Madina Basaeva was born in Dushanbe, her dad worked as a driver, and her mother as a cook. Four years ago, Madina sold hamburgers in McDonald’s and helped her family pay for a modest apartment bought in a mortgage, today she earns about a million rubles a month. Madina does not go public without personal bodyguard and she is the ambassador of the fashion house Dolce & Gabbana. What is the secret to her success? Representatives of the baby boomer generation brought up on films “Cinderella” and “Pretty Woman,” may suggest that the girl successfully married. People of generation Z, even if (by strange chance) they have not heard of Basaeva, will guess that money and blogging brought her fame. And they’ll be right.
Dina Saeva (pseudonym of Basaeva) entered Forbes rating of the highest paid tiktokers, she has more than 16 million subscribers. The first Lady of TikTok is 22 years old, on Instagram she has many photos in a swimsuit amid hot sands and snowy forests, in TikTok she has short videos with unpretentious humor, singing under phonogram and dance challenges. It seems that everyone can repeat her success. As secretary Verochka from Russian film “Office romance” said, nothing is impossible for a person with intelligence. Nevertheless, many, having tried to blog, understand how difficult it is to get not just a million, but even a few thousand subscribers. How to achieve popularity on the Web?
Find your niche
Madina Basaeva, Rahim Abramov (tiktoker with 10 million subscribers and millions of income), Anastasia Ivleeva (more than 13 million subscribers in Instagram) do not have acting, music or psychological education, but they understand very clearly what they want and what their subscribers expect from them. Young bloggers like to sing, to dance, to dress up. Their young audience enjoys watching this beautiful and easy life, which, it turns out, is available not only to actors, models, majors, and celebs, but also to ordinary provincial children from ordinary working families. In addition, if a graduate of the Moscow conservatory will try to repeat the success of Dina Saeva — it is not evident if she will succeed. Even despite the fact if she sings better, or dresses more elegant, and quotes from Russian and foreign classics are guessed in her posts. Because a blogger with such a cool backstory is more logical to act as expert and target a different audience.
Despite the dominance of amateurs, expert opinion is still very valuable, and 3 thousand subscribers of a smart financial analyst, or an authoritative pediatrician, or an advanced IT specialist for advertisers can “weigh” more than 300 thousand followers in TikTok. Because these 3,000 are a proven target audience.
People are interested in expert opinion on a variety of issues — what kind of cinema to watch during week-end, what novelties were published in the world of intellectual literature, how to store medication correctly etc. If you know everything about keeping, breeding, feeding domestic rats, or you understand thoroughly the systems of proper nutrition, or you are professionally engaged in fitness, you are very likely to become a successful expert blogger. So, Tikhon Smirnov works in grocery retail and talks about his secrets in his zen channel, where Smirnov has about 100,000 subscribers.
“I trade expired sausages, cheat with price tags, and I hum,” Smirnov shares information about himself.
He explains very cheerfully and competently to audience why fresh bread is always pushed deep into the shelf, why cashiers ask for a passport from forty-year-old bearded wine buyers, how store employees have to pay for crashed bottles with expensive alcohol. Alexander Sysoev, founder of the Russian Restaurant Festival, writes in Zen (26 thousand subscribers) and Telegram (102 thousand subscribers) about the opening of new institutions and interesting events in the restaurant business, gives excellent recipes for downs and fillings.
Among developers of personal brands there are such famous entrepreneurs as Oleg Tinkov (about 300 thousands of subscribers to YouTube, more than 400 thousand — in Instsgram), Igor Rybakov (more than a million subscribers to YouTube), Oscar Hartman (about 400 thousand subscribers to YouTube).
“There is much more trust in the product when there is a living person behind it. Personal brand development helps the development of the project, or business,” said Alexander Sysoev.
For a blog to attract a large audience, you need to be a passionate person yourself. If talking about fitness, business or travel is not too interesting for you, you should not even try to get others interested.
Find your feature
But, for example, many like to travel. Many people like to talk about trips with relatives and friends. But at the same time, only few become famous travel bloggers. Because it is not enough to just talk about distant cities and countries – you still need to do it the way no one else.
It’s not so easy to find own feature, standing out from the crowd of the similiar lovers of travel/ animal/ architecture/ music. Journalist and video blogger Yuri Dud (his show “vDud” in YouTube has 8.7 million subscribers), for example, introduces the audience to the life of Russian provinces through conversations and walks with the most glossy Russian photographer Dmitry Markov, whose heroes are often orphans, disabled people, alcoholics. Irina Goldman (more than 900 thousand subscribers to Instsgram, among material achievements — “I earned Porsche in 2 weeks”) travels with the dog — her husky Space humbly gets photographed against the background of sights and natural beauties.
The main film critic of Russian YouTube Yevgeny Bazhenov (Bad Comedian) makes funny and evil reviews on bad films, mocks stupid jokes, wretched stories, pointless dialogues. For this he is loved – Bad Comedian reviews for some films reach 13 million views. Ruslan Usachev (2.49 million subscribers to the YouTube) maintains a film blog “Harmful cinema,” occasionally appearing in a frame with an overhead mustache and a tube.
Even a math teacher could make his image memorable. Peter Zemskov from Chelyabinsk is 52 years old, he gives algebra and geometry lessons in TikTok (in just a month more than 260 thousand users signed for him!), wearing red jeans and a sweater, switching on background music.
Economic journalist Alexandra Bayazitova (her YouTube channel “Hell’s Moneys” has got 113 thousands of subscribers) talks simply and with humor about finances, loans, mortgages, sitting in the kitchen in a homemade gown, without makeup, but with a huge red cat in her arms.
“To look at photos where a child is weaving in a pool or where he is fixed in the background of some sights, is interesting for his relatives only. But, say, to find out the travel story of a huge large family or tourists going to distant countries without luggage, with one small backpack behind, can be curious to lots of people. For blogger success be sure to find your feature, learn to surprise the audience, to show and to tell constantly something unexpected,” sais Evgenia Borodina, a journalist, travel blogger.
Find time and money
It would seem an obvious rule, but for some reason many novice bloggers forget about it: If you want to earn by blogging, treat it like a job. We do not skip work, we try to do it in good faith and in quality. Same with the blog. It is necessary to lead it not from time to time, but regularly, photos and videos should be of good quality, texts should be easy to read and without grammatical errors.
“It seems to many that a blogger is someone who does nothing, but simply talks about his life. But behind every successful blogger there is system work. What qualities should a person possess to discipline himself? First of all, he or she should have strong motivation, the desire for something (passion) or to avoid something (fear). Where is the source of the strongest desires and human fears? From the point of view of psychology, it is in emotional trauma and mental complexes. In an attempt to avoid emotional pain, a person can do his best. Besides that, in the structure of the psyche of a successful blogger there should be quite strong narcissistic and hysteroid radicals. Constructive narcissism and hysteroidism are essential for opportunities to show themselves brightly, as well as to manage large groups of people (subscribers). Highly manifested narcissistic and hysteroid radicals + self-discipline and systematics = successful blogger. But the secret is that these qualities are rarely combined in one person. Therefore, only few become successful in blogging,” says Kristina Kudryavtseva, founder and head of the European School of Psychology.
Even if the blogger is fine with discipline and motivation, at some point he can find that despite all efforts, the growth in the number of subscribers has stalled. So it’s time to fork out for advertising. You can share ads with other bloggers, pay promoted opinion leaders for mentioning you on blogs, or contact one of the many blogger agencies. Agencies promise to help build communication strategy, monetize content, create blogger merch, organize meetings with fans, build a musical career. Many successful blogs are served by entire teams of professionals: the editor helps make texts more thoughtful or funny, the photographer and the operator conduct a competent shooting, the stylist creates a fashionable image, the assistant agrees on cooperation with brands and participation in press tours.
In general, blogging is a serious matter. For his sake, you often have to make sacrifices. Some successful bloggers sacrifice basic, stable and well-paid, work, focusing all efforts on blogging, others sacrifice rest (the ability to abstract from streams of hatred and sometimes uncensored words of haters do not come immediately), others sacrifice their vision (those who spend a lot of time with a smartphone in their hands, are frequent guests of ophthalmologists). And what do you want? How else to achieve the love of millions and collect 100 thousand likes under the photo of your, unremarkable and not too raised, cats?
Author: Natalia Sysoeva