This Filipino nurse manages a YouTube channel, where she vlogs on Filipino recipes, one of which has garnered more than 4.5 million views.
Manila-born Rhoda Mina works as a registered manager in a private nursing home in Nottingham, England. During her off days, the care home manager vlogs about Filipino recipes on her popular YouTube channel, where she’s known as “Aling Oday.”
With more than 200,000 subscribers, Aling Oday has reached thousands of viewers, teaching them how to cook Pinoy homegrown recipes like humba, chopsuey, and dinuguan. As of July 2022, her YouTube channel has racked up more than 44 million views.
Rhoda started vlogging as a hobby in 2013. “Since I love cooking, I tried to record a video while I was cooking and uploaded it.”
That first video of pineapple spareribs received a good number of views, encouraging her to create more videos. Seeing her subscribers organically increasing pushed her to continue this hobby, even though she wasn’t earning anything from ads and did not have any inkling of how Adsense works. She’s had to learn how to manage her video channel by trial and error, even getting banned after the first week when she clicked on her videos, not knowing that content creators were penalized for doing so.
As her popularity grew, a media company, Thoughtful Media, approached her to help monetize her channel. “I learned to be aware of new trends in food so I could continue reaching out to my market,” Rhoda shared. It was also encouraging to hear from followers who paid her compliments. “Some of them even thanked me [saying] that I helped them a lot to earn income through my recipes and videos.”
Rhoda admits that it was a struggle to keep producing content during the pandemic, although she tried to upload every week and record videos during her day off.
“I get my inspiration from recent trends in food and try to personalize it to my taste and liking,” Rhoda shares. In fact, the Aling Oday channel has spawned a more focused vlog called Keto Pinoy, where she uploads videos of Filipino recipes made keto-friendly.
Rhoda is currently taking some time off from vlogging to focus on her health. “I will definitely go back soon,” she promised. “I will continue vlogging. It’s my passion and my pride and joy.”