.png)
Doing What We Love While Showcasing Our Friendship.
We are DelexisEats, two best friends who make mukbangs together. We also have a channel called Danielle and Marjan, where we post lifestyle videos, such as vlogs and clothing hauls. We also each have our channels that are called DanielleDenise and MarjanAlexis. Danielle is 24, and Marjan is 25. We are based in Los Angeles, California. For us, YouTube is a fun side-hustle. We are a two-person army. We both contribute to our channels equally. We both film and edit videos and come up with content ideas for our channels. For the name DelexisEats, we combined our middle names, Denise and Alexis, and since it was a mukbang channel, we put “Eats” at the end. We got the idea from a YouTube channel we used to watch with sisters who have a singing group named Ceeradi, which is also a combination of their middle names. It took us about an hour to come up with our channel name. We were joking around about it one night and just decided to go for it.
We have been content creators for about two and a half years. We started posting our channel on January 4, 2018. Going into it, we didn’t think anyone would even watch our videos, but we went for it anyway.
We started making content. After all, we wanted to showcase our friendship because we thought we were funny and had some crazy stories. We came up with the idea to make mukbangs because we were interested in watching mukbangs and thought that was the best way for us to be our true selves. For us, making mukbangs is more comfortable and more relaxed than just talking in front of a camera. In the beginning, we just posted our content on YouTube. Now we try to post content on both YouTube and Instagram.
Two quotes that we stand by today are “Never give up” and “It doesn’t matter what people on the internet think about us, they do not know us in real life.” The YouTubers that inspired us were Bloveslife and Nikocado Avocado. We liked how real and fun they are in their videos. Now, we are motivated by our subscribers and the love and support they give us.
We usually wait until the day we film our videos to figure out what to eat in our mukbangs. We typically base our videos on what we are craving. Once or twice, we tried writing down ideas, but we quickly learned that it did not work for us. There are days where neither one of us has any specific cravings and even days where one of us does not want to eat, so we resort to our comfort foods or choose not to film.
The techniques that we’ve learned on this journey is to always create when you are going to be proud of what you put out and learning to rest when you need it.
We film and edit on our iPhones. We use iMovie to edit and the phone app Phonto to edit our video thumbnails. Neither one of these apps is hard to use, but it takes trial and error to get things exactly how you want and like. We are on YouTube, Instagram, and Tiktok, all under the name DelexisEats.
We were afraid of what people would think of us but quickly grew out of that mindset. We got more love than hate and still do. Of course, there are negative comments, but we either ignore them or sometimes clap back. Years before creating our channel, we wanted to start another channel, but we were afraid of not being ourselves. We would make videos and watch them back and cringe because the girls on the screen were not us. We overcame those fears because we matured and understood that what we did and who we did not concern others or their opinions. Also, we were just eating on camera, so there was no way of faking that.
In the beginning, we posted a video about once a week. If we had the funds to eat, we had the funds to make a video. We did not get any outside help in building our brand. We did everything ourselves, from creating the channel and making the banner and logo, to editing and posting. It took about three months to start seeing our channel grow and hit that first 100 subscriber mark. We weren’t concerned about the number of subscribers we had. Of course, we wanted to grow, but we also wanted to stay true to ourselves and not do anything dramatic to gain subscribers. Now we have 13k subscribers, and about 4k views every video. We’ve been making videos for about six years and started posting in 2018.
The video that got us a lot of traction is EXTREMELY CRUNCHY Fried Chicken Mukbang | DeLexisEats.
We had to learn that no matter who you are or what you look like or how nice you are, people will still have something wrong to say about you. For someone trying to improve their content, understand what your audience wants to see and put out what you would like to watch. As for growing your channel, interacting with your viewers helps. For example, responding to comments and doing lives allows us to interact with our supporters and appreciate it. Also, you do not need expensive or fancy equipment to create. An iPhone, ring light, and a good setup go a long way.
The video we listed above was a significant milestone for us. It is what pushed our channel, views, and subscribers up. Hitting 10k subscribers was a huge highlight and milestone. We never thought we’d connect with that many people. Getting recognized by some of the other mukbangers we watched was another highlight of our content career. Weirdly enough, getting put in a “cringe mukbang” compilation was a highlight for us. We wouldn’t say that any of these milestones have changed our lives at all. We are still everyday people.
We didn’t have any strategies to grow our channel in the beginning. Truthfully, we still don’t. We have noticed that commenting on other similar YouTube channels have helped us gain subscribers. Of course, we didn’t spam their comment section. We’d watch their videos because we genuinely liked them and then commented like everyone else and then casually said that we also made similar videos and checked it out. We did think about buying subscribers, views, and comments but never followed through because we were broke. We’ve done two collabs with other mukbangers - Tastin with Tia and Posi Claudia. These videos got about 7k views each.
Our first brand deal was with The Coldest Water, which is a water bottle brand. They reached out to us and asked if we were willing to be brand ambassadors. We’ve signed up for sites that help brands get in touch with content creators but have never obtained a deal through any of them.
We don’t have criteria for choosing brand deals, as we have not had many. If a brand doesn’t have an Instagram or website, then we categorize it as shady. If we get an email from someone claiming to be an Amazon seller and asking us to buy their products and saying they will send us the money back via Paypal, we know it is a shady deal. In handling brand deals and sponsorships, be professional and polite in your emails and on the phone. Ask the questions you want answers to. If you want to know if the brand offers compensation in exchange for promoting their product, then ask. We’ve done this before, and gotten a bonus when the brand was not going to provide us. They usually ask how much we charge, and we’ve negotiated the pay by saying, “since there’s two of us, our pay starts at $400.”
