Thanks for my Tesla, YouTube
An Auckland teenager who dropped out of engineering school and gave up his part-time job to make YouTube videos has just bought a Tesla.
Liam Thompson still lives at home, but is earning so much producing clips for the online video platform he’s making more money than his parents.
‘‘I started doing YouTube just for fun,’’ he says. ‘‘I wasn’t thinking this was going to be my career.’’
The 19-year-old’s success dates back to September last year, when he posted a fiveminute video called ‘‘I taught my dog to play Minecraft’’ that went viral.
The Mt Albert teen used treats to successfully teach his family’s pet dog Max to step on giant keyboard buttons and play the popular open world game.
At the time, Thompson had been YouTubing for just a few months, had just 80 subscribers on his channel and was considering other career options.
But the video quickly found an audience, sending his YouTube career into the stratosphere.
‘‘It took me four months to get 80 [subscribers] and, a week later, I had 150,000,’’ he says. ‘‘It changed my entire life path.’’
YouTubing is a far cry from Thompson’s initial career options when he left school as a high achiever in maths and physics at the end of 2018.
‘‘He started engineering school, came home after a day, and went, ‘I don’t want to do that’,’’ mother Jill says.
‘‘Then he said he wanted to be a YouTuber.
‘‘I didn’t even know what YouTube was. I said, ‘What? No you can’t do that Liam, no-one makes their career that, it’s not a proper job’.’’
Despite their hesitation, Thompson’s parents gave him a three-month ultimatum to make YouTubing work, or he’d have to find proper employment.
Initially, his videos only got a handful of views, including repeat clicks from his mum.
‘‘I just loved it, I didn’t think it would work out as a job so I kept doing it for fun,’’ Thompson says.
While he filmed, Thompson kept his options open, moving furniture part-time, enrolling in Police College and considering film school.
Once his Minecraft clip went viral, he was forced to give all of those up. Thompson was able to start playing ads on his videos, for which he is paid about 40 per cent of the revenue, with monthly deposits made into his bank account.
Each of his clips get hundreds of thousands of views, with many of his viewers coming from America and Europe.
His channel has become so popular Thompson is recognised by fans when he visits his local mall. And now that YouTubing has become his fulltime career, Thompson treats it like a job.
He uses the time his family – mum Jill, dad Will and sisters
Alex, Isla and Evie – are out during the day to work.
He spends four days on each of his videos, two on coming up with a concept, a day filming and then a day editing.
‘‘The concept is the part that takes the longest. Usually the fourth day is hectic – a lot of feeling unproductive, that’s the hard part.
‘‘You think of something, ‘Oh that would be a funny joke, I could do this’. It blossoms into an idea pretty quick.’’
Thompson says he tries to choose subjects that he hasn’t seen other YouTubers cover.
‘‘I had a lot of people saying [that] I need to branch out into a niche, something that would build an audience,’’ he says.
‘‘I just like doing random stuff and it seems that other people do as well.’’
Recent videos have included sampling popular YouTube food trends, building and then sleeping in a house made of tinfoil and becoming a computer game character in real life.
His videos get more views when he includes Max, or his 18-year-old cat Frodo.
After his Minecraft success, Thompson’s parents stepped back and let him do his thing – although they did monitor his YouTube channel for nasty comments and started charging him rent of $150 a week.
‘‘It sort of blows me away that it’s actually a thing and there’s that many people around the world sitting there watching videos,’’ says Jill.
‘‘It’s a different world now. The stuff kids do now is so different to what we did. I guess you’ve just got to deal with it. Crikey, he’s doing better than I am and I’ve been working for years.’’
But when it came to the Tesla, a black Model 3 which retails for $73,900, Thompson’s mother admits she and her husband needed a little persuading.
He was too young to take one for a test drive and needed his parents’ approval for financing. ‘‘I said, ‘Liam, buying a Tesla is the most stupid idea in the world. Buy a house’. But it’s his dream.’’
Owning a Tesla and becoming a fulltime YouTuber were Thompson’s first goals, but now he’s added one more to his list: moving into his own place.
‘‘I’d like to,’’ he admits. ‘‘But the car set me back a bit.’’