Bethany Mota: YouTube Career “More Valuable” Than TV

Bethany Mota recently completed a strong showing on the latest season of ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, where she finished in fourth place. Mota will now have more time to focus on her YouTube channel, where she shares fashion and beauty videos with her 7.7 million subscribers, and according to some of her recent comments, that’s where she’d like to stay.

During a presentation at Business Insider’s Ignition conference, Mota addressed her TV time and her desire to continuing creating videos on YouTube. “I was kind of hesitant to be on Dancing With The Stars,” she said, “but I was looking for a way to become more mainstream. But, even still, I look at YouTube and what I do online as more valuable than that.”

Mota continued on to explain the reasoning behind her preference. “When you do mainstream TV there are producers and directors you have to go to in order to get approval for things,” Mota says. “But on YouTube, I’m my own director. I’m my own producer. I can have an idea and just go with it.”

This logic is fairly straightforward. After all, the freedom of the Internet and the ability to share unedited thoughts with the world is what draws many young content creators to YouTube in the first place. It is still interesting, though, to see one of the site’s biggest stars express a desire to stay right where she is, especially during a time when so many YouTubers are looking to expand their careers to TV.

During her talk, Mota also discussed her interactions with haters and several other aspects of her online video career. More information about Ignition can be found at Business Insider’s website.