Forbes just announced its list of the highest-paid YouTube stars and it comes as no surprise that makeup tutorial guru Michelle Phan, with over 8 million subscribers and counting, made the cut. Prerequisites for making the list? A minimum of $2.5 million pretax earnings for the year ending June 1, 2015. It was reported that Phan made $3 million for the year, putting her at number seven on the list.
According to Forbes, “One of the only commonalities of the group is their youth: Most are under 30, and thus only slightly older than their target audience members, many of whom are of the generation that prefers YouTube to old-fashioned television.” Michelle Phan definitely falls into all of these categories. “She’s playing a long game; she reinvests most of the money from her projects—including her cosmetics line and ipsy, a monthly makeup-subscription service—right back into her business.”
[ Read: Michelle Phan Talks Success, Her New Book and Miley Cyrus ]
“I thought, if [YouTube] is going to be the global television of the future, I need to build my brand here,” she said to Forbes, when speaking of her first YouTube video that went live in 2007. “Within the first week, 40,000 people watched it and hundreds of comments came in and that’s when I realized I’d found my calling.”
Aside from being a famous YouTube star, Phan also has a successful cosmetics line, em Michelle Phan, and popular Ipsy subscription service. Just last week, L’Oreal announced it was ending its deal with em Michelle Phan. “Together, we’ve made the decision to sell Em Michelle Phan to Ipsy, a company which Michelle cofounded,” said Carol Hamilton, president of L’Oréal USA’s Luxe division, in a statement to WWD. “We are proud to have worked with Michelle to help bring her vision to life.”
We’re excited to see what the YouTube star has in store for her two brands.
