YouTube can be one of the most empowering tools in a would-be entrepreneur’s arsenal. In essence it provides a platform, marketing system and ad-sales force all wrapped in one package. The product? The entrepreneur and his or her passion.
As it turns out, ordinary people demonstrating and talking about what they like to do can be interesting to throngs of folks. Gothenburg Sweden’s Felix Kjellberg – known on YouTube as PewDiePie – rakes in $4 million a year by filming himself playing video games, California’s Jenna Marbles has attracted 13 million subscribers to clips of her funny ruminations, and the comedy stylings of Ryan Higa – known as Nigahiga – have been viewed over 1.8 billion times.
These are some of YouTube’s mega-stars and there are many YouTube entrepreneurs out there making a great living by growing their subscriber bases doing what they love. Here are just a few:
Rob Chapman
UK rock musician Rob Chapman knows almost as much about reaching an audience online as he does about shredding in the pentatonic scale. With the help of YouTube – and his own energetic, likable personality – his life has undergone an amazing transformation from struggling musician to venue-packing bandleader, product endorser and guitar company owner. His Rob Chapman channel has 198,000 subscribers (adding another 10,000 each month) and attracts 2.8 million views a month. “I’m just a dude who plays guitar in a flat in England and I never knew that it would be like this.”
Seven years ago Chapman, who is 39, worked day-jobs in marketing and accounting, played gigs with bands, taught guitar to a handful of students and did session work for a couple of record labels in the UK. “I did all sorts of things, from transcribing work for Yngwie Malmsteen to writing jingles for local stores.” The money was meager and frustration set in. “I loved playing the music but I wasn’t getting any money—I wasn’t really progressing at all.”
Chapman’s first experience using audio-visual social media to strike a chord with an online following came with a small instructional guitar video he placed on MySpace in 2006. Two days after posting he had about 50 views and several positive comments. A humble result indeed, but for Chapman it was a revelation. “I had been considering myself locally and not globally.”
Resolving to make more guitar-oriented videos, he switched to a new video-sharing site called YouTube and suddenly the local artist was being seen by guitar freaks the world over. During an early product review video, Chapman got bored, shed his straightforward style and began goofing off. “I had fun in the video making stupid noises and jumping around,” he remembers. The two-minute clip of rock guitar and Chapman’s antics has since accrued almost half a million views. “I realized then that it isn’t just the product in the video that makes it a big video—it’s absolutely to do with brand and the personality,” he says. “I realized that I needed to become a brand.”
Chapman has some tips for creating that winning YouTube personality. Remember that you are communicating before countless sets of eyeballs— make your gestures and statements big and clear. As a band frontman, that came easily to Chapman. “I’d make coffee, I’d put on some Malmsteen or some Jimi Hendrix and then I would imagine that I was in front of a massive audience talking to them from a stage, rather than that little room in Wiltshire making a video.”
The video thumbnail is paramount to grabbing a viewers attention on YouTube, says Chapman. The title, the description and the tags are important in that specific order. Making it easy for web surfers to notice and access content is key. “With people online, we’re competing with gaming and porn.”
Read more: 3 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Their Lives With YouTube
