Alina Mcleod

Alina Mcleod is a popular Canadian travel YouTuber.

She has 290K subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.

Alina was a model and an actress.

Introduction-

Alina Mcleod was born on 17 February 1991 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Her mother, Elena, was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Alina’s biological father was also born in Russia.

Her parents got separated when she was a baby.

In 1995, Elena met Gordon, a Canadian farmer from Saskatchewan, when he was on a tour of Ukraine and later, they got married in Ukraine.

In 1996, they moved to Kinistino, Saskatchewan; a few years later, Alina’s biological parents divorced.

Alina grew up in Kinistino, a small agricultural town with less than 1000 inhabitants.

She wanted to grow up to become an astronaut and later, due to her interest in psychology, she wanted to become a psychologist, but didn’t become either.

At 20, Alina got her Canadian citizenship.

Education-

She did her schooling from Kinistino Composite High School; she graduated in 2008.

At 15, Alina got her first modelling contract in Tokyo and after this trip, she decided to not attend university as her perception changed after she met people travelling the world, following their passions and being their own bosses; she was inspired by them.

She took acting training from Toronto Film School in 2013 – 2014.

Modelling & acting-

At a young age, Alina watched a lot of fashion television and decided to become a model and an actress.

She started modelling at 13.

At 14, Alina signed up with SHE Modelling Agency in Saskatchewan and as there were not many modelling opportunities there, she attended Faces West, a modelling convention in Vancouver.

Thanks to her good performance at the convention, she attracted many modelling agencies; out of all the agencies, she chose to work with Team Evviva in Tokyo.

Even though Alina never travelled to Asia before, she decided to go to Tokyo; she bought Rosetta Stone’s Japanese language learning program.

She arrived at Tokyo in January 2006 by herself and started working as a model at Team Evviva; she worked here until March 2009.

At the time, Alina was the youngest person in the agency and worked with reputable brands like Canon, Mitsubishi, Honda, Peach John and Shiseido.

In between her modelling contracts, she used to travel, and work as a part-time waitress (she worked in this job for a decade), she also worked as a freelance writer, had her own photography business and did a few other random jobs when she wasn’t earning enough from modelling and acting.

At 20, Alina secured a role in a Japanese TV show Ataru; this was the number one show in Japan in 2012; she also worked in many short films.

In 2013, she moved to Toronto to attend Toronto Film School.

Alina was a part-time actress at TEAM Inc, The Characters and Creative Drive Artists in Toronto from January 2008 to November 2016.

Then, she worked as a model at Schönberg Models from October 2016 to January 2017 in Tokyo.

While working as a model, travelling was a part of her job which she greatly enjoyed.

Choosing YouTube over acting-

After Alina moved to Toronto for the film industry, she wasn’t getting a lot of opportunities; so, she started her eponymous YouTube channel on 26 October 2013.

This channel started off as a beauty channel as at the time, she was a model and loved makeup; but these videos didn’t become popular.

Alina published her first video, “A Model’s Holy Grail Beauty Products,” on 2 October 2015; she also published her first travel video in the same year.

As she continued publishing videos, she realised that she liked YouTube more than acting.

YouTube allowed Alina to not only travel the world, be creative and perform but also be her own boss; but for acting, she needed to have a flexible schedule, be open for auditions and couldn’t have time freedom.

Also, in the film industry, she had to work for long hours for almost free; she had to put long hours just into auditions without knowing whether it would lead to a job.

At 25, Alina travelled to Japan for her last modelling contract and she vlogged her experiences around Japan; thanks to this, she reached 1,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel; this success made her believe that her channel could grow even bigger.

In 2018, she visited Moldova, Transnistria, Ukraine and Romania in a month and a half, and all these videos performed extremely well.

Thanks to the success of these videos, Alina stopped producing beauty videos and started publishing only travel videos.

In 2019, she became a full-time YouTuber; at the time, even though she was publishing regularly, she was earning only around 300-400 CAD per month.

At the time, Alina’s plan was to dedicate six months and travel on the Trans-Siberian Express and publish these videos; she hoped that this trip would allow her to start earning decent money from her channel and allow her to continue being a full-time YouTuber.

And if it doesn’t work out, her plan was to return to her waitressing job and put YouTube on the back burner.

Prior to the trip, she worked many extra shifts at her waitressing job to have a security blanket of money.

Thankfully, Alina’s plan worked out; her channel grew from 20K to 50K subscribers and one of her Trans-Siberian Express videos became viral which allowed her to continue as a full-time YouTuber.

At the time, she also started receiving new sponsorship opportunities.

Another reason for Alina to continue travelling was her budget for travel was less than her full-time living expenses in Toronto.

She also worked as a freelance travel host for VIVA Lifestyle & Travel Media from December 2016 to May 2017 in Toronto.

A successful YouTuber-

As of April 2024, Alina has 290K subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.

She earns from a variety of sources like advertisements on YouTube, affiliate marketing, sponsorships; she also accepts donations on Patreon and PayPal and sells travel guides through her website.

Alina films her videos with DJI Pocket 2, Sony α6400 and DJI Action 2 cameras.

In 2020, she started her second YouTube channel (Russian), Алина Маклеод.

Favourite destinations-

Her favourite destinations are Astana and Almaty in Kazakhstan, Primorsky Krai and Lake Baikal in Russia.

Through her travel, Alina intends to throw light on less-travelled, unique destinations and dispel the myths surrounding them.

Some of the other YouTubers travelling the off-the beaten destinations are Nick Fisher and Jeremiah Jean.

Alina is inspired by Anthony Bourdain and her future plan is to produce a travel show for Netflix.

She is a good cook and is a polyglot as she knows English, Japanese, Russian and Ukrainian.

Alina’s zodiac sign is Aquarius, and she is tall at 170 cm.

She lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Alina Mcleod?

Share with me in the comment section below.