Many people want to be famous when they grow up, but Wyatt Michel, junior, is starting early.

Michel started a YouTube channel when he was 11 years old. Since then, he has gotten 12 million views and over 78,000 subscribers.

“I enjoy making and uploading videos that other people enjoy,” Michel said. “I also get paid for views or people watching ads, so I can make money for my savings. I probably get $2-3 per day, and have probably made around $1700.”

Bear Facts interviewed Michel to find out how a 17 year old could beat the odds and achieve YouTube fame.

Q: How did you get into YouTube?
A: I started out doing stop motion videos with legos, which is basically putting lots of pictures together and playing them one after the other very fast to make a movie out of it. After that I moved on to making backyard videos, like filming skits in the backyard and uploading it onto YouTube.

Q: What do you enjoy the most about making YouTube videos?
A: Probably making the videos with my friends and then seeing the reactions of people online. I mostly make music mixes, which is where I make a playlist out of a bunch of songs that I like and upload it onto YouTube. It is mostly electronic music, like dubstep or trap. I also upload funny moments of me playing video games with my friends.

Q: What is the best memory you have from doing YouTube?
A: Probably coming back to a video I uploaded 24 hours ago and seeing it has 5,000 views, and then 10,000 and then 30,000. It is just mind boggling how many people can find a video and watch it. It’s nice to see how many people like your content, and how popular and crazy things can get.

Q: What are the worst parts of doing YouTube?
A: One problem I have had is copyright material. I unwittingly put copyrighted material in my video that has almost 8 million views, so I do not get any of the revenue from it. If I did, it could actually be giving me upwards of $20,000 per year. So right now it is just one giant, mocking video that just sits there and soaks up money for videos. My other problem would be just staying consistent with uploading videos. I want to eventually make an upload schedule, and upload videos every Tuesday or Friday. The big problem is how much time it takes to do this, and with school and other aspects of my life, YouTube is just on the backburner.

Q: How popular would you say your videos are?
A: Some of my videos end up getting insanely popular, while others do not. For example, my biggest video is about to reach 8 million views, another about 1 million, and another around 500,000. I’d say I have a few outliers that get crazy amounts of views, but I probably average a good 5,000-10,000 views per video.

Q: Is it a challenge to do YouTube while keeping up with school?
A: Yes and no. Yes because I need to do things after school, like eat dinner with my family, and then I only have about 1-2 hours to myself. If I manage my time better, I could probably be uploading videos more consistently.

Q: How long do you think you will be doing YouTube?
A: As long as I see it can go, as long as I want to do it, as long as I keep it alive. Basically, nothing will stop me until I just don’t want to do it anymore. I plan to continue doing this for as long as I can, maybe even as long as twenty or thirty years.