The rise of the ‘rock star’ Aussie YouTuber

Jordan Sweeto is a pretty regular 23-year-old who lives in Canberra.

He has a girlfriend, likes video games, and plays the guitar – but he is also an online celebrity, with a huge following of teenage girls.

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Sweeto’s YouTube channel has more than 300,000 subscribers and his videos have amassed more than 11 million plays.

It is figures like this that allow him to make living as a YouTuber.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a YouTuber is someone with their own YouTube channel who regularly posts original video content.

Fans can then subscribe to the channel to get regular updates from the YouTuber, who has the potential to make money via YouTube advertisements, or by working with brands and companies.

And as audiences, particularly young people, increasingly look to the internet for entertainment – the rise of the YouTuber has been exponential.

Several have built online empires, with crossovers into the world of film, television and mainstream media.

High-profile overseas examples include American comedy duo Smosh, the VlogBrothers by Englishmen John and Hank Green, and online personalities Jenna Marbles and Grace Helbig. Top Australian YouTubers include HowToBasic, a channel that makes spoof “how to” videos and actor, musician and personality Troye Sivan. Each of them has millions of subscribers.

From Canberra to crazy town

According to online statistics website Social Blade, Sweeto sits at 93 on a list of Australia’s top 100 YouTubers by subscriber numbers.

Although reluctant to talk about how much he makes from his channel, Sweeto said for the last six months, making online content for YouYube and his various social media streams had been his full-time job.

Sweeto is originally from Canada but grew up in Australia and went to school in Canberra.

His journey as a YouTuber began more than five years ago, with comedy videos and clips of his former band, Dan Sweeto, after which the channel is still named.

These days the channel is dedicated to his own music, and quirky and conversational videos, in which he chats with his fans.

His “how I do my hair” tutorial  is a prime example.

“It’s pretty much me but like, a little bit more energy,” he said.

“The kind of message that I try to spread online is positivity and I do that in a really energetic way… I’m like that around my friends. Maybe a little bit more uncensored.”

To make a living online, Sweeto also utilises an arsenal of online social media channels.

He averages one or two YouTube videos a week, but a typical day involves a lot of social media interaction with his fans.

“We’re on all the different social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat,” he said.

“We also do YouNow, which is kind of becoming a thing now… you can live stream yourself and kind of interact with fans.”

Sweeto also recently joined a YouTube group channel called My Digital Escape (MDE), where he makes videos with seven other like-minded YouTubers for a teenage audience.

As part of My Digital Escape, this year he spent three months touring the United States for Warped Tour, as a guest YouTuber.

“It’s just been kind of on a viral boom at the moment which is awesome,” he said.

“Before My Digital Escape I was at around 150,000 [YouTube] subscribers… But My Digital Escape is when we all started growing together and it was that snow ball effect.”

‘Everybody there knew who I was’

Sweeto’s audience consists primarily of teenage girls from the United States. “It

was just crazy the reception I got. It was a targeted audience, but everybody there knew who I was and who the YouTubers were,” he said.

“It’s overwhelming a lot of the time. But I got used to it towards the end. It’s a funny thing to get used to … You feel like rock stars.”

After the rush of touring in the US, Sweeto said it was a relief to return to relative anonymity in Canberra.

But having such a devoted group of followers makes Sweeto a valuable online commodity, particularly for companies looking to sell their wares to the YouTuber’s target audience.

Sweeto has two managers to help handle the business side of things.

He said since Warped Tour, they had been swamped with offers.

“We do get a lot of sponsorship offers from bigger companies,” he said.

“For me it’s a matter of if I feel comfortable promoting something that I agree with.”

‘I don’t have a crazy story’: HeyImNatalia

But video bloggers do not need to have hundreds of thousands of subscribers to make money – or to get fans screaming.

Another YouTuber getting traction online is Natalia, the 21-year-old behind YouTube channel HeyImNatalia.

Natalia, who prefers to be known by her first name only, is a personality YouTuber with a subscriber base of more than 30,000.

“I don’t really have this crazy story. I just had this camera sitting in my bedroom, and I think I’d been watching You Tube that day, and I was like, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool that’s something I want to do’,” she said.

“For me it was a way that I could express myself and my creative side… I didn’t think it was going to stick, but here we are four years later and I’m still talking to a camera, and it’s been super cool.”

She describes HeyImNatalia as a variety channel, and as with Sweeto the tone is conversational and fun – like talking to a best friend.

“I don’t have specific categories that I do necessarily. It’s just whatever I’m feeling at the time…. If I want to make a video talking about how crap my day was, then I can talk about that,” she said.

“Or if I want to talk about how I made a cool T-shirt, I can do that. It’s just a place where I can express through I am through video and people seem to enjoy it.”

According to Natalia, the majority of her viewers are female and between the ages of 13 and 17.

She has hosted “meet-ups” with fans around Australia, which she said at times could be overwhelming.

“In Melbourne, I walked into Federation Square and was mobbed. That was weird,” she said.

“I’d never experienced anything like that… There was people coming and they were crying.”

Natalia also uses numerous social media channels to keep her fans “in the loop” and regularly works with companies offering sponsorships and other support.

“Recently, I’ve been working with Contiki over in America, so I’ve just got back from that,” she said.

But she said for now, she was happy working on her YouTube channel on a part-time basis, supplementing her income by working a retail job.

Brand, YouTuber partnerships becoming more common

Andrew Hughes, a social marketing expert from the Australian National University’s Research School of Management, said big brands were working with YouTubers like Sweeto and Natalia more and more often.

He said opportunities for online personalities to work with corporates were becoming more plentiful, as they were seen by audiences as very credible sources.

“You might be more cynical if it’s a celebrity you already know. But if it’s some like a blogger, you might think to yourself, ‘well, this person is more trustworthy, because I know them more personally’,” he said.

“That’s something about bloggers and YouTubers – you seem to have a more personal relationship with them because they’re not so much out of reach like say the a-league celebrities,”

And Dr Hughes said higher credibility in turn meant a better endorsement for a brand or product.

He said the shift to advertising utilising online personalities was still in its infancy, but people should expect to see more of it in the future.

“What we’re finding in marketing is that over the last few years, there’s been a significant trend away from traditional media such as newspaper, radio and television and more into the online spend – where you can find the emerging demographics like gen X and gen Y spending more and more of their time,” he said.

“The online platforms are where people are going… in terms of their time, so that as a market is where you want to find people.”