A 22-year-old Londoner who works as a professional “clipper” has told the BBC he makes more than £120,000 a year producing short, vertical social media videos that he hopes will go viral.
Eknoor Singh said the only equipment he needs is a mobile phone and a decent internet connection. “The more views a clip gets, the more money I make,” he said.
The usual arrangement, according to the BBC, is that a client — ranging from a clothing brand or record label to a movie studio, podcaster or influencer — supplies a longer video that the clipper watches. The clipper then selects what they judge to be the strongest material and cuts it into clips of 30 to 60 seconds, which are uploaded to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or other platforms.
Clippers, who are generally aged between 16 and 25, are hired on the assumption that they better understand what appeals to that age group and can drive as many views as possible. Across platforms, a clipper can earn as much as $3 (£2.30) per 1,000 views, which the BBC reports can prove highly lucrative when a clip takes off.
Singh said he became addicted to the work last year after earning $300 from an Instagram post featuring popstar Dua Lipa. “I was like, ‘OK, this is a lot of money for simply posting a video.’ I instantly knew how lucrative it could be,” he said.
He now says he brings in “at least £10,000 a month”. He favours clips that are funny, quick to watch and engaging, citing a clip he made in May of Sabrina Carpenter reacting to having the tails of her dress stepped on at the Met Gala in New York. Singh did not disclose the identity of the client.
For Ethan Weems, a 24-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, clipping is a profitable side line alongside his other video-making work. He said he earns “at least $1,000 a month” from it, producing short videos for the YouTuber and podcaster Caleb Hammer, best known for hosting Financial Audit, a show that examines the personal finances of its guests.
Weems said the income allows him to earn a living from home and spend more time with his wife and one-year-old son. “I don’t want that typical nine-to-five job where I have to go into an office every day,” he said.
Social media consultant Lia Haberman cautioned that only a small number of clippers reach that level of earnings. “It mirrors the creator economy more broadly. The vast majority make little to nothing,” she said.
Streaming industry analyst Devin Nash said the time commitment involved in successful clipping is frequently underestimated, warning that those who do well must “watch hours and hours of content, and they just live in that world”.
Several intermediary websites pair clippers with prospective clients, from pages on general forums such as Reddit and Discord to dedicated sites including Clipping Culture, Vyro, Whop and Kick. The dedicated platforms charge a fee to the companies seeking the work, and Clipping Culture lists clients such as Capital Records, Universal Music Group and HBO Max.
For such firms, the BBC reports, hiring a teenager or twenty-something working from a bedroom is considerably cheaper than buying conventional social media advertising, and is likely to be more effective at attracting attention.
Boxabl, a Las Vegas company that builds modular homes and whose founder Galiano Tiramani appears in many of its videos, has taken that approach. “I think we’ve done probably a billion views [of clips] so far,” Tiramani said.
In the UK, Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser who now hosts the Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast, has also adopted clips. “The clips are almost like trailers for the main events,” he said, noting that a recent episode featuring Prime Minister Andy Burnham drew close to 50,000 long plays while its clips had reached millions of views.
Evan Stanfield, founder and head of Clipping Culture, is 21 and launched the business last year after leaving the University of Kansas. He said the site links brands with more than 340,000 clippers worldwide, and offered a straightforward explanation for the format’s popularity: “People’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.”
He added that clipping suits younger people because “they’re most of the consumers of short-form videos”.
Singh said he works at clipping almost constantly, wherever he happens to be. “I could be anywhere. I could go on holiday and make money.”
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