YouTuber Adam hits a million subscribers

The young Derry man has now received the coveted Gold Play Button from YouTube for reaching the milestone, which opens doors to reaching an even wider audience and attracting further commercial partners and opportunities.

To put it in perspective, out of around 50 million active YouTube channels across the world, Adam’s is now among the 2,200 most popular.

Adam started up his channel, TheNewAdamb99, three years ago and has put a lot of effort into steadily building his follower base to become one of the top YouTubers anywhere in Ireland or the UK.

And the 18-year-old, who recently attended the premiere of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ in Paris with little brother Callum (aged nine), at the invitation of Disney, has accomplished the feat while studying for his A-Levels at St. Columb’s College, where he was Head Boy.

“It felt like a dream that you could never achieve; that it wasn’t possible to reach it. When I reached 100,000 I got the Silver Play Button but I still thought one million was years away, but it just flew in.”

In fact, Adam’s channel has increased 10-fold in little over a year.

But luck has had little to do with it, as achieving success has meant putting in the hours and the effort. “I have been constantly working at it and at school I was doing studying, doing homework so I was very busy and I think that’s why it flew by so fast.”

With his audience growing, Adam has decided to hold off on going to university and dedicate time to developing his online presence and content during a gap year.

“Last year was one of the hardest of my life doing A-Levels and YouTube: studying, homework, editing, incorporating that into a daily schedule. But I got there in the end!

“One of the things I love is that I will have more time to focus solely on YouTube.”

The local teenager has built his channel with a diverse range of videos, from ‘How To’ tutorials to prank calls and travel vlogs to challenges, with a healthy dollop of Derry humour, slick editing skills and sometimes with Callum in tow as well.

One thing he is well known for is encouraging others not to give up.

“One of the hardest thing on YouTube is people are really put off by low periods,” he said. “It’s how you deal with those lows. It is so easy to get disheartened when things are not going your way, but if you stick with it, it will be worth it. You have to never get discouraged. Even if you have hardly any views on some videos, there might be a person counting on you to make their day a bit better. There are people out there who might be depending on you to lighten up their day.”

Adam knows this firsthand from the feedback and reactions he gets from some of his own subscriber base, and said that knowing you have put a smile on somebody’s face means a lot.

“It’s very heart warming and very motivating. Comments and feedback are one of the best things about being a YouTuber.”

And in a bid to encourage other YouTubers, Adam has created a new video on his channel entitled, ‘Do you want one million subscribers?’

But Adam freely admits he too is sometimes surprised by which uploads end up striking a chord and going viral, pointing to a recent vlog which notched up a staggering 1.3m views. “With YouTube,” he says, “you have to expect the unexpected!”