If you have an idea for a YouTube channel today, chances are someone's already beaten
you to it.
YouTube has a staggering 1.3 billion users as of 2017, with 300 hours worth of video
uploaded to the site every single minute.
Those figures may seem intimidating, but it isn't impossible to make a mark if you want
it bad enough.
Every year there's a handful of YouTubers who blow up after appearing from nowhere,
and 2018 will be no different.
Fortunately for you, you don't have to wait until next year to check them out.
We've compiled a list of the ones to watch out for over the coming months.
Dobre Brothers
The Dobre Brothers are the sons of gold medal-winning Romanian gymnast Aurelia Dobre, whose career
was derailed by a serious knee injury.
Aurelia went on to marry a gym owner named Boz Mofid and the pair settled down in the
United States, where they had four sons together: Cyrus, Darius, Lucas and Marcus.
Twins Lucas and Marcus are already huge YouTubers in their own right, with over 5 million subscribers,
but brothers Cyrus and Darius are relative unknowns in comparison.
For now, anyway.
All four recently teamed up to start a brand new channel in which they put the gymnastics
their mother taught them to good use.
Even though the channel only got up and running in June 2017, they already have over a million
subscribers.
The siblings also make their own music, releasing two tracks as a preview of what's to come
from them going forward.
Expect Cyrus and Darius Dobre to become as YouTube famous as their brothers in 2018.
Sommer Ray
Fitness model turned social media starlet Sommer Ray already has a following of over
16 million people on Instagram, where she's best known for her perfectly sculpted behind.
Ray is already making a comfortable living from turning her back to the camera, though
she'll have to do more than that if she wants to become an influencer on YouTube.
Ray only joined YouTube in January 2017 but she's already attracted over 880,000 subscribers,
though she didn't do it alone.
Ray happens to be good friends with Rice Gum, a hugely popular YouTuber who invited Ray
to move into his Hollywood home alongside a bunch of other well-known YouTubers in June
2017.
With her army of Insta followers guaranteed to check her out on YouTube, 2018 could well
be the year of Sommer.
Christian LeBlanc
Ever want to quit your job and dedicate your time to traveling the world?
Good luck.
You'll have to settle for living vicariously through Christian LeBlanc's channel Lost LeBlanc,
which he started in 2015 and currently has just shy of 400,000 subscribers.
The tanned travel vlogger stands out from the crowd because he uses a wide array of
high-end camera equipment instead of the standard GoPro most travel YouTubers rely on.
LeBlanc has traveled South East Asia extensively, and is often found in either Thailand or Bali,
major hubs for backpackers and digital nomads.
Sure, those two places have been vlogged to death at this point, but as the number one
up-and-coming traveler on YouTube, LeBlanc knows to take his viewers further afield to
keep them interested.
The Canadian recently released a beautifully filmed series of vlogs in which he sailed
around Ireland in a genuine Russian pirate ship.
Ayla Woodruff
Nicknamed "What's The 411" because of her four-foot-eleven height, Ayla Woodruff was
known as the assistant of Team 10 YouTuber Logan Paul, but she was recently replaced
with someone else.
Rumors swirled that Woodruff had been fired under bad circumstances, but the diminutive
beauty revealed that they are still on speaking terms, saying,
"Logan and I still hang out, you guys still see me on the vlogs all the time."
"It's no hard feelings.
I'm super excited for him to have a new assistant and to get it straight, he will not admit
this in the vlog, he did not fire me."
The exposure the whole saga brought has given Woodruff a golden opportunity to restart her
own vlogging career, which was put on the back burner while she was working under Paul
in 2015.
Woodruff now incorporates health and fitness into her vlogs and already has over 719,000
subscribers of her own to brag about.
Jordan Houston
Teenage vlogger Jordan Houston joined YouTube in October 2016, and the blond-haired Brit
already has over 326,000 subscribers.
His videos are partially prank-based and he gained notoriety among store owners in the
Brighton area for hiding out overnight in places like Toys "R" Us and Ikea.
Houston's most popular videos are the ones covering his ongoing feud with fellow YouTuber
Ruby Rube, who he's called out for faking her videos.
Exposing a bigger channel is a good way to get yourself noticed, but it comes at a price
— Rube's family have threatened Houston with court proceedings.
Houston responded,
"They can't just silence a small YouTuber, just because I don't have as many subs."
"At least I keep it real, that's what I care about."
Something tells us that Houston's subscriber count will actually surpass Ruby Rube's in
2018 as he continues on his march toward YouTube stardom.
Joey Bizinger
Japanese-Australian vlogger Joey Bizinger has a massive following in the YouTube anime
community thanks to the success of his main channel, The Anime Man, which recently hit
a huge milestone with over one million subscribers.
As one of the most authoritative voices discussing anime right now, he realized that by with
limiting himself to a single topic, he was also limiting the range of his viewership.
So he made the smart move of starting a separate channel to discuss non-anime related topics
with the world.
His new channel has surpassed the 200,000 subscriber mark, and while anime still manages
to creep into his videos from time to time, he discusses an array of topics and recently
branched out into gaming.
He stinks at Sonic Mania, but don't let that stop you from checking out his channel, as
Joey could well become a big name on YouTube in 2018.
The Johnson Fam
Family vlogging is big business on YouTube, and there are countless clans trying to get
a share.
The success of the massively popular Shaytard family channel has inspired countless others
to try and do the same thing.
One up-and-coming channel that's been gathering steam these past few years is The Johnson
Fam.
Natalia, Jeff, Peyton and Olivia started making videos in 2015 and since then they've managed
to exceed half a million subscribers, with earnings estimated to be as much as $77,000
a month.
Those figures look set to increase next year, and by the end of 2018 the Johnsons will in
all likelihood be a household name.
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