Brady Drake
With 892k subscribers and over 110,000,000 views, Scott Cramer is one of the biggest local YouTubers. And unlike most who currently create content for a living, he knew he wanted to do this all along.
We were lucky enough to sit down with Cramer, who was born in Kindred, ND, and graduated from MSUM, for an exclusive interview.
Q&A with Scott Cramer
So, what do you remember about the first YouTube video you made?
We used to make videos on my family’s home video camera. We made a bunch of them before I ever posted anything to YouTube. The first YouTube video I posted was a rip-off of a Ryan Higa video when I was around 12 years old.
We did that for about two or three years—just doing different versions of what other YouTubers were doing because we were just kids. Then, I started figuring out some of my own stuff but I stopped completely when I got to high school.
I stopped because it was kind of lame at the time. Nobody was doing kids would pull up my videos in the computer lab—it was embarrassing.
They weren’t making fun of me or anything—I just, even now, don’t like being around people who are watching or talking about what I do. It’s funny because my job is very public, but I hate the attention being on me. So I stopped because people were talking about it at all. Not that they were doing it negatively, but just because they were like talking about it all.
However, I always had the idea that this is what I was going to be doing some day. The first YouTubers came about around like 2007 or 2008 when I started wanting to do it. I saw these people making stuff so I realized there must be something to it. It felt like watching TV and I knew people on TV were doing television as a job so I thought that people must be making money. I didn’t learn until much later that nobody was making any money at that time.
When I got to high school, people were starting to YouTube as a real job, but it didn’t work for me in the past so I didn’t do it. It was the same song and dance early in college—it was too embarrassing to do.
When did you start back up again?
I started college at Concordia College and transferred to MSUM after my sophomore year. I started exploring it then because it felt like I was around a fresh group of people who didn’t know who I was.
When did you start to gain traction?
It was kind of in two different places. I did a video about running the Fargo Marathon without training for it in 2017. I posted it to just my personal Facebook page and it got like 100,000 views or something and everyone locally knew about it. I did an interview with Froggy on the radio station. And I did an interview with a Minneapolis TV news station—I just did a bunch of random stuff like that
I also posted it to my YouTube channel, but it didn’t really do anything over there. So, I had gained this Facebook following and it was great because I thought I could start sharing my YouTube videos to Facebook and pull people to YouTube. But it doesn’t really work like that because there are only so many people that are on your Facebook page—like 300 friends, so they can’t really make a difference.
So I was posting YouTube videos for a few months, and then in November of 2017—that same year—I posted a YouTube video that took off, and then everything I had posted before that kind of trickled down. So, November of 2017 was when I realized this was a real thing that could actually happen.
The video was more of a commentary thing so, after that video, I put more of an emphasis on doing the commentary stuff.
The first couple of years were really a roller coaster. I’d post one video and it’d get 1,000 views and then another one would get 300,000 or 1 million. It took awhile before it became a consistent thing.
Did You Know?
Cramer’s most watched video “I can’t believe PBS Kids aired this episode…” has over 6 million views. In total, Cramer has 24 videos with over 1 million views.
When were you able to start supporting yourself with YouTube?
I think in the beginning of 2019. I moved out of my apartment and moved back in with my parents for a few months as a buffer before me and my wife moved in together. So, I was living with my parents for like three months and working a lowpaying job after college and I was pumping out videos nonstop. I was posting a video and a song every week. At that time, I started making as much money with YouTube as I was making at work. So, I kept that going for awhile and then quit my job in the summer of 2020 because I was making triple what I was making at my job doing YouTube and I enjoyed it more.
Where was most of that money coming from at that time?
Most of what I was doing at that time was from ad revenue and I had a tiny bit of merch. At the time, I was doing sponsorship stuff, but I was kind of handling it all myself, and I didn’t know how to do that. I had to negotiate with brands and do all of the contract stuff. I was doing that myself up until probably the start of 2020. And then somebody approached me who said they’d do it for us. He’s still the same guy that I work with now, who handles all of the negotiations and contract stuff.
When did you start doing merch?
I started doing merch really early on—like before anyone cared about it. It was probably early 2018. But, I started doing it more intentionally in 2020 and 2021 when I started doing this full time. Now, it’s more of a piece of the pie for my income.
Do you remember the first time you saw someone wearing your merch that you didn’t know?
I remember the first one of my friends saw somebody in public wearing a piece of merch—they took a picture and sent it to me, which is a little creepy, but it was cool.
I don’t know if I’ve ever actually bumped into somebody wearing my merch, but I’ve bumped into people who tell me they watch my videos.
I’ve always thought that there’s a sweet spot you can be at where you can do this comfortably as a career without being truly famous and having all of the pitfalls that come with that—the constant ridicule, people constantly judging every single move you make. You can’t do or say anything. I don’t have to really deal with any of that—I’m in a really great sweet spot, which is definitely a blessing.
I have friends who are in the higher tier celebrities who do things like stop posting on Instagram because it’s too stressful dealing with all of the ridicule and people’s opinions about everything you do.
I know your videos mostly focus on commentary, do you ever stray away from that?
I do some stuff that’s almost more of a vlog. I did a video recently where I did a road trip out to western North Dakota to see this roadside attraction called the enchanted highway. There were still parts of the video where I would cut back to where I was sitting at my desk talking to the camera doing narration, but I was doing commentary about my own experience.
A lot of other commentary is about movies or TV shows or whatever. But I’ve been breaking away from talking about pop culture a lot lately
It allows me to be a little less formulaic, but I do supplement with commentary videos because I know they will do well.
The next video is a sort of documentary-style video about the painted bison around town, which is exciting.
Interested buying merch? Head to strugglrshop.com
Are there any dream projects you have?
No, I don’t plan out any further than a year ahead. I have the whole year planned out though. I know week by week what I’m going to do. I know what topics I’m going to do and I have bullet points and research done a year in advance for everything I do.
What is your favorite thing about making videos?
My favorite part is the most stressful part, which is sharing it with people. I love making the stuff—it’s so much fun. But if I made it, and just hid it away on a hard drive somewhere, I didn’t complete the task. The reward is getting it out there for people to see it.
Growing up, was there anyone in your family or anyone around you doing video?
No, no one else was doing video stuff. But now, it feels like everybody I bump into is doing some kind of video.
I had to learn from other YouTubers. That’s why, early on, I was emulating a lot of other YouTubers and what they did. And I pulled a lot of my humor from Andy Sandberg. College Humor was an old YouTube channel that I pulled a lot from as well.
Did you have any other creative outlets while you were in high school?
No, I was really sports-heavy. The only creative thing I can think of is class projects. If we had to write a report on a book we were reading in English class, I would always ask if I could make a video for it instead.
Every teacher was so supportive of it. I could check one of the flip cameras out from the library and edit it on the Mac in the library
I also helped out with the yearbook, but that’s about it.
Why stay local?
Early on, right after I had a video blow up for the first time, I got it in my head that I was going to move to LA and be an entertainer. But I didn’t because my family is here and slowly that desire faded away because I realized I don’t have to be anywhere else—I can do this from anywhere, which is why this is one of the greatest jobs. My wife and I are raising two kids now and we’re able to just go on walks all the time, go to the park, and we don’t have to worry about crazy traffic or anything like that?
What are your favorite places around the area?
Golf is great anywhere around here, but my go to courses are Maple River—it’s beautiful, I love going there—and the course in Leonard, ND. Golfing is great, it’s my absolute favorite thing to do—it’s harder now with two kids because I feel immense guilt leaving them behind with my wife for three or four hours.
When it comes to work I love doing the classic thing where I go and sit in a coffee shop. It’s calming and when I’m home, I feel like I can’t get a lot done.
Do you have favorite coffee shops?
I love Thunder Coffee in West Fargo—I go there as often as I can. The owner is awesome, the atmosphere is so good, and they have bright window bright windows
I also like going to Moxie Java in West Fargo.
