Estee Lalonde: 5 Secrets To Running A Successful YouTube Channel - Dispatch Weekly

Estée Lalonde (@esteelalonde, 1m followers), 25, from Canada, first started blogging in 2010, after moving to London to be with her boyfriend, Aslan (@li0nsmane), who she met online. However running a successful online platform is not as easy as it looks.

Here are five secrets to running a successful YouTube channel:

1. You Don’t Need To Be An Expert

Estée Lalonde is not a professional make-up artist like Pixiwoo and Tanya Burr. Instead she makes simple, classic make-up tutorials, exploring and tracking down different makeup products, not claiming to know everything about the fashion industry. Her barefaced natural beauty and honest approach makes her more relatable for average viewers. The best advice would be to be yourself and rather than trying to copy the style of another successful vlogger.

2. YouTube and Keeping It Real

Her original YouTube name, Essie Button was scrapped in favor of her real name, Estée Lalonde, which was a brave move since this was what everyone knew her as. However, in her video, she explains that using her real name makes her vlog more intimate and personal, allowing her to expand outside of beauty reviews and tips, into more areas that she is passionate about. Whereas so many vloggers become personalities and cartoon versions of their former selves, it’s refreshing to see someone keeping it real.

3. Slow Success, Consistency and Determination

Estée Lalonde hasn’t had immediate success, but if you look into the background of most YouTubers (@PewDiePie, @JennaMarbles or @Zoella) you will find similar stories of a hard, slow climb to the top. Estée Lalonde studied psychology, doing a few part-time jobs before transitioning into blogging full-time. Part of her success was the fact that she made videos consistently so that audiences knew when to expect content. This ensures trust and allows you to build rapport.

4. YouTubing, Blogging and Sponsors

Getting sponsored is rare for YouTube vloggers unless they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Therefore, it took Estée Lalonde two years to get sponsored after she started blogging. Therefore, when the going gets tough it’s important to have other strategies in order to make money so there isn’t so much stress to immediately get traction. As the above point emphasises, YouTubing is a slow grind to the top. However, blogging consistently, adding value to posts, so that audiences learn something, whilst adding your authentic personality can help you connect with viewers. Sponsored content can be made only once you’re in a position of having a substantial audience, enough for industry insiders to consider that you are now an influencer.

5. Online and Offline Life

When Essena O’Neil, a model with a substantial social media following quit her platforms because of the pressure and the ‘contrived perfection’ this raised all sorts of debate about whether or not influencers were promoting a false image that was impossible to emulate. With Estée being signed up with Storm Model Management, she will likely be scrutinized. However, by being able to cut off your online and offline life, this helps you to understand what is real and unreal. Obviously, the image you present online is a heightened version of yourself and the one you pay in real life is more everyday and normal. Estée has said, “I think social media is what you make of it-if you start out not being yourself on the Internet, things can go that way… but for me it’s always been me being myself online.”