A year ago Ben Phillips was working in his mum’s shoe shop and making Vines for fun. Now he tells BuzzFeed News that major brands are paying him £12,000 to make them and he has a team of 12 people.
This is Ben Phillips – he makes Vines for a living and has more than 1.3 million followers on the six-second-video platform.
The Cardiff-born social media star can make £12,000 for a sponsored Vine and has a team of 12 people working on the marketing and commercial sides of his brand. He's 22 years old.
This time last year, Phillips was working in his mum's shoe shop and rising to stardom through the extremely cute Vines he made with "Dr" Harley, the 3-year-old son of his then girlfriend.
But in the summer of 2014 he split up with Harley's mum, Abi, after two and a half years together, ending the Ben and Harley Vine partnership.
The split happened not long after the duo reached a million Vine followers and had been featured on BuzzFeed and British TV news, and came just as they were being courted by brands to do sponsored Vines after being signed up by New York-based social media agency GrapeStory, co-founded by leading Vine star Jerome Jarre.
"When I left Harley it was the lowest [point] of my life," Phillips tells BuzzFeed News. "I didn't know what to do, because I'd broken up with my girlfriend and it was something that I couldn't control, it was completely her decision."
