Jessica Braun sits behind a sparsely garnished wooden desk in her Carmel house, holding a $17 1-ounce bottle of Neutrogena foundation like it's a fragile egg.

The 28-year-old taps the bottle gingerly with an outstretched finger. It's one of those gestures that could make anything she's holding seem attractive.

"This is one that I reach for all the time, or even just in the summer when I don't want a ton of stuff on my face," she says to no one but a camera and an intensely bright ring light, which reflects blazing halos into her irises. "I just want it to look a little bit more natural, a little bit more perfected."

Then she whispers, again seemingly to no one, and holds the bottle next to her flawlessly made-up face: "This is awesome."

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But Braun isn't talking to no one. She's talking to potentially more than 400,000 people who have subscribed to her makeup YouTube channel, under her handle JAMbeauty89.

In the world of beauty YouTubers, Braun is at the mid-level of fame. She produces three to five videos a week, has earned almost 50 million views since 2013 and could make a pretty good living off the money she's received through advertising royalties on her content.

By day, though, she's a fifth-grade teacher at Smoky Row Elementary School, part of the Carmel Clay School system. Her husband, Tyler, is a travel agent who hosts a travel video blog. The two kismetly met when she was playing Jasmine and he, Aladdin, in a Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre performance.

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At a time when nearly every kid aspires to become a famous YouTuber — but with a vague understanding of how it all works — we sat down with Braun to learn what it's like to earn a living through this strange online culture.

How'd you get started?

This whole YouTube thing started for me four-ish years ago. I had moved back from Chicago, I had been going to school there for musical theater for a few years and decided, I love this, but it's not something I want to do for my career.

So I moved home to become a teacher and as I was starting school at IUPUI, I realized, I need a hobby, I can't just do this, the creative part of me is going crazy. I had taken theater makeup classes in school in Chicago. So, with a little bit of knowledge and this newfound love of YouTube, I started watching videos. I was still living with my parents at the time, I sat on my bedroom floor, bought like a $5 little tripod on Amazon and set it on top of a huge stack of books and I just started talking about makeup. And so, here we are, four years later and I'm still talking about makeup. I'm just not at my parents' house and I have a little bit better equipment.

What do you wear when you shoot?

When I'm shooting videos, oftentimes, I'll totally wear pajama bottoms on the bottom, slippers, and a nice top, and maybe jewelry and, of course, a full face of makeup. So it really is kind of a backwards thing when you think about it.

Every kid I know under the age of 13, when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up —

They say YouTuber.

Yep. You're someone who's teaching 9- and 10-year-olds. Do you talk to them about what you do?

It's very weird to teach kids who are the age that watch YouTube videos. If you search my name, and I'm your teacher, you're going to find it. I tell the parents usually. Throughout the year, they start to watch videos and realize, "Oh my gosh this is my teacher and that's her house." It's kind of one of those thing when you're a kid and you see your teacher at the store, or somewhere in the summer, and you're like, "Oh my gosh my teacher's a real person." It's gotta feel that way to them. For some of the parents, they feel like they know me a little better because they've seen something of that.

What's your advice to any kid who wants to grow up to be a YouTuber?

You've gotta have an actual thing that you really feel passionate about. If you're just wanting to be a YouTuber to be a YouTuber and just run around and film yourself running around doing shenanigans, but you don't really have a vision for it, then you might be doing it for the wrong reasons and you might not find the success that you want.

The other piece of advice I'd give is have something else for your job. And then if the YouTube part turns into a job, great, and if you want to quit that job and just do YouTube, then awesome. But it's better to have another career that you're doing on the side, because if the YouTube turns into it, that's wonderful, but if not, then you're not drowning with nothing to do.

YouTube is notorious for negative comments. How do you handle that?

There will always be people that want to pick apart whatever it is. I think that it's caused me to grow a really thick skin, and I will say that I was very sensitive at first, but you do realize that a lot it can just roll off your back. And a lot of it has transferred to my life outside of YouTube into teaching and to the other things that I do. I can handle a lot more than I think I could've before I started. I don't delete negative comments, I don't respond to them. I just leave them there, and oftentimes people will comment back and they'll have my back.

Do you ever worry about your personal safety as you become more well-known?

Yes. Putting out there that I'm from Indiana, it is kind of an issue. If there was anyone with a bad intention, they could probably find me, especially given that I'm a teacher. That stuff is public record. With any job like this, safety will always be an issue, and there's not a ton you can do about it except, you know, try not to divulge your actual address. There are other precautions. YouTubers do house tours, and they do a tour of every room in their house, every door, and that's something I've kind of decided I'm never going to do because it doesn't seem smart from a safety standpoint.

Have you been recognized locally?

Yes, last night we were at the Monon Center and a couple of people, they watch my channel. It's usually when I'm shopping for makeup that I get recognized. And even outside of Indiana Chicago and other cities we travel to. And it's always surreal. Like, I remember we were in the airport in Dublin and a woman probably double my age recognized me and she was like, "I watch your channel!" It's so cool to meet other people.

Are you ever going to quit your day job?

My day job is something that I enjoy so much. The past two years of teaching, I've thought about quitting over and over again, and every time I think about it, I think, "No." At this point, I'm not doing it out of necessity. I'm doing it because I actually like it. I'm getting to that point of both teaching and YouTube, I just like both so much I don't want to give either one up. I don't want to do one or the other.

Could you?

We definitely can pay the bills with our YouTube alone, but we both choose to do our jobs outside of it. He's a travel agent, we love to travel, so it's just one of those things that we've made work again, just because we love both, we love it all and we don't want to give up any of it.

How do you make money with YouTube?

The money on YouTube comes from being a partner on YouTube. Once you hit a certain point on YouTube, you become a partner on YouTube, and that's how you can start sharing ad revenue with them. And so that's why you'll see most YouTube videos will have an ad before it.

You can choose the kinds of ads, how long they play, if you want an ad in the middle of your videos. With that, you get the money from that. So making money on YouTube has a lot less to do with how many subscribers you have, although that helps, it really has everything to do with how many people are actually watching your videos. So the more people that are watching your videos, the more ads they're seeing, the more money you're making.

How do you actually get paid?

You get paid every month. I make money on the videos I've done that month, but ...if I've got a video that's been doing well for six weeks, that's great because that's kicking into what I'm making the next month as well. Some videos of mine are consistently making money because they're constantly getting viewed even though I made them two years ago. This is still a world to me that even four years into it, there are so many ins and outs that I don't understand. The more ads they watch, the more money you make. And if people don't skip the ad and they watch more of it, you also make more money that way. Now, we all skip ads because why would you sit and watch them? I mean, I don't even do it.

What's your view on accepting free stuff from companies that want your promotion?

There are influencers, like myself, that companies will send tons of free things.It just kind of makes you feel dirty because that's not why most of us are doing this. We're doing this because we just want to share information. I want to review that foundation so you can know if you want to spend your hard-earned money on that foundation or not, not because I want a bunch of free makeup.

And at this point, I don't need free makeup. I'm just trying to make sure that the viewers know that I'm always going to be honest, whether it was sent to me or whether I bought it. There are plenty of products sent to me that I will give a completely negative review. Great companies will see that and respect that because they understand that's how that should work, but certain companies will stop sending you makeup if you give them a negative review. To be quite candid, I'm usually like, "Good," because that's not a company that I would want to endorse.

Was there a point when you actually took off and became famous?

Growth with subscribers has been a very steady process for me. There was no one viral video I had that just rocketed the number. I attribute that to the fact that I'm not doing videos just for that viral sensation. I like to do videos that are helpful for everyday use. It's still a steady growth, but it's more organic.

Are you worried about becoming very YouTube famous and losing yourself?

There are a lot of YouTubers that have a ton of subscribers. And I think some of them don't quite remember what it was like to be a normal — I hate to use the word normal — but a person with a job. Not that YouTube's not a job, because it's work. But just what it's like to leave in the morning and go to work and then to come home, and all those kinds of things that go into that kind of a day and that kind of a lifestyle. So I hope that as I continue working on this channel and hopefully growing that I never ever lose sight of that, because that's why I started my channel in the first place.

Call IndyStar reporter Amy Bartner at (317) 444-6752. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.