To earn over £120,000 ($156,000) a year, Eknuur Singh needs nothing more than a smartphone and a good internet connection.
The 22-year-old Londoner works as a professional ‘clipper’.
Clients pay him to create short vertical videos for social media in the hope that they will go viral.
“The more views a video gets, the more I earn,” he says.
It usually works like this: a client – ranging from a clothing brand to a music label, film studio, assistant or influencer – has a long video, which the clipper watches first. They then cut out 30- to 60-second clips that they find most interesting and post them on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or other platforms.
The idea is that clippers, who are usually aged between 16 and 25, have a better understanding of what kind of content will appeal to this age group. One such example was a video he made last May: Sabrina Carpenter’s reaction at the Met Gala in New York when she stepped on the train of her dress.
Singh did not reveal who commissioned the video.
Many earn nothing
For 24-year-old video editor Ethan Wims from Wichita, Kansas, this is a lucrative side job alongside his other video work. He says he earns ‘at least $1,000 a month’ from the clips.
He creates short videos for YouTube and for Caleb Hammer, the host of a well-known financial audit programme that analyses guests’ personal finances.
According to Wims, this job allows him to work from home and spend more time with his wife and one-year-old son.
“I don’t want a typical 9-to-5 job where you have to go into the office every day,” he says. These might be pages on Reddit or Discord, as well as specialised sites such as Clipping Culture, Vyro, Whop and Kick. Such services charge a commission to the companies that commission the bots.
Clipping Culture’s clients include Capitol Records, Universal Music Group and HBO Max. For such companies, working with a teenager or young adult operating from their bedroom is far cheaper than traditional social media advertising, and is often more effective at capturing the audience’s attention.
This is precisely the advantage recognised by Boxabl, a modular home builder based in Las Vegas.
“I think our videos have already racked up around a billion views,” says the company’s founder, Galliano Tiramani.
In the UK, short clips are being actively used by Jimmy McLaughlin, a former Downing Street adviser and now host of the podcast ‘Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future’.
These clips are almost like trailers
He adds that this work is particularly well-suited to young people, as they are the main consumers of short-form video content.
Eknur Singh himself says he cuts hair almost non-stop, no matter where he is.
“I can be anywhere. I can go on holiday and still earn a living,” he says.