The Sabrina Carpenter clip that helped a 22-year-old make £120,000 a year
Eknoor Singh says he only needs his phone and good internet to make more than £120,000 a year.
A 22-year-old person from London is a professional “clipper.” People pay him to make short, upright videos for social media, hoping they will become very popular.
He says, “The more people watch my video, the more money I earn.”
Usually, the client—who could be a clothing company, a music company, a movie studio, a podcaster, or a person with a big online following—gives a long video first, and the person who cuts the video watches it before making a short clip.
They make short videos, lasting 30 to 60 seconds, showing the best parts, and then share them on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or other websites.
The plan is that the clip makers, who are usually between 16 and 25 years old, will know what kind of videos teenagers like and will make short videos that lots of people will watch.
£10,000 a month
If a short video gets a lot of views, the person who made it can earn up to $3 (about £2.30) for every 1,000 times people watch it. This can make a lot of money if the video becomes very popular.
Singh started liking clipping last year after he earned $300 by sharing a short video of pop star Dua Lipa on Instagram.
I thought, “Wow, this is a lot of money just for sharing a video.” I quickly realized it could be very profitable.
Now he says he makes “at least £10,000 a month.”.
He says he looks for funny, short, and interesting videos, like a quick one he made last May about Sabrina Carpenter’s funny reaction when her dress’s tails were stepped on at the Met Gala in New York. Singh didn’t say who asked him to make the video.
Many make nothing
Ethan Weems, who is 24 years old and from Wichita, Kansas, earns extra money by editing videos on the side of his main video-making job. He says he makes at least $1,000 every month from clipping videos.
He does this by making short videos for Caleb Hammer, who is a YouTuber and podcaster. Caleb Hammer is best known for hosting a show called Financial Audit, where he looks at and explains the personal money stories of the people he interviews.
Weems says clipping helps him earn money from home so he can spend more time with his wife and one-year-old son. “I don’t want a regular nine-to-five job where I have to go to an office every day,” he says.Some hair cutters can earn a lot of money, but social media helper Lia Haberman warns that there are not many of these successful people. “It’s like the creator world,” she explains. “Most of them don’t make much money at all.”.
Streaming expert Devin Nash says people often think making clips is quick and simple, but it’s not. He explains that good clippers have to watch many hours of videos and spend a lot of time in that world to do well.
There are some helper websites that show videos of jobs, and they help barbers find and connect with their potential customers.
They include pages on general websites like Reddit and Discord, as well as special sites like Clipping Culture, Vyro, Whop, and Kick.
The second group of websites charges money to the companies that want their work done. Clipping Culture has clients like Capital Records, Universal Music Group, and HBO Max.
For companies like these, hiring a teenager or someone in their twenties to work from their bedroom costs less than paying for regular ads on social media, and it might even attract more people’s attention.
Boxabl, a company in Las Vegas that builds homes made of many parts, has been watched a lot online. Galiano Tiramani, the person who started the company and appears in many of their videos, says they’ve had about a billion views of their videos so far.
In the UK, Jimmy McLoughlin, who used to work as an adviser in the government and now hosts the Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast, also likes to share short video clips.
He says the clips are like short previews for the main events. For example, a recent podcast with Prime Minister Andy Burnham was listened to almost 50,000 times, but the clips from it have been played millions of times.
Evan Stanfield, who started Clipping Culture and is in charge, is only 21 years old. He started the company last year after leaving the University of Kansas.
Stanfield says that the website links brands to over 340,000 hair clippers from around the world. He believes short videos are popular because “people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.”.
He says that making short videos is something young people do because most of the people who watch these videos are young too.
Eknoor Singh says he keeps clipping nonstop no matter where he is in London.
I might be somewhere else. I could go on a trip and earn money.