Beauty YouTubers have turned TikTok into QVC

But 10 minutes later, TikTok showed me yet another live stream: this one from OG beauty YouTuber Tati Westbrook, who tried to sell me a curling iron — a far cry from her favorite eyeshadow palette created it in 2019 – through the small screen.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see merchandise either. Influencers have always been, at least to some extent, glorified salespeople. Still, I couldn’t help but cringe. Their voices sounded different, like anxious sales reps trying to get my attention. It was a blatant drive to sell, sell, sell.

Some millennial viewers shared similar and often harsher thoughts.

“I’m sad. I used to trust all your reviews because you did it for the love of the game. Not commission. 😭,” one person commented on one of Westbrook’s TikToks promoting her recent stream.

“You’re getting worse than Kylie Jenner,” another person wrote on one of Star’s videos. “It’s every other day some kind of BS sale or relaunch. I miss the old Jeffree Star, this desperate new JS sucks!!”

I was right there with them. Seeing these larger-than-life figures go from the top of the beauty food chain to hosting QVC-style flash sales was shocking. But as I later realized, their tactic is also kind of genius: they use a free platform to sell directly to consumers while increasing brand awareness.

YouTubers have turned into TikTokers

Rewind a few years, and beauty influencers have dominated the cosmetics industry with the audiences they’ve built on YouTube — even when their careers were fraught with scandal.

Forbes reported Michelle Phan, who is considered the first makeup influencer on the Internet, as one of the highest-earning YouTubers of 2015, with annual earnings of $3 million. The lucrative beauty business only exploded from there.

YouTuber Jaclyn Hill collaborated with Becca Cosmetics on a shimmery highlighter in 2016, bringing the company $3.5 million in online sales in five hours. Two years later, Forbes said Star had reached $18 million in annual earnings — partly because one of his standout products brought in $20 million at launch, as he told Star and fellow YouTuber Shane Dawson.

Star then created a collaborative line with Dawson, who is best known for posting controversial comedy sketches and videos exploring conspiracy theories. Before it launched in 2019, the Star team estimated that the makeup line would make at least $35 million if it sold out, which it did almost immediately.

However, after years of influencer feuds, multiple cancellations and the pandemic, beauty YouTubers have woken up, said Alex Rawitz, director of research and insights at influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ.

Stars like Charles have gone from tens of millions of views on YouTube videos to just over a million per post, and TikTokkers like Mikayla Nogueira, with her nearly 16 million followers, have stepped into the spotlight.

“They used to be at the top of our creator rankings, driving the most engagement for brands and being at the top of the industry,” Rawitz told Business Insider. “They were replaced by people who were still doing tutorials, but doing really quick cuts and 20-second-sized things more suited to the modern attention span.”

Some of YouTube’s best and brightest have tried to make a comeback in 2023, like Charles, who made waves with a Cosmopolitan cover story, and Star, who opened her meat-and-makeup combo shop in Wyoming.

But the OG beauty influencers cracked the comeback code when they entered the wild world of TikTok live streams, earning them revived reputations and income.

Star began hosting virtual events on the platform in 2023, and Westbrook hosted her first live stream in April of this year. On YouTube, fellow beauties James Charles and Laura Lee have also followed suit.

These creators often took an interactive approach to sales with their streaming events.

Star, for example, has hosted makeup masterclasses with professional artists so viewers can learn how to use certain products from his brand, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, and then get discounts on them through the TikTok Shop.

Charles, on the other hand, has focused his efforts on making his brand’s cosmetic sponge the best-selling makeup blender on the platform.

Westbrook and Lee took a different approach, apparently partnering with companies to sell them products on the TikTok commerce platform at discounted rates. However, they made their personal efforts.

Lee, like Star, wrapped the orders by hand during their live broadcasts, and Westbrook demonstrated the tools and makeup she promoted.

In doing so, Rawitz said these creators are blending the old-school ways of long-form YouTube content with the modern, fast-moving platform TikTok.

“They don’t necessarily have to learn new tricks or try to adapt to the creators coming into the short-form video ecosystem,” he said. “Instead, they can have a more conversational flow with their followers, where they talk about whatever’s on their mind, talk about their day, but also about selling the product.”

Star, Westbrook, and Lee go live at least once a week, and Star often streams several times a week on two accounts: his personal page and his brand page. And when they do, it can take hours. A TikTok live on the Jeffree Star Cosmetics page hosted on July 24 lasted about four hours, while Westbrook was live for eight straight hours on July 10.

Leah Spector, director of communications and content at CreatorIQ, said these long live streams are strategic for generating revenue, maintaining engagement and attracting new fans.

“The longer it goes live, the more likely you are to capture new viewers,” she told BI. “When I see there’s 20,000 people watching a live stream, I’m like, ‘Oh, something interesting has got to happen. Let me join”. It’s simply a numbers game to get more people to join, even if they drop out pretty quickly.”

Influencers don’t care if it’s creepy—and they shouldn’t

Westbrook, in particular, was inundated with criticism and notices every time she promoted her live streams on TikTok.

“It feels like HSN,” one person commented on her page, while others joked that she was in her “QVC era.”

Influencers, however, seem to be in on the joke. Westbrook posted a video on July 10 mocking her live streams.

“Creators clearly don’t mind and lean into the format’s potential crisis,” Rawitz said.

They can do this with the help of longtime fans standing behind them. Mazaiah Hutchinson, a 27-year-old from Pennsylvania, has been following beauty influencers for over a decade. She told BI that she naturally followed stars like Westbrook on TikTok.

She sees live streams as a way to connect with her favorite creators and finds QVC’s style of selling nostalgic.

“We look up to these creators, so it’s really nice to be in their presence,” Hutchinson said. “You can send a comment and get an immediate response back. You can see in real time what I’m doing.”

In some ways, I understand the appeal.

While writing this review, I logged into a live stream hosted on the Jeffree Star Cosmetics account. As random makeup artists loudly demonstrated products for two hours, I found myself wishing something more exciting would happen — like an appearance by Star himself.

The beauty business is moving

TikTok live streaming is big business with big money attached.

ASMR influencer Lucy Davis previously told BI that she earns between $20 and $300 every time she streams, while Jakey Boehm, a sleep-streaming TikToker, said she earned $34,000 in one month.

Rawitz said that while it’s unclear how much these beauty influencers personally earn through these live streams, there are clear benefits to hosting them. They have the potential to make money through the products they sell, donations sent by viewers, and new fans who become regular consumers.

In the words of one fan who commented on a post from Star: “You bring the beauty, I bring the debit card.”

“If they’re putting that much time into it, then it’s probably profitable for them and probably ultimately profitable for the brand,” he said.

That’s not to mention how crucial the TikTok Shop has been to the success of beauty labels in 2024 — especially when influencers promote their products.

According to CreatorIQ, Jeffree Star has so far generated at least $686,298 in Earned Media Value (EMV) for Elf Cosmetics through TikTok this year. EMV is a metric used in the social media industry – and analyzed with proprietary technology at CreatorIQ – to help determine the value of any creator’s social media content about different brands.

Ultimately, the benefit of these long-form live streams apparently goes beyond profit.

Creators who once needed expensive lighting equipment, scandal-proof scripts, and hours to edit YouTube videos can now access occasional live streams without doing any of that. Better yet, they can also have employees hosted for them.

Live events, especially those that last for hours, are not always recorded, so the chances of being involved in a scandal are probably less likely.

But perhaps most importantly, beauty influencers no longer need audiences to worship them, watching every clip they post on every social media platform. Instead, they just need us to stick around long enough to make a purchase.