YouTube as a Career with K.L Cao: Beauty and the Vlog Podcast 25
KL is 26 years old and started her channel September 2009 while she was in college in Omaha Nebraska. KL is now currently residing in Hong Kong. KL is best known for her DIY videos and has almost 625k subscribers and 55 million video views.
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KL Show Notes!
Beauty Bonus Round
What are your three Holy Grail Items?
Eyeliner: Hypersharp by Maybelline (only available in Asia). It’s amazing, super waterproof and it’s a drugstore brand. It’s so humid here and it’s amazing. I told my friends in the US about it and they went on EBAY and bought it.
Model In a Bottle: Makeup setting spray and I love it. It’s amazing, I’m really oily and it sets my makeup for the day.
The Big Easy: Benefit BB Cream: When you apply it on, it is hydrating and dries to a powder. It’s magic! It’s amazing, it makes my skin tone look so pretty. It’s pretty good coverage for a BB cream. It has good coverage, I really love it. It’s a great foundation, BB cream.
What is your best tip that our listeners can implement today that will help them increase their subscriber base and video views? Behind the scenes of YouTube you need to understand business a little bit, whether it’s legal documentation or learning how to write an invoice for brands so they can pay you. Take basic business 101. At a certain point you will need to start implementing those skills. I learned it by Wikipedia, YouTube and mistakes. One time a brand was like, can you send us an invoice? I don’t have an invoice! I’m going to go through paypal and download that template and forward it.
What do you think is more important, subscribers or video views? Video views is more important and how consistent those views are. You can have 100 videos with one that has a million views and others that only have 100 or 200. You have to have a consistent set of views. It will fluctuate depending on season and what you plan to upload. Video views are pretty important. Most brands just take a look at just subscriber count but I think that once in a while they look at views too. If you upload and you only give them 10k views and they expected 50k then they will be disappointed.
Who is your beauty vlogger inspiration? Pursebuzz, she was one of the first few I watched and Encore makeup.
What do you wish you knew when you first started? That it was going to be a career and I should get ready to do interviews like this. I would have taken it more seriously at the beginning. Sometimes my title wasn’t even a title, it was the file name. I wish I would have taken it a little more seriously at the beginning. Definitely writing out a detailed subscription box. When I don’t do that, my viewers always ask me to list out the product. Annotating, linking to your other videos. During the video I have an end card. There is a box for my card and two videos that I did recently.
What piece of advice would you give someone else who is looking to start? Invest in a good camera. Eventually you are going to buy it anyway, so you should just buy it now. Stop buying those shoes and handbags and save up for that nice one camera. The first camera I bought that was awesome was the T3I. Its super cheap now, you can get it for $200 and get a really good lens for it and you’ll be fine. If you look at the content now they have HD everything and 16k likes.
What is your favorite social media outlet? Facebook. Its very organized and I can talk to people and message people when I need to.
You can find KL and her channel at YouTube.com/SecretLifeofaBioNerd.
