Why You Can Succeed Online...

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This is a great story:-

Lauren Luke: the Internet make-up guru
A mum from South Shields has become a worldwide sensation with 56 million views for her online make-up demos
Lauren Luke
Carol Midgley

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Lauren Luke was at a theme park last week when she saw a couple nudging each other and whispering. "That's her," said one. "That's the girl off the internet." The girl off the internet is a phrase that follows Luke a lot these days. She is the 27-year-old single mother from South Shields who somehow, against all the odds, managed to become world famous.

Two years ago she was working in a dead-end job as a taxi dispatcher and wondering how to create a better life for her son Jordan, 11. Now she has her own make-up range, stars in a Nintendo game, is fêted in America and has been watched online more than 50 million times.

To many, her name may well draw a blank. But Luke's make-up tutorials, relayed from her pink and black bedroom on a webcam and so unscripted and unfinessed that you can hear seagulls squawking outside or her dogs snoring, are watched religiously throughout the world. She is the most popular YouTube user in Britain. Young women scream her name in the street. Walking around New York recently, she was recognised and stopped by fans. Yet hers is a very modern kind of fame -- all this was achieved without television.

When we meet at the house in Jarrow that she shares with her partner Ken she is busy shoving her three dogs into another room and putting the kettle on. She still cannot quite believe what has happened. "I don't feel famous at all," she says. "It's strange. But I know people are nudging each other and staring in the street. It happened the other day at Flamingoland." On her desk, alongside a giant teddy bear, are a computer and a small camera -- the only clues to this global "industry". It is from here that she conducts about three tutorials a week on YouTube , plus "Twittering like mad".
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Luke's remarkable success is about more than just the power of the internet. She knows that her mass appeal arises from how ordinary she appears. She is a size 16, working-class girl who left school with no qualifications because she fell pregnant at 15. Until recently she had never been abroad and didn't have a passport. Her audience see themselves in her. She is, without wanting to sound cheesy, every woman.

To call her tutorials unpretentious would be an understatement. Luke speaks to the camera as she would to her best friend, mispronouncing the names of make-up brands and handing out earthy tips on products. "I was disappointed with this," she'll say, or "you don't have to fart about with that". She never edits them because she doesn't know how. Yet she has an instinctive gift for eye make-up. Although she had never had a make-up lesson when she began broadcasting and refuses to follow any rules, her results are, frankly, stunning. Luke is the perfect antidote to the intimidating, exclusive, self-mythologising beauty industry. Her popularity is an indication of the hunger for "real" people with real bodies and faces that have not been airbrushed beyond recognition.

"People have had enough," she says. "They want people to be shown as they really are. I think I've come along at a good time for that." On the day we meet there is a furore in the media about a stylist walking out of London Fashion Week, reportedly over the use of size 12 to 14 models. This makes Luke angry and she launches into a tirade about normal-sized women not being catered for. "What they are telling people is that thin equals success," she says. "Real people are made to feel freaky -- but we are the ones buying their clothes and their products."

She believes, like millions of others, that "there is a standard set by the industry that is unobtainable by the vast majority of us normal folk who pay for it. We're entitled to have products that work and bring out the best in us. I really hope that people will look at what's happened to me and think there's a bit of hope. In a way, I suppose I'm taking on the beauty industry."

If she is, she will have a lot of followers. The thousands of messages left on her videos are effusive. "Most other make-up YouTubers never show their mistakes. Lauren gets out her wet wipes and shows us how to fix it," reads one. "Sweety, you are gorgeous, I simply adore you. Can't WAIT till your products are here in Australia!!!" reads another. Luke says she has had these thoughts about the industry for years but only now has felt able to voice them: "I can speak me mind now I'm getting more self-confident." For years she felt intimidated by the white-coated women on the cosmetics counters of department stores -- and sometimes, she admits, she still does.

This insecurity possibly dates back to her schooldays, which she describes as "a nightmare". She was bullied. "Nobody was my friend," she says. "For the most part it was a lonely and frightening experience." Some teachers opined that she would amount to nothing -- and when she foolishly confided in a classmate that her dream was to make something of herself in America, the bullies' riposte was to paint on a wall "Lauren's going to America, yeah right!". She would experiment with make-up to make herself feel better.

In her new book, she describes losing her virginity at 15 to Jordan's father. "I was lying there watching Felix the Cat on TV, thinking to meself 'I'm having sex' and feeling that all the curiosity preceding sex didn't match the feelings discovered during the actual event."

After giving birth she continued to live with her mum, who herself had twin babies, and took different jobs to make ends meet (by then she had separated from Jordan's father). It was while working at the taxi office that she came up with the idea of buying make-up wholesale and selling it on eBay. "Instead of using photos of the products, I would use it on meself and take a photo," she says. Before long e-mails started pouring in, asking how she had done this or that with her eyes. There were so many to reply to that she found it easier to upload demonstration videos instead. A phenomenon was born. Now her products are selling fast. More than 130 retailers stock them in America. Her book features a picture of a gigantic Lauren Luke advertisement in Times Square, New York, with the word "Me!" scrawled on in pen -- a rejoinder to those mocking bullies.

Her book is dotted with almost evangelistic mottos -- "Have faith in yourself and it will happen"; "I want to make everyone feel special" -- as well as handy tips on, for example, refreshing tired eyes and creating the impression of high cheekbones.

She has resisted giving people makeovers. Although that would undoubtedly be lucrative, she insists that it is not her "thing". Her thing is showing people how to do it themselves: "I see it as empowering people," she says. "When you go to the hairdresser your hair looks lovely but there's no way you can make it look that way at home. Well, I bet you could if they sat down and showed you how. This is why I'd rather sit down with someone and show them."

I ask her advice. I should try experimenting with pink eyeshadow, she says (I have never done that in my life) and "browns make blue eyes pop" (again, I had no idea). I must use a different colour every day of the week to see what works best.

Most people, according to Luke, are in a make-up rut. I ask how you stop eyeliner clogging in the corner of your eye. You can't, she says, you just have to have good friends who will tell you when it happens.

Another thing she must resist, now that her career is taking off, is being "branded". Luke's lack of slickness is the key to her charm; polish it too much and the magic may disappear. She knows this all too well. "It will only mess up if I let people interfere," she says, adding that she has already said no to a few things she has been asked to do. "It has to be ad lib. I have to do it my own way."

She is right. Ironically, for a young woman whose authenticity is her currency, one of her biggest challenges will be keeping it real.
#online #succeed
  • Profile picture of the author Raymond White
    Wow, That is a great news man. So, it seems that we too can become very popular if we are IM Guru.... we can get fans ourselves too.. :p
    Ya, I do agree man, that is a good lessons for newbies like me
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