Every week, Im shares her thoughts on style, makeup tutorials and advice about how to live your best life. How did you get your start with YouTube? I feel like there's so many different offers that come into my inbox so it is really important to work with brands that resonate with you because viewers can smell if a product does not fit. When this whole branded campaign started a lot of brands were specific and controlling with their messaging. They wanted to make sure that they got their messaging points across. It could take from three days to a week and a half depending on how detailed the video is What's your content strategy? But there's a lot of evergreen content where the timing really doesn't matter. There's just so much that goes into a business and it's important to hire people that can do something they can't do, 10 times better than you. But if I actually showed what I do every day and what actually goes into taking that perfect Instagram photo or that perfect travel video, people would realize, wow it's definitely harder than it looks. I created a video showing viewers what to wear in the office."
Jenn Im’s visual diary of her life opened the door for her to become a designer.
In this series, YouTube Icon, Entrepreneur speaks with the individuals behind popular YouTube channels to find out the secrets of their success.
Growing up in Los Angeles, 27-year-old Jenn Im was always passionate about clothes, finding gems in thrift shops and putting together unique looks. Her family thought that she should pursue a traditional career as a doctor, lawyer or in the corporate world, but through YouTube, Im was able to create a business of her own.
Over the past eight years since she started her channel ClothesEncounters, Im has grown a following of 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube and 1.6 million on Instagram. Every week, Im shares her thoughts on style, makeup tutorials and advice about how to live your best life.
In August of 2017, Im was able to achieve her dream of designing her own clothing line with the launch of EGGIE. Im says that she knew she was never going to be completely ready to make the leap, but that if she kept putting it off, it might never happen.
“Even though I had a lot on my plate, I just knew it was time,” Im tells Entrepreneur. “You could spend your entire life being prepared, but when a strike of luck hits, you have to just have to run with it.”
Im says the response from her fans has been rewarding, even more so than seeing people wearing the clothes who don’t know who she is from YouTube. She says she sees the line as both an extension of her brand and a bet on the future.
“It’s important to think of the long run because I don’t know if I would be able to do YouTube for the rest of my life,” Im says. “I don’t know if I could be 40 and still be doing makeup tutorials. But I love having this option where this could be my exit strategy, where I can still be working and investing in a project that I’m passionate about.”
Im spoke to Entrepreneur about getting started with YouTube, building a following and branching out.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get your start with YouTube?
I started the summer of 2010 at a time when YouTube was a small and more intimate space. I really wanted to start a blog. But it was so saturated and I thought, I’m obsessed with watching YouTube videos, why don’t I showcase my fashion on this platform? So I started to show a lot of the items that I got at thrift stores or looks that I was wearing to different events. It just snowballed into what it is today as viewers requested more from me. They would ask if I could show them makeup and hygiene routines and then it slowly got more personal. Now it’s a visual diary of my life.
How do you monetize your channel?
I use AdSense. Google runs ads on your videos as they are about to begin and ads in between your videos. It’s changed because back in the day there were a lot of multichannel networks. I can see that starting to slowly phase out. Now brands are just communicating directly to the influencers and their agency or management company.
The bulk of my money definitely just comes from branded content that I do. [When I partner…
COMMENTS