A West Cumbrian Youtuber and TikTok star has scooped two big subscriber accolades.
Ben Rowlands, 22, of Whitehaven, set up his first YouTube channel at the start of the pandemic and created hundreds of educational music videos and gaining over 10,000 followers in the process.
Following the success of his first channel, Ben went on to create a new channel in May 2021, but this time he focused entirely on tech reviews.
In just a year, his new channel exploded in popularity, with his videos on both TikTok and YouTube getting millions of views every day.
As a result of his success, Ben was recently awarded a YouTube silver playbutton award for passing 100,000 subscribers and a 100,000 followers milestone TikTok award.
Talking about his new channel’s success, Ben said: “When I was a kid I always watched YouTube, all I watched was YouTube gamers tech reviewers, I never really watched TV. I remember as a kid when I found out that YouTubers got awards for content creation that I thought wow, that’s really cool, I want one of them one day, and now it’s happened. It’s taken a lot of work to get there, but I’m excited for what’s to come.”
Initially, Ben said the new channel had been a process of trial and error and finding a gap in the otherwise saturated market of tech reviewers.
He added: “I started off by doing the latest and greatest tech and got 1,000 subscribers in the first month, so I got monetised really quickly and became a YouTube partner in that month. But at first it was a trial and error period of thinking about what the channel was going to be.
“At the end of 2021 I had only 7,000 subscribers on my new tech channel, and hadn’t found much success. A lot of work with little results, in views and traction on the channel. I’d initially started off doing Apple iPads, laptops and iPhones, but noticed the market was way too saturated and too many people were doing those videos so I pivoted at the start of this year into a gaming tech channel because I noticed my Xbox videos were doing well.
“But in the summer everything changed, in June it all clicked after I dedicated a lot of time to learning about YouTube growth. I set up TikTok in March, which was a struggle to start with but I persisted and fast forward a few months Tiktok now brings in around 15,000 new Followers a week. I’m still shocked how fast I grew to 100,000 followers in less than four months.”
After working entirely on his own on his channels for months, Ben now has a full-time video editor alongside a few other staff members who help out occasionally with his TikTok and YouTube channels.
Ben said: “Everything we do is incredibly intentional. At the start of the year it was all me and then towards the end of the summer I brought on an editor full time.
“Every single video we have I do a full spreadsheet where I’ll just throw down hundreds of ideas and from that we pick the best one. We make to or three scripts for each video, it can take a good few hours to create a script for a 25-second TikTok video, there’s even intention behind the specific words we use in the videos.”
One of Ben’s most viral videos, ‘I felt pain in virtual reality’ got a whopping total of 3.7 million views on TikTok and 2.7 million on YouTube, which Ben said was down to very strategically choosing a topic that best suited his audience’s interests.
@benrowlands.uk I Felt Pain in VR with this… #vr #oculusquest2 #virtualreality #vrgaming #vrtiktok #quest2 #oculus #xbox #playstation #pcgaming #pcgamer #gamingontiktok #gaming #gamer #xboxtiktok #ps5 ♬ original sound – Ben Rowlands
He added: “I always feel YouTube is an underrated career, as in everyone can achieve on there. YouTube has a career path to success that you have full control over almost like traditional business, so it’s definitely my favourite platform and a priority. But TikTok doesn’t punish you for trying things out which makes creating the content much less stressful and more fun and free.”
Ben said a typical day in his working life was varied. He added: “I have two different modes of me being a content creator and then a manager of my editor and the staff who help with one off jobs and then I have business meetings regarding sponsorships where I could be on with someone in Canada or LA.
“Then there’s the actual creator on the internet and I’ll rack up to me studio for planning or shooting days. A planning day is a whole day of planning a video and planning out when to upload and there’s so much intention behind that process with researching, writing and testing products – I’m dyslexic, so it’s not my forte and it can take some time!”
“Then a shooting day is a whole day of filming and I won’t finish until 7.30pm I normally work 12 hour days and go to the gym after to cool down a bit. The average lifespan of a creator is five years, so what I do in the next five years is pivitol for the channel and the starting point of whatever I do in my 30s.”
Talking about his goals for the future, Ben said: “Since hitting my milestones, elements of my job have begun to change. An analogy I like to use is that, you suddenly go from playing non league football to joining a decent size club in the football league like Carlisle United. With that comes more responsibility in how you behave in your videos and with your audience.
“You also get loads of emails, with sponsorships, brand deals, management offers and so much more that you don’t know what to do with and can be a massive distraction.
“But my focus for now is to keep on doing what I have been and tunnel my energy into getting to the Championship League which is the 1,000,000 Subs and Followers Milestone. Then we can worry about the Premier League and getting a few million.”
Ben also recently launched a brand new gaming channel, which he hopes will be just as successful as his tech channel by next year.
