GloZell Uses Age, Experience, and #Green To Ascend YouTube

[Editor’s Note: The First Drafts Series is a Tubefilter column that highlights and critiques the first online videos from the world’s greatest online video stars. Check out previous editions of FDS here.]

It’s easy being #green when you’re Glozell Green (aka glozell1), the fabulous-at-50 Queen of YouTube who went mega after Elijah Wood mentioned her on Jimmy Kimmel Live! for this wild and crazy video rant:

So how does a vlogger-slash-comedienne amass 325 million+ video views, 1 million+ subscribers, a starring role in an upcoming YouTube funded series Ms. Right for Alright TV, and Dartmouth’s title of “Internet Meme of the Week” for such viral video chart toppers as My Push up Bra will help me get my man and Translate Kesha Tick Tock Lyrics… GloZell?

If you want to be successful, surround yourself with supportive people.

Nothing sucks worse than having people in your life telling you, “You can’t do it,” “There’s too much competition,” or “You’re not smart, talented, lucky, young, old, rich, thin or good looking enough.”  Becoming a mega-famous web legend is going to require confidence in your ideas and belief in yourself (not to mention energy and persistence). So you’d best have somebody in your corner who isn’t douchey, even if it is just your cat or your court-ordered therapist.

When asked how crucial her hunky talent manager fiancée is to her Internet stardom, Glozell said, “He is a million percent crucial to my success. I am not organized at all and I’m a terrible driver. My first day in California I hit a cop. I ran right into a cop.  But cops just don’t play that.” Lucky for the po-po, Kevin “SK” Simon is organized, a good driver, and so supportive that he actually shoots vids of himself painting portraits of Glo-gurl. I want to go to there.

You’re never too old to become an Internet star.

Thanks to a hundred years worth of traditional media stereotypes (with movies, television, and fashion magazines glorifying scantily clad pre-pubescent waifs), older peeps in Western society get about as much respect as Charles Manson at a parole board hearing. No worries. On the Internet, anyone with

talent, ingenuity, and a magnetic personality gets respect. Youth helps, sure. But so does having knowledge, insight, and life experiences to draw from. And while not every person over 50 is a gusher of wisdom, they do own most of the assets, spend half the money, vote more, are more active in their communities, and have more staying power than the Energizer Bunny.

FYI: YouTube success is all about staying power, especially in the beginning, when results are rarely visible. Our homegirl Glo has so much endurance, she once attended 600 consecutive tapings of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno just so she could video interview the other attendees she met there– proof positive that 50 is the new 30!

Get a gimmick or create a catchphrase.

Nothing racks up views like a quirky little feature that makes you stand out from the herd.  For FRED Figglehorn it’s a shrill voice. The Annoying Orange stars talking fruit that always get eviscerated. And Glozell has both a gimmick (Green lipstick. Get it? Glozell Green?) and a memorable catchphrase: “Is you okay? Is You?” According to Wikipedia, marketing masterminds have been known to employ gimmicks to make products seem more exciting to consumers… and so can YOU. Over ‘n out.

The First Drafts Series is a Tubefilter column that highlights and critiques the first online video work of the world’s greatest online video stars. It is written by the savvy online video experts Frank and Lynn Chindamo. Frank teaches webisode production at Chapman University and USC School of Cinematic Arts (where Freddie Wong was actually his student!)  Lynn is an award winning webisode creator who has written and directed series for Babelgum, Planet Green, and Petco. She is the world’s first Internet Stardom Curator, with 500,000+ followers on Myspace, and has written a book on the subject – Internet Stardom: Insider Secrets to Web Fame and Fortune.

Wanna learn web video production, distribution and monetization at the Columbia University School of the Arts? Check it out and FYI: 2013 Summer session at Columbia University is open to the public and taught by the USC Professor of 5SF!