Jovan Hill calls himself a “digital beggar.” He is making $4,000 a month simply by live-streaming his daily life, complaining how broke he is and begging viewers to donate money to him to help pay for his monthly $1,300 rent for his apartment in Brooklyn, his $100 monthly T-shirt habit, weed, and video games
The 25-year-old, who lives in Brooklyn, uses social media platforms such as Periscope, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter to ask for cash from his 200,000 plus followers.
In one video he is filmed saying: “I’m very poor today.
“So if you want any tax write-offs, please donate to the Jovan charity.”
And amazingly his pleas work. Within minutes of posting his videos, donations begin to flood in to his PayPal account from loyal fans.
But followers often send him unsolicited Venmo donations showing appreciation for his videos, in which he’s seen ranting about pop culture, discussing mental health, eating, smoking weed, talking to friends, and walking around his neighborhood.
One wrote: “The only reason I wake up and go to work everyday is so I can give @EHJovan money for rent.”
Jovan, who uses his iPhone to rant about anything and everything, says he is amazed that random people send him money.
“When I talk to friends who have known me for a long time, they could never understand sending a random person money, and I kind of feel the same way,” he told the New York Times.
But it’s a community. A community based around me.”
He first encountered the generosity of online strangers when in 2016 he asked for help because his grandmother’s power had been turned off because of unpaid bills. Followers sent him $3,000.
Viewers occasionally ask him why he doesn’t get a traditional job, to which he replies: “I made this my job.”
Hill, who has been leaning on his followers for financial support since early 2018, when he dropped out of college in Texas and moved to New York City on a whim. He briefly worked at a movie theater, but when he realized he could make more money online, he quit.
“I was making less money at the movie theater than sitting in my room live-streaming five times a day,” Hill told The Times. “So why go to work?”
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