YouTube Millionaires: A Look Inside ‘Life According To Jimmy’

Few creators are rising faster than YouTube comedian and college student Jimmy Tatro. Tatro, who posts sketches on his Life According To Jimmy channel every week, only began making videos in November 2011, but he already has more than 1.6 million subscribers. We spoke to Tatro about his ascendant fandom and his future on YouTube.

Tubefilter: How does it feel to crack one million subscribers? Did you ever think you would make it this big?

Jimmy Tatro: It felt great, I was super excited as was Christian. 1 million is just such an unfathomably large number of people I had to step back for a second and just think to myself, wow, 1 million, that’s nuts. When I started on YouTube it was always a goal for the channel to get to this point but now that it is I just want it to get even bigger.

TF: You’ve experienced a pretty meteoric rise to YouTube millionaire-dom. Why do you think people have flocked to your channel so quickly?

JT: All the sketches we do are very relatable to my demographic, there’s so many things that people see and think to themselves ‘oh my god that happens to me and my friends all the time and then want to share. That’s usually what we’re going for, we want people to want to share the videos and we want people to think the videos are hilarious. Potential subscribers also know they can depend on a sketch every week which is important.

TF: Did you ever get recognized around campus for being the ‘Life According To Jimmy’ guy?

JT: Yeah

TF: What made you decide to sign with Big Frame?

JT: I wanted to take my channel to the next level. At that point I had about 34,000 subscribers and I was trying to start making money off videos which I didn’t really understand how to do. I met Sarah Penna (my manager) and I knew she could help me get to the point I wanted to be at. Right when I signed with Big Frame they got me all partnered up with YouTube and I had a moment where I said to myself, ‘No more fucking around, you’re doing a video every week from now on, this is your job’ and since then I’ve made sure to put out a video every single Monday since November 2011.

TF: What’s up next for LifeAccordingToJimmy? Any fun projects on the horizon?

JT: I’m always trying to keep moving forward and keep doing bigger things. We’re working on a show right now that has a really great concept and I think would be a very smooth transition from the internet to television. There’s a lot going on right now, nothing is for sure though so I don’t want to say I’m doing something and jinx it haha but yeah we have a lot of fun projects on the horizon.

Photo by Melly Lee.