Sophie Headon, 26, has more than 1million subscribers on her channel (Picture: Chase Paul)
Welcome back to How I Made It, Metro.co.uk’s weekly career journey series.
This week we’re chatting with Londoner Sophie Headon, 26, behind the YouTube channel Sophdoeslife, which has 1.4million subscribers.
If you’ve ever stumbled on beauty YouTube, you’ve likely seen her bargain brand reviews.
She shares with us how her channel grew, getting swept up in the FaceTune era, and how she likes to remain somewhat private in her job as a content creator.
Here’s how she made it happen.
When did you first get into YouTube?
I started my channel in 2015, which in my eyes was the peak of Beauty YouTube.
I had spent my teenage years watching Zoella, Tanya Burr, Pixiwoo, FleurDeForce, and Samantha Maria to name a few (some iconic British beauty creators), so I already had a lot of beauty creators to look up to.
They all inspired me to start my channel, and at 18 years old I thought I would just give it a go! I started my channel at a good time, when Beauty YouTube was at a real high.
How have you pivoted to TikTok as that’s become more popular?
I remember when Tiktok first launched, I really thought it was an app for kids.
It was only during lockdown that I saw everyone around me talking about it, that I decided to download it and give it a try by doing quick product reviews, sharing makeup hacks, and mini tutorials.
Beauty content is SO popular on Tiktok, it’s great but I do find it less personal than YouTube.
What are the challenges you’ve faced in growing your channel? How long did it take to become ‘big’?
My growth on YouTube has definitely come and gone in waves, it was never as simple as uploading a video and it becoming ‘big’ overnight.
At the very beginning, my makeup skills were really not great, and I was trying to juggle being a university student and studying for a Graphic Design degree, so it was a struggle. I would spend the majority of my free time filming and editing YouTube videos, and worked for free for the first year of my channel – it was more of a hobby to me and I was just enjoying the filming and editing process, and making little to no money from ad revenue.
It wasn’t until maybe a year later, that I filmed a Testing Primark Makeup video, and Testing Poundland Makeup Video, that I really started to see growth.
Those videos became super popular, and I had a lot of young viewers who were really interested in affordable makeup (as was I), so I continued to review and test affordable makeup, which people really seemed to enjoy.
At the beginning of summer 2016, I had hit 30,000 subscribers which was more than I ever expected, and …read more
Source:: Metro
