Creator Q+A: Sydney Morgan

Dylan Wells: Tell us your creator origin story – when did you first start making and posting content?

Sydney Morgan: I've been an artist my whole life, drawing and painting, and when I got older I started volunteering through my art department to do children's face painting at local fairs and events. I always loved watching beauty content growing up on YouTube, and I started experimenting more with it myself and posting it online, and I did my friend’s [makeup] for proms and dance photos. 

I was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis in 2018, so I spent the next two years in and out of the hospital. I really needed a creative outlet at the time, so I got a lot more into makeup, and I started posting little videos online around covid time, and I was really just posting them as a portfolio for my friends and family to see what I was up to. And they very quickly started getting a lot of views and likes. 

I had to take a gap year [in 2020] for my colitis surgeries and also the pandemic. By the end of that first year, I think I had 7 million followers on TikTok and a million subscribers on YouTube. So instead of going to college like I had planned, I moved to Los Angeles and pursued content creation full time.

DW: Was there a particular moment where you realized this might actually be a better path for you than those college plans?

SM: I never knew that content creators could even make money. I knew it was their job, but I don't think I knew where the money was coming from – I had seen them do brand partnerships, but I didn't know how the ads running on YouTube videos got paid, or anything like that. So I was making a little bit of money from the TikTok ad program, but nothing that was crazy at the time that could be a full-time career. 

Then my friend and I took a trip to Los Angeles – when I had still under a million [followers] on TikTok – that's when I met my now-manager. And then I did the math: How many followers would I have to get per day [in hopes she would] manage me?

So I did that, and that's when I got my first brand deal. I think it was for like $1,000. I was like, “Oh my God.” I didn't realize you could make this much money from posting content and advertising for products. And I think that was the moment when I realized this could actually be a career, when I started doing brand partnerships.

DW: Talk to me about how you approach this as an entrepreneur, and how you think about your content as a business.

SM: It's crazy to think that it started out as just such an innocent hobby that I was doing from my hospital room, and now it's honestly a full on production company in a way, because I have probably seven team members that are helping me with content now, whether that's editors, thumbnail designers, a producer, things like that. 

I approach everything now more so from an optimization standpoint, and I try to experiment with repeatable formats and things that are more sustainable long term. Because if I was trying to come up with a new concept every single day, that's just not sustainable. That's why I do a lot less full, crazy special effects makeup looks now than I used to, because doing a 12-hour makeup look every day until the end of time just wouldn't ever work for me. That's why I've kind of expanded my lane and do a little bit more outside of beauty – beauty adjacent. But anything that the fans are interested in, I will create.

DW: What was that transition like – going from this all being content you're producing yourself, to then having to delegate what you're actually in charge of versus what you're outsourcing to someone on your team – giving up some of that control?

SM: That was so hard for me, and I pushed it as long as I possibly could before asking for help and bringing someone on my team. And I think the first person I hired was maybe a short-form editor, because giving my raw footage to someone, it just feels scary, and I always thought it would change the way that I was filming. If I knew someone else was going to see that full footage, maybe I wouldn't be as silly and goofy and experimental, because when I'm the one seeing it, I don't care if I do something stupid, I'll edit it out. Giving it to someone else was a little bit scary, but it's the best thing I could have ever done.

DW: What have you learned about what types of content resonate best with your audience?

SM: Leaning into trends is super important, especially in the long-form space, or leaning into borrowed recognition. So say, I know one of [my audience’s] favorite celebrities is Taylor Swift, I'm thinking, how can I do a video where Taylor Swift could be in my thumbnail?

My recent video was testing celebrity beauty secrets to see if they work, and Taylor Swift was in this thumbnail, so the click-through rate on that video was great. That's something that I've done a lot. Building videos around viral moments is something that's been really great for me, especially for growth.

DW: What is your favorite platform to post on these days?

SM: YouTube, not close. The community on YouTube is a lot stronger than any other platform, and I feel like my content actually gets shown to the people that hit that subscribe button, versus on other platforms, you kind of hit follow and then maybe never see them again, because you just get fed all kinds of random content, which is great for discoverability and views, but it's not great for community. I love the longer-form format there. I feel like my audience gets to know me a little bit more. YouTube as a platform is just the best with their creators. They care so much. They take care of us. YouTube is the only platform where I could make a full-time living off of.

DW: What's your favorite type of content to watch right now or your favorite creator to watch?

SM: I've been watching a lot of podcasts on YouTube, but that's like, so unrelated to my stuff. My favorite podcast is “The Diary Of A CEO.” I've been watching a ton of those. And I've actually been watching Pokemon videos, a guy named Deep Pocket Monster, he collects Pokemon cards.

This Q+A is part of Verified, a newsletter that is published by WP Creator, a new business outside The Washington Post’s newsroom that is focused on the creator economy and content partnerships with independent creators. Learn more about WP Creator.