James R | On 02, Feb 2016

Zoella now has over 10 million subscribers on YouTube, ranking her among the UK’s streaming elite.

If that figure sounds small, it’s testament to just how big the video site has become: words like “million” have become commonplace when talking about YouTube. The number of videos on the site topping 1 billion views has rocketed in the last year, with Swedish gamer PewDiePie hitting a total of 10 billion views across all of his videos last September.

Subscribers, though, are harder to come by – and they are the best indication of real popularity, as casual fans choose to become loyal, regular viewers of a channel’s content. In fact, Zoella is only the fourth UK YouTube channel to hit the elusive 10 million mark, alongside Adele, One Direction and KSI. It’s telling that Zoella and KSI are the only non-music-related channels in that group, emphasising just how big a following they have. (Depending on how you want to define it, PewDiePie also herals from British soil: Felix Kjellberg is currently based in Brighton and, with 41.9 million subscribers, is the most popular YouTuber of all.)

So who is Zoella? That question might have been expected a couple of years ago, but most people will have heard of her now, even those outside of the vlogosphere, thanks to her ventures in the offline world: the beauty and fashion vlogger became a bestselling author with her first book – Girl Online, released in 2014 – and gained even more notoriety when it emerged that she had worked with a ghostwriter on it. She also appeared on the Band Aid 30 charity single last year and has been the face of a whole line of make-up products, not to mention mental healthy charity Mind.

But despite having become a published writer, singer and charity ambassador, Zoella has continued to post regularly to YouTube, something that has helped to both retain her fans and build that community larger. (At the time of writing, her latest video was posted on 31st January 2016 and already has 1.27 million views.) After joining in 2010, Zoella reached the 1 million milestone in 2013, before racing to 6 million in 2014, when YouTube promoted her through TV and billboard adverts. Today, she has 10,026,513 subscribers and over 660 million views on YouTube across all of her videos.

The next headline using the word “billion” can’t be far away…

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