Meet the BeauTubers: the formula for YouTube success

Last year, YouTube titan Jenna Marbles coined a new term for the beauty gurus flooding the video sharing platform’s main page - BeauTubers. BeauTubers are best known as the makeup and cosmetic testers and trend-setters. Best believe it - if one of the ‘top 3’ influencers on YouTube recommends a £100 loose powder, it will be sold out in days. But how do these content creators come to wield that kind of power? It takes a lot more than you might think.

In your own time

As with any kind of content creation, preparation is necessary. This means tracking the activity of the most successful beauty names out there and examining exactly what makes their content stand out. The recipe for success is usually a mixture of excellent editing skills, humour and picking up on trends quickly. Time is the biggest factor in all of this. Before BeauTubers can start filming, they need to do some serious content planning, as there’s nothing worse than breaking promises to subscribers and leaving them hanging.

Many successful YouTubers started their channels alongside a full-time job. As the success of their channels really took off, they needed as much time as possible to dedicate to creating content, liaising with companies and attending events. So they made their night job their day job. But when you’re that successful, your YouTube channel easily covers the bills.

Budget or big bucks?

The next step is one of the biggest reasons breaking into the industry is so difficult. When so many established BeauTubers are using top-of-the-range equipment to capture their makeup tutorials in detail, a video filmed on an iPhone is unlikely to cut through the noise. However, almost all of the big names on YouTube started their journeys with less-than-standard equipment. Their trick is using their follower count as a guide for taking the next step up. In fact, you can track the fan growth of established BeauTubers through their video and audio quality, as more subs means more opportunities to invest in a new camera, zoom lens or external microphone.

Mixing business with pleasure

Although there is always controversy surrounding partnerships between BeauTubers and beauty companies, sponsored videos really do help even the most established beauty gurus stay afloat. However, that doesn’t mean all partnerships are made the same. BeauTubers make headlines for their iffy partnerships when dishonesty comes into the frame. In the beauty sphere, honesty has been proven to be the best policy. This can mean that BeauTubers lose subscribers or get cut out of future company collabs. But when a channel gives truthful, unbiased reviews, the focus is turned to the products. Isn’t that what we’re all there for anyway?

Always-on approach

In the YouTube sphere - and any content creation role - reactive research is a must. And this doesn’t stop once BeauTubers have made their mark - staying relevant is just as much of a challenge. Keeping up to date with conversations on all channels and reacting quickly to news in the industry is essential. Wavy eyebrows are trending right now? BeauTubers have tried it and shared their industry opinion within a few hours. Another beauty company has fallen short on their latest foundation shade range? The ‘Top 3’ have already posted a rant video and swatch test. That's how you stay relevant.  

Crisis averted!

Whenever someone’s face appears on the Instagram explore feed or in beauty news articles, the world starts watching - both in a good way and in a potentially career-ending way. Sometimes it only takes a poorly-timed tweet or an opinion that goes against the grain and BeauTubers can find themselves mentioned in scathing videos by a ‘drama channel’. Some of these channels have over 300k followers, which means that being featured can have some seriously negative consequences. Alternatively, it can catapult them into the spotlight. It just depends how they envisage their rise to fame.

By now, it should be clear just how challenging it is to run a beauty channel on YouTube. But the hard work, time and cold hard cash have helped them create their own YouTube empires. Surely there’s something we can all learn from that?