While financial goals were among the most popular reasons to take on an additional job—33% did it to diversify their income, for example—the survey proved financial motivations weren’t always the most popular ones. In fact, 38% of those surveyed listed doing something fun that they enjoy as a reason to start a side job.
If the content creator and social media star Howieazy took that survey, he would probably be one of that 38% who did it for the fun of it. “Making videos was a hobby of mine for the longest time,” he says. “It wasn’t ‘til the quarantine that I started doing it full time.”
Howie’s first steps into content creation happened during the mid-2010s when Vine was the service that facilitated an explosion of talent and creativity with its looping, six-second video format. Howieazy took note of it, enjoying the comedic content of KingBach and thinking he would like to do the same. Being a college student at the time, and a restless one at that, content creation soon took up a sizable chunk of Howie’s focus.
“I went to college for a long time, and I was constantly changing majors, trying my hand at things like computer science, journalism, graphic design,” Howieazy says. “At the same time, I would skip class time to create videos, and some teachers noticed it when my videos went viral. They tried to get me to focus on studying, but I never really found any satisfaction in it. I just wanted to make videos.”
Eventually, Howie left without graduating college and found a job that allowed him to continue making videos on the side. That was the situation in which the quarantine found him. “I was on TikTok the most at that point. It blew up for me during quarantine; I was getting a lot of followers, and I was starting to think I should take this video thing seriously,” Howieazy recalls. “But I had doubts it would be financially stable for me. That’s when Spotlight took off on Snapchat. I had a couple of viral videos and ended up getting a massive payout.”
During his streaming career, Howieazy created content on a number of platforms. He started on Vine, but he had to move on from it when the platform folded in 2016. Howie had more than 50,000 followers on Vine at the time. As many other content creators did and still do, he posted his Vine content on YouTube while he was on Vine, so making the change to the biggest video platform in the world after Vine’s demise wasn’t that difficult for him. Granted, he had to adapt to the longer time format, as YouTube videos need to be at least a minute long to be eligible for monetization.
From there, he moved to TikTok and Snapchat, finding a way to grow his following on each of the platforms. In 2020, he got 1 million followers on TikTok. A year later, his YouTube channel reached 1 million subscribers. Though the Snapchat payout stands out as his biggest success, Howie reveals that his favorite platform to create for right now is YouTube.
“YouTube is my favorite platform at the moment because it’s reliable, it helps people be financially stable, and it takes good care of its creators,” Howie says. “If I wanted to do minute-long YouTube videos, I could live off of that alone. But I prefer doing Shorts; they take me back to my Vine days.”
When talking about what’s next in line for him, Howieazy has some things he likes to do. A content creator branching out into movies wouldn’t be unheard of, and Howie’s big wish would be to appear in a Marvel movie. He had the opportunity to meet some of the people involved with the franchise at a Spider-Man movie premiere, so he’s getting into a position where that would be a possibility. Closer to home, however, he’d like to work with Mr. Beast, who is also from North Carolina, and to try himself out in new forms of content.
“I want to try more Twitch streaming and streaming with games in general,” Howieazy says. “I don’t have that much practice with live streaming, and I like story games, so I tend to get immersed when I play.” Still, given how he’s conquered every platform he’s posted his content on, there’s little doubt that Howie will draw an audience on Twitch. It might even be enough for the Marvel people to take a closer look.
