The video performed well

Yawning as he woke up, and his back still feeling raw from the wax, Liam gingerly sat up in bed and grabbed his phone. He checked the analytics for his new video and when he saw the number, his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. The video had been up for only a few hours and it already had 500 views! Given that his videos usually topped out at 10 views per day, this was an achievement!

“Woah! I guess they liked seeing me in pain…” Liam mused as he scrolled through his comments.

As he scrolled, he realized that a huge chunk of the comments were asking if other commenters had “come here from Rachel Kisaki?” Liam typed in Rachel’s channel name and was surprised once more when he saw that she had 50K subscribers. Not a million, of course, but certainly more than Liam’s paltry 83, which had since jumped to 200 since Rachel’s endorsement. And she’d offered to help him out?

“Wow…” Liam said as he scrolled through her videos.

They were pretty much the bogstandard fashion/lifestyle/beauty blogger, makeup tutorials, clothing hauls, that sort of stuff, but while Liam didn’t get the appeal, he could tell that they performed exceedingly well, and not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, decided to give Rachel a call. Thankfully, it was her day off so she agreed to come to his place so they could talk about strategy.

“I love helping out struggling creators, and I think you’ve got a lot of potential. I mean people are subscribing now that I’ve introduced you to them, right?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah,” Liam said.

“So the next step is to keep the momentum moving, they liked that video, so we should do others like it. But first we need to work on your presentation.”

“Presentation?”

“Don’t get me wrong, but I watched your backlog last night and it’s just so boring. You in front of a wall, and you always look washed out and frumpy. I can lend you some lighting equipment, I’ve got an old ringlight I never use, but we need to either work on making your studio nicer, or revamping your wardrobe.”

“What’s wrong with my wardrobe?”

“T-shirts are boring, you need some trendy clothes. And we’ve gotta do something with that hair, too! Ooh, that can be a video!” Rachel paused to write a note into her phone. “The better you look, the more people will wanna watch, trust me.”

Gauging from Rachel’s personal style, which was extremely trendy and undeniably feminine, in her somewhat lolita-inspired dress, Liam trusted her judgement.

“So, what’s it gonna be? A shopping trip or fixing up your studio?” Rachel asked.

“Uh…” Liam started.