How YouTube Can Make You Money - The Lauren Luke Success Story

Everyone knows about YouTube and the ability to 'Broadcast Yourself', but how do you actually make money from YouTube?

For Lauren Luke it was by being a self taught make-up artist and giving lessons online. Lauren is a 27 year old from South Shields (near Newcastle), UK. In 2007 she gave up her job as a taxi dispatcher to sell cosmetics on Ebay. After a while Lauren Luke was getting requests for beauty advice and make-up looks from her buyers, so she registered with YouTube and began filming make-up tutorials in her bedroom.

Lauren Luke provides a step by step guide on how to achieve almost any look, but it was when a viewer requested the 'Leona Lewis look' from her Bleeding Love video, that things really took off for Lauren Luke. Her YouTube hits went through the roof and a whole new host of viewers caused her videos to go viral.

Lauren Luke began using YouTube to broadcast her videos in June 2007, since then she's had over 34 million hits. What sets Lauren Luke apart is that she had no formal training as a make-up artist when she began posting videos on YouTube. It was only a year into her venture that she took evening classes to become fully trained. She admits that the only new thing that she learnt from the classes was how to prime the face in preparation for applying make-up, other than that, the talent came natural to her.

With so much exposure on YouTube, it was only a matter of time before Lauren got offered a cosmetics related job. In late 2007 the UK based make-up brand, Barry M signed her up to create exclusive make-up looks with their products on YouTube.

2009 has so far seen Lauren Luke getting an editorial role at the Guardian newspaper, in which she publishes a weekly beauty column. She will also be publishing a book later in the year.

Though by far the most potentially lucrative deal thanks to YouTube, is her own brand of make-up products; By Lauren Luke. Currently available are 5 colour palettes containing everything you need to re-create her tutorial looks. With over 34 million hits and 207,738 current subscribers to her YouTube channel, that's potentially a lot of make-up sales from YouTube alone.

Without YouTube, it's highly unlikely that Lauren Luke would be in the position to have her own column in a top UK newspaper, let alone her own make-up brand. It just proves that with a bit of hard work and a lot of knowledge, a webcam and a YouTube account, you can make money if people are interested in what you're doing online.

Lauren Luke proves that if you have expert knowledge on a subject, especially if it's a visual one that you can create tutorials about, then get posting on YouTube today! If you can teach someone a skill they would like to possess, they'll watch your video.

I think that a huge part of Lauren's success is down to her personality, she's chatty, down to earth and natural. She doesn't edit her videos, so what you see is exactly what she's filmed, mistakes and all. I think this is what you have to possess in order to do well on YouTube, you have to have the likeabilty factor. Lauren talks as though you're her best friend when she's doing her tutorials, and that's the key, it's personal and people relate to her.

Everyone wants to learn something, what's your expertise? Use YouTube to get noticed and who knows? You could be the next YouTube success story with the money rolling in. Just make sure you're entertaining to watch, even if you're telling me how to mend a vacuum cleaner!