Samoa’s new crop of YouTube music artists have two options when starting out trying to make a living from their talents online: getting an agent or help from a friend or family member outside the country. 

The video giant’s terms and services require Samoan content creators wishing to capitalise on their art to route any earnings through a third party.

For husband and wife duo Della Jensen of Vaiala and Lagi Jensen of Vaiusu, it was an aunt and uncle who live in Sweden who nudged them in the right direction and helped them to monetise the Della Jensen Official YouTube Channel.

Since the release of their “Ana Ou Iloaina” original song about one year ago, the couple makes between $3,000 and $4,000 Samoan tala per month. 

“So far, so good. The way it works is with subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more money you make because the more people who subscribe, the more views you get…it relies on subscribers and views. Our YouTube, I have to say it’s going very well,” Mr. Jensen said.

They currently have 37 videos uploaded to their YouTube channel and their popular “Ana Ou Iloaina” channel has received more than 890,000 views in the span of a year. 

“For us, we’re not using any agents because they take a huge cut for their fees and sometimes they won’t be straight with the cut they are taking. The thing is, you can make a huge amount of money but the cut will also be huge for the agents so that is why we are running our own channel,” said Mr. Jensen.

“Our channel was activated by my aunty in Sweden. My aunt and her husband who works in I.T. advised us way before that we were losing a lot of money. 

“She said this is the way for us to make money – on YouTube. So she created our channel and then she passed it to us.”

His aunt saw that their song “Ana Ou Iloaina” was receiving high view numbers after initially appearing on Pesega Records.

“That is when she advised us to make our own channel and upload our videos ourselves,” Mr. Jensen said.

“If it were not for my aunty, we would not have thought to make a YouTube channel. We have been advising a lot of our music friends how to make money on YouTube….within a month the highest we have made is $4,000 Samoan tala...I thank the Lord for showing us the way.”

The money received is wired straight into a bank account in New Zealand.

“YouTube doesn’t accept accounts in Samoa so I was very lucky because my mom used to work in New Zealand,” Mr. Jensen said. 

“She came back and she is here with us. That is why people use agents because you cannot use a bank account in Samoa.”

For now, Della and Lagi, the parents of two boys and one girl, are writing their own music and have taken a break from creating videos.

But their YouTube fans can expect new future additions. 

“Right now, we are not too sure but we are not in a rush…we have been in this business for a while and we know it’s about the timing,” said Mr. Jensen.

“We’re just writing and harmonising and trying to find the right words for our songs.”