What’s That?

For those of us who are just catching up with the idea that our thoughts can be shared with such a wide audience and don’t know what all these things are, podcasting is one way of sharing those thoughts. A podcast is a short audio broadcast on a specific topic and is episodic in nature. Often found on iTunes or Spotify, podcasts can be a simple conversation like the ones Michelle Obama is now hosting, someone reading a book aloud or information on any variety of topics like Ted Talks. Literally, Ted Talks are shorter monologues that people view as “ideas worth spreading” and are easily downloadable onto your computer or wireless device.

Whatever your area of study, expertise or topic of exploration, there’s someone out there who shares your interest. Connecting with them via your broadcast over the internet can be the way to expand someone’s horizons.