YouTuber Theodora Lee reveals what it’s REALLY like to be a star vlogger…from brand endorsements to ‘banking videos’

EVER wondered what a day in a YouTuber’s life is like?

Well, from my 5 years of vlogging experience, here's the sort of day you could expect if you decided to be a YouTuber...

Sometime around 8am

Seeing as we don’t have an office to get to or a boss to report to, our alarms go off at various hours of the morning. If we’ve got editing to do, we’ll probably rise somewhere around 8am to put the kettle on.

9am – 10am

Before we get to actual work, we’ll spend an hour or so scrolling social media to see how well our recent posts have done and then we’ll trawl other YouTubers’ and bloggers’ social media to see how well their recent posts have done.

Whilst sipping tea we’ll consider that we might need to work a little harder that day.

10am – 12pm

Before getting to our emails, of which there are many, especially from foreign companies offering free clothes in exchange for a video - which we really should start denying seeing as free clothes don’t pay the rent - we finally get down to some editing.

12pm – 1pm

Being a remote ‘business’ and all, it’s around this time that a Skype meeting might occur.

Whether it’s with an MCN (a multi-channel network trying to win us over for a cut of our YouTube earnings), a brand (looking to collaborate for brand endorsement which means money – fingers crossed!) or our agent/ manager (reminding us that we have outstanding Instagrams to post for ‘brand X’ – oops!), a lot of business talk will be spoken, and we’ll pretend like we know exactly what’s going on.

1pm – 2pm

It’s time for lunch with fellow a YouTuber/blogger/freelancer/anyone who works at home alone to speak about the struggles of being our own bosses, but how we wouldn’t want it any other way.

We’ll do a quick Instagram shoot of our food when it arrives, and then talk briefly about our travel plans for the rest for the year, before getting back to shoot our next YouTube video.

2pm - 4pm

We’ll spend the next couple hours setting up for our YouTube video.

Once our hair and makeup is done, the back-drop is set, the lighting has been plugged in, the camera is on its tripod and the microphone has a new battery in it, we’ll press record and realise we actually don’t know what the video is going to be about.

So we take out our laptops and scroll through our YouTube feed for inspiration.

4pm – 5pm

We film our video which is somewhere between what we saw another YouTuber do really well, and our very own creation – which we really hope will do okay – and then decide to order takeout for dinner because our flat is a mess and we can’t face doing more dishes.

7pm – 8pm

We upload the video we shot some weeks previously as a ‘bank video’ – because today’s video still needs to be edited, and let’s face it: we’re tired.

Before making the video public, we design the thumbnail and fiddle with the title to make sure it stands out, without looking completely click bait.

8pm – 9pm

We refresh our latest video and read through the encouraging comments, which all of a sudden remind us why we do what we do. We feel encouraged and respond to as many comments as possible using loads of happy emojies.

Sometime around 11pm

We’ll go to bed and bravely set our alarms for 7am the next morning, because we’re excited about our work, and want to make the most of our time as YouTubers – as sole creatives and dare we say ‘business owners’, while we still can!

Can't get enough of Theodora Lee? You can check out the real story behind her ‘pretty’ Instagram snaps in courageously honest blog post.