Having a viral video hit on YouTube is one thing, but building a career and making lots of money from YouTube is quite another. But that’s exactly what has happened to Lauren Luke, who has become a world famous make-up artist purely from posting videos to YouTube.
Viral Video Hits
Viral video hits are ten a penny. Not a week goes by when there isn’t a new one doing the rounds. And we keep track of most of them on Web TV Hub. The people behind or starring in them enjoy five minutes of very intense fame and are then generally never heard of again.
A few people are able to break that trend and turn their five minutes into something more. Lucas Cruikshank has turned the squeaky-voiced Fred into a long-running and very profitable Web video property. While others seem to have artificially engineered a viral video hit for fame and fortune.
Lauren Luke
, on the other hand, started posting videos to YouTube with no idea of how it would change her life forever. Luke is a 27-year-old single mother from the North-East of England who has a passion for make-up and a talent for applying it and advising others on how best to wear it.
Luke started off selling make-up on eBay where she would take photos of herself modeling the make-up. This led to her applying the make-up on video and uploading the results to YouTube. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fame and Fortune
20 months on from that inauspicious beginning and Luke is known the world over. Her videos have been viewed an incredible 54 million times and her YouTube channel has over 260,000 subscribers from 70 different countries at the time of writing.
Luke now has her own By Lauren Luke make-up brand which is set to be sold in U.S. stores, has a book deal, has helped create a Nintendo DS video game titled Supermodel Makeover, and could soon have her own TV show.
She is also on her way to being a millionaire after doing a deal with Google to share in the ad revenue the company makes on her YouTube videos. Which is not a privilege Google hands out to just anyone.
Building An Audience
The key thing here is that Lauren Luke began using YouTube not for fame or fortune but just to share her make-up tips and tricks. But her passion and almost anti-cosmetics industry attitudes resonated with the audience so much that they lapped up everything she said.
And when that happens, people start to take notice.
Conclusions
This not only shows the power of how-to videos, which are becoming increasingly big business, but also how a slow and steady approach to selling yourself online and on video may be better than having a one-off viral video hit. Lauren Luke is now set for life, and she has YouTube to thank for that.
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