15 Things You Didn't Know About ALUX.COM
Welcome to Alux.com
The place where future billionaires come to get inspired!
Hello Aluxers!
Damn it feels great to see you here, especially today!
We did it!
We reached our first milestone of 1 million subscribers!
From the bottom of our hearts, a sincere: THANK YOU! for sharing this journey with us!
You’ve been requesting this video since we had less than 100,000 subscribers
and we promised will do it when we’ll hit 1 million.
So let's cut the intro short!
Here are: 15 Things You Didn’t Know About ALUX.COM
Number 1: The project started in college as a tumblr blog
What started out as a hobby collecting luxury pictures on the blogging platform called tumblr
eventually turned into what we know today as ALUX.COM
I remember setting up a tumblr blog when I was in college
because I've always had a fascination for the things that are regarded as fine living.
So, I wanted to bring all the pics I enjoyed looking at in the same place!
I chose tumblr.
At the time, I was actually building this clothing company.. but it failed!
Because I didn't really understand what it takes to build a business in the fashion industry.
But the blog kept on growing!
So I told myself if I can get to 10,000 followers I'll monetize it in some way
Fortunately, it didn't take that long!
Number 2: The start of Alux involves signing Google as a client, Dropping Out and Going ALL IN
If you’ve been watching our videos for a while, you might remember
we’ve mentioned numerous times that there needs to be stakes in order for you to take the goal seriously.
Life is filled with cross-roads where you have the power to guide your life in a certain direction.
Choose wisely Aluxers! Here’s our story.
I remember when I got to Brussels, at this time we only had the website which was making around 350 euros per month and my rent was 1500 euros with utilities.
I gave myself until the end of the year to see which path to pursue
Luckly for me, the classes were incredibly boring so I decided to skip all of them and work 14-16 hour days on the business.
it turned out alright!
I actually remember visiting my family over the Holidays
and telling them I'm planning on dropping out and starting this company on the internet
and as you'd expect, they didn't like that very much
but, they've turned around since!
Number 3: The Brand was initially known as EALUXE.com
If you’ve been a subscriber with us since the beginning you might even remember this!
For the first 3 years the brand was EALUXE.com.
The name came from the tumblr blog we previously mentioned. Even today, the facebook page is fb.com/ealuxe
It stood for: Emil Anton Luxury Experiences
3 years later it was time for an upgrade…
Something to remember when picking a name for your business,
it needs to be remembered easily. If people struggle recalling your name, you’re just making life a little bit more difficult for yourself.
The name I really wanted to get was LUX.COM, 3 letters, .com domain, would’ve been the perfect fit!
The thing is LUX.com is a million dollar plus domain name and is currently owned by a skin-care conglomerate, so not luck on that front.
but, after years of negotiation, back and forthwith a really shady reseller company from Russia we got ALUX.COM
..with NO ESCROW!
Number 4: Dan Bilzerian was the first Viral Hit of Alux.com
For the younger viewers, there was a time when the world didn’t know about Dan Bilzerian
well at least not to the degree that he is known today.
We published an article called: Who is Dan Bilzerian and Why You Want to be Him”
which massively exploded on facebook, getting new eyeballs on our website.
Back then Dan had around 400,000 followers
I’ve discovered his page by accident and immediately knew people would want to see this.
I wrote a short piece, looked into who the guy was, inserted some of his more controversial pictures
Published it & sent it over to my close friends, saying: You need to see this guy!
The post went viral, over a million views, people were either shocked or amazed!
If you were to check Dan's original website
he actually had a press page where our old logo was the biggest one in scale
because we were one of the first "bigger brands" to feature him!
Just to get this straight:
Dan would've probably exploded anyway!
He's got like what.. 24-25 million instagram followers right now
bit the article on him - I believe - fueled both our growths.
Number 5: The first video to hit 1 Million views was the one on the Top 10 most expensive private jets.
After 3 years of being a traditional publisher
despite growing our reader base
a trend became clear that people were looking for easier ways to consume content
and on the long run we’ll see a greater and greater adoption of video.
So we decided to give this a shot and that’s how we came to know you guys!
We already had a team of writers for the website,
but the problem with video, is that you need different people with different skill-sets just to make 1 piece of content.
I ... still feel like a need a glass of Whisky.
Ok. Thank you!
I started taking all the money from the website and put it into videos that made barely any money at all.
because we had a greater vision towards the end.
The first video to be a hit, was the top 10 most expensive private jets
It got to a million views, it got new eyeballs
and we started picking up subscribers now and then.
Fun fact: The guy who owns the #1 and #3 plane on that ranking, Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal
is currently in jail for embezzling funds from the Saudi Arabian government.
Who knew!?
Number 6: Before Alux, there weren’t any platforms dedicated to luxury enthusiasts exclusively, so we decided to build it ourselves.
Some of you might not know this, but the website www.alux.com is actually a social network.
On our website we built an entire social network infrastructure, so the Aluxers, can create an account, add pics, ask questions and interact with the community.
I’ve always been fascinated by communities and the dynamics of everything.
Platforms like reddit or 9Gag were really interesting to me.
Although I have much respect for the founders of 9Gag and the way the company is growing,
I’ve never quite related to the content there,
So I decided to build my own version, with more luxury and less depressed individuals.
Number 7: Alux has a larger audience on youtube than Forbes - you know the magazine!
Forbes magazine is one of those iconic brands that we still look up to even today.
hey have a very active youtube channel with over 5000 videos on there
but for some reason people are not sticking around.
It doesn’t stop there!
Alux has a wider subscriber base than brands like: Business Insider, Bloomberg and even Fox News.
It’s an interesting process, because when we started out we wanted to be Forbes or Business Insider
We only dreamt of the day when we'll see them as direct competitors
or even overtake them in audience size
even if on only 1 platform.
Our goal is to overtake VOGUE.COM!
These guys have access to all the celebrities in the world
and they're really active on youtube
We're coming after you VOGUE!
Also, I still can't believe we've got more subscribers than JAY-Z!
You know how crazy that is?!
Number 8: In the last year we lost over 120,000 subscribers
Not everybody stuck around to see us hit the 1 million subscriber mark
but not all of them did so by their own desire.
it's true.
Over 100,000 people were once subscribed to Alux and now they're not. ... BUT!
There's a catch!
Around 50% of them are accounts that got closed down by youtube for one reason or the other
the remaining 60,000.. well..
we know our content is not for everyone so we respect their choice and have no bad feelings towards them.
Number 9: Alux.com is valued at over 1 million dollars
If Alux.com were to be sold today, it would fetch north of 1 million us dollars.
Something to remember is that, we’re not just a youtube channel, we’re a tech company with a media twist.
We actually received an offer to sell early last year,
taking that offer as benchmark with all our growth and development an exit in the low 7 figure range is not that unlikely.
Just the 4 letter domain name is currently valued at around 100,000 dollars.
We'll just have to wait and see how big we can make this thing go.
Number 10: Turned down 2.0 Bitcoin for a video sponsorship
Despite what many of you think, none of our videos are actually sponsored.
All our videos are financed and researched by our internal team. All of them!
That doesn’t mean there weren’t sponsors interested, it just would’ve affected the way we grow and the trust between us and the audience.
The largest amount we turned down was of 2.0 Bitcoin for a single video sponsorship.
We've had big offers in the past, but we always stuck to the idea that we'll only accept sponsors when we reach a certain point.
The most recent one was a crypto-exchange who offered to pay us 2 full bitcoin for an endorsement
At the time, a single bitcoin was valued at $13,000
We looked into their platform, did some digging and realized they were kinda fishy
their exchange rates were way higher than others
and they made it really difficult for users to take out their earnings.
Although the money was good, we had to say no
because we'd never endorse a brand, sponsor or product that we don't trust ourselves just for some short term gain.
Number 11: In the last 12 Months people have watch Alux videos for over half a billion minutes.
Yes, you heard that right. Billion with a “B”.
Let’s say you spend 10 minutes watching one of our videos,
then someone else spends 10 minutes watching another video..
Add all that up and in the last 12 months, we’ve streamed over 535 million minutes.
It would take a single individual a little over a thousand years to get to half a billion minutes spent doing anything.
This is where the analytics go crazy. We’re really glad you guys enjoy the content we work so hard to make
and these numbers speak only of the scale of what we’re building here.
Number 12: Our most popular and controversial video almost didn’t get published.
Our most watched video is “15 Things You Poor people do That the rich don’t” with around 4 and a half million views.
The video almost didn’t get published, because we were not sure if people would respond positively to a blunt, hard, straight to the point narrative.
I remember finishing the script and thinking: this is the type of cold shower that would have benefited myself early on
We might not always like the truth, but it’s better to know of it than turn a blind eye.
So we decided to publish it and some people were not pleased with us.
Number 13: An Alux.com App is coming this year.
We’ve been meaning to do a community app for a while now,
but since all our resources were put into creating the best possible content, the decision was postponed.
We always said that if we’re going to do an app, we had to do it right.
By the end of 2018 we should deliver an app for both iOS and Android that serves to give even more of a platform for our community to grow.
It’s actually not that difficult to make an app, the difficult part is making an app that people actually want to use.
How many apps you have on your phone that you never open?
There's more to an app than just building it!
Number 14: The term “Alux” actually has a mythological meaning.
An Alux is a mythological creature from the Mayan culture
most prominently in the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala.
They are similar to the Irish Leprechaun, resembling tiny people who could either bring you great fortune or rain havoc on your life
depending on how you treat them.
The story goes like this:
If you were a farmer and encountered an Alux on your field it would ask you for an offering to see what kind of person you are
if you were respectful of him, for 7 years the Alux would help grow the crops, summon rain, patrol the fields, bringing much prosperity into your life
on the other hand, if you mistreated it, it would rain havok on your life and bring illness.
We find the name fitting.
Number 15: We’re planning an entire TV or YouTube Series
One of the biggest surprises of this year was our Milan video.
In order for Alux to grow as a brand the type of projects we undertake need to be bigger and better.
As a media company, we always try to push the quality of our end product.
That’s why we’ve started our own production division.
Summer 2018 is the beginning of a year long project of traveling all around the world and documenting what it means to live an elegant life.
his has got to be the biggest thing we’ve done so far!
And it wouldn't have been possible without the support from you guys.
I don't want to go into much detail about our travel schedule or how the episodes will be structured
it's gonna be a show for Aluxers, by Aluxers.
So, if you're subscribed to our channel, you're gonna love it!
Every month we do a LIVE stream Q&A on instagram.
So make sure to follow us there so you can keep up with what we’re doing on the side.
We’re curious to know Aluxers:
What was your favorite ALUX.COM video so far? Let us know in the comments!
You know it's not an Alux.com video without a special reward for you guys watching until the end
So I'm gonna do something special
and give a shoutout to the most loyal Aluxers,
the ones who always comment "First" on our videos
So.. here's a special shout out to:
Thanks to our communities in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Australia, Philippines, Germany, United Arab Emirates and more
Also, a special thanks to the people who make Alux possible
The Alux.com Team
See you in another million!