What started out as a simple “unboxing” YouTube channel has ballooned into a multi-million-follower network based on the latest and greatest in computer technology.
Surrey’s Linus Sebastian, 30, appeared in his first YouTube video for NCIX Tech Tips back in 2007. In that video, he describes and installs a computer processing unit (CPU) cooling system.
At the time, Sebastian was working for NCIX, the Richmond-headquartered computer company. He started as a sales representative, but was eventually promoted to a management position. One of his duties was to make product-information videos.
“We didn’t expect people to subscribe, that was never the plan,” Sebastian explains in one of his videos. “What I think was a huge part of the success at the time was the quantity of videos I produced. I was doing one-and-a-half videos a day, 45 videos a month, early in the process. I would go to the parking lot and shoot 10 at a time.”
Sebastian started Linus Tech Tips, an arm of NCIX that would allow him to publish at a lower-production cost. The new channel, Sebastian said, allowed him to publish videos more frequently and would “absolve the company of some of the responsibility for whatever it is I might say.”
The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel started to gain followers, but the NCIX channel was still dominant.
In 2013, Sebastian decided to leave NCIX, through an agreement, and brought the Linus Tech Tips channel and its trademark with him.
He set up a makeshift studio in his two-car garage, hired two people and continued to create unboxing and technology-related videos.
“When I started out, my five-year plan was to have five people total and we would make YouTube videos and would move into a space at some point when and if that made sense,” Sebastian said Wednesday.
“I would have been happy for us to be just like five guys or girls going out, making videos. If we could all make a pretty good living, that would be super cool.”
From mid-2013 until now, however, Sebastian has transformed his small, single-handycam production into a 19-person team that works out of a 6,000-square-foot studio.
His YouTube channel, Linus Tech Tips, has more than 3.5 million subscribers from around the globe.
“Around the time I started making videos, a huge YouTube channel might have a few hundred thousand subscribers. The game has changed so much. YouTube itself has become much more ubiquitous.”
YouTube now has more than one billion users.
Sebastian says he’s not able to pin down what it takes to rise above the sheer number of videos posted a day.
“It’s a great question. If I could bottle it and sell it, I would make a lot more money than what I make running a YouTube channel. For me, a big part of it was right place, right time.”
Sebastian’s team just came back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Historically, videos produced from the show have created the largest spike in the channel’s viewership.
“That’s where we pump out about 40 to 60 videos in like five days. Every new hot thing is there.”
Linus Tech Tip’s most-viewed video – with seven million views – is an unboxing and first look at a remote-control fire truck. In another popular video – four million views – he built a $30,000 computer.
As for the future, Sebastian said his team is creating a video-sharing platform that will cultivate viewer-to-creator interaction. The pilot project, Floatplane, can be found on linustechtips.com
Sebastian said his company, Linus Media Group, is getting close to launching the platform, but isn’t ready to commit to a date.
His YouTube channel can be found at youtube.com/linustechtips