Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each creator has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments here.
This week’s installment of YouTube Millionaires is brought to you by Bright – a learning platform focused on real conversations that level up your life.
For high school sweethearts Ant and Ana, it truly was love at first sight.
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The now-married creator couple met by chance: Ant was working at a daycare, and Ana, who had to complete community service hours, happened to select it as her volunteer workplace.
“When we first met and saw each other at the daycare it was an instant connection,” Ana tells Tubefilter. “We were only kids at the time, but the instant spark between us was inseparable.” Two days later, she says, Ant asked if she would be his girlfriend. “I told myself it would only be a summer fling, nothing series!” she says. “I wasn’t thinking about boyfriends at that time, but almost a decade later and we haven’t looked back since! It was meant to be.”
Ant and Ana’s bond is the core of their shared social media presence, which sees them creating short videos together across TikTok (6.3 million followers), Instagram (180K followers), and, of course, YouTube. Their audience–affectionately nicknamed the AAFAM–tunes in for a mishmash mix of content that spans from pranks to challenges to the everydays of married life.
Ant and Ana became full-time creators in 2020, and now, with a newfound surge of traffic coming in from YouTube’s TikTok competitor, Shorts (to the tune of nearly 300 million views in May, 250 million in June, and 273 million in July), they are planning for lasting careers in content.
Check out our chat with them below.
Tubefilter: How does it feel to hit one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?
AntXAna: We want to thank everyone who supports us in this journey! Hitting one million subscribers is such a happy and surreal moment. Blessed and grateful to have reached this milestone together as a strong family that grows every single day! To all our supporters we want to say: If you have a dream, go for it, you can do whatever you put your mind to and don’t let nobody tell you otherwise! Todos ustedes son especiales y recuerdan que el cielo es el límite! (You are all special and remember the sky is the limit!)
Tubefilter: Tell us a little about you! Where are you from? How did you meet?
Ana: My name is Ana María Jones. I was born in Cali, Colombia. At the age of four, my parents moved to the United States seeking a better future for our family. We first moved to New York City and later on relocated to Tampa, Fla., and that’s where I met Anthony! In high school, I had to complete community service hours, so I went to a local daycare. It so happened that Anthony worked there at the time. We became friends and soon started dating. We are high school sweethearts and also college sweethearts. We both graduated from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. Years later, we are now happily married.
Ant: Like Ana was saying, she and I first met at a daycare. I know back then I was young, but it was love at first sight! Over the years, Ana has taught me a lot about embracing our cultures, family, and from watching our videos, all our fans know Ana tries to get my Spanish speaking game up! When people first see me, a lot of people think that I’m Hispanic, but I’m actually biracial; Black and White. Born and raised in Tampa, Fla. I like to think that I can speak two languages, English and a little bit of “Spanglish.” I’m an introvert at heart, but YouTube has really helped me step out my comfort zone and learn to love engaging with others. I love to collect shoes, I’m a very big sneakerhead. My favorite sports are basketball and boxing/MMA. Before we became creators, I ran two successful online businesses and we worked for our family’s trucking business.
Tubefilter: When and why did you start a YouTube channel together?
Ana: We started YouTube in August 2017. My little sister, Camila, was the reason we started YouTube. Throughout all of high school, she would always tell us, “You guys should start a YouTube channel!” We didn’t find it interesting at first, and we would always make excuses.
After high school, we moved to Miami to attend FIU. Before moving, she told us again, “Start YouTube and record your college experience.” We thought that was actually a pretty cool idea. When we first started, it was a hobby. We were both in college, so it wasn’t a priority. Fast forward, in the beginning of 2020 we got married and bought a house together. We started creating content all around our house, bringing our followers into our home and life–pranking each other and doing challenges! It slowly started becoming a passion and soon we knew we’d built the AAFAM house!
Tubefilter: Recently you’ve been posting a lot of content to YouTube Shorts. Has Shorts helped grow your channel? What are the pros and cons of posting on Shorts?
Ana: Absolutely! YouTube Shorts has been a huge part of our recent channel growth. We were able to hop on the new feature early on, and it has rapidly grown our channel from 200K all the way to one million in just two months. One of the great things about YouTube Shorts is that they’re simple to create. You just take out your phone and start shooting the video. It’s a great way for me and Anthony to interact with our community.
On the other hand, sometimes it does seem like Shorts can affect the audience retention of long-form videos, so we want to keep our content fresh and start creating longer videos. You have to be creative!
Tubefilter: Is YouTube your full-time job? How often do you film? What does the average day look like for you?
Ant: Ana graduated with a BA in public relations and I in international business. After college, we both had great careers, but in the beginning of 2020, we realized YouTube was more than just a hobby–it was our passion. We then decided to leave our careers and focus full-time on YouTube and TikTok. Now we are full-time creators, and we love it!!!
We film content at least twice a week, but sometimes it comes spontaneously! On a typical day: we usually wake up in the morning, make coffee, and meditate. We love to start our morning by being grateful, praying, and clearing our minds to get our day started. We then brainstorm ideas (example: challenges we can film) and start creating content! Sometimes we find ourselves not planning and will just prank each other. We love prank wars! Nobody is safe in the AAFAM house! hahaha
Tubefilter: Do you have any strategies for growing your audience? Have you noticed any particular kind of content getting more traction than others? Do you adjust what you film depending on how your viewers react?
Ana: Yes, our pranks and challenges get a lot of traction from our audience! They love to see us get each other’s reactions, like in this video. We plan to continue to bring those to the table and put a smile on our fans’ faces. Our fans tell us all the time, they love to see the videos where Anthony tries to speak Spanish or tries to translate something I say in Spanish. We call it the If you know, you know series.
We also noticed our audience loves storytime videos. We recently did a storytime of how we first started dating in high school and how my parents didn’t approve of our relationship, but now they love us together! We like to be authentic and share content that shows our personalities. Sometimes our supporters do ask for more videos of a certain kind (ex: pranks) so we give them more pranks like this one! I guess you can say we do adjust what we film depending on viewers’ reaction.
Tubefilter: How do you make your videos stand out amidst all the noise on YouTube? What do you hope people take away from your content?
Ana: We stay true to ourselves. We try to be humble in everything that we do and of course have fun with it! I truly believe that the moment a creator isn’t having fun creating content, there’s something wrong, and I feel like viewers can tell. I hope people’s days can get a little brighter once they see our videos. We get excited showing people the love we have for each in hopes that we inspire others to show love back. When we see comments like, “Thanks for making my day better,” or “Gracias por alegrarme el dia,” it means the world to us! We want to continue to spread positivity and let people know we are here for them! Life might get rough, but they are loved and they are not alone!
Tubefilter: What’s your favorite part of making content on YouTube?
Ana & Ant: That’s a hard question! Our favorite part is making a difference in others’ lives, we love helping our community in any way we can. If we are able to motivate someone or inspire our AAFAM, that’s already good enough for us! We also enjoy teaching and showing our audiences how we merge both our cultures together, Hispanic and American. It’s so fun! We also love coming up with creative ideas and spending time together working as best friends!
Tubefilter: Have you expanded your content/personal brand off YouTube at all? Launched any merch, a related business, a presence on another social platform…? Do you want to?
Ana & Ant: Yes! We are looking forward to expanding our brand since we hit one million subscribers. We recently brought on manager Vanessa Beals, from Underscore, to help us take things to the next level and advise us on how we can expand our businesses into things we love and believe in. Aside from YouTube, we have a presence on TikTok and Instagram. There, we have a family of close to 7M followers–we love the AAFAM!
Tubefilter: What’s next for you and your channel? Any plans looking to the future?
Ana & Ant: In the near future, we do see ourselves starting a family. Most of our supporters now are telling us to have a baby. We’ll have a baby in God’s timing; we definitely see ourselves having a family and creating fun family content next. In the meantime, we plan to continue and expand our #AAFAM community by creating more funny and loving content!! Bringing our audience more pranks, challenges, storytimes, and funny bilingual videos! We like to say, and strongly believe, with God everything is possible, Con Dios Todo Es Posible!
This week’s installment of YouTube Millionaires is brought to you by Bright – a learning platform focused on real conversations that level up your life.
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