Just to see if I liked vlogging, I uploaded a video of my sister and I cleaning up a river in a canoe for Earth Day. The sound was horrible, and the quality was horrible... But you have to blog what's interesting to you and not care what anyone thinks.

My fan base is really, really young. They're the youngest demographic that you can track on YouTube: 13- to 17-year-old females. But the fan mail that I get in my P.O. box, they're all from moms and from kids who are two years old, three years old, four years old.

I've worked since it was basically legal to work. I was a waitress on and off for eight years. I worked at Sears; I worked at Abercrombie folding clothes. My dad really instilled good money management habits, and I've saved 10 percent of my paycheck, every paycheck, since I was 15.

My manager and fellow YouTuber, Mike Lamond, encouraged me to start a YouTube channel as a way to practice speaking, entertaining, and being more comfortable in front of a camera. In the beginning, I used an $80 dollar flip-camera and edited every episode myself.