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A 6-year-old YouTube star is making an estimated $18 million a year. We talked to the company behind her global strategy.

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Anastasia Radzinskaya

  • The entertainment company and global YouTube multichannel network Yoola takes YouTube creators like 6-year-old Anastasia Radzinskaya and turns their channels into business empires.
  • Anastasia's YouTube business generated $18 million in a single year, according to Forbes' most recent report on YouTuber earnings.
  • Yoola has helped its creators with the development, distribution, and monetization of their video content.
  • Anastasia has nine YouTube channels, four of which have over 10 million subscribers. 
  • Eyal Baumel, the CEO of Yoola, broke down the company's global strategy and how it turned Anastasia into one of the fast-growing YouTube creators. 
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The 6-year-old internet star Anastasia Radzinskaya is a worldwide phenomenon and has become one of YouTube's fastest-growing creators thanks to a global multilingual strategy.

Anastasia owns four diamond play buttons, a plaque YouTube sends to creators once they hit 10 million subscribers on a single YouTube channel.

Her YouTube business generated $18 million in a single year, according to Forbes, which put her in the No. 3 spot on its most recent report on the top-earning YouTubers.

Anastasia is a part of a group of YouTube creators who have found success on the platform by developing global content. For instance, Yovana Mendoza, a food and lifestyle vlogger, has multiple YouTube channels and a dedicated Spanish-language channel with 2 million subscribers. Other channels, like Ryan's World — which makes an estimated $26 million a year, according to Forbes— have begun expanding. In October, Ryan's World announced the launch of a new channel for Spanish-speaking viewers called Ryan's World Español.

Anastasia — who was born in Russia but moved to the US with her family a year ago — speaks Russian, English, and Spanish, and she is learning more.

With the help of the entertainment company and global YouTube multichannel network Yoola, Anastasia has expanded her digital business to nine channels in different languages, including Stacy Toys (English) with 25.4 million subscribers, Like Nastya Vlog (Russian) with 46.8 million subscribers, Funny Stacy (Spanish) with 17 million subscribers, and Like Nastya (a mix of English and Russian) with 15.5 million subscribers.

Eyal Baumel, the CEO of Yoola, spoke with Business Insider about how the company takes a self-produced YouTube channel like Anastasia's and turns it into a global success.

Yoola

Some YouTube formats are better than others for a global strategy

Before bringing on Anastasia, Yoola, which is based in Los Angeles but serves a large market in Russia, created several YouTube channels in varying languages for the other creators it worked with, starting with English, German, and Russian, according to Baumel.

The company decided to apply that same strategy to Anastasia's YouTube business after noticing how fast these channels were growing.

Anastasia was a perfect candidate for this strategy because she already spoke both English and Russian and was learning more, including Spanish.

"We believe that if you localize content, you can expand your audience," Baumel said. "We started working with talent to create different channels with similar content just in different languages that also take into consideration the different culture and languages."

Anastasia's videos, which are typically fewer than 10 minutes long, feature her playing with toys or acting out scripted skits, which her mom writes, at home alongside her dad.

Baumel said using different languages and localized content doesn't work for every creator but that some formats travel very well, like kids' content, DIY content, and life hacks.

The Radzinskaya family keeps a strict schedule and films only on weekends

Between Anastasia's school, homework, time with friends, and extracurriculars — like piano lessons and learning to speak more languages — the family had to develop a strict filming schedule, which keeps them on track with uploads. 

They try to publish a video about three to four times a week on YouTube and film only on the weekends, according to Baumel.

"The way the YouTube algorithm works is that if you publish more videos a week, you have a better chance of being featured or suggested," he said. "It's better to publish more videos than less. I would say to really be consistent; you need to publish two to three times a week."

Yoola helps its YouTube clients create story arcs, crafting each YouTube video with a clear beginning, middle, and end, Baumel said. 

Anastasia's mom typically creates the skits for the videos, often bouncing ideas off her daughter, Baumel said. Besides Yoola, Anastasia's team consists of her, her two parents, and two video editors. 

Anastasia Radzinskaya

Turning down brand deals and leaning into consumer products

Yoola signed the Radzinskaya family about two years ago, Baumel said. 

Since then, it has worked with the family in developing consumer products, traditional-media opportunities, apps, and strategic partnerships. 

The Radzinskaya family has promoted only two companies across its YouTube channels over the past 12 months: Dannon and Legoland. The family receives partnership pitches constantly but turns down many offers.

Instead, the family is looking to grow its business in-house and develop its own brand around Anastasia. 

Yoola has a venture arm (Yoola Ventures) that invests in consumer products and assists creators in developing them. The company's latest venture is a wellness brand and energy drink it cofounded with actor Ian Somerhalder. 

Developing consumer products to sell directly to followers has become one of the top ways influencers are profiting off their digital brands.

The top-earning YouTube star, 8-year-old Ryan Kaji, who is known for his channel Ryan's World (23.7 million subscribers), built a lucrative empire off YouTube by developing partnerships with Walmart and Amazon and selling consumer products with Ryan's World branding.

'YouTube is the most consistent platform'

Building a business away from YouTube's platform is one of the ways popular kids'-entertainment channels are protecting themselves from YouTube's changing policies. 

In January, YouTube implemented an overhaul of its policies around children's content after its parent company, Google, paid $170 million to settle the Federal Trade Commission's allegations that the site had violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal information from kids younger than 13 years old without parental consent.

COPPA changed the way advertisers buy ads on YouTube, but they are still able to purchase ads that play on a kids-focused channel, according to Baumel. 

As a multichannel network, Yoola is partnered with YouTube, and the company has a team at YouTube they communicate with when these changes arise.  

"The smart way is to diversify your revenue sources," Baumel said. "But still, YouTube is the most consistent platform in terms of revenue. You might have a drop, but you can still make a living off YouTube ads, and they pay well to creators with a large audience."

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