UPLOADING THEIR LIVES
Quebec’s YouTube stars cultivating huge audiences
Every morning at around 8 a.m., Cynthia Dulude wakes up, scrolls through her Instagram feed and devotes a few minutes to a meditation app before heading downstairs for breakfast. The soft-spoken redhead waters her plants, gets dressed, carefully applies her makeup and starts her work.
Dulude did not reveal these intimate details to me, but her typical morning is available for all to see on her YouTube channel, one of the most popular in Quebec.
The 25-year-old vlogger from the South Shore recently recorded her routine and edited it into a sleek video. Within a day of uploading it, the 81/2-minute post had just over 8,000 views, 1,000 likes and 100 admiring comments.
Supplying her 625,000 subscribers with makeup tutorials over two YouTube channels has become Dulude’s full-time job. She and many other Quebecers are working as “creators” who fastidiously share their daily activities directly to ever-growing fan bases.
For some YouTubers, this is the only real gig they have known. For others, it’s a hobby turned career.
But how much can you earn from posting videos a few times a week? Like top-tier public figures, YouTube’s most popular creators boast millions of fans and millions in revenue, thanks to advertising, brand partnerships and merchandise. Viewers are believed to spend an estimated one billion hours a day streaming content on the video-sharing site, which launched in 2005.
The undisputed king of original content is Felix Kjellberg, an energetic Swedish gamer who goes by the handle PewDiePie. He has the most subscribers of any YouTube user — 59.5 million — and despite recent controversies over racial slurs in his videos, Forbes estimated his 2017 earnings at US$12 million. Only one Canadian cracks the top tier of original content creators: Toronto-based Evan Fong, 25, who has attracted 22 million subscribers to his VanossGaming channel. One 2015 report pegged his monthly income at $300,000.
In Montreal, an early YouTube success was Jon Lajoie, a Dawson theatre graduate and Longueuil native who joined the network a decade ago. His videos for earnest yet oddball songs like High as F--and Everyday Normal Guy have led to 506 million views. While his output on YouTube has slowed, Lajoie has gone on to shape a career in live comedy, TV and music.
Still producing hit content is the local crew behind the cooking channel Epic Meal Time. Their channel has racked up nearly seven million subscribers and 974 million views since they started sharing snappy videos of outlandishly mouth-watering recipes, like the One Million Calorie Lasagna and the Great Nutella Pyramid.
Beyond comedy, gaming and food, beauty blogging targeted to teens and young women has proved to be extremely lucrative.
British blogger Zoe Sugg posts snappy makeup tutorials and shopping hauls. Known as Zoella, she is reputed to earn $85,000 a month. Followed by 12 million subscribers on YouTube, she has also published a novel for young adults and released a beauty line.
Emma Verde followed in Zoella’s footsteps. The 21-year-old vlogger, who grew up in France and later Sherbrooke, started posting videos for fun while still in high school.
In the few years since, she has attracted an audience of more than 730,000 teens and young women.
She has published a book of her musings, advice and cartoons, Suivez-moi!, and despite having left her CEGEP studies to work on her channel, Verde released a school supply line that retailed at Walmart last fall, as well as a clothing line.
But how much can you earn from posting videos a few times a week? Like top-tier public figures, YouTube’s most popular creators boast millions of fans and millions in revenue.
“It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle,” Verde explained from her home in the Plateau.
The tone in her videos is breezy, friendly and occasionally confessional. She estimates she puts in 40 to 50 hours a week writing, shooting and editing her videos, then dutifully posting and promoting them to social media and interacting with followers.
But the current YouTube crown in Quebec goes to Catherine Francoeur, known as GirlyAddict to her 802,000 followers. Already in possession of a Silver Play Button, a physical trophy YouTube awards users with 100,000 subscribers, she is close to getting her Gold Play Button for one million follows.
Her boyfriend, Jay Malachani, has joined the enterprise, and the two vlog about their day at a separate channel, Cath & Jay.
The couple work on their videos in their Laval condo, which they share with their black cat, Fudge. (The feline is a social media star in his own right, with 33,700 Instagram followers and his own video game, designed by Malachani.) A typical GirlyAddict viewer is a female between the ages of 13 and 24, and she might be treated to a chatty, bright video of Cath (and sometimes Jay) sampling food from Ikea or making batches of slime.
So with ads on their videos, merchandise and branding, is the cash rolling in for these full-time content creators? The vloggers I spoke with were cautious about divulging their exact earnings.
“We’re able to live a good life. We’re comfortable, but you never know,” said Malachani, referring partly to the fickle nature of YouTube’s algorithms and monetization plan, Google AdSense.
Every time a viewer clicks on a video or a banner ad attached to a video, the video owner receives a couple of cents in return.
But cheques are only mailed out once $100 is accumulated, and for a first-time vlogger, hitting that threshold can take time.
One million views, by Malachani’s estimation, produces a $3,000 cheque from AdSense. And so the more lucrative partnerships and external projects are part of Cath & Jay’s business plan.
Malachani, a videographer and web developer with his own channel, can charge a brand between $2,000 and $6,000 to share two sponsored photos on his personal Instagram. And since YouTubers are marketing themselves first and foremost, putting authenticity at a premium, it means carefully selecting offers and sifting through countless freebies mailed to their door.
“We say ‘no’ more than we say ‘yes,’ ” said Francoeur, who has partnered with Pantene & Olay.
“I know my fans trust me. I’m not going to talk about something I don’t believe in.”
A branding deal could lead to a mere mention of a product, an Instagram post or a video built around the product.
Dulude, who trained as a makeup artist, believes she could live off her advertising revenue alone.
In her recent morning routine video, the caption included a string of links and promotional codes, including makeup, Uber and a food delivery service. But she continues to work outside the world of YouTube as a makeup artist, instructor and penning makeup columns.
Some YouTubers have turned to local agencies like Studio Le Slingshot and Goji to manage their projects and brand partnerships.
“We take care of the business side of things, and the creator is in charge of their content,” explained Slingshot director Gabrielle Madé.
“And we work with them to develop products, like books, fashion lines and makeup.”
Magician Chris Ramsay is a recent addition to Slingshot’s 30-strong roster of YouTubers — and its sole anglophone.
He honed his skills as a magician while bartending in St-Jérôme, performing sleight-of-hand card tricks for patrons. Eventually, he started developing tricks for magic companies. Once his YouTube revenue came close to matching his salary, Ramsay quit and plunged into vlogging full time last spring.
“Best decision I ever made,” the magician said over the phone last month from New York City, where he was invited to attend a YouTube-sponsored “creator camp” for international creators.
Sporting a signature bushy beard and black, branded baseball cap, Ramsay uploads tutorials and performances with strangers on the street.
Kicking off 2017 with 100,000 subscribers, he vowed to quintuple his “Ram Fam” by the new year. He has achieved that goal handily.
“The next generation is getting raised through YouTube. Kids are captivated,” said Ramsay, whose home base is in St-Sauveur. How does he explain his success? “Content is king in this industry. The bottom line is having a talent or having something to share with people.”
One advantage Ramsay might have over other Quebec YouTubers is language.
Filming in English allows him to reach the wider North American market, and beyond. He’s been invited to tour YouTube’s California headquarters in San Bruno.
But by vlogging in their native tongue, Verde, Dulude, Francoeur and other francophones can still draw an international crowd, with fans in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco and Tunisia.
“It’s more niche. I’d rather be a big fish in a small pond,” said Dulude, who once toyed with the idea of shooting English videos.
“Anybody can be doing videos in English, but I feel like people like it better in French,” said Francoeur, who says about 60 per cent of her following is in France, while only one-quarter is based in Canada.
Sometimes language isn’t needed for a YouTuber to attract an audience. All David Freiheit needed was a curious squirrel.
In November 2014, the lawyer was in Westmount Park, attaching a piece of bread to his GoPro, a small camera beloved by some vloggers. His target, the squirrel in question, snatched the device and scampered up a tree — and sent the camera plummeting to the ground. Freiheit uploaded the footage to his channel, Viva Frei.
Within days, millions had viewed the squirrel’s simple but funny 66-second video.
“A pest in Montreal blows people’s minds in Japan,” Freiheit said, recalling four interview requests from Japanese television shows. “It was the most exhilarating week of my life.”
Freiheit licensed the video to a third party, which distributed the video to paying clients beyond YouTube.
A few months later, a cheque for his cut (roughly $2,000) arrived in the mail. He bought a drone.
Long disenchanted with litigation, Freiheit had found a new calling. He has largely wound up his own practice, shifting to work on his channel and creating videos for others. Viva Frei has a relatively modest 24,000 followers, but Freiheit has licensed other hit videos and enlisted his three young children into the family business.
“You don’t do it to get famous on YouTube — you do it because you like what you’re doing. And then the following develops.”
A pest in Montreal blows people’s minds in Japan. It was the most exhilarating week of my life.
DAVID FREIHEIT, about interest spurred by his video of a squirrel