South African entrepreneurs are using YouTube to run successful businesses that cater to unique markets.
Ramscomics and Yellow Brick Cinema are two South African YouTube channels that grew from the founders sharing animation or music on the platform, to fully-fledged businesses within three years.
In 2013, Ramscomics founder Jonas Lekganyane started making video animations featuring characters talking in local languages, and Yellow Brick Cinema founder Roche Klue decided to share his original compositions of relaxing music to YouTube.
YouTube recently held the first Sub-Saharan African Awards, awarding YouTube creators across eight countries in a number of categories. Ramscomics won in the comics section and Yellow Brick Cinema won the award for the top subscribed creator in SA and in the music section.
Slumber melody
Yellow Brick Cinema was also given the YouTube Gold Play Button in recognition of reaching one million subscribers.
Shaun Williams, marketing manager at Yellow Brick Cinema, says the channel was launched in January 2013 and the company started making money within the first few weeks, albeit small amounts at first.
The videos are original compositions of instrumental relaxing, study or sleep music, and are normally longer than an hour.
Founding composer Roche Klue came up with the idea after using similar music to help him relax and study. "He discovered the music was already popular on YouTube and decided to share his original compositions," says Williams.
Williams says the most popular music on the channel is sleep music, followed by study music. "We believe it's because our sleep music has been so effective in helping millions of people fall asleep, and many viewers come back to the videos night after night as a solution for insomnia and poor sleep."
Most of the channel's viewers are from the US, but there are subscribers from over 150 countries.
Vernacular illustrations
Lekganyane says the first time he was exposed to unlimited Internet was when he studied at the University of Pretoria, as he grew up in a rural area.
"In that year, I discovered new ways of learning on the Internet and learned how to animate using YouTube tutorials. This was when I realised how efficient YouTube was, and that there are a lot of people on the platform that were ready to watch content," says Lekganyane.
"Also, YouTube made it so easy for me to broadcast my ideas without having to spend."
Ramscomics are witty animations discussing current issues in local languages. Lekganyane launched the channel in 2013 and started making money from it that year, and initially revenue came from external jobs he got through people seeing his YouTube channel.
It is now a full animation house that makes most of its money from YouTube revenue and works with over 20 other people, such as voice-over artists. Lekganyane aims to grow it into the biggest animation studio in Africa that covers African stories and builds up talent in the region.
Most of his subscribers come from SA, but also Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and other neighbouring countries, who can understand the languages and relate to the stories.
Ramscomics was featured twice in the top 10 most watched videos by South Africans in 2016, for Noko Mashaba: Meet our loyer and Noko Mashaba: The blind date (the list excluded videos from major music labels).
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