The Force is Strong with “That Star Wars Girl”
Anna is a freelance Visual Development artist who did not intend to become a YouTuber.
I’ve known Anna for over 5 years, and from what I know, she eats, breathes and sleeps Star Wars. Her love for the epic space opera began when she was 2-years-old. She even grew up in Modesto, CA, which is the same town George Lucas (the creator of Star Wars) was born and raised in. Star Wars has been such a big part of her life, that she even gave a speech at her high school graduation (which happened to be on the same night of Lucas’ 50th anniversary of graduating from the same school) about how he inspired her. So when I found out that Anna made a YouTube channel, I was astonished. The content that she spoke about in her channel did not surprise me, but what baffled me was the reasoning behind the creation of her channel and how she became to be known as: “That Star Wars Girl”.
“I am a huge Star Wars fan and I absolutely hated it.” By “it”, Anna was referring to Star Wars: Episode XVIII-The Last Jedi that was released on December 15, 2017. Everyone that Anna knew, including myself, wanted to know why she hated the film. Instead of repeating herself to a hundred different people, she decided to make a video that answered every single question that she received about the movie.
A month after the film was released, Anna uploaded a 38 minute video called “Honest Review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi”. She only intended for her video to be shared with her friends and family.
“What [Disney has] been doing to Star Wars just disgusts me to my very core. This isn’t just a movie to us, this is real, this is something that has been with us in our entire lives. I don’t want to see the things that I love get destroyed,” was her passionate statement on how she felt about the direction the new trilogy was going in.
Anna stressed how much she would love it if George Lucas would buy back Lucasfilm or if Disney could give it back. If not, have Lucas work on future projects to improve them and bring them back to his original vision and its glory. The only part of “The Last Jedi” Anna enjoyed was when it ended. She decided to give it another chance and after seeing the film for the second time, she admitted that the second viewing made her hate it more.
Than something extraordinary happened, what Anna had only intended to be a video to be shared with friends and family was watched by many others. As of December 2018, her Last Jedi review has over 84,000 views and over 1,500 comments. After 10 months of uploading videos, “That Star Wars Girl” has over 16 thousand subscribers.
“It’s really powerful and it’s really touching… it’s made me feel for the first time in my life that I’m not alone and that there is a whole community that I can connect to that feel the same way I do.”
Due to the hundreds of positive reviews she received and thousands of fans that she had gained, in expressing her passion for Star Wars, Anna has decided to continue to create more videos for her YouTube channel.
“To continuously come out with videos, I have to keep up with [SW related] news. I have to do my research to see if the news is fake.”
Anna hasn’t considered her YouTube channel as “work” because she’s fervent about the subject(s) she talks about. As she started making videos, she admitted she “got lucky”. Eventually, she acquired skills to increase her viewership, and mustered viewer consistency. With the right timing and making sure the topic of her videos are still relevant, Anna has posted videos that have reached a hundred thousand views.
One aspect of creating content Anna has acknowledged is the time of day she uploads her videos. A majority of her viewers are from the United States, but she does have a handful of viewers in Europe, predominantly the United Kingdom.
“I have to make sure that my videos are posted early in the morning, so that way my viewers in Europe see it first and it gains a lot of views, so that when my American subscribers see it when they wake up, they’ll see all the views it’s gotten, which will make them want to click on it and watch it.”
When a viewer searches a video on YouTube, the first video that will show up will most likely be the video with the most views. As a viewer, they’ll think to themselves “this one has the most views, therefore it must be good”.
After she uploaded her third video onto her channel, her subscribers encouraged Anna to reach out to a community known as “Geeks & Gamers”, a diverse group of people that talk about nerd culture, comics, anime, and video games. Once she joined the community, she was asked to create a video for the “Geeks & Gamers” YouTube channel. Since then she has become part of a faction called the “Fandom Menace”, a group of people that don’t like the way Disney is taking over because “they are bringing identity politics into Star Wars and trying to push a political agenda.” Through “Geeks & Gamers”, she has acquired more subscribers and made the decision to become a full time YouTuber.
For Anna to make a profit out of her channel, “That Star Wars Girl”, she had to be monetized. To be considered for monetization, Anna had to have 1,000 or more subscribers and a certain amount of watch hours. Watch hours is the total amount of time that is being accumulated by viewers spend watching videos. Channels have to accumulate 4,000 watch hours to be monetized.
“Companies are paying YouTube to get their ads in videos. They don’t just chose any channel to have ads. [Companies] want their ads to be seen, so they want to show their ads where there are many subscribers.”
The channel generated money every time a viewer watched an advertisement on a video. Thereafter, the money accumulated from the ad is split up. YouTube itself takes a portion of the revenue and the YouTuber gets the other portion for getting a viewer to watch it. Money was accumulated every time a viewer watched the entire ad, interacted with it, or clicked on it to visit the company’s website.
“Once you’ve passed the first step, each video must be a certain length, cannot contain any copyright material, and go through a checklist created by YouTube to be approved and profitable.” It took Anna three months to get her channel, “That Star Wars Girl”, monetized.
Anna has her own process on how to upload a video to please the YouTube algorithm, a computerized system that filters which videos people see when they’re online. It shows viewers what they want (or at least what the algorithm thinks they want). Anna titles her videos to contain “controversial titles with the words like breaking news, controversy, and update” typed in all caps and followed by exclamation marks. By doing so, she has captured the attention of her subscribers and new viewers. She has created thumbnails for every video that she’s uploaded so far, but doesn’t put the title in the thumbnail to get viewers intrigued.
“I would love to be doing this in 5 years, but I don’t plan that far ahead, because I’ve learned in life that as much planning as you do, things come up and plans change. Where I thought I’d be in 5 years ago, is nowhere near where I am now.” Anna admitted that she only plans for the foreseeable future. She assured that she’ll still be around in another year creating more content because of Episode IX that will be released in December 2019.
“People will watch your channel because they like who you are. My followers like how honest I am, and they can see that I’m a real person.”
