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Swedish YouTube celebs find worldwide audience

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Swedish YouTube celebs find worldwide audience
Felix 'Pewdiepie' Kjellberg. Photo: TT

Known as a tech-savvy and trend sensitive bunch, Swedes are predictably punching above their weight when it comes to YouTube with several "super celebs" reaching out to global audiences in their millions.

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YouTube is more than just cute cats and some Swedes have managed to establish their own channels with massive worldwide audiences.
 
"The dream is to be able to work full time on my video blog," said 20-year-old Clara Henry.
 
With names such Pewdiepie, Misslissibell or KeyYo, some Swedes are taking the video genre by storm. 
 
Clara Henry is one of the brightest shining Swedish stars on the Youtube night sky. 
 
Her career as a video blogger started out as a hobby. 
 
"Initially I had just a blog where I put out videos. My plan was never that it would be big. But then I put up a video in December 2011, which became huge in just one week. Then I realized that I might be good at this, and so I continued," she said.
 
Today, her YouTube channel has some 235,000 subscribers and 22 million views. 
 
"It's pretty cool - given that I only speak Swedish," she says. 
 
Just like most YouTube stars Clara Henry makes everything by herself: films, clips and scripts. The only thing she gets help with is advertising. 
 
Despite viewing figures that most Swedish television programmes can only dream of, the financial rewards are however not yet sufficient to make a living. 
 
The online attention has however led to programme presenter jobs for SVT and Kanal 5, which are better paid. 
 
Despite being in demand for other jobs Henry has however no plans to shut down her video blog.
 
"It would not be so clever to leave YouTube where I have my band of followers," she said.
 
 
Swedish company United Screens is working to help the Scandinavian video bloggers to make money and now represents some hundred artists. 
 
Three of them can make a living from their channels, according to programme director Malte Andreasson. 
 
"The market is still quite immature. But there is huge interest from advertisers. Ask me in a year and I think there will be much more."
 
United Screens' most successful video blogs are about music, cooking, cars - and games. 
 
A look at the top ten lists reveals that gaming channels clearly attract the biggest audience. And here is Sweden there is one real YouTube gaming superstar. 
 
With over 28 million subscribers Felix Kjellberg, aka Pewdiepie, is the biggest on YouTube in the world. Last year, his company made just over 23 million kronor ($3.36 million) in profits. 
 
Smaller, niched subjects also generate a large following.
 
"We have a whole channel just about pregnancy. In the traditional media, it would be a bit of a specialized publication, but here it is pretty big business," said Malte Andreasson.

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