Nairobi News

Four or five years ago, Lifestyle Vlogger Miss Trudy was working in a supermarket as a promotional saleswoman, earning Sh10,000 a month.

She was a university graduate, and due to the lack of jobs in the country, she jumped at the opportunity to work in the supermarket when it presented itself.

But it wasn’t long before she was made redundant at a time when she was expecting a promotion.

She turned to Youtube and created content to drown her sorrows. A year later, she heard about YouTube’s monetisation policy, AdSense, and applied for it.

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However, the returns were not as great as she expected and she was mocked by everyone, with many advising her to find something better to do.

“At the time, I was making 10,000 from YouTube, but it wasn’t enough, I couldn’t live on it. My colleagues had real jobs, they had things going for them.

But on the other hand, I didn’t want to stop doing content because I didn’t want to look for another 9-5 job. It got to a point where I was so depressed that I got a DM on Instagram from this random guy called Wode Maya saying he was coming to Kenya to create content,” Miss Trudy says.

But because she was having an emotional breakdown, Miss Trudy ignored the message.

“By the time I replied to his DM, it was three months late, he had already left (for Kenya), but we continued to talk.”

As they chatted, the Ghanaian invited her to join him on his next trip to Ethiopia, but she was reluctant because she was broke.

“In about two weeks to a month, he told me he was going to Ethiopia and asked, ‘Do you want to come?’ and I told him to leave me alone because I was depressed.”

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But on reflection, Miss Trudy had a change of heart.

“At that time I had only saved Sh40,000 and I said let me just go, what do I have to lose? It’s the best decision I ever made in my life because I booked my return ticket which cost Sh25,000, I met Wode Maya and he just changed my life”.

Miss Trudy owes it all to her husband, who transformed her journey of creating lifestyle content from earning Sh10,000 a month on YouTube to millions.

“He asked me if YouTube was all I did for a living and I said yes. Then he asked how often I uploaded content and I said twice a week. He then urged me to treat content creation as an everyday task, so I started uploading more consistently, almost every day.

He also taught me how to advertise on my channel, which I didn’t know, I had never advertised before, and that’s how I got my first big cheque from Youtube, $1,000 (Sh134,000). Since then, that’s the most I’ve ever made from YouTube.

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