Full Time YouTuber Shares her Secrets for Massive Success on YouTube with Kristina Horner: Beauty and the Vlog Podcast 16
Kristina Horner is a YouTube veteran and has been on YouTube for almost 8 years. She started off as a “Harry Potter” girl and has had multiple channels. She now focuses on books, book reviews and overall book disussions on her channel. Hope you enjoy listening us chat about growing your YouTube channel using social media, eyebrows and how her life has evolved as a result of YouTube. Kristina has 136k subscribers and 20 million video views.
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Kristina Horner Show Notes!
Below are excerpts from the beginning and end of the interview. Please note that what is quoted below has been paraphrased a bit for easier readability. Enjoy! Dont forget to check out the podcast and the YouTube video for the interview in its entirety.
What inspired you to start a YouTube channel?
I have actually been on YouTube for about 8 years. I have been on YouTube since before YouTube even knew what it was. I’ve been on YouTube since people just talked to their cameras, there wasn’t any adsense program, there wasn’t any partner programs. You couldn’t make money doing it. I was filming YouTube videos because I was in college and I was bored. Harry Potter was why I first got involved on YouTube. I did other stuff online in the Harry Potter fandom and I just saw that people were making videos talking about the books and stuff. I thought it was awesome because I didn’t have people at home to talk about the books as I would have liked. I started doing that, from there I started watching other people’s videos and saw that people were talking about their lives and other things. So, I just didn’t stop making videos. I kept making videos and I was there for every step of YouTubes journey. I’m still here today doing it. It’s been an interesting ride to see how it has changed and evolved over the years
I was in a band that wrote music about harry potter and I wrote fan fiction and I was a nerdy teenager doing all of that Harry Potter stuff online. So I started doing videos about Harry Potter to go along with the other stuff I was doing. The people who were listening to my Harry Potter music came over to watch my videos. It wasn’t until i started making videos on other topics on top of that that my channel started growing.
Do you do YouTube full time?
YouTube doesn’t specifically pay my bills but I don’t have another job. I make videos twice a week, always. Everything I am doing is online content creation stuff and opportunities that I have gotten from YouTube. Technically yes, the YouTube videos themselves are not what pays my bills. It’s sponsored posts. Making videos for other companies and all sorts of stuff like that.
What does your channel focus on?
I went through a phase of doing music again and I always made videos talking about my life and geek culture. Really recently I started making videos about books and clothes and fashion and those two things have given my channel another direction that my channel hasn’t had before. I’ve done a lot more with clothing and books recently which is fun and different.
What are your three holy grail items?
NYX Jumbo Pencil in Milk: You can use it as a base,. as a primer, it makes everything so much brighter.
Urban Decay Brow Box: I only recently found out that doing your eyebrows is a thing people do. Having big eyebrows is amazing.
Coastal Scents 88 Palette: It has every color you could need or want.
What is your best tip to help increase your subscriber base or video views?
One thing I heard recently is that we live in this world where we have to use Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Pinterest and it can be extremely overwhelming. Unfortunately it’s true, you have to have a presence on all of these things. One thing I heard recently which has been really working for me is that you don’t have to be really amazing at all of them. You don’t need to make all of the social media platforms huge. What you need to do is pick the one or two you are really good at or pick the one that you are best at and really work on that. You have your YouTube channel, you want to get more views and say you really really really enjoy pinterest, work on that one. Make your pinterest as popular as your YouTube channel and you are going to get more people going to your YouTube channel because of that or maybe you just like instagram. Make sure you are putting as much energy as you put into your YouTube channel also into your instagram. But don’t burn yourself out by trying to do all of them to that extreme level.
What is your favorite social media platform?
I have been really enjoying instagram. I do try to post at least twice a day on instagram fun things I am doing, outfits of the day and things like that. I do also like Facebook. I have been trying to make my personal Facebook fanpage better and more interesting. Those are the two that I work the hardest on. But I try to be really active on Twitter and have a presence on Tumblr, I’m really bad at pinterest but I at least have one.
Who is your biggest vlogger Inspiration?
John and Hank Green of the Vlog Brothers: Two guys that have gotten wildly successful but they haven’t changed and are unapologetically who they are. They haven’t sold out in any way.
Laci Green
I agree with her on everything she says and how hard she works to fight the good fight for women.
What do you wish you knew when you first started?
I wish that I had known how big it was going to get because I would not have picked my username I Talk to Snakes. Aside from picking your username, nothing you do is that permanent. There are embarassing videos but I have taken them down. You can grow and adapt but you can’t change your username so pick a good one.
I was 19 when I started my YouTube channel and I am 26 now. People have watched me go from the last awkward stages of being a teenager to being an adult. It’s been fun sharing that. I went from being underage to being able to drink and I was thinking, should I talk about that? Are my subscribers old? But, Im 26 years old, it’s ok to talk about that. I try and talk about the things that I do, but in a responsible way. I am mindful that I am often speaking with young women that are in the need of good role models and support.
What piece of advice for someone just starting their YouTube channel?
Finding other people in your topic range or subscriber range to collaborate with and talk about and support each others channels is so important. Finding other social media platforms that you can shine on. If you get bigger on Instagram, those people are more likely to watch your videos as well. YouTube can be a tough platform for new people, it’s not designed to help new people. Taking advantage of a platform that is more forgiving can really help and you can send your traffic to your YouTube channel.
KristinaHorner.com
YouTube.com/Kristina
https://www.youtube.com/user/italktosnakes
