Job Description: Professional YouTuber

Forget being a footballer or actress; young people’s dream job is being a YouTube star these days! Today, YouTubers are more popular role models for young people than TV stars, Hollywood actors and footballers. Ali A, who is one of the most famous Call of Duty YouTube gamers online, is a case in point. He is from the UK and has over 8.5 million subscribers as of today. He also has another account called More Ali A, where he does Minecraft videos, and it has around 4.3 million subscribers. Ali A, whose full name is Alastair Aiken, tells how he became a YouTuber:

‘I first started making videos and posting them on YouTube just for the fun of it and to share my video game highlights with my friends at school. This was back in 2009. YouTube was the easiest place to share the clips online, and I didn’t think much of it at the time. Now, creating YouTube videos is my full-time job! It’s a privilege to make a career out of creating YouTube content. It gives me the freedom to create my own work schedule. I don’t have to answer to anyone else. I can just post videos when I see fit and create content that I enjoy! None of this comes without hard work, though. YouTube is an extremely competitive space. In order to stay in the game, I upload at least one video every single day. Anyone across the world can post video content on YouTube, which means I am technically competing against anyone else in the world that’s posting Call of Duty videos. I devote as much time as possible to creating videos so that my content can stand out. I have a worldwide fan base, so when it’s 3 a.m. in the UK (where I live), it’s anywhere between 7 pm and 10 pm in the US (where the majority of my fans live). I often stay up late to make sure I am interacting with fans across the world via social media sites like Twitter and posting content to suit all time zones.’

Ali A gets an average of 1.5 million video views every day with the number of subscribers rising by 6,000 daily on average. Most of his videos hit 600,000 views within the first week. YouTube pays around $2-$5 per 1,000 video views. He earns an average of $2,700 per day just from his main YouTube account and around $500 per day from his other account. In total, this amounts to around $1.2 million a year. For sure, he has other sponsorship deals outside the platform, but still, that is a tiny amount of money. Ali A works very hard and deserves it all.