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Jordan Watson first rose to internet fame when he made a video with his then-four-month-old daughter, Alba, in 2015.
The clip, intended for a soon-to-be-dad friend, demonstrating how to hold a baby, went viral on Facebook.
What followed was what he calls “Z grade fame”. He became a household name on the internet and did a handful of TV interviews, set up his YouTube channel in January the following year and started to make weekly videos.
Within two years he was able to quit his job and work full-time making videos.
Watson has since posted 600 videos online and makes on average about $3000 each month from YouTube. That does not include his earnings from brand partnership deals, which he says are much more lucrative.
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He has racked up 172 million videos views on his YouTube channel and 250 million views on Facebook.
Watson co-founded a jandal company called Golden with no money of his own in late 2021 as a way to utilise his social media fan base of almost four million people.
Golden launched in Australia at the end of last year and sales across the ditch have already outstripped those of the domestic market. It has so far sold about 70,000 pairs.
Watson says the idea of a business has been in the works for about four years, as a way to safeguard his income. In 2019, an investor impressed by his audience engagement got in touch with Watson’s management, keen to start a venture as a partnership. Watson instantly knew it needed to be jandals that didn’t blow out and fall apart at the toe.
“I live in jandals and even before we launched this I always lived in jandals, gumboots or bare feet. At the first meeting I said, why don’t we put the bread tag on the bottom, and it stemmed from there,” said Tauranga-based Watson.
Golden says its jandals are superior because the plug pop (the portion that divides the two straps and connects to the sole) is a copy of a bread tag that stops it splitting and coming through. Watson tested the durability of the products for entertainment purposes in his videos.
“The classic New Zealand and Aussie act has always been putting a bread tag on, and that’s our point of difference – we’ve made the plug so big it can’t pop out.”
Supplied
Golden’s jandals feature a bread tag-styled “plug pop”.
Watson has made a handful of videos plugging his brand of jandals, including offering strangers $20 if they could unplug its bread tag plug – to no success.
Although his social media career is booming, Watson says he wanted to diversify his income streams and start a business that could further draw on his fan base.
“You never know when the bubble is going to pop. It’s a very weird industry that I’m in. When it all kicked off there was no manual I could read on how to be a viral dude online – you just wing it and make it up. So far it’s working, but I think it was a clever move to try and get something else as part of my repertoire and try and become a businessman.”
Watson dedicates time each day to work on Golden and calls himself the unofficial chief executive of the five-person team.
He considers himself the face of the brand and gets to have the final say on every decision made. He holds a 20% stake in the company and is tasked with the creative direction of the brand, including planning and producing video marketing content.
Most recently Watson made a video about him breaking a Guinness World record for sprinting 100m in jandals, beating German former world titleholder André Ortolf to the accolade by a matter of seconds.
Watson says all Golden online sales up until now have come directly from his social channels. “We have spikes if I come up with a piece of content that goes out on the How to Dad channels, [the power of social media] is huge, and we’ll keep on figuring out what we can do to keep it fresh and so I don’t just become that jandal dude.”
How to Dad typically puts out two videos a week and one video on the Golden channels.
“I’ve gone back to the tried-and-true way that I did when I started and that was one video a week. I try to stick to two videos max per week and give myself a bit of breathing space, and don’t put so much pressure on myself, and it seems to be working. I’m still here, it’s still my full-time gig, I’m getting money through YouTube and working with brands now and then, so as long as that is still happening, I can kind of dabble in both and make them both work,” said Watson.
“You have to stop and pinch yourself [sometimes] and be like ‘Hey, I made a silly viral video all those years ago and now it’s a full time gig’.”
Watson says fresh content comes easy.
“I have a brain fart idea in the shower in the morning, I write it down, and I film it that day and I can edit it that day, and I can post it. It’s great to have an audience that still likes it and I’m confident I can keep it going for another 10 years at least.”
He did his first brand sponsorship deal with Tourism Rotorua in 2016, which entailed a free trip to Rotorua in exchange for a short video for its social channels. The video went viral and received more than one million views of YouTube and over 20 million on Facebook. Since then, Watson had worked with companies such as The Warehouse and McDonalds, promoting its Kiwi Burger.
Social media influencing is a serious business with the influencers able to make six-figure sums from ads on single videos, and there is even bigger money to be made from collaborations with brands in exchange for posts and mentions in videos.
Watson would not disclose his net worth, but said he was not yet a millionaire.
He said he had never thought of YouTube money as something he could live on. He said he could, however, make a lot more than $3000 a month from YouTube if a video went viral.
There were some YouTubers with the same amount of subscribers as him making $30,000 a month, he said.
“I make short-form content, which isn’t the best for monetisation. I make quick one-minute or one-minute 30-second clips, but if you’re one of these vloggers making 10-minute vlogs you can definitely get paid a lot more as there are more ads in your video.”
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