In high school, Jade Schlechter’s basement was the place to be. A party at Schlechter’s meant unrelenting teenage rowdiness and a guarantee someone would be curled up around the porcelain throne by the end of the night.
Schlechter isn’t in high school anymore, but there’s still a familiar face wreaking havoc and puking his guts out in the basement every week. Why? Well, it’s his job.
Ryan Doka, known on the internet as DokaRyan, considers himself a professional YouTuber. His videos are not the typical cat, or cute baby videos though – far from it. He’s a challenge expert with videos ranging from him drinking pig’s blood to eating the world’s hottest pepper. The videos often end up with the 20-year-old screaming in pain or retching the contents onto himself.
“I’m just the camera man,” says Schlechter, laughing.
“I don’t know why I use [Schlechter’s] basement. I like this place a lot. The couches are beautiful, the lighting is really nice, and he’s almost always available,” says Doka.
Schlechter and Doka have been making these videos since high school and have been able to make a respectable amount of cash out of them – enough cash to convince Doka to quit his job and pursue YouTube as a full time job.
“This isn’t just a hobby, or something I want to take for granted and do every now and then. It’s something people like, and it gives me a big euphoric feeling and I just want to keep doing it and be seen by more people,” says Doka.
Doka has over 150,000 subscribers and 20 million total views. His most viral video titled “150 Warheads Challenge,” has Doka attempting to eat 150 of the super-sour candies, has over 4.5 million views.
“Once I uploaded that video, I just blew up huge. It was the first challenge video I ever did. I got a million views in the first three to four months and that’s unbelievable.”
YouTubers with a certain amount of views like Doka are paid by Google’s monetization system called Google AdSense. Businesses pay to have commercials roll before one of their YouTube videos and the creator is paid accordingly. While the exact number differs from YouTuber to YouTuber, Doka says that a standard equation would be one cent per every hundred views.
“I made a cent in a day and I thought, ‘this is the best thing in the world, I’m getting paid real money.’ Then I made three cents a day, and it started building gradually. Then I started getting cheques that were $300 to $500 a month.”
Besides advertising revenue, a large part of income comes from brand integration and companies sponsoring videos. Doka says that he currently makes around $1500 a month, but with full-time dedication to his career, he sees that number at least doubling in no time.
Doka isn’t the only Reginian making a living through online videos though. Nineteen-year-old Jordan Clory, known by the alias ‘Spodermen’, has over 180,000 subscribers, 13 million views and over 2 million follows across his multiple twitter accounts, which he also garners revenue from.
“Most of the huge spikes in income comes from a viral video. If you get a big video and it spreads to other videos really quickly, you’ll get a huge spike in revenue. Ad revenue on the internet fluctuates. It can go from making $600 to $5000 the next.”
Clory was not willing to disclose an actual salary, but he says he generally makes around twice as much as minimum wage a month across all of his social media jobs.
“There’s a misconception that YouTubers are rich; like we make a lot of money, but that’s not the case,” says Clory. “The reason that YouTubers do it is because we get enjoyment out of it, we don’t make a ton of money. For the most part, channels like DokaRyan and Spodermen, it’s enough to get by and pay your bills but we’re not rich by any means.”
“I see the potential in it. Some people don’t see that, but I’ve done it for so long and I know enough about it that I can see how well it can grow and what I can do with it,” says Doka. “An older person who doesn’t know anything about it might just see me making stupid videos and they’ll tell me to get a real job. This is my job.”