Mark Wiens never had a 9-to-5 job after graduating college. Now he has nearly 1.8 million subscribers and has visited dozens of countries.
In this series, YouTube Icon, Entrepreneur speaks with the individuals behind popular YouTube channels to find out the secrets of their success.
Mark Wiens’s goal after graduating from college was twofold: travel the world and earn enough money so he could continue traveling.
Ten years later, Wiens still embarks on trips throughout the world, including to China, Mexico, Laos, Turkey, Dubai, Austria and dozens of other countries, eating dishes such as jacuzzi chicken, poop fish chilli dip and Oaxacan mole negro — and it’s all thanks to YouTube.
“It was my goal to earn money in any way that I could,” Wiens says. “However, my goal was never to be a YouTube person.”
Since joining YouTube in 2009, Wiens, who was born in America and now lives in Bangkok, has amassed nearly 1.8 million subscribers and racked up nearly 373 million views. He also has another channel focused on accommodations. He initially started out just blogging — his site is Migrationology — but then saw the growth potential of video.
“I knew video was only going to get more popular as the internet improved, so I committed to making videos on a regular, consistent basis,” he says. “I especially love street food and showing the food and the atmosphere and a little bit of the cooking.”
Entrepreneur spoke with Wiens about his content strategy and what he would advise people who want to get started with YouTube now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get your start with YouTube?
I went to Arizona State University and graduated with a degree in global studies, with an emphasis on culture and art. But I really had no idea what I was going to do with that degree or with my life. I didn’t really know what I was interested in, but I knew I loved cultures and traveling and global issues. So right after graduating in 2008, I set off. I traveled for almost a year before I pretty much ran out of money, but I didn’t want to return to the States. I ended up teaching English for a year in South America. It was that year when I really started to blog a lot. I was going to attempt to make a living blogging or doing something online.
I was taking photos of everything that I would eat, and I was writing about the food. But then I wanted to start making videos, because I wanted to show more. You can look at a photo of food, but you can’t see that much emotion, you can’t feel the atmosphere. So I decided to just start making really short, really easy point-and-shoot videos of the food I was eating. It took me years to actually be able to earn a living, but I was able to live on a real serious budget living in Thailand, where the cost of living is much lower than in the United States, so that I could buy myself time to invest in online projects.
Were you always kind of an adventurous eater all your life?
Yes, actually, all the way from when I was a child. I grew up living in a variety of different countries. Both of my parents are American, but we lived in France, Democratic Republic of Congo and then Kenya until I graduated high school. So throughout my childhood, I was introduced to a lot of cultures. I got to sample a lot of food from the places that we lived or visited and during my middle school and high school years in Nairobi, Kenya, where I went to an international school. People at my school were from all over the world, and I would have friends who would bring in Korean or Ethiopian or Chilean food. That might have been a reason why I was so interested experiencing food from different countries.
How much of your time do you spend on a video, and what does that entail?
Things have changed quite a lot now, but when I first started out, it was really just walking down the street and…
