With YouTubers becoming as famous if not more famous than mainstream celebrities, bewildered shoppers may find that someone on their list is hoping for a piece of their favorite digital celebrity for the holidays.
If someone on your shopping list is devoted to YouTube, there’s a variety of different gifts that could fill their stocking in 2014, from fashion and beauty to literature and music. For a totally reasonable price, you can surprise the YouTube fanatic in your life with the perfect holiday gift.
Beauty vlogger must-haves
Photo via em by Michelle Phan
The beauty gurus of YouTube demand big paydays for promoting various brands of cosmetics, but now many are getting in the beauty game themselves with their own lines of makeup and makeup accessories. Michelle Phan is absolutely dominant in the space with her em line, a partnership with L’Oreal. A good starting point is the Life Palette, with 36 shades of refillable cheek, eye, and lip colors for $59 in three different styles—Night, Career, and Beach.
Meanwhile, U.K. beauty queen Zoella has her own lifestyle line complete with perfumes, creams, soaps, and adorable toiletry bags, available at several online outlets and maxing out at $16 a piece. Once you’ve got the tools, your YouTube fan can turn to YouTube to learn how to do the newest and most reliable makeup tricks.
YouTuber fashion finds
Bethany Mota for Aéropostale
The style gurus of YouTube are churning out more than just products for your face. Vlogger
Bethany Mota, who found mainstream acclaim with a long run on this season’s Dancing With the Stars, sells a line of attire and home goods through Aéropostale. Her holiday offerings include whimsical sweatshirts for $28, a fragrance that retails for $25, and an entire bed-in-a-bag kit for $129 to transform your entire room to a Mota-approved model.
Bethany Mota for Aéropostale
Meanwhile, multichannel network AwesomenessTV has even launched an entire brick-and-mortar pop-up shop dedicated to merchandise fashioned by the network’s creators. Fans can purchase clothes designed by the likes of Teala Dunn, Sawyer Hartman, and Vine star Cameron Dallas, among others. For those not in L.A. to shop in person, the items are available online, with many priced in the affordable $24.99 range.
Get literal with vlog-to-book deals
Photo courtesy of Hannah Hart
YouTubers have been leaping off your screens and onto shelves in 2014, with several digital personalities putting out tomes. For the literary-minded YouTube fanatic, it’s almost certain one of their faves has taken up pen and paper route for a perfect holiday gift.
For the foodie, try Hannah Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen book of life lessons and simple recipes, for $15. If you’re looking for a fictional take, Zoella, a.k.a. Zoe Sugg, just released a blockbuster first novel, Girl Online, that broke sales records for a first-time author. It’s available on Amazon for $11, where you will also find a large selection of additional YouTube authors.
YouTube songbird singalongs
YouTube has been full of singers since the early days, and some of YouTube’s best and brightest have released albums in 2014. A cappella heavyweights Pentatonix have a new holiday album out just in time for the season, with the group covering classics like “Silent Night” and “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.”
Likewise, fellow a cappella singer Peter Hollens also released his debut album this fall, which is full of collaborations with other YouTubers like Lindsey Stirling, his wife Evynne Hollens, and Pentatonix’s Avi Kaplan. Both are ideal stocking stuffers for the crossover YouTube/choir geeks on your list.
There have also been a few vloggers-to-singer transformations this year. Bethany Mota released a single, called “Need You Right Now” to much fanfare. Also, Australian vlogger Troye Sivan debuted his first solo album, landing in the Top 10 on the Billboard charts the week of release. Even YouTubers who can’t sing are releasing albums. Connor Franta took the curation route with this compilation mix through Opus Records, which landed him a spot on the Billboard charts.
One-stop shops for fandom
Tyler Oakley/District Lines
You can’t go wrong with simply wearing your passion for YouTube on your sleeve, so to speak. For all your inside joke
Nerdfighteria needs, the DFTBA store is your home. For starters we suggest the “Feminist as Fuck” shirt for $20, for which a portion of proceeds go to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and anything Pizza John related (you can’t go wrong with Pizza John socks for $12). Several YouTube creators run their personal merch operations out of DFTBA, making it pretty much your one-stop-shop for the part of YouTube you can wear on your chest.
Tyler Oakley/District Lines
The other major hub for YouTuber merchandise is DistrictLines, where you can get items from Troye Sivan, GloZell, Annoying Orange, and more. This is also home to the iconic “I Can’t Stop Watching YouTubers” print from Tyler Oakley, pretty much essential for any YouTube fan. In poster form it’s perfect for collecting autographs. It sells for $19.99—or for $5 more, you can start off your collection with an Oakley signature.
The gift that keeps on giving
Perhaps instead of a physical item, your YouTube fan would appreciate the gift of being able to gift back to the creators they love with direct financial support. Patreon is one option, where a diverse set of creators including YouTubers can ask fans to pledge money per month or per project to support their work, with rewards similar to a Kickstarter campaign. (The platform was developed by one half of YouTube musical sensation Pomplamoose.)
Fan can also support certain YouTubers on the Subbable platform, developed by Hank and John Green. It works only on the monthly contribution system, and fans can search either site for their favorite YouTuber to support. Or, simplest yet, they can give money directly through YouTube itself with the tip jar system, where fans can leave a donation while watching videos through Google Wallet.
Regardless of how you put money into the YouTube ecosystem—from products and merchandise to direct financial support, you’ll be giving the YouTube fanatic in your life the gift of more YouTube, which is really all they could ever want.
Photo via Andrew Butitta/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed
