Sugg, 27, started uploading vlogs as a teen. She now has upwards of 11.6 million YouTube... [+]
Eight years into her remarkable career, the 27-year-old who goes by ‘Zoella’ online still broadcasts from her bedroom, as she did when she started posting vlogs as a teenager in 2009.
Today, however, that room is in a 5-bedroom house she bought herself with the spoils of her earnings.
Zoe Sugg’s cheerful, charming delivery and girl-next-door good looks have turned the Brighton, England resident into one of YouTube’s most-followed stars, with 11.6 million subscribers and counting.
Sugg tops the Beauty category of Forbes’ first ever Top Influencers list, with Ipsy subscription box founder Michelle Phan at #2 and Dubai-based Instagram sensation Huda Kattan at #3.
Zoella made her name not as a professional makeup artist, but as a bubbly, self-taught beauty fanatic, reviewing cosmetics and showing off shopping bags full of drugstore purchases -- or ‘hauls,’ in online parlance.
"As you know, I am no expert," she announces at the start of a tutorial on how to attain gold eyes and berry lips that had been viewed 5.3 million times as of March 2017.
She's as likely to recommend a $4 moisturizer from the high street as she is a $40 department store brand, much to the delight of her legions of millennial and Gen Z fans.
Her videos regularly rack up those sorts of numbers; such is her popularity that a second YouTube channel, MoreZoella, a curated chronicle of her daily life, has over 4.5 million subscribers.
It's partly this willingness to share her (carefully edited) musings and day-to-day activities that has earned Zoella her loyal following.
"It's about authenticity," said Stephanie Horbaczewski, founder and CEO of fashion and lifestyle influencer network StyleHaul. "If you want to be entertained, there are a million places to be entertained. These are the people that are able to bring communities together."
Sugg has managed to supplement her earnings from YouTube clicks and onscreen brand collaborations with a successful offline career as a novelist: her first book ‘Girl Online’ broke records in her home country for first-week sales, according to Nielsen Bookscan.
It quickly became a New York Times bestseller in the U.S. She followed that 2014 hit with sequels in 2015 and 2016.
In 2014, she put her name to a beauty line at U.K. drugstore chain Superdrug, where it has since broken sales records. The 50-product collection includes cutely-named candles and emoji-inspired accessories aimed squarely at Zoella’s young viewership.
Sugg has used her considerable platform to discuss her anxiety disorder and struggles with panic attacks. Her willingness to document an often taboo subject led to U.K. mental health nonprofit Mind naming her as their first digital ambassador.
"A lot of people get the assumption that because someone is able to sit here in front of a camera and speak for 10 to 20 minutes and broadcast it in front of hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of people on the internet, that must mean that they are 100% confident, have absolutely no self-esteem issues, have no real-life problems, they’re always happy, they’re always jolly."she said in a 2012 video that has since amassed over 4 million views.
"That is so wrong. There are a lot more things to people than you might first realize."
