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.
Jenna Sinatra and Will DeVane have a policy of being honest about imperfections.
They know if they didn’t, their Gen Z audience would–to put it frankly–call bullshit.
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When we last spoke to Sinatra and DeVane in April for our other column, Creators on the Rise, they’d just hit 550,000 subscribers on YouTube. Now they’re just about to hit one million, and both are trending toward 2 million followers on their solo TikTok accounts.
For those who aren’t familiar with Sinatra and DeVane, they grew up in the same New Jersey town and met because DeVane is Sinatra’s brother’s childhood best friend. They became a couple in high school, started creating content together during quarantine, and now they’re balancing being full-time college students with also being full-time content creators.
And, as their online presence grows, they’re looking forward to spending next year trying something new. They already make a mix of both short- and long-form content. The next thing they’re adding? Travel vlogs. They have big plans to hit up one new U.S. state per month starting in 2023–and they intend to let fate decide their destinations.
Check out our chat with them below.
Tubefilter: For those who don’t know you, can you talk about how thing whole social media thing started?
Will DeVane: I would say that we are a young couple that kind of just came out of nowhere with social media and we both never did any type of social media before we started. We just started putting ourselves out there and being ourselves online and people really loved that—and our relationship was a very relatable thing. So I think that our relationship is something for younger people to—oh, what’s the word—relate with! Relate with and grow along with us as we continue.
Tubefilter: Last time we spoke, you guys mentioned how you differentiate yourselves because you specifically make couple content for Gen Z. Do you have any more thoughts about the importance of that?
Jenna Sinatra: I think since we’re a bit younger than most of the couples that are out there right now…It’s definitely a different time of growing up, so we’re not having the same experiences or problems or relationships or marriages or family styles as older couples. We’re a young couple, and Gen Z, the young audience, we can relate with them. They could have experiences just like us and the problems within our relationship—we like to keep everything very open and, and real.
So like, if we start a YouTube video and we maybe argue or fight in it, we’ll show that and we’ll address it. Everything that we go through, we like to keep our audience a part of it. Obviously there’s stuff that we have to keep offline, but we’re very real and young and I think Gen Z really can relate with our content.
Tubefilter: Why is it so important for you to be honest?
JS: I think sometimes if we aren’t honest, a lot of people might get discouraged with their own life experiences, thinking that maybe our relationship is perfect and theirs isn’t. Everyone goes through stuff, everyone has complications, everyone has little bumps in the road and arguments and I feel like it’s important for them to say nothing’s perfect.
Tubefilter: What will it feel for you guys to hit a million subscribers?
JS: It’s actually insane. When we started, we never thought we would hit a milestone like that. We thought we would probably just keep riding at lower numbers. We never thought one million would be a number that we’d even consider reachable in two years.
@jennasinatra We hate when this happens @willdevane ♬ original sound – bantsbrits
Tubefilter: How has your growth been? Have you guys really picked up subscribers quickly or has it sort of been slow and steady?
JS: It’s been different throughout time. Shorts obviously helps us like grow a bit faster than when we had to rely on long-form video. That helps us grow a bit faster. It all depends on the time and the work and content we put out.
Tubefilter: Has anything changed for you guys over the past few months since we last talked?
JS: Not really, honestly!
Tubefilter: What does your average day look like now? I know you’re back in school.
WD: We do go to school, yeah. A big thing for us is time management and organization, because with school now we have to work around our class time, our work time, and recording for videos. And friends! Friends apart from social media that we like to keep up with. It’s just, time management is hard with school, but it’s something that we like.
Tubefilter: Do you guys have a specific schedule when it comes to things like filming? Do you have set days or set times, or do you just sort of work it in when you can?
WD: What we like to do is try to schedule for our week that we have upcoming because it makes it a lot easier and less stressful if we know exactly how our days are gonna go. There’s definitely times where it doesn’t work out, but that’s what we try and do.
@willdevanecrazy♬ Something in the orange –
Tubefilter: How do you two split responsibilities with your content? Does one of you edit? Does anybody do scripting? Do you come with ideas together?
WD: We try to come up with video ideas together. We try to sit down and think of things that we can do. For the video aspect, Jenna actually edits our long-form videos and I post our Shorts for us. Then we record the long-form together, obviously.
Tubefilter: Can you talk a little bit about why it’s important for you to be doing both short- and long-form?
JS: Yeah! We like to keep up with both because I feel like even though short-form is more for people—like, the attention span right now is just not the way it used to be. But we like to keep the long-form because I feel like people understand our personalities a lot more with our long-form. And then once they know, kind of, our personalities, then seeing that then with our short-form, it just all makes sense and it’s better if we do both. And I like that we do both, because it’s just like more authentic.
Tubefilter: How often do you put out a long-form video?
WD: So right now we are doing one long-form video a week. We definitely might wanna do two or three in the future, but for right now with school and everything, one is perfectly fine for us. We post every Sunday.
Tubefilter: What are the two of you majoring in?
WD: I’m currently majoring in business and finance.
JS: I’m majoring in communications with a minor in creator and production.
Tubefilter: Definitely degrees that will help you with being creators.
JS: It’s more up my alley. Originally I was going for education, but I just found that I was not really interested in the classes I was taking, so I decided to switch to something that I get more excited about.
Tubefilter: Do you have any plans to go into jobs or into careers, or are you planning to be creators full-time?
JS: Our main priority would definitely be doing what we do now for our future, but we know that it’s not something that’s guaranteed, and it can end at whatever time. So we are going to school to get our degrees to have as a backup option. But we love what we do now.
Tubefilter: That’s smart. I’ve talked to a few people who don’t plan to go to college and that scares me a little bit. I think my parents would’ve killed me if I didn’t go.
JS: Exactly. Ours too.
Tubefilter: Do you have any projects or plans you’re looking forward to?
JS: I don’t know if we mentioned this in our last one, but this upcoming year we’re trying to travel to a different state in the U.S. for each month. So that is still our plan.
Tubefilter: Yeah, you mentioned that at the end of our talk last time, but I wasn’t sure if COVID waylaid that.
JS: Yeah, I think we’re gonna try. It’s gonna be difficult, obviously, with school and everything, but it’s definitely something we’ve always wanted to do, traveling, and it’s hard to sit down and say, “Okay, we’re gonna do it.” If it’s mandatory every month that we have to go somewhere, whether it’s far, whether we drive or fly, I feel like it’ll get us out there and doing it and make it so we do it.
Tubefilter: How did you come up with that idea?
JS: I think one day I saw a video of a couple trying to fill out a map, and I was like, “Oh, that’s a really good idea.” I don’t know what made me think about the blindfold. We want to put on a blindfold and just shoot a dart. I don’t know where we came up with that idea. I feel like it’s because we’re so indecisive we wouldn’t be able to pick where to start. So if we kind of just randomize it in a creative way, it’ll make it even more fun to do—and cooler for the content we’ll put out when we do that.
Tubefilter: Are you planning to do a specific number of travel days per month?
JS: It’s all depending on where we go. If we go somewhere close we can drive to and just spend like a long weekend, that’s fine. Or if it’s somewhere farther that we have to fly to, we don’t mind staying for a week and just taking maybe two days off of school since we school Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We wouldn’t mind taking a week off if we have to do that every once in a while, and depending on the place that we travel to, some take longer to get around to.
Tubefilter: Have you two done any travel content previously, or is that a new thing for you?
JS: We’ve gone to very small things. We went to Florida—I don’t think we ended up making a video on that. But we went to a Miami music festival.
Tubefilter: Do the two of you have any advice for young creator couples or just young creators in general?
JS: Definitely be yourself and don’t be afraid to show your personalities. I feel like sometimes people are embarrassed or afraid to really put themselves out there and show their true goofy selves, and I think that’s something we really don’t mind doing. We like to show all our sides—our goofiness, our sadness, everything. And I think for couples that are trying to do anything in the creator aspect, don’t be afraid to do that.
