How YouTube Put Me in Long Term Debt
I’ve been a creator on Youtube for 16 years, and a consumer of Youtube for 1 day more.
I was looking for inspiration on google ahead a hair appointment in April 2010. I was having a pink streak in my hair and found an image that turned out to be a thumbnail and led me to a tutorial from someone called Zoeebella - not to be confused with Zoella. I lost an hour to her videos about makeup and style before she recommended another channel called, Lanaindiana.. and down the rabbit hole I fell.
This was my first introduction to the beauty guru world. I hadn’t yet found the UK contingent but I knew I wanted in.
I set up my channel that night, made a video with my newly pink hair, of a makeup tutorial I had no business teaching anyone, and the rest is history.
Well, the rest is actually quite an expensive hobby with inconsistent returns.
Initially, I set myself up as missbudgetbeauty, I was out of work for the first time in my life, I’d become a part-time parent a year earlier and I had time to fill. On my child-free days, I made videos about makeup and quickly realised I would need to buy in more to sustain the channel. I was watching people swatch every colour of a new lipstick launch and show their drawers and drawers of makeup lined up perfectly, as a ‘collection’. Although ‘budget beauty’ was my theme, it wasn’t really in my budget to keep up with that lifestyle.
I found an office job but was quickly made redundant and then, in the most bizarre way I’ve ever found a job, I applied for a makeup counter position through gum tree. By this time I also had a blog and sent some examples of my ‘work’ to bolster my application. The interview went well but the responsibilities were vague, so I was somewhat surprised to arrive on my first day to discover I was the counter manager for Urban Decay.
I had very little retail experience, no makeup training and I was expected to write up a business plan, deal with staff and work insane Christmas hours - I mean midnight close, it was bonkers - in my first 6 months. Although I didn’t love the job, I loved the people, I loved the brand, and it gave me access to product and time to learn skills I never would have. It was, again, short lived but perfectly timed for my online hobby.
So my first year on YouTube as a whirlwind. I’d been introduced to this machine we now know as a ‘the creator economy’ and also to the beauty industry through my real job. It cemented something in me that wanted to build something. I’d never had much ambition. I’d never really found anything I thought I was particularly good at, but through YouTube, I discovered that I could connect with people. If I was interested in a subject, I could talk endlessly about it, and that suddenly had monetary value.
I made 100 videos, and spent god knows how much money, before I ever made a penny through the platform, but once it was available? Magic. Something I’d been doing for free was now going to give me an ALLOWANCE?
By the time I was pregnant with Milo, I had another job (albeit temp - not great for maternity leave) and had started another channel and blog, dedicated to pregnancy, missbudgetbaby. I was prolific. I posted 7 days a week across the channels and I loved it. But once I left work, statutory maternity pay wasn’t really cutting it and youtube wasn’t paying me much. This was where the problems became clear.
I had already been living in my overdraft(s) and putting things on cards to worry about later.. now I didn’t have enough money coming it to cover those expenses. I couldn’t afford to be buying things to review on YouTube while I couldn’t afford my basic bills, but YouTube was also my only source of income in that window of time.
I don’t think I took a full 7 days off when I had Milo. My first vlog back was with him when he was just days old, back at home. It wasn’t a financial decision, but I do think it was at least a little tinged with not wanting to be forgotten or left behind. I continued to film while he napped and post at the same volume I had before. No time to rest, this was my job now.
I started making money from as on my website and working with sponsors. It felt legitimate and like the money would keep coming in, so I didn’t need to worry about those pesky debts in the background. So long as I was paying the minimums, it would be fine.
The problem with any self employment is that the money is never guaranteed. I’m acutely aware of this in our candle business. We have had lots of orders in the first half of the year but we aren’t able to pay ourselves until the second half. YouTube is similar. Advertisers throw money at the Autumn Winter but Spring/Summer can feel LEAN.
So when I was spending like there was no tomorrow, buying a new laptop, a new camera, lights.. things I thought I needed to be a professional blogger-type, I didn’t know the well was about to run dry.
Thankfully, around that time, my temp employer invited me back. It was minimum wage and it would be part time, but I decided it was the best move. It’s always been important to me to pay my fair share of bills, so going back to an office job and having regular money coming in gave me back the independence I’d lost while on ‘maternity’. It also came just before the YouTube earnings dropped for the season.
That should have been my first lesson in making money online, but I wouldn’t learn that for a while.
Years went by and I didn’t change my ways. I got so used to random sums coming in that I just assumed that I’d be fine. I could run up a £2000 debt because soon enough, I’d get an email about a gig that would pay it off. I even reduced my days at work, to give me time to work on this internet empire.
For a while, it worked. The ‘robbing peter to pay paul’ system I had going was sustainable, so long as money was coming in, but the bottom was always going to fall out, wasn’t it?
I was getting bored of the content I was creating. I was starting to resent having to spend money to make it and my views were plummeting. Meanwhile, I had a beauty brand promising me a makeup palette that would make me so much money, I could may off my mortgage. I just had to keep things ticking over and that payday would be mine. There were sketches, samples, photos from the factory. When it didn’t come to be, I realised how much I had pinned on it.
I also realised how long it had extended content I wasn’t interested in making anymore. I couldn’t stop making beauty reviews if I was going to release a palette of my own, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. No wonder the views were down.
Then came lockdown. A time where a lot of people found a new home on YouTube. I leaned in to daily vlogs to give myself an outlet and a routine. I was working from home and home schooling kids 6 years apart. I needed something for me and vlogs felt like an escape. Everyone was less and less interested in makeup and there were more people uploading to YouTube than ever before. It was a wild time to be in that, ‘who am I online?’ headspace.
The money was also down, because there was a lot less to advertise to a world who wasn’t leaving the house.
This was the first time I decided I needed to really look at my finances. I wasn’t spending as much and so it felt like a good opportunity to work out my budget and see if I could clear some debts. It became a bit of an obsession. I was paying off overdrafts I’d lived in for over a decade and it felt great.
I’d been making ‘shop with me’ videos for a while, trying to get around the popular ‘hauls’ by showing what was new in store without having to spend any actual money. It felt like this, coupled with my new financial attitude could really turn things around, but once the world opened up, any positive change was replaced with, ‘YOLO’ and my spending was worse than ever.
Now I felt like I was hanging on to the channel I’d poured so much of my life in to by a thread. I had to go back to the old ways, the beauty reviews, the hauls, I needed to win back my audience and make it 2012 again.
It’s worth noting that, at this time, I didn’t know I had ADHD. I can now look back and see so many triggers and spot patterns of behaviour that are so obvious. Back then, I just felt erratic and I wasn’t sure how to level out. I was constantly seesawing between ideas and moods, trying to work out how to fix things. Sometimes that meant throwing money at a problem, sometimes I was very low, regretting all of the money I’d wasted.. and the best thing for a low mood? SHOPPING.
I eventually found myself at a crossroads. Was I really going to keep flogging this dead horse? I was spending money to keep up with a lifestyle I didn’t even care about anymore, but was I ready to let it go?
I did my first low buy year. I started posting declutters and talking about the masses of wasted product and clothing I’d contributed to in my pursuit of this influencer life. It felt real and authentic in a way YouTube hadn’t in years.
Viewers responded well, but I still had one foot in the old world because the declining views were side eyeing my from the corner of the room. ‘You’re ruining everything’ they said, taunting me with their percentages and lost subscriber counts.
Everyone tells you to just keep at it, consistency is key and everyone can be successful with enough work. I’m here to tell you that success isn’t permanent. Industries change and goal posts move all the time. In my case, I found an audience with a certain type of content and then we outgrew each other. That has to be okay. It’s a bit like falling out of love. You might want to keep working on it, but sometimes enough is enough. It’s not a failure, it just ran its course.
This year has been the first where I have not been led by numbers. If I don’t have anything I want to post, I’m not posting. I don’t have a schedule or a list of content to film. I’ve started sharing my journey out of debt and my second hand shopping, but I only talk about makeup when I’m excited or when I’m reviewing things I’ve used up, in a ‘was this worth my money?’ capacity.
The early days of YouTube felt so free. You could post what you wanted, it didn’t have to be glossy or well edited, it was just people connecting with other people about shared interests.
Soon it became a way for one group to find out what they needed to buy from another group that was selling them those things. I bought things ONLY to review them. Things I wasn’t really even interested in beyond the video. I found myself in a luxury phase because of YouTube and started buying designer handbags I would have had ZERO interest in, had it not been for social media.
YouTube made me spend money as a creator and as a consumer because it made me think that was normal. Unfortunately, because I have never been good with money, I then fell in to the trap of expecting large paydays to always be around to bail me out and once they weren’t, I was in a serious pickle. I also have a self employed tax bill to pay twice a year, and I am only now getting to grips with saving for that rather than hoping the money will present itself nearer the time.
Having been a young parent with SO much to prove, social media was somewhere I could find validation in acceptance and recognition. It was a like a drug, now it’s been removed I can see more clearly but at the time, it was everything. I don’t regret it and I’m happy with the relationship I have with social media today, but it was certainly a rollercoaster. I pinned too much of my mental wellbeing on how I was performing online and, having already been an emotional overspender, it’s no wonder I put so much money behind the success of that.
I don’t think anyone could have cautioned me from going down that initial path, but I’ve been particularly reflective recently. Thinking a lot about how I want my life to look and what I’m giving my energy to. I don’t think I’d ever want to remove YouTube entirely, but removing myself from the hamster wheel, limiting my time on instagram and consuming almost no beauty and fashion content now.. I feel totally differently about my place online and what it should take to maintain it.
YouTube should be entertainment or educational, it should never be something that makes you feel less than or encourages negative behaviour. Gambling ads have this disclaimer but I think all the time, this absolutely applies to social media too. They’ve gamified every app to keep our attention so it’s no different. Whatever you enjoy, when the fun stops, stop!
And don’t buy makeup on a credit card. Ever.
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