- Jen Lauren is a part-time nano influencer who films videos on fitness, health, wellness, and her daily life in New York City.
- She started her YouTube channel in 2018 and now has about 1,900 subscribers.
- She turned her YouTube channel into her side hustle by monetizing her videos with ads and brand deals.
- Lauren spoke with Business Insider about how much money she makes on YouTube.
- Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Insider Influencers.
This is the latest installment of Business Insider's YouTube money logs, where creators break down how much they earn.
Jen Lauren is a lifestyle influencer on YouTube, and though she isn't getting rich filming videos, she is making an extra $100 to $200 per month with only a few thousand followers.
Lauren is part of a category known as "nano influencers," which is generally defined as creators who have fewer than 5,000 subscribers on YouTube and between 2,500 and 10,000 followers on Instagram.
Lauren, 24, lives in New York City and works in public relations full time. She treats her social-media pages as a side hustle. She launched her YouTube channel in 2018 and today she has about 1,900 subscribers as well as about 3,000 Instagram followers.
Lauren's YouTube channel has dozens of workout class reviews and some of her most popular videos include a review of SoildCore classes (11,000 views), Rumble Boxing (9,000 views), and Barre3 (9,000 views).
As a part-time influencer, she earns most of her revenue as a creator from sponsorships and ads placed in her videos through YouTube's Partner Program.
She uses a media kit when pitching herself to brands and she charges around $350 for an Instagram sponsorship (one in-feed post) or YouTube sponsorship (brand mention), and that price will vary depending on the scope of work, she said. (Business Insider verified her rates with documentation provided by Lauren.)
Lauren was accepted into YouTube's Partner Program at the end of July, and it took a few weeks for her videos to start earning money, she said. To be accepted into the program, creators must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, and once they are in, their videos will be monetized with ads filtered by Google. How much money a creator earns depends on the video's watch time, length, video type, and viewer demographics, among other factors. YouTube also keeps 45% of the ad revenue, with the creator keeping the rest.
So how much has she earned so far?
Lauren broke down how much money she's earned on YouTube as a nano influencer with between 1,000 and 2,000 subscribers. Business Insider verified her earnings with screenshots of her analytics dashboard:
- October: $139
- November: $195
- December: $195
Creators cannot cash out their earnings until they have at least $100 in their account, Lauren added.
How to build an audience by creating searchable content
When Lauren launched her YouTube channel, she decided to start filming videos reviewing different workout classes around NYC. She emailed the studios, first asking if it was okay to film, and found that some of them were happy to offer her free classes in exchange for her making a dedicated video about them. She said one studio even sent her a discount code for her viewers to use if they wanted to sign up.
"I had such a passion for trying out workout classes in NYC," she told Business Insider. "I was the person all my friends would come to, to ask what workout classes they should try. When I wanted to try a new class I would search them on YouTube, but I found that no one was really reviewing all these classes in NYC."
She uploads at least two videos a week to YouTube and she tries to film timely, searchable videos. For instance, she recently reviewed Apple Fitness+ classes after the service debuted in December and that video has over 4,000 views.
"Create searchable content," Lauren said. "People aren't going to find you unless they are searching for the topic you are talking about."
Instead of naming a video "day in my life," Lauren recommends adding in searchable keywords that relate to what your video is about into the title, like "cleaning my NYC apartment," or "day in the life of a social media manager."
And she said creators need to figure out who their audience is.
"When someone has millions of subscribers their followers will watch them do anything," Lauren said. "But when you are first starting out you want people to find you. I have a demographic niche where I target people like me who are interested in health and wellness just out of college and maybe live in NYC."
For more on the business of influencers, according to YouTube stars, check out these Business Insider posts:
How much money a YouTube video with about 100,000 views makes, according to 5 creators
A YouTube creator and candle maker was able to turn her hobby into a full-time job because of ad revenue. She broke down her exact income for every month in 2020.
A YouTube star with over 200,000 subscribers explains how much money she's made each month in 2020
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