D’Urso gives a tutorial on how to install the newest version of Cydia in his video “Jailbreak 6.0.1 Tethered/Untethered iPhone 4, 3GS, iPod Touch Redsn0w.”

Why did two Palo Alto High School students decide to start a YouTube channel that has garnered close to half a million subscribers and 24 million video views?

For Paly junior Freddy Kellison-Linn and senior Adrian D’Urso, the answer is simple.

“We originally decided to start the YouTube channel as something fun, because we both had iPod Touches and enjoyed them,” Kellison-Linn says.

In 2009, Kellison-Linn and his partner D’Urso, started their YouTube channel, iPodUplink, and began to post iPod, iPhone, and iPad applications reviews, news updates, and tutorials on jailbreaking, a technique that expands and unlocks Apple software using an app called Cydia.

Since then, the two have uploaded about 670 videos to YouTube and have started a website, jailbreaknation.com, to feature their content. They have gained a considerable amount of recognition for their work.

When they started the channel, they had no idea they would be so popular. But many people want to jailbreak their Apple products. Because jailbreaking is not an easy thing to do, there is a large demand for instructions.

When they need to make a video, D’Urso and Kellison-Linn follow a fairly simple process.

“We make videos when we find new material that is notable enough,” D’Urso says. To them, notable material is defined as content that they believe their viewers will find entertaining.

Both of them have camera set-ups and Final Cut Pro, a video editing software, at home, so they can film a video whenever they see the need.
“We film it, then edit it,” D’Urso says. “It usually takes about 30 to 60 minutes to make an average video.”

According to Kellison-Linn, after about a year, the channel only had about 1,000 subscribers. But once they created the website, views and success spiked rapidly. On their website, content is presented on a more personalized, better looking  and easier to understand template than  on YouTube.

Their popularity has grown almost exponentially. Less than a year ago, the two only reached 100,000 subscribers. By about mid-November of 2012, the channel topped  400,000 subscribers. According to buyads.com, a website that helps people place ads and tracks site traffic, the site gets about one million monthly visitors.

The channel currently has just over 410,000 subscribers and 24 million video views. All together, nearly six and a half times as many people as live in Palo Alto, or half of the population of San Francisco watch their content.

Their most popular video, from 2011, is just short of 700,000 views. Several of their other videos have hundreds of thousands of views. On the other hand, some have as little as 10,000. D’Urso attributes the popularity of certain videos to their relevance and importance to the public. A tutorial on how to jailbreak a new software update may get hundreds of thousands of views, while a review of a certain jailbreak may get less.

Kellison-Linn and D’Urso make up part of the young community of individuals like Ray William Johnson and Ryan Higa, who have harnessed the power of the YouTube.
Formerly normal people like Johnson, Higa (NigaHiga), Jenna Marbles, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla (Smosh), and Phillip Defranco (Sxephil) have all gained considerable fame and fortune through the YouTube videos they have created.

All have several million subscribers who watch their videos regularly, with Ray William Johnson currently topping the charts at about 6.3 million subscribers.
Rather than treating it as a hobby, these creators make a living off the videos they produce. YouTube pays people who become YouTube partners and allow their videos to be monetized.

This means that whenever somebody views a partner’s video, there will be an advertisement. The more views a video has, the more expensive the ads it runs, and the more money the partner makes. The catch is, if you don’t get any views, you will not make money.

According to D’Urso, the average rate of pay is about $2.50 per thousand views, which may not seem like a lot. But when your video has a million views, that means you are making $2,500 from that video.

Many YouTube stars have also delved into other ventures in order to expand their businesses and turn more of a profit. Luckily for D’Urso and Kellison-Linn, the ads on their website have become a major source of their income, and over the years, they have made a considerable amount of money. D’Urso, ever modest, did not share a figure, but hinted at the actual amount.

“We earn more money (through our website and channel) than any other high school jobs,” he says.

With  eyes on the future, the success the two have had  allows them enough funding to do almost whatever they want. In September, D’Urso brought an iPhone 5 onto his roof, and dropped it to test its durability.  And whenever a new Apple device is released, D’Urso and Kellison-Linn pre-order it so that can upload  a review as soon as possible.

When asked about the future direction of the channel and the website, Kellison-Linn says they still have some time to grow, develop, and tweak.

“We still have a lot of space to grow into, especially as we get more experienced and can produce better content,” Kellison-Linn says.
Freddy Kellison-Linn and Adrian D’Urso are on a roll, so expect more top notch content to come.     v