How to do YouTube full time and Make it Your Career with Karissa Pukas: Beauty and the Vlog Podcast 6
Click on the play button on the right in the podcast player above to listen. ⇑
Karissa Pukas is a full time YouTuber from Canada now living in Australia. She reveals how she got started in YouTube and how she was slowly able to increase her subscriber base.
Channel Stats:
Subscribers: 610,000
Video Views: 27 Million
Karissa’s Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/saturdaynightsalrite/featured
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Check out the YouTube channel with the video interview here!
Karissa Pukas Show Notes!
About Your Channel:
I think that my channel has been a little bit different than typical fashion and beauty. I have strayed a little and do a bit of lifestyle as well and let whoever is watching me get to know me on a personal level. I think a lot of beauty blogs shy away from that. I think thats what sets my stuff apart from the others.
In the Beginning:
I’ve been doing my channel full time since Febriuary of 2013. I dwecided to make the leap when I was working at Estee Lauder sitting at the counter thinking, I don;t want to do this the rest of my life. So, I said ok, let’s make the YouTube thing work and I took the jump.
I think that the biggest thing is, am I going to be able to make it money wise. You have to pay rent. It’s terrifying even if you have a support cushion. But especially living in another country, it’s terrifying. But in life are your friends and family going to accept it, will my boyfriend accept it, will it be the right thing for me, am I going to be happy making videos and creating so much content all the time. Can I do this? It’s a lot of mind games to get over but I’m really really happy that I pushed through it becauase I think a lot of people would have hit a wall at that point bevcause it is a scary thing to do to commit to yourself and have enough belief in yourself that you could do it. I am glad that I did though.
I thought that the reason why I knew at 100k I was able to work my butt off to do it, my friend Shannon from Shaaanxo, she started doing it at about 100k, that’s when she decided to do YouTube full time and if she could do it and I had so much encouragement from her that I could probably do it myself. The first couple of months were hard and I was living on a budget, but it was doable.
I never thought that YouTube could be a job until at about 50-80k that I thought it was actually growing enough that it could be a job.
I have very strong morals in what I believe in. I think that brands really enjoy that fact. I am very honest about their products and I will not promote something that I dont believe in. I will only use things that I will generally use and want to share with my subscribers
YouTube as a Job:
YouTube is my job. Sometimes there are weeks where you have so much going on in your life. People don’t remember to be compassionate a lot of times. They get their claws out. They forget you are a person too and you have stuff going on. With starting a business, there is already so much going on behind the scenes and you get exhausted and your videos reflect that. It is hard to seperate one from the other, it is so intertwined. You really need a breather. I feel that over the past two weeks when I have been home, I was visiting with fanily and I hadn’t posted. To have that time to reset and come back into, what do I want from my life, what do I want to do? I have come back to my heart center and I think that refreshes me to do more videos and I feel like I can share myself again. You feel like you are giving giving giving, doing content, doing things, but you are not happy about it. Now that you have something to give, it’s exciting again. I am excited to get back to videos. I am so excited to be filming. I am excited to make videos again.
Beauty Bonus Round:
Holy Grail Items:
Hourglass Primer: It’s the most expensive primer you can ever buy, but it’s worth it.
MAC Melba Blush – It’s unreal, I have been absolutely loving it. Perfect, peach tone.
Benefit Hula Bronzer: Such a staple, I use it anywhere.
Jordana Best Lash Extreme: So good.
Top two tech must haves
iPhone: I don’t know what I would do without it.
Laptop
Best tip to increase your subscriber base:
Don’t make videos because people are requesting them, make videos becuase you want to make them and you are genuinely interested in that topic and you are being yourself about it. There is nothing worse than watching someone do a carbon copy of someone else’s video. It does not work for you at all. Why waste your time doing something that you cant sustain. You can’t pretend to bve someone else on your channel for a long period of time. If you are doing content that you are proud of and exvcited to film that is how you will blossom in the community.
Beauty Vlogger Inspiration:
Batalash
What do you wish you knew when you first started:
I wish that I knew that criticism isn’t as bad as you really think it is. It’s not a bad thing to get a bad comment. I think that was a hard thing for me to wrap my head around. I am a people peleaser in a lot of ways. At the end of the day I’m going to do what makes me happy, but I want people to be happy. Everyone deep down wants people to like them. I think you have to let go of the fact that that’s just not going to happen.
What piece of advice would you give someone who is just starting their YouTube channel:
Just do it. Just sit down in front of a camera and talk. You are probably not going to be good at it to start off with. Go look back at my first video, it’s hilarious. I am sitting there in my old apartment. There is my cat litter box in the back. I am pretty sure he took a poo when I was filming. It is not going to be perfect and that is ok, that’s the beauty of it. The more that you do it the more you learn about editing, or that you learn about production or filming or lighting. You get better as you grow. It is such a cool feeling to look back and go, I have come such a long way becuase I just decided that I am going to do it. Why not just start, you just have to start.
I feel like its been a slow and steady trek to the top. I really dont mind because it is all people that are so geniunely loyal to my channel. I have such little negatively and I am so thankful for it. Everyone that is there is there because they want to be there and they are excited to be there and that is the end game for me. That’s all that matters.
Channel Stats:
Subscribers: 610,000
Video Views: 27 Million
Karissa’s Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/saturdaynightsalrite/featured
