an article on Teenaged to college-aged "influencers."

1. William King
Intro to Journalism
Professor Pickert
29 April, 2021
Final Story
After his freshman year at William & Mary, Zach Levet dropped out, turned a Sprinter van into a
mobile home and traveled the country filming videos for his YouTube channel.
“I didn’t plan for it to be my career. Once it started off, things definitely changed,” says Levet,
now 21 years old with 96,000 subscribers to his channel and five videos with more than 400,000
views, “I wouldn’t have dropped out if I didn’t have a YouTube channel, that’s for sure.”
Parents may gain a few gray hairs at the thought of their child eschewing a college education in
favor of spending their days posting videos on YouTube, but social media platforms have created
fertile ground for a new profitable job title available to any teenager with a mobile phone and a
basic understanding of video editing: Influencer.
“I think when I initially dropped out my mom was more reluctant. She was like, ‘Are you sure?’”
says Levet. When he left college, Levet also gave up a Division I athletic scholarship for cross
country running. “But I’m making a living, they don’t have to support me.”

2. Levet’s channel targets the niche running community, regularly pulling in tens of thousands of
views for videos documenting everything from his training workouts and running challenges to
making his morning coffee and spending the day unpacking boxes in his new home in Venice.
He ends each video with the same advice for his viewers: “Live happy, be healthy.”
His comments section is filled with appreciative and supportive messages from fans and other
runners.
“I hope that I can learn more from Zach on how to be a better person in life and how to make
Running YouTube videos!” comments one viewer.
Others use the comments section to share their own running goals with Levet. “Yes Zack, you
beast. Great job. Trying to go for a 17:15 5km this Saturday at parkrun,” comments another
viewer.
The content of his videos is no more spectacular than the ins and outs of his true daily life, but
his consistent uploading and loyal fan base has garnered enough popularity to give him a steady
revenue stream, some of which is through a contract with athletic shoe company, Hoka.
Most of Levet’s revenue comes from brand deals with companies looking for ad placements in
his videos and sales from his clothing company, Live Well Apparel.

3. “The brand deals are super significant,” says Levet. One deal can make him $1,500 to $2,000,
and if he consistently uploads videos, he can do two of them a month. Levet also currently has a
contract with a company that is paying him $20,000 over the course of six months.
“When you look at the New York Times recommending a product versus this influencer you’ve
come to know who has the same morning routine as you, and recommends this hair dryer, or
workout clothing brand, you’re going to relate to the individual more than the institution,” says
Jill Frey, Associate Director of Bully Pulpit, a communications agency that assists institutions
and individuals in building their brands through digital platforms. “When you’re able to kind of
mix the feeling of that closeness and that intimacy with celebrity, you have something that’s
really powerful.”
According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) salary survey, college
graduates in America earn an average of $50,000 a year. According to Levet’s own estimate, he
is making just under this amount after spending close to a year solely focused on his channel.
Max Reisenger, a 17-year-old high school student in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, launched a
YouTube channel at 15 when he briefly moved with his family to France. He uploaded videos
documenting his daily life as an American teenager in a foreign country, but when the number of
subscribers to his channel grew to 40,000 within eight months of beginning it he realized that a
hobby had become a career.

4. Reisenger’s channel now has 338,000 subscribers and four videos with more than 1 million
views. Even though he is not yet a legal adult, Reisenger is supporting himself with the money
he makes from his influencing career.
“I can be self-sufficient,” says Max, “I think overtime it's been pretty exponential, It’s just a
question of how long things will be going this well. But, for now, it's been very rewarding.”
It is a career that could not have existed for a prior generation, and it is one that initially caused
some confusion for Reisenger’s grandparents.
“My grandparents don’t quite understand what I do and for a while they were like ‘Why are you
getting paid for your videos?’” says Max, “It sounds crazy–living out on your own and making
your own money–but people have been doing this in the past and it just looks a little bit different
today with the technology.”
Gavin May, an 18-year-old YouTuber with 160,000 subscribers to his channel and a top video
with 5.4 million views, shares Frey’s view that an influencing career is most profitable when
used as a tool for marketing products or other business endeavors.
“If you have an established following on social media,” says May, “that saves you a ton of up
front costs that you would have to spend on marketing just to get your program or your business
out there to the masses. If you already have that platform, it gives you a base of people that are

5. going to purchase what you’re offering. They like you, they follow you for the stuff you put
out.”
May, unlike Reisenger and Levet, is a chameleon with his content. He has adapted his channel
throughout the years to reflect what he believes will be the most popular among viewers,
beginning with trampoline tricks in eighth grade, to working on cars, to its current content of
offering stock market and financial advice to college-aged viewers.
“I just want to be clear that everything I’ve learned, I’ve literally learned just by Googling and
putting in the work on the internet,” states May in a video entitled, Day Trading Tips That Will
Make You RICH!! “If I can learn to do this on my own, anyone can learn to do this on their
own.”
For May, even the college he attended was a calculated decision to build his influencing career.
He only applied to schools in Los Angeles, identified as the epicenter of the influencer lifestyle
by Levet, Reisenger and May.
“The only reason I was really interested in college was the connections and not so much the
education,” says May, “Everything I learned I’ve just learned by myself, through experience and
reading about it online. I feel like the need for college definitely isn’t the same as it was before
the internet age.”