Cesar Majorana is a writer, artist and host shows both online and on tv. He collaborated with us on the development of Hmmosphere earlier this year. Now we spoke to him about his career, embedded within the influencer world, and what goes on behind the scenes over there.
Sjef van Beers: In which ways have you made money using social media?
Cesar Majorana: Oh, interesting question! Iâve never monetised, never made money by attracting viewers, which you then basically sell for ad revenue. There are, however, people who have made money off of videos in which I appear. The most notable example was when I was in a relationship with a vlogger. She was making these âa day in the lifeâ vlogs, which were her most popular videos. And I appeared in thoseâsometimes we were at my place or we would go out to lunch. And then I was paying for the lunch, when we werenât in a relationship yet. And afterwards I thought: âHey you made money off of that date with me.â And of course people found that incredibly interesting. I remember on the ELLEgirl forum there were complete threads about our relationship.
SvB: But didnât you then get new followers because you appeared on those vlogs?
CM: Yes, thatâs true. People also started speculating: âWho is this guy? Oh, this is him, I found him here.â So yeah, I did gain capital from it in the end. Kind of a bad way to think about relationships, but oh well.
I have done collaborations with brands. Back in the day I mostly was just getting products sent for free. Right now, when I get sent stuff for free I donât feel any obligation to post about it. And when people want me to post about it, and Iâm interested in posting about it too, then I need to get paid for that.
Thereâs also a really big ecosystem of creators being asked by companies to brainstorm, think along with them, and come and give workshops as experts on social media. And thatâs really in high demand. So then you can just end up at a local Rabobank talking about all the things youâre doing on social media. I often think the level of those gigs is pretty low. A lot of influencer friends of mine who do this, they just post and are very active online. And they sort of understand it and got a feeling for it, but they are not like the biggest SEO experts.
SvB: Right, because what exactly do you teach them during a workshop? How they can make fun content?
CM: Yes, a lot of times Iâm just helping them come up with ideas for content for different platforms. I think the places where I enjoyed doing this the most are places where young people are working. For instance scholieren.com, where I used to go for my book reports back when I was in high school. Now every company is on social media, so theyâve all got video channels now too. And there are working young people, who go and learn to be a presenter. So then you go explain to them how you write a format for something like that, how long your videos need to be, when youâre going to upload them. I think a lot of people are also looking for some sort of secret formula for this. And for that, of course, they look at YouTubers that are trying everything to figure this out and can sort of sense what the algorithm is currently enforcing when it comes to upload moments or the length of videos.
SvB: So thatâs really about sensing instinctively and doing some trial and error?
CM:I think youâre exchanging this knowledge all the time. Yesterday, I was at the YouTube Brandcast Day in Rotterdam. It was a big event, and I was there with a lot of YouTubers. At a certain moment we were talking about this and you could really notice that everyone was playing a completely different ball game. There was one person who used to upload all the time, more than two hundred videos per year, but is now working in a series format and doing twenty videos a year. And they thought it wouldnât work at all for the algorithm, but it turns out it works as well. So the era of when you could sort of make sense of the algorithm is definitely over, because itâs so individualised now. For me it works to post in the afternoon, but maybe you have way more reach in the evening. The algorithm is now so complex, itâs not exact science anymore.
What YouTubers are now running into is that theyâre not reaching their own audience anymore. Letâs say you have three hundred thousand subscribers, but when you upload a video you only get maybe a hundred thousand views, if youâre lucky. So you are constantly trying to get into the feed of people who have not only subscribed to your channel, but to thirty others as well. Thatâs the challenge now for creators.
But letâs get back to the ways I have made money. I got paid as a freelancer to do stuff on other peopleâs channels. I also got paid to come up with videos for a big YouTube channel. Then I was telling them âyou could do this one prank, or you could pull this stuntâ. And recently I was moving, so I sold a bunch of old clothes I had to get rid of to my followers and that was really easy.
SvB: How did you start to make money with social media? Were you picked up by an agency immediately or did you get DMs from companies wanting to work with you?
CM: I did get an agent really quick, but that happened partly because I became friends with her. So when she started her agency, it was very logical for me to join that. And that was relatively early in my career. But when I talk to creators that donât have an agent yet I always try to motivate them to get one. Because it changes the way you work so much.
SvB: In what way?
CM: As a creator you represent yourself and you can end up in conflicting situations where you have to negotiate your own fee. And thatâs very abject, because I want to walk into some office, or wherever Iâm working that day, and be the best possible version of me that day. Even when Iâm hungover or something. But you want to deliver something valuable in that moment and that is way harder to do when, in the back of your mind, thereâs all the stuff about the money that is involved or that preceded this. So just for your creativity alone, itâs already so nice to have someone else take care of that.
On top of that, with an agent you can say âyeah, Iâm sorry, but Emily is just so strict about thisâ, even when itâs actually coming from you. So itâs also some kind of shield, because you cannot afford to be seen as arrogant or give the impression that youâre only after money. So you have to stay as far away from those conversations as possible. Thatâs the easiest way to sustain yourself in that harsh field of finances and economic transactions that need to take place.
SvB: Yeah, this really reminds me of the art world as well and doing freelance workâthe way youâre perceived as a person and having the headspace to come up with ideas when youâre also busy doing emails and all that administrative work.
CM: Yes, I think as an artist in this day and age you are your own PR person, and your own social media marketeer, and your own agent, and your own dietician, and so on and so on. You are fulfilling all these roles at once, and just like being a creator that makes for a very vulnerable and heavy job. Thereâs this piece I wrote with Linda Duits a while ago. And especially around that time (now itâs not that intense anymore), creators were really looked down upon. While they are not the cultural elite of the country or something like that at all. They might be popular and seem powerful at the time, but they are people that are immensely afraid of losing all the capital they built.
SvB: And then an agent can function as some sort of lightning diverter or a shield?
CM: For sure, and also as someone who is constantly helping you take the next step in your career decisions and money-wise. For example, I thought it was just so magical when a company wanted to send me something. I remember I once got a package from the Zeeman, which I posted about. I thought it was just so cool that they sent me something. But then at a certain moment my agent was the first person to tell me: âHey, youâre now getting a lot of packages. Weâre going to tune it down, because this is not good for your credibility, and not for your price. Because when all those other companies see how youâre getting all these packages and post about it immediately they will keep sending you stuff and then youâll never get honest pay for it, like other creators get.â
SvB: Similarly to the insight about the packages, did your agent also help you professionalise in other ways?
CM: I think the craft remained the same. I donât think Iâve started doing completely different things from when I started my work as a presenter, but what has changed are the circumstances under which I do it. She knows really well that I donât need to have five meetings in the run-up to a hosting gig at the film festival. She understands this and arranges that they can call with me for an hour beforehand, and thatâs included in the fee.
At the end of the day, what I do as a maker is to peddle new ideas. And with her I really learned to negotiate with, for example, the broadcasters. Negotiations about time-slots, money, the people you work withâan agent also helps you with those kinds of things if you have a good one.
SvB: Iâd like to get back to the creator theme. Youâre not busy with setting up a growth plan or stuff like that? Or do you know people who do so?
CM: Yeah, of course. She also does that for some people. For example, sheâs got some people on her roster that participate in a TV show like Expeditie Robinson. Then she tells them: âAlright, I know Instagram isnât really your thing, but this is an excellent opportunity to grow your Instagram. So make sure that each day youâre on TV you have a post ready about it.â
What a lot of creators have to deal with is that youâre constantly in a sort of battle to create new output all the time. So what an agent is really useful for as well, is that she works with a bunch of other talents that she can set you up with. Itâs in that way that Iâve done a lot of collaborations via the agency. And you can see that with YouTubers as well, when they appear in each otherâs videos, thatâs just a barter deal. And often the management arranges this. Theyâre like: âWe got this one audience, and this other audience, letâs try to merge them a little.â And because both parties profit from this, they can do this without having to pay each other.
SvB: Just like those TikTok collab mansions.
CM: Exactly. I wonder how those are doing now, with the current gas prices.
SvB: Are there other parties you have to deal with outside of your agency?
CM: You have to deal with a lot of PR agencies. You get familiar with them, know what brands they represent, and what partnerships they are interesting in doing with you. These are also nice people. The people who work at the positions that have contact with you are people that are often very nice.
And also, like at the YouTube Brandcast day that I mentioned earlier, you deal with the ambassador of YouTube, who is also very involved in your growth. For instance, when you’re a YouTuber in the UK, you can visit YouTubeâs offices where they have a studio for you to shoot your videos at. In The Netherlands they donât have that, but I did have a session with them last week about the possibilities of YouTube Shorts since they now want to push creators to upload Shorts.
SvB: So it seems like they are really trying to support and steer creators that are already popular.
CM: Yes, and thatâs necessary too, because at a certain moment you end up on a plateau. Youâve reached the maximum of whatâs possible. And then they start helping you: âWe see these things that are happening in other countries. Have you thought of trying that?â
Yesterday I met up with the team of Dylan Haegens, who was the biggest YouTuber of the Netherlands for a long time. But he has an entire empire. He for sure has the biggest brand amongst kids for school supplies. And a guy like him, of course, is a giant cash cow for YouTube. Advertisers work with YouTube as a platform because he is active on there and his audience is there. He reached one million subscribers at some point. But then to move from one million subscribers to two million subscribers is a way harder route. So for stuff like that YouTube starts helping you, like âwhat can we come up with?â. You have to do it yourself for the most part, but such a platform is also interested in the question âcan we support someone in the Netherlands to reach two million subscribers?â.
SvB: Yeah, because at the end of the day itâs in their interest as well.
CM: Absolutely. At the YouTube Brandcast party you really recognised the people who are the corporate types that are at their desk all day. You can tell from their posture, those shoulders that look like theyâve been sitting in a Herman Miller desk chair for the entire week. But those folks actually are our biggest friends, of course. We were with a group of creators at a certain moment and we were like âwait a second, this party is not for us at all, itâs for the marketeersâ.
SvB: Exactly, and those folks are the people just behind the people with the friendly faces you usually get to deal with.
CM: Yeah, those are the people that are busy with the KPIs, with the metrics of the clicks and the advertisements. And thatâs something you get to deal with as well as a creator: you constantly need to give insight into your numbers. You do a campaign and as soon as itâs over you get all these messages âCan we get your Instagram insights? Can we get a number of how many people saw your story?â They want to know all these kinds of things. And actually it was only recently that I started thinkingâeven though itâs mainly global target group data mostly about demographicsâthereâs a certain privacy element to it that doesnât really sit right with me.
This is also one of the reasons those discount codes are set up the way they are, with peopleâs names. It is often joked about that every YouTuber has their own code. But the reason people started doing thatâand this started in the world of beauty influencers but itâs also a big deal among gamers nowâis because you can then measure exactly how much audience you brought to a webshop. And often you can even make a deal that from all the sales you generated you get half the profit. Or they might say: âWe give you the code CESAR20 and for every sale you get a percentage.â Or you agree to post CESAR20 and you get a fixed fee, depending on what deal you set up.
However, the metrics people think are important, are not the most important. A lot of YouTubers are busy with how many subscribers they get, but your subscriber retention is much more interesting. How much of your subscribers come back to watch more videos? And thatâs also what the people behind the scenes at the platforms are concerned with. Back in the day it was all about the views, but now there are way more complex questions behind the determination of oneâs success. And creators have picked up on that as well, so they are not concerned about views as much as they are concerned with the click-through rate or stuff like that.
SvB: When we were emailing to set up this interview we were talking about âediting internsââteenagers editing videos, often underpaid, for big creators or channels. Video editing once was a craft which you had to study in school, and now itâs easy to learn as an autodidact. Are there more jobs like this? Do they disrupt the market or work field in any way?
CM: Yes, I remember that for sure. For instance, I learned to edit videos from friends who were YouTubers. And I remember clearly, when I got to do items for TV for the first time and wanted to use the same methods for that, the editors over there were completely terrified of jump cuts. That was really not done. You learned in school that you should never use a jump cut. That was really unacceptable. And now all editors are using jump cuts, but I remember clearly that this âjump cut revolutionâ didnât go over smoothly. It really was met with resistance from exactly those classically schooled editors who wanted to uphold their craft. Even though I think now the craft is just whatever contributes to a good video. And that can be a jump cut as well. So now itâs been added to everyoneâs palette of tools to use, except for maybe a small number of die hard TV editors, but they donât make videos for YouTube anymore anyway.
SvB: I believe I once heard an editor of the NOS describe what they call the âtea cup shotâ. When they want to make a cut in some footage of a person talking they use some b-roll, for example of a tea cup, to cover up the cut, so the viewers wonât notice it.
CM: Yeah, and what I think those people did not notice, is that creators, especially vloggers, are constantly filming themselves in such a way that they simultaneously shoot their own b-roll, if you watch closely. And thatâs already in those jump cuts. They film in such a manner that you can always cut a few seconds into the future without completely derailing the video.
Iâve seen vloggers being paired with traditional video crews to film a âshoplogâ, for example. So these juxtapositions happen in many ways, shapes, and forms. What I think works best, is when a creator and a videographer or editor team up early on and make a name for themselves together. Recently, for a gig I did we needed a videographer and I picked someone who works for a YouTuber, but is now a freelancer too.
SvB: So they got to piggyback off of their work with that YouTuber?
CM: Yes, you really win when you team along early on with a creator and you fanatically help them to grow. Then hopefully, if that person is somewhat mentally sane, that will be your success too later on. So you can see many of those duos are on the come-up.
And sometimes the work of these editors and videographers is the less visible labour in the relationship . I can think of many examples, like Anna Nooshin for instance. She worked with this girl that eventually started her own channel and became a creator herself, because in the end she had her very own vision and was a little more alternative. You see those collaborations often result in these behind-the-scenes people making a name for themselves, which is necessary to keep getting gigs as a freelancer.
And sometimes the labour is really invisible. An example of that are the vlogs from Boef. Youâre always asking yourself: how did Boef do it, having such a tumultuous life, when he was basically the biggest name in Dutch rap and a notorious vlogger at the same time? How did he have enough hours in the day to do all that crazy shit and make vlogs of it too? Well, that happened via a guy he knew from his neighbourhood who did the editing. So the only thing Boef did was drop off the footage at a barber shop. He shot a lot of footage, and that kid didnât even edit it that much, he just put it all together on a big desktop PC in the back of the barber shop.
SvB: To wrap things up, what are, for you, the consequences of being financially dependent on social media, or at least having a financial interest in it?
CM: For me, Iâm in somewhat of a funny position in that itâs mostly a leverage against the other things I do. For example, I wanted to do Vuilnis TV (Trash TV), a show about what we throw away and how we are reflected in what we throw away. I thought out the whole format and was going to do it myself, on my own channel, after sending it to the VPRO, who didnât do much with the plan. But when they heard about that, they were like: âNo, we do want to do this with you.â And a month later we were shooting. So in that sense I can use my social media presence to my advantage, but I donât rely on it the way other people do.
But when I think about the dependency I see in others, I think thatâs incredibly scary. Yesterday I spoke to a creator who is now doing an acting course and wants to expand on that, but their audience just expects them to make videos in their old style. And they donât know how to switch it up to what they actually want to do, which is acting instead of vlogging. They were really in a crisis. So thatâs whatâs constantly corrupting you. Itâs constantly putting you in this paradox between the audienceâs expectations and what you actually want to go and do with your life.
Because, when you start and you build an audience that grows along with you, thatâs very romantic. That you start out as a teen vlogger, and end up as a mom vlogger, is a very common pipeline. But the pipeline to doing something completely different with your life, thatâs being talked about way less. Again, we can take Boef as an example. He was the biggest vlogger for a while, and when he didnât need it anymore he quit. And you notice that the career you have as a creator can be very vulnerable. It really has a beginning and an end. And itâs very rare that someone like NikkieTutorials can do one thing for such a long time and remain interested in it themselves. Thatâs a very rare quality that not many people possess. So youâre constantly vulnerable to changes, not just from the outside world, but within yourself. That you donât feel like making three hundred videos a year again, because it is quite heavy work. Or with Dylan Haegens who, together with his girlfriend Marit Brugman, really built an empire. But all of a sudden heâs responsible for an entire company that needs to get orders for school agendas, needs to set up events at theatres, and on and on.
At some point, the stakes are so high and you have to keep cultivating. Itâs somewhat like gardening. Everyone knows what happens to your plants at home when you leave for one or two weeks and donât water them. And itâs the same with making content for a living. Itâs really not that when you have built a following that thatâs the endâ thatâs really more the start of things. Then you constantly have to engage that following and play a part in their lives. Thatâs the ongoing challenge.