Barrington teens on way to being YouTube’s rising stars
At 15- years old, Kyler Newell is living the dream.
Not only is he doing what he loves but he is getting paid to do it.
In only one year, Kyler has created his YouTube Channel, Roblox Locus, a Roblox gamer channel, and has garnered 161,000 subscribers and up to 785,000 views on one video.
Every day Newell waits until his house in Barrington settles down for the night and then begins his work.
He opens his laptop and captures playing his favourite online game, Roblox, with commentary.
His fans eat it up with more than 30,000 views per video. What’s his secret? “Be entertaining,” said Kyler. “I don’t know how I do that so I just be myself.”
When his video is filmed he spends a good one to two hours in the editing studio to polish up the video before uploading it to YouTube.
For Kyler his first video he ever uploaded went viral. But he didn’t know it at the time.
A year ago he uploaded a video tutorial on how to play the Roblox game secrets.
After he uploaded it he forgot all about it until two months later.
When he checked in on his channel he was surprised to see the video had received 10,000 views and he had already 72 subscribers off of just one video.
This began what has become a job for Kyler but one so fun he still classifies it as a hobby.
When Kyler reached 10,000 subscribers, YouTube started to send him a monthly cheque.
When he reached 100,000 subscribers, Kyler received the coveted silver creator award plaque that he hasn’t even got- ten around to mounting on his wall.
He’s too busy creating more videos his fans love.
His 13-year old sister Tayla is also a gamer, known as Hyper Cookiie in the YouTube world.
She has reached over 15,000 subscribers with 121,000 views on one of her latest videos.
“I had 2,000 but my brother gave me a shout out on one of his videos and I got all of the rest of the subscribers all in one week,” said Tayla.
While Kyler shows an onscreen video of himself while he’s playing, Tayla is playing to the suspense of her fans.
She plans to do a face reveal when she reaches 100,000 subscribers. The two siblings even get in to a bit of rivalry.
Kyler hacked his sisters Roblox account but it wasn’t long before Tayla was hacking in to Kyler’s Roblox account and buying Snow Queen dresses and flower hair for her big brother. That video got 121,000 views. They also battle over the less than perfect Internet connection. With two YouTube businesses in one household, Kayla goes over to her grandmother’s connection next door so she can upload her videos.
They both are having a lot of fun playing the games they love and connecting to other gamers around the world but they are also learning valuable lessons on running a business.
Both kids say knowing who your viewers are and knowing what they like help to give them videos they will keep coming back to.
“I focused on making my channel look like a brand,” said Kyler. His videos are put together with intros and edited into a clean final copy full of fast paced dialogue his viewers have come to know and love.
He also reinvested his money earned back into his studio; upgrading to top of the line equipment and paying for it all himself.
But, Kyler says he’d do it still even if he didn’t make money.
“I like to do it,” he said. “It’s fun…I like when people say I’ve made them laugh.”
For Tayla she feels the same way.
“That is my goal in all of YouTube,” she said. “Keep doing videos of all the things I love.”