Making a Living Before Making It Big on YouTube | Social

Brenden and Tyler LaTarte know these deals well. The 17-year-old twins got started on Instagram, where they collectively have almost 50,000 followers. Several months ago, they started a YouTube channel. While they wait for it to take off, they’re relying on a live-streaming app called UpLive to make money and build a following. They receive $500 for 30 hours of streaming within a 15-day time period. They stream their lives, chat with fans, and fill the hours with whatever they think followers will find interesting.

“It’s always good as a creator to have supportive parents and friends, but it’s even better when you have supportive apps behind you,” said Mario Ayuso, their manager. “When an app sees your potential and what you’re bringing to the table they’ll partner with you to get you to the next goal. Maybe that’s financial, maybe it’s connections, or an audience.”

Tristan Snell is the founder of Snakt, an app that lets you remix or reply to videos. This year, he made the trip out to VidCon, an annual YouTuber conference, in order to meet and court more creators to the app’s partner program, which allows them to get paid for using the app. When he got there, Snell was overwhelmed with the interest from small to mid-level creators.

One of them was Gabriel Stevens, who had 86,000 followers on Live.ly—a live-streaming video app that shut down this summer—and 42,000 on Instagram, yet only 3,500 on YouTube. He told me he’d be thrilled to partner with any video start-up that would pay him. “I probably made $40,000 on Live.ly,” he said, but he wasn’t too stressed about the app’s shuttering. “Mid-level people like me, we’re good at being on a bunch of different apps,” he said. “We never know which app might blow up or go away.”

Because video start-ups can shut down without warning if they run out of venture capital or get acquired, Stevens and other fledgling internet celebrities say they need to constantly hustle for new deals. Right now, he said, he’s trying to get a contract with Vego, another short-form video app.

Brendon Davis, a 20-year-old online video star, reads tech news sites to learn about new social networks or video apps, and has a running group chat where he trades tips about new companies with fellow social-media stars.

“You have to catch the wave early,” he said. “If the app does blow up then you’ll be one of the top influencers on it.” He told me he currently has partnerships with five apps total. “I’m on Cheez, Muscial.ly, Oevo, HypeWave. I’m beta testing an app that releases in two weeks; it’s going to be banging. Me and my network and friends, we are all social-media kids,” he said. “When I found out about HypeWave [a location-based social video app], we all downloaded the app and got verified on it right away. That way, if the app does get bigger we’re going to be the main influencers on the app.”