Chatting with Beauty Guru Amanda Ensing About Having YouTube as a Career: Beauty and the Vlog Podcast 10
Amanda Ensing is one of the more recognizable beauty influencers on YouTube and Instagram. With her gorgeous face, talent for makeup and down to earth personality, she has amassed a huge following of millions of followers on YouTube and Instagram. She sat down with us at the Beauty and the Vlog podcast and shared her humble YouTube beginnings and how she ended up giving up a career as a lawyer for YouTube. Read on for show notes from the podcast episode or listen for the full interview on iTunes and Stitcher.
Amanda Ensing Opens Up About YouTube Careers
“So every day is a little bit different with a YouTube career. It’s kind of like running your own business. I am someone who likes to do their own schedule. I usually film twice a week, I try to get two videos up a week. A lot of alone time. I love this career more than anything but its definitely a lot of time sitting by myself, by my computer because it usually takes me 7 hours editing a video.”
“I became obsessed with trying new products. The last year of a half in college I was always in class on my computer reading product reviews, looking up YouTube videos, not paying attention at all and I thought, it would be fun to record a video.”
“The hardest thing with a channel is getting people to watch your video. Especially now, it’s so saturated, there are so many people trying to do it. It’s really hard to get noticed. I started using Instagram a lot. Now, instagram is so much bigger. I posted a lot on instagram. I tried to make friends. I just wanted to talk to other people who liked makeup as much as I did. I always commented on people that I loved and people that I admired. I used instagram, I used pinterest. I tried to use as many social media outlets as I could to get my name out there to get my work out there.”
“There were not that many people when I started on instagram posting makeup pictures. Why can’t I do YouTube and post stuff on instagram. I started commenting on their pictures. Not just liking. I really wanted people to know me. I thought that if people saw my work they would like me and we could be friends. I would just comment on their stuff, on their YouTube videos and try to get noticed. I just wanted to start a friendship with them and network and meet other people doing what I wanted to do.”
“I always wanted to blog. I always wanted a fashion blog and I didn’t really know how to go about it. Im this girl in Tennessee nobody is going to care about me so I kept my school route. For YouTube, I did it for fun, but I was serious about doing it. I found a passion for makeup. I had never really been passionate about anything except for makeup. I did it for fun but I wanted to do it 100% if I was going to do it. Once I got into it, I wanted it to happen because I loved it so much and I wanted to do it as long as I could.”
Interview Questions:
What are your favorite beauty items?
Bite Beauty Rambutan Lip Gloss
Estee Lauder Heat Wave: Highlighting Powder
What are your top favorite tech tools?
iphone
What is your best tip for increasing subscriber base?
Consistency.
Who is your beauty vlogger inspiration?
“Casey Holmes, We are the same but not really the same. I love her. Our friendship is off of YouTube. We dont talk about work a whole lot. We met from YouTube. She’s in the south too. She’s actually going to come visit me next week. We hang out a lot. I get a lot of inspiration just because she just gets me. She’s my best friend which is weird because I have so many friends in real life.”
What do you wish you knew when you first started YouTube and Instagram?
“Standing your ground more. I wish I knew more about the business side. People were getting paid to do things that I was doing for free because I didn’t know people made money. That would have helped me do it a little quicker.”
What would you tell someone who is just starting their YouTube channel?
“Stay true to yourself. You can get caught up in what everyone else is doing. You don’t want to get caught being anyone else. Don’t let anyone else doing YouTube influence you because you want to stand out.”
Amanda Ensing’s YouTube channel
Are you just starting out and need some guidance on some great equipment? Below is a roundup of some of the favorite tools mentioned on the show.
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Starter Camera | Camera | Ring Light | Umbrella Lights | Soft Boxes | Microphone | Backdrop Stand | Clamps
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