Bethany Mota is only 18-years-old but thanks to the wild popularity of her videos about shopping she’s more popular online than Vogue magazine and has her own national branded line of clothing and jewelry.
The Northern California teen is turning a hobby she started at 14 into a million dollar phenomenon before she’s even moved out of her parents’ house and it’s all thanks to YouTube.
‘Hi. I’m Bethany. I’m a Youtuber,’ she writes on one of her many social media accounts. ‘My viewers are my besties and I love them bunches!’
And those followers love her back–all five million of them.
Bethany is the queen bee of a craze called ‘haul videos’ on YouTube and they’re exactly what they sound like they are.
It’s where girls record a play-by-play of their shopping mall ‘hauls’ and then post them for the teenaged world to see on YouTube.
The teen’s Instagram account, where she posts photos of herself, her cloths and her meticulously decorated bedroom when she isn’t making YouTube videos watched by the hundreds of thousands, has over 2 million followers–more than most celebrities.
Nearly five million people follow her YouTube channel.
Mota is so popular that teen-centric mall staple Aeropostale has branded an entire line of clothes and jewelry with her name.
The casualwear chain is hoping that teen girls across America who don’t already know her name will soon be wearing t-shirts and backless sweaters that bear the ‘Motavator’ label.
According to Business Insider, Mota began her march toward teen fashion domination after coming up against school bullying.
‘I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to leave my house,’ she said, and that she turned to YouTube as a ‘kind of an outlet for me to be myself.’
Despite her growing success, Mota is still largely an online celebrity as opposed to a red-carpet walking source of magazine gossip.
‘Whenever I have free time I love to just lay in my bed and watch YouTube videos, watch movies,’ she told Business Insider. ‘Just basically do nothing.’
The Aeropostale gig isn’t even her first partnership. The bubbly teen has worked with JC Penney and Forever 21 in the past.
And despite it all, she manages to stay grounded.
‘I don’t want to do something unless it feels organic,’ she said. ‘True to me, who I am and what my channel represents.’
