The Vlogger Interviews: TheSchwartzcaster [Eric Peter Schwartz]

About this interview:

Why would a grown man play with a puppet on YouTube?

A while back, I interviewed Spiggitz the Cat on The Vlogger Interviews.  Spiggitz is a ratty-looking, opinionated vlogging feline puppet created by Eric Peter Schwartz, and featured on his YouTube channel, http://youtube.com/TheSchwartzcaster  With this interview, I meet Eric himself, and find out the question asked of most YouTubers by the uninitiated:  Why?

Eric Peter Schwartz, a resident of Aurora, Illinois, has a long history in writing, theater and comedy (take a look his extensive resume on his home page).  He thinks of himself as a born performer, but his comedy efforts had been been in hibernation for a while when he learned about YouTube a few years back.  As you'll discover, YouTube reignited his creative flame.  Spiggitz, once a crowd favorite in his live comedy shows, was adapted for this new venue, and has since evolved into Eric's alter-ego.

Eric is fascinated by the opportunities that online video is beginning to offer.  In live theater, ad sales in a show's program booklet is an important supplementary source of income.   He believes that with some hard work, YouTubers could be quite successful monetizing their work beyond the Google Adsense model, which allows YouTubers to share in the revenue generated by advertisements placed by Google on their videos.