KNYSNA TO KNIGHTSBRIDGE: Caspar Lee spends much of his time in London now
Caspar Lee, 20, is SA's YouTube prince, turning lo-fi videos into fame & fun.
Fast forward nine years and tons of YouTubers with their own channels (DStv, eat your heart out) are getting cheques in the mail. "Thousands" of them are making six figures.
Now 20, Caspar Lee was 16 and living in Knysna when he started making YouTube videos for fun, then boom: he's on the red carpet, some lackey adjusting his hair.
Two years after he launched his channel Dicasp (as in "Director Caspar") from his bedroom, he's shed the baby fat and hired managers. "I'm bad at negotiating. I always say 'yes', but apparently that's not always so great," he says, with boy-next-door innocence.
He won't say how much he earns, but Socialblade, which compiles YouTube data, estimates he banks as much as R5-million a year. He lives independently in London. "I'm looking at investing in some companies and property."
At an awards ceremony where we meet in Joburg, he's bathed in TV camera spotlights. "It's not hard to cope with fame. It doesn't feel real." He knows what happens to TV child-stars with no Plan B. "I'm learning the trade and hopefully I can create a business from it." Watch out: here comes the media mogul of the 2020s.
He pulls out his phone from his jeans, but I bet he's already checked his numbers today. "Right now I'm on 2.34million subscribers, growing at 130000 a month, which is pretty cool. Whatever the advertisers are paying Google, you split: 55% to you and 45% to YouTube."
At 16, he won a poker game, then bought himself a video camera with the winnings. But his plan to shoot videos to get attention from girls backfired. "When you're a teenage boy talking to a camera every day, you don't get much action." Just then a doe-eyed girl slides up to him - most of his subscribers are young women. He's used his good looks. I'm told he has the best hair on the internet.
"When I started I made the videos topless. I wasn't trying to appeal to anyone sexually. It was just f**king hot in my house."Uh-huh.
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