The internet can sometimes be a scary place, and if you’re joining a niche with your content, you may face that scariness from all sides: your comments section and your YouTube peers. How do you weather that storm, build your channel and gain the success you’re driving for? Our guest this week - beauty, fashion and lifestyle YouTuber Leesha aka xSparkage - shares her journey through the complicated and controversial world of beauty and how she’s made it through so you can too!

“The beauty community is supposed to lift people up and show them that they can be artistic.”

Leesha is a veteran YouTuber. She was putting out videos before YouTube partnership was a thing and if you look at her channel she’s been putting out great content for over 10 years! She came up with a lot of the top beauty YouTubers today in a time when the community was more collaborative and supportive. In 2014 she took a break when her daughter Violet was born, and since returning shes expanded her focus to cover fashion and giving lifestyle advice to her audience.

“If a brand sends you something, it doesn’t mean you owe them anything.”

The beauty niche has definitely changed over the years. In a lot of ways, the beauty community has gotten more negatively competitive, and it's harder to pick the people who are genuinely here to help the community from those who are only growing a following for selfish reasons. Unfortunately, the controversy in the community brings views and attention but is that the kind of attention we need? We dive into a lot of that today as well as how you can grow your channel despite the negatives while doing right by your audience on the process.

“People make the mistake of thinking ‘I’m just talking to my friends’ but no, it’s for everybody to see... and people keep the receipts.”

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