Skip to main content

Everyone wants to see what Bibi is up to

Internet heroes: German Youtubers like Bibi and Julienco influence trends, fashion and brands. They also earn a lot of money.

30.05.2017
© dpa - Julian Claßen and Bianca Heinicke

Germany. “Even the harshest critics have to acknowledge that Youtuber is a job.” Germany also has enough successful Youtubers to justify this statement in Neon magazine. According to Manager Magazin, Bianca Heinicke, Germany’s most famous Youtuber, who gives fashion and lifestyle tips to roughly 4.5 million subscribers, earns at least 110,000 euros a month.

There are no official figures, however, because Youtube and its stars do not talk about their revenues. The business magazine cites calculations by experts which indicate that Bianca Heinicke earns around 50,000 euros a month with advertising on her Youtube channel alone. She also receives another 22,000 euros in revenues through affiliate links: if someone buys a product directly after clicking a link shown during one of Bibi’s videos, the Youtuber then receives commission. Because she became a celebrity some time ago, she can now earn an estimated 35,000 euros with advertising outside her channel – and is able to ask an international star like the singer Ed Sheeran to take part in a “song challenge” on her sofa.

Silly, but successful

In the new advertising world, it doesn’t always have to look like advertising. Together with her friend Julian Classen, who has over three million subscribers as Youtuber Julienco, Bibi also produces “10 Kinds of ...” video clips. In these films she makes fun of typical parents, siblings and couples, for example. What often seems over the top and rather silly is popular with Bibi’s mainly female teenage target group. A recent analysis by the Territory Webguerillas agency ranked Bibi as the most influential German Youtuber. Julienco was ranked third among the top influencers, and second place went to Julien Bam, who is successful on Youtube with a different approach.

Julien Bam, who originally comes from Singapore and grew up in Aachen, impresses viewers of his videos not only with his break dancing, but also with his self-irony (Das Geheimnis meines Erfolgs) and variations of songs. This is also commercially  successful, and he has won several prizes. Incidentally, Julien Bam was especially influential in February 2017: the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia sent him to Berlin as a member of the Federal Assembly that elected the Federal President. 

Internet heroes: new sound from Hamburg

© www.deutschland.de