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10 Confessions of a Cake Influencer
2K views
Sep 6, 2024
How does a cake influencer earn money? And how much? How much time does it take and how much cake do you eat in the process? What's the best and the hardest part? I’ll be sharing all of this and more in this video! *Start your FREE 7 day trial on my cake school https://britishgirlbakes.teachable.com/p/all-you-can-cake/ *LEARN The Basics of Cake and The Basics of Buttercream in my most popular online courses! https://britishgirlbakes.teachable.com/ *My 4 Minute Buttercream recipe https://www.britishgirlbakes.com/recipes/buttercream-frosting/ *READ a written version of this tutorial (with photos!) https://www.britishgirlbakes.com/10-confessions-of-a-cake-influencer/ *SUBSCRIBE to my channel for a new cake decorating tutorial every week! *SAY HI! Website: https://www.britishgirlbakes.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/britishgirlbakes
View Video Transcript
0:00
How does a cake influencer really make money and how much
0:03
How much time do you have to put in? How much cake do you have to eat in the process
0:07
What's the best and the hardest part? I'll be sharing all of this and more in this video
0:14
First confession, I didn't choose to be an influencer. Influencers are a relatively new term
0:19
referring to people who influence people's actions or generate interest. For example, using a certain cake comb
0:26
The first cake decorating video I shared was back in 2012, a time-lapse video of making a car-shaped cake in my old cupcake shop in Costa Rica
0:34
And I did it just for fun, but then almost six years ago, I started accounts on YouTube and
0:40
Instagram specifically to share cake decorating tutorials. And at the time, especially on Instagram, it was really rare to show a video of the process
0:48
of making a cake. It was mostly photos. So the account got really popular and I guess I became an accidental influencer
0:55
Confession number two. My life is not very glamorous. There are definitely fun parts to doing this, travel and interviews and decorating cakes, of course
1:04
but overall my life is definitely not glamorous. Off camera, I'm usually in my pajamas with a cup of coffee in my hand
1:11
washing massive piles of dirty bowls with a baby in the background or in a baby carrier
1:16
and there are usually kids running in and out of the room while I'm working. Here's a funny example of this. I took a time-lapse video of a cake melting to show what happens in the sun
1:25
and let's zoom out to see the setup. I use my phone. phone on a tripod but the sun was so strong I didn want the phone to overheat So I used one of my kids umbrellas balanced on a stroller to try to keep the phone in the shade Not as glamorous of a setup as you might expect
1:39
Confession number three. I don't do this part-time. This is definitely for me a full-time job
1:44
I do this while my kids are in school and preschool with a babysitter watching the baby for about three hours a day
1:50
while the baby naps, which is another two hours a day, and about three hours after bedtime every night
1:56
And if you add that up, that's 40 hours a week. If you want to see the filming, the editing, all of the process that goes on behind the scenes
2:02
I do have another video showing that, and I'll put the link up at the top of the screen and in the video description
2:07
Even with over 300,000 subscribers, I don't make much money on YouTube
2:12
Here's a short with over a million views, and I made $77
2:17
Long-form videos are much better. This one with over 3 million views has made 17,000
2:23
Here's a typical day's earnings on YouTube. On its own, this isn't enough to live on where I live
2:28
So why do I do it? To hopefully find people who learn from my free tutorials on YouTube
2:33
and then visit my cake school and sign up for the paid courses there. Same for Instagram
2:37
I'm hoping that people learn from the tutorials and then visit the cake school to learn more. Despite popular belief, I don't eat cake every day
2:44
Yes, for recipe testing, I'll taste a lot of cake. But typically when I'm decorating cakes for videos
2:49
I'll frost and re-frost and redecorate them over and over again, sometimes five or six times
2:54
So by the time I finish, they're not even edible anymore. And if they are edible they honestly not that tempting to me anymore because I had a cake shop in Costa Rica for four years where I did taste testing every single day So I had enough cake to last me a lifetime I don have a camera crew an editor a marketing team a website team a social media manager it just me When I decoration
3:15
cakes, I set up various cameras around the room to get different angles, and then I edit all of my
3:20
own videos using Final Cut Pro. For my website, I write out every tutorial with photos, for people
3:26
who prefer to read instead of watching the videos, and for marketing, I design and write and send out a
3:31
newsletter every week. And then I run all of the British Girl Bakes social media accounts
3:35
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. I don't sell my cakes for a lot of money. Actually, I don't sell them
3:40
at all. I make about 100 cakes a year, but I choose what I make based on what I think will be popular
3:45
on my cake school or my website, YouTube, Instagram, not based on orders. Then I give them away to
3:51
friends or family, neighbours, teachers at school, or I'll frost and redecorate them again and again
3:57
for different videos. I don't share all of my cake fails. I do like to
4:01
share troubleshooting so if I make a mistake in a process I will share it and I'll explain
4:06
what you can do to prevent it or what you can do to fix it if it does happen to you. But sometimes when
4:11
I'm trying to simplify a technique, I'll try lots of different methods and none of them will work
4:15
And so I don't end up sharing it, I just move on to something else. I will say that I don't
4:20
share all of my camera footage. What you see is about a 15th of what I actually film because
4:25
it typically takes about an hour and a half to film a cake and then I'll cut it down to
4:29
about five minutes for the YouTube tutorial. So I'll cut out all of the boring parts and just try and
4:34
show the key moments that you really need to be able to see in order to replicate that technique at home I don have any qualifications to be a cake decorator I actually went to university to study law I graduated I moved to Costa Rica to teach English I ended up opening a cake shop
4:50
moved to Los Angeles and managed some bakeries there, had a baby, was totally overwhelmed and
4:55
started making cake decorating videos on maternity leave to try to keep myself sane. And here we are
5:01
The hardest thing about being a cake influencer is trying to find a balance. I choose when I work
5:07
and how much I work, and so when I'm working on a project I love, it's easy to try to find
5:11
more time to spend on it by getting extra babysitting hours for my kids or canceling plans or
5:17
working late at night instead of making time for what's really important, which is spending
5:22
time with my friends and family. So creating a work-life balance by defining which hours I'm
5:27
going to work and then sticking to that is for me the hardest part. Let's finish with the best thing
5:33
I have so much flexibility to choose what I want to do, how much of it to do, and what
5:37
to do it, which means I can spend a lot of time with my family. And with a lot of advanced planning, I can travel and work from anywhere
5:44
I just got back from a trip with my family for a month, and I could schedule ahead so that I didn't have to work while I was away
5:51
and I could really focus on spending time with my family. And that's amazing to be able to do when my kids are so little
5:57
and still think the time the best thing. As always, if you have any questions, put them in the comments below the video
6:02
And I'd love it if you subscribe to my YouTube channel. I share a new cake decorating tutorial every
6:07
week. Visit my cake school on British Girlbakes.com and I hope to see you there
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