EXCLUSIVE: Burnley YouTube star Vizeh offers his tips on how to make it as a YouTuber

He's amassed more than 171,000 YouTube subscribers, his videos have been viewed millions of times, and he's a lifelong Clarets supporter with a soft spot for Dean Marney. As Burnley's biggest online sensation, Vizeh gets asked the same question time and time again : how do you make it as a YouTuber?
Burnley YouTuber Vizeh with his plaque for reaching 100,000 subscribers.Burnley YouTuber Vizeh with his plaque for reaching 100,000 subscribers.
Burnley YouTuber Vizeh with his plaque for reaching 100,000 subscribers.

Well, now the man who has done just about everything online from shaving his head to raise money for The MS Society to getting more than 600,000 views on a video of grown men (including himself, he admits at the start) losing their minds over a game of FIFA has revealed a few of his major tips on how to make it as a YouTube star.

Being a YouTuber is about as 21st century a job as you can imagine. Potentially as lucrative as being a footballer, the world's top earners on the platform regularly take home more than £10m a year owing to their impossible popularity as the media personalities of tomorrow. But how do you get to the stage where you can be a YouTuber as a job?

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"To anyone wanting to start on YouTube, I'd say do something that you really enjoy," says Vizeh, who's real name is Liam Waddington. "If you enjoy football, then do football content, if you enjoy vlogging, then become a vlogger, and then be consistent.

"Make sure you upload two or three times a week and that you set yourself little steps and goals," adds Liam, who has been uploading videos to YouTube since 2010. "If you have 100 subscribers, aim for 120. Feel like you're working towards something - even if it's not YouTube, anything in life, make sure you're working towards something because otherwise you feel lost."

Explaining that while some people may feel the need to change their character to succeed on YouTube, Liam explains that the budding social media stars of the future should see the website as an outlet and as a place in which they can be comfortable to be themselves, but at the same time show a more creative element to their personalities which may otherwise remain hidden.

"I'm naturally quite an introverted person - if I go to a party and they know me as Vizeh the YouTube guy, then I'm different to how I am if no one knows who I am," Liam explains. "On YouTube I can be more wacky and express myself. You can be more creative, so just make sure that the person you are online is your unique selling point - that you're yourself, but that you're also taking advantage of the platform to show a side of yourself that you may not show as much.

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"Nowadays, if you show too much weirdness or creativity I feel like it can get beaten out of you as a kid being told that university and degrees are all so serious..." he added. "We lose our creativity over time, so if you've got a place where you can still portray that, just for your own happiness it helps you."

Finally, explaining to people just how difficult it is to make it as a full-time YouTuber, Liam has a final few words of wisdom to try and steer people more to using the platform for themselves.

"Do it as a passion and don't go into YouTube thinking you're gonna be a YouTuber and make money," he says. "It's so hard to do."