Bhadrak: Arpita Khatua, daughter of Niranjan Khatua of Tarago village under Bant block in Bhadrak district, is earning lakhs from YouTube.
What she does is manufacturing and selling daily need articles, decorative items and gift items from discarded materials through her YouTube channel.
After graduation, she did a Certificate of Teacher (CT) programme. As she was doing her CT training she made such articles. She stayed in hostel. During the period, she tried her hand at making greeting cards from papers, colours and pitch boards. She would gift her articles to her friends on special occasions like birthday or New Year day celebrations.
This apart, she prepared beautiful wall hangings from articles one would discard or are available easily. Since she would put her heart and soul into it, the end products were so beautiful and enticing that whoever saw them wanted to buy them. Her friends’ appreciation and encouragement made her more determined.
She started making various decorative articles from old newspapers, ice cream spoons and sticks. Within a few days, she became an expert.
“Since the day when my brother suggested to me to market my products, I have never looked back. I created my own YouTube channel in the name of ‘Craft Gallery’ and started uploading videos of my crafts,” she shared.
“Like many others, I too experienced teething problems. But I was not the person to let them overpower me. To make the videos more attractive, I edited my videos before uploading and it worked. The popularity of my channel started growing, slowly but steadily,” she added.
As of now, the number of subscribers of her channel has crossed 1 lakh and her channel is receiving advertisements from YouTube. The number of her followers has crossed 8 crores!
“During the initial period, my monthly earning was something between Rs 4,000 to 5,000. It increased when I started receiving advertisements. Now I earn over Rs1,00,000 per month. In the coming days, I will take it to a new high,” she expressed.
Her father, who wanted Arpita to be a government service holder, was not in favour of what his educated daughter was doing. Now, he is also extending his full support to her.
Nowadays, hundreds of people are thronging her house to have a look at how a set of skilled hands making crafts. The villagers said they feel proud of their village girl Arpita.
PNN
