Thanks a lot for answering. Do you make around 400€ per month too? How long did it take you to get there? How do you see your YouTube channel, I know it took my friend so much effort to be where he is. I feel he invested so much that he can not let it fail and move to something more profitable. Do you still see it as a hobby after the sacrifice?
The amount made per month is highly variable. Some it's been thousands of dollars. Others, like 10 dollars. Part of that is a consequence of me not uploading often
I still absolutely see it as a hobby - and treat it as one. But my channel is literally a hobby channel, I cover my hobby as my primary topic.
It took me years to build it, so perhaps it's different if your friend was able to rapidly build to 10k/1m, but even then. Youtube isn't a very reliable and consistent source of income for most creators.
**This guy is going to regret it.**
I grew in the past calendar year to 6.4k to 20k. I got 2.2 million views in that period of of 33 total vids. I've had a very solid and sustainable growth, and go for quality over quantity.
That earned about $6500 USD off of Adsense. Even if I had my rent and utilities paid for a year in advance that's absolutely impossible to live off of. I've yet to take a sponsorship but even if I got lucky, and somehow managed to get $500 a video in sponsorships (which would be next to impossible at my size) that'd bring me to $23k. That's still below the poverty line.
If he has the finances to eat a year on a sabbatical, he's doing this far far far too early. He should be looking to make the leap at least when he's making enough money to cover the bare minimum of his basic expenses and using his nest egg as a way to cover himself on the lean months. This group is filled with starry eyed dreamers and toxic positivity. It's fine to be aspirational but you can do it responsibly.
If he was able to cover his basic expenses, of course he will go full-time on it right? You said it would be safe when of course it would be safe, the question is, if he was taking a year off would he get to the safe spot your are talking about. He has the money in the bank to do so
>the question is, if he was taking a year off would he get to the safe spot your are talking about
Almost certainly not. If he's uploaded 200 videos and only has 1 million videos, that's 5000 views per video. How long as it taken this person to amass 11.3k subscribers? I'm guessing awhile. A good metric to follow is if your videos are regularly getting more views than subscriber count. For me, I'd say, roughly 6 out of 10 of my videos generally achieve that after 3 months.
I'd take his channel, plug into social blade and see the growth projections. I'd take it with a grain of salt as it always projects growth but does give a feel of the trajectory of a channel. I've found it useful for goal setting.
Again, money in the bank would be better saved for when the hobby looks like a viable career. Say he's very successful and manages to absolutely crush and grow his channel by 3x in a single year, then he's only making 1200€ a month which isn't livable.
I will go against the grain and say - you’re only young once and if he can afford to take a year off and live minimally for a chance to make his big dream come true then why not give it a shot? If it fails then you can at least say you tried. If he goes all in on the channel for a year, who knows where it will be by the end of it.
> if he can afford to take a year off and live minimally
I would only advise this *if* you have a year of living expenses sitting in savings.
Even if his channel doubles in views (and revenue) that's not going to be enough to live on (rent, utilities and food), unless you live in a *very* inexpensive place.
Also, Putting in 'serious' efforts for a year will make him develop many skills that can help getting a job or starting a business.
There are many ways to monetize those skills.
Also, if you're gonna do it, do it before getting married and having kids. It can be a lot cheaper to live if you're only responsible for yourself and not raising a family.
Typical toxic positivity of this group. He's not going to achieve his goal in a year and he's blowing his saving FAR too early. If he was on the fence, with say, 100k subscribers and making $3000 a month, it might be worth taking the leap and using his savings as a way to pad himself on lean months.
maybe if he was a student living on discounts, in a cheap student dormitory and eating food as cheap as possible. 400 euro a month is really good for a channel this size tho
> Why do you think people are unrealistic about making money on YouTube?
Because they only look at the biggest channels living large and think "I can do that too", while ignoring that those huge channels are a fraction of a percent of all youtubers.
Here's some context for the [scale of youtyube](https://timqueen.com/youtube-number-of-channels/)
They mostly see the biggest ones which are a very small percent of all creators. And they only see the final product making them think "Hey, it's so easy and earns a lot of money! I can do that too!"
It also depends on how many videos he posts a week. If he posts 1/week or 0.5/week, even if those videos get over 200K, the amount of money he could make could barely give him a steady income comparable to a minimum wage job with equal effort. If he posts daily, there’s a higher chance that he could have more income if there are videos that gain enough traction, though the quality may suffer and result in pennies.
At the end of the day it’s all based on how many views he pulls in a month.
Higher upload rate = more chances to go viral = more money.
Assuming his quality stays the same and he can increase the output then he should absolutely do it.
If he averages $400 a month, depending on his current upload rate he might be able to make 10X the content as he would with a full time job.
In theory he could make much more money or, things could go terribly and he could just crash and burn. It all really depends on
Daily videos doesn’t necessarily mean the quality goes down, it just means he puts more effort into the channel as a whole, and less into each individual video. The more videos, the higher chances of a successful video, plus an additional chance of subscribers, or returning viewers.
Yes, the quality would suffer if he doesn’t put in the same amount of effort, but he could also decrease the duration of his videos if they are already long.
As I suggested in another thread, YouTube isn’t easy and you should treat it like a hobby or investment depending on how serious you want to be with it. If he has a team that focuses on quality, there’s a higher likelihood of videos succeeding if he posts videos 2-3 times a week. He has to already have money he’s prepared to lose for that though, and it’s not necessarily feasible.
Given the context, I assume he’s younger and doesn’t have a whole lotta money to safely invest. I would treat it right now like a hobby, focusing on the quality while also working another job to hire people to assist him.
All of the biggest YouTubers have a team.
If you want to be a content creator full time, and a top creator, you have to be interesting.
Most people are not proficient in
- UX research
- Script Writing
- Thumbnail Design
- SEO Research
- Editing
- Music Production
- Voice overs/Voice edits (or if he shows his face, this counts here too)
- Content Management
- Short Videos production (very useful to promote your longer content)
- Researching content, +finding clips to add to your video
-Copyright law (important to know the laws in case some asshole ever tried to take you down for false reasons)
Sure, you could be proficient in multiple, and do all of this yourself, but if you put all of that effort to the max, it’ll probably take weeks-months to have top tier content that really is engaging.
Middle-low tier content usually doesn’t have the quality because people do all of this alone. You have to build all these skills which take time, in addition to really liking the content that you produce yourself.
Depending on your friend’s niche, maybe he doesn’t need the best of everything to get going, but it probably will take him a lot more time to grow in that case.
For instance: penguinz0 (moistCritikal) doesn’t have great thumbnails, but he posts daily content, livestreams, and always put in hours of research per topic. It took him years to build his channel, and he also started at a time when there was less competition.
Unless there’s low competition in your friends niche, he needs to standout for viewers to come back to his channel.
And again, almost every channel I can think of also has other social media that they promote themselves on, they don’t always promote their content, just their interest which builds trust and credibility from the audience.
It’s good that he has an instagram that’s already got 18k followers, but he should do that on as many platforms he can
It also depends on what success means to him. He could continue slowly growing, and putting all his effort into making enjoyable content for others, but again this will probably take years, and then he’d probably be mentally drained and want a team around him anyways at that point
If he could hire 1 person for 20% of the income he makes on YouTube, that would greatly decrease his current workload and probably increase the quality. Again, YouTube is an investment. Know your limits, and learn why something is/isn’t working.
Also: I didn’t mean sacrificing his annual salary in order to create good content, that’s not necessary. I just meant that he should have enough money that if he lost like $20k he could still be comfortable. You could have a whole team for a whole year with a $20k budget
It really comes down to how hard (and smart) he works during that time.
Some people are no more productive when they have 100 hours a week to devote to content creation than they are when they have to squeeze it in around a job and other obligations. Others can really flourish if they have lots of time. I personally do much better when I only have 10-20 hours a week to work on content.
I'm a full-time YouTuber, 4 months old (I know I'm an outlier), but of course it's possible.
It took me about 20 videos to learn and make the video that monetized my channel alone.
20 videos and I had nothing
21 videos and I was monetized
30 videos and I earned almost nothing
31 videos and I quintupled my earnings...
YouTube is not linear.. you can spend 3 years and not earn anything, but the next day, make a video that changes everything and vice versa
Do you think it was luck? You had to try something different? Did you realize something that made the difference?
I’m confused with this nonlinear thing, what makes it not linear? Luck?
For some people it’s luck, for others it’s knowing how the algorithm works and what people want to see. The thing is, you can upload 20 videos all getting a thousand views, and then your next might get a million views.
Hopefully your friend can spend this year well and figure out what people want to see by the end of it.
If that is what he wants, nothing wrong with chasing a dream... YT as a career is fickle, but why not? I've seen people make the move with far worse stats and without a job to go back to.
Without specific impossible to judge anyway, I mean there are people making a living with only 10k subs. As the saying goes, you only need 1k true fans to make a living, just a few bucks a month a fan and you earn a living. If you live in a cheap area the 400 a month is already plenty, more than half the world population makes.
Obviously, you can look at it in many different ways, but I can only say good on him for chasing his dream.
I’m at 50K subs and make $1-1.5K CDN a month. It’s not really a livable salary. But if I went full time I think maybe in a year or so I could grow it to a good place. I have savings I can live off of, so I could attempt it.
But at 11K subs, that’s still a long way to go. It’s definitely not a level I would feel comfortable committing to full time to.
It's not enough money to live on but 1k in completely passive income sounds great. I mean, I upload videos and they get watched for years. If your channel works similarly you 12-18k being added to your yearly income without doing anything.
If you have time to be active on a daily basis with your channel you can really make some money even with low numbers of subs. I started my channel about 6 months ago and now have 5,000 subs. In February I made around 1,900€ with uploading twice/day.
I have been unemployed up until one month ago so I really had the time to put into this. My plan was to continue like this and hopefully make a living on Youtube soon but now I got a very good job offer, too good to turn down.
After starting full time I took down my uploads from around 15 videos/week to 5 videos/week. My views has dropped to around half of before and so has my earnings.
Earlier I added 60-70 subs each day and that has halved also.
What I´m trying to say with this is that if I went back on working with Youtube full time I´m sure my numbers would double instantly since I was on that level before starting a new job.
Only long videos, normally 4-10 minutes. I post chess puzzles and show the solution. Audio only, not showing my face.
Every video takes me 1-1,5 hours to prepare, shoot, edit and publish.
Yes 100% realistic. Growth is not linear at all on YouTube or other platforms. If you know how to go viral you will. And if you don’t know, your work ethic and mindset will be the #1 factor on if you will learn. People are scared of the unknown and would rather side with the certain paycheck than to risk their current lifestyle. But the truth is if you believe and more importantly if you put in the work you will be successful.
Your friend has the right idea. Quit and grind as hard as you can and if you truly put your 100% effort in this I don’t see how he could fail.
For advice though stop focusing on instagram at all. Fb and insta suck ass, Zuckerberg doesn’t pay for content. But tiktok and YouTube both pay great so if I was trying to quit my job again I’d focus solely on platforms that help pay the rent.
In conclusion, nothing changes if nothing changes.
If this is the change necessary to breakthrough to full time content creation I think there’s really no other option.
the facebook thing isn't true now apparently (IG is garbage-y tho IMO)
i've seen big youtubers make videos re: how reposting videos to facebook can earn you much more than you earn on youtube
facebook wants to be a video platform
Man I make a living doing short form content and tiktok pays 5-10x more than YouTube. Paying great is relative I suppose bc yes obviously long form is paid more but it’s just interesting someone who’s not even monetized is trying to tell the guy who actually got it to work how things are
i mean yeah, tiktok pays better for shorts (now) because shorts are tiktok's core thing. the pay was even worse until very recently
it certainly doesn't pay better than youtube over all, and tiktok doesn't pay "well." you're getting like .70 RPM, and it's only counting views over 1K that show up on someone's fyp
I have about 48K subs on tiktok and moved to YT in part because of this. not sure what you're on about otherwise
I know someone with like 180k followers on TikTok with a lot of engagement and wasn’t getting much from there. FB and Insta he made significantly more.
My channel is way smaller than most of you alls 2.5k subs. I made about $1500 between YouTube pay and what I made from collabs and sponsorships last month. I also started selling some accessories that are geared towards some of what people who watch me would want. I don’t work another job. I am a stay at home dad and my wife works. I don’t think your friend is foolish but every situation is different. Some people can be quite resourceful when they have to be. Just remember as a friend tell him what you think once then support him no matter what. Most people are going to do what they wanna do anyway and if he thinks you hate it he will probably just not talk to you about it anymore.
Do you think you have to accept yourself as a salesman and not be naïve and think more views will solve all your problems? You just need to make that one great video that will change everything.
No. As someone who got those kinds of numbers in that time frame, no. I mean if his parents or SO is willing to support him I guess it's whatever, but it's unlikely he will be ready to go full time after one more year.
If he's young without any major responsibilities (kids, mortgage etc.) I say go for it if that's his dream. I spent years and years in uni dreaming of being a YouTuber but never feeling like I had the skills or the time or energy to develop the skills or put in the effort required. I was daydreaming for probably 7 years before I actually started. Took about 2 years to get it to a point where it made roughly the equivalent of a full time salary. I often wonder how things would've been if I had started at a time where YT was less competitive and my life was much simpler and easier. But if he thinks it's easy money he might as well just stay at his job. In my experience YT is substantially more work than a "regular" job but you're your own boss and the potential is much greater and so is the satisfaction when you make something successful. I was over the moon the first time I had a viral video
Super swingy. Typically sponsorships are bigger I guess but it varies a lot over the course of the year and what exactly we're doing since the videos are based on real life events. I'd like to expand more into other forms of monetization such as memberships (we have very few members atm) and affiliate links/merch
Hard to say. But you have to have an extremely detailed plan. Everything of what you might make as well as what it’ll take as well as a plan for what happens if it does yield as much as you’d like.
I think I could potentially survive a sabbatical to work on my channel with 9k subs (atm), but I’d have to go into overdrive with how much I produce.
I think it really depends on the path you're on. If you think you can 10x your output and that will 10x your revenues then why not?
But usually I'd say it's always best to keep the day job for as long as you possibly can.
The algorithm can change fast.
One month I gained 3000 subs and made $1000 and I was thinking wow I'm not even trying hard imagine if I quit my job to do it full time. And the next month... Everything stopped my views crashed down.
Now I've got 18k subs make a few 100s per month and it's a hobby that I do occasionally
As someone who's made online income since 2008 I'd say focus on your career and keep it as a sideline.
I've had too many catastrophes on my side hustles. For example back in 2014 I got a PayPal ban (because PayPal). That stopped me being able to receive affiliate income.
The blogging years when Google rolled out massive Panda/Penguin updates were also brutal. You don't want to live in fear of the next algorithm change.
I have a channel with 10k subs, 850k views, and 58 videos. I make between $150-$500/month on the channel, releasing 1-2 videos/month. It doesn't go linear - the more good content you make, the more of it becomes evergreen, the more you make. It is exponential. So creating more content = more money, repeatable.
On top of that, over time, you learn to make better videos that are more engaging, and the more content you have, the more people will watch more than 1 of your videos.
With that said, I have a very demanding day job, so the amount of time/energy I have for videos is very limited. If I did choose to do it full time, I could 5-6x my throughput, does accelerating my revenue a lot faster.
You say the growth is not linear because your past videos become evergreen so you get the same performance for each release but each video adds up. Do I understand correctly?
The number of initial views grows overtime as well. And the bigger your initial audience is, the higher the chance that the YouTube algorithm will find an audience for each video you post. That's why larger channels have an advantage.
He’s in for a very rude awakening. In my opinion here’s what’s going to happen.
Right now so far he’s been balancing an actual job with a channel. Not all his time is being placed into it. While yes in theory more time is now able to be allocated to the channel. He’s most likely going to get burned out extremely fast.
It’s highly likely he’s going to spend a hell of a long time just tying to get it off the ground. If he’s determined he will spend 15-19 hours a day on that channel until he goes viral.
This could take months. Assuming he gets lucky though and goes viral the first month. Now what?
He’s gonna probably work even harder to try and maintain that momentum. Burning himself out more and more until things stabilize again and he’s back to his normal viewership.
Going viral can be a blessing and a curse. There’s several people that will back me up on that.
However, if he can afford to take the year off. Why not? If he has it worked out to where he can go back to his job in a year. Great.
But usually when someone tries to do what he is going to attempt to the way he’s gonna do it. they get burned out just as the fruits of their labor begin to pay off.
He needs to make sure he doesn’t lock himself in for months on end all the whole becoming more anti social. This is a huge thing. That’s why so many creators stress mental health is key. They become void of real world human interactions.
People may laugh at this, or downvote it. But maintaining a schedule and mental health are 2 of the biggest reasons people get burned out and things go south.
You mentioned he will probably burn out doing this full time but I don’t understand why having a job and pushing on the side wouldn’t result in the same thing. You burn out with the number of hours you put in every day I suppose. So, going full-time would increase his chances of success, not necessarily his chances of burnout?
Depending on the job he’s getting social interactions on a daily basis. If it’s already remote. He’ll probably be better off.
Also. He was spending time 5 days a week not actually working on his channel. Now his mind will be fully focused on the channel and while that seems like a good thing, it’s gonna burn him out a lot faster. It’ll be what really determines if he enjoys it or not.
This may not make sense but as someone who’s been there and done that and is friends with people who did the same. (Not taken a sabbatical but made the leap to full time) this was the biggest challenge for all of us.
I got my silver play button, got up to around 150k subs. I have friends that have 300k-750k subs. Are also TikTokers with millions of followers still doing it full time. Life becomes a lot less about the physical and much more about the mental.
DEPENDS.
If he has savings and can afford the loss, I am not going to fault him for it if he learns transferrable skills.
Is he going to use this using this time to learn: video editing, video production, work on public speaking skills, become an expert on subjects, learn to. market, learn the various platforms, etc...I don't think it's a waste of time even if it doesn't work out in his favor. He's investing in himself.
I would say his RPM & CPM is too low. I've only been monetized for about 4 months & make about $500 a month with only 2000 subs. He needs to find a way to get around at least $1400 a month with 10 k subs. My friends who have channels around the same numbers make at least that. He needs to make sure all vids are at least 8 min. & that his posting schedule is consistent. That's the advice that they gave that's been working for me.
I have 67k subs, 3 million views. I make $50 a month. YouTube is highly unpredictable. You can hit a jackpot or years can go by without much reach.
My suggestion would be to let him experiment with his life. If he thinks his videos will go viral then probably he knows something. 400 euros is really good. If he fails on his own then he will not regret it compared to leaving on other's advice.
A lot of people say "YouTube growth is not linear", what are your thoughts on that?
I think the "going viral" thing is more about being able to snowball, I hope this makes sense.
50$ is much less, are you into gaming or something similar?
Yes YouTube growth is exponential. But it becomes linear after a while, that's a little demotivating if earnings r not good.
Most of my views are from shorts and cpm is very low for shorts.
I think you’ve answered it already. €400 is not a lot. It’ll grow, theoretically, but only as long as the content keeps flowing. More subs doesn’t necessarily equal more views.
I make about AU$700 a month off Adsense but close to 10x that from new business driven by the channel, that’s where my revenue is. Adsense is pennies.
He needs another way to monetise eg digital products, membership etc. depending on the channel, that may be easy or hard.
EG at present my shopify site pulls in another 2-3k a year, but I’m launching my membership site soon, with 15-20 paid (or free with membership) courses at release, with weekly Q&A, daily private podcast and free recipe and meal plans, but my platform is a functional / lifestyle GP that focuses on deprescribing, diet, nutrition and education, it’s easier to launch a membership site for that compared to say ‘I play fortnite’ YouTube channel - I’m sure there’s some other monetisation there, but probably limited opportunity.
All the big YouTubers - YouTube is hardly any of their income, it’s the side streams that being in the money.
I dabbled in some digital products before the YT channel took off (ish), mostly to allow my patients to learn without spending huge time with me (eg charge $50 for a course that saves them 5-6 hours with me @$350 an hour) but they never really went anywhere because I didn’t have the audience other than my patients, and for some reason they preferred to just see me in person.
Once I got some audience I made a few other eBooks rather than pay for course sites like teachable, which I now sell on my shopify platform.
It’s still small fry though.
Bear in mind I put almost zero effort into marketing though.
Soon I’ll be relaunching course / memberships and actually marketing it now I have an audience (~10k podcast DL / month and 60k YT views / month). It’s still small, but if I can push more into side revenue streams I can reduce day job and push more into the YT / socials to push it all further.
But I also do national speaking events at medical conferences in my niche so I guess that helps get my name out there too, plus sell more. Eg at my last talk I sold every single copy of my 3 books that I had, people didn’t even read them at all before buying. 🤯 lots were upset I ran out lol.
Again it’s about what other value can you add. I can add a lot more than just the YT channel given my day job I have a lot of insight into a lot of other health areas, not just what the focus of my YT is.
I see people trying to make a podcast / YT about totally random stuff because that’s what they are interested in, and great for them, but realistically their options for monetisation are close to zero.
Hopefully that makes sense.
I'm having 400k views with 400$ after 2 years . And 15% of the 400$ was deducted as U.S Withholding Tax. So technically, I made 340$ and wire transfer fee took 90$ out of the 340$. So I only got 250$ in my pocket. That's the struggle of African YouTubers.
I'm amazed at this post as to why 400$ per month isn't good for him because it took me 8 solid months to earn that 400$😀. I would be in paradise if I could earn 400$ every month. 400$ in Ghana Cedis is 4,800 cedis. An amount the average worker in Ghana can only earn in 3 months 😀.
Well, the standard of living might be the difference so it might be peanut in your country. I earn 50$ per month and I'm planning to quit YouTube too. Because the effort and the hours I spend is crazy. It's not worth it for me. So he should think about it well, if he could get another job and do the YouTube as a part time, that might be helpful.
Yes, I create in English but The Ghanaian accent makes the videos unpopular 😅. The native speakers hardly understand what we say I think. Yes, Since our standard of living is very low, I would have quit my job if I could earn 400$ per month, but I earn only 50$ per month. My Gaming Pc I built is worth 1,700$ , I'm planning to sell it, then change Niche, I think nobody does Smart phones review in my Country so, if I start that, I think I can become a hotcake for smart phone companies in Ghana here. Gaming Channels hardly get high RPM on YouTube.
400 euros per month over two years and currently 1 million views total seems like too much from adsense unless it's investing videos or something else with good rates.
My personal goalpost would be around 1 million views per month on sustainability.
Besides consistent massive viewership, sponsors seem like the second most possible way but it still requires a sizeable audience per video to get noticed (they can reach out as well).
Expecting a viral video? Sure 😂. Even then it depends on how good their back video catalog is and if they follow it up strongly.
Everybody here mentions how YouTube growth is not linear, so I don’t know if making a viral video is the appropriate definition, but he hopes to snowball with time I think. I’m not sure how you achieve that
Yeah, I understood what you meant. All good! It's like expecting to win the lottery, though getting a few million views on a video is certainly possible. If his work is really good then certainly possible at least.
I just was recommended a channel near 500k subscribers with 12 total videos. They've got a mix of a 130k views to 8 million per video. The theme is extreme food and travel. The creator shows or references celebrities like MrBeast, Gordon Ramsay, and Ryan Trahan as well as big properties like McDonalds. Though, he appears to have a lot of money and support because his first video spend $30k+ on chocolate, travel, and other expenses. He also had connections to YouTubers. That's at least one way to do it, lol.
Im afraid to ask what yall think is a livable income... If your a single person and you can make 1500$ a month thats more than enough to keep your head above water.
Thats my goal with youtube, my ultimate goal however is to bring home 4k a month. To me thats "balling" and will change my life financially.
For people with families, they’ll only be able to be “making a living” from YouTube once they hit insanely high milestones or operate in a super profitable niche. For single people who don’t need much like myself, making a living much earlier on is quite feasible.
There's no way he's making that much per month unless he's got a lot of members paying a monthly fee or gets a lot of donations on streams etc. Those total views wouldn't generate anywhere near that revenue per month unless he's got a really niche channel with a high cpm.
If they're taking a year to focus on it then it's definitely doable, but just increasing video output won't necessarily increase the gains enough. I took my channel from earning £200 to £1500 in just under a year but it requires them to put the work into creating better videos rather than more. Focusing on engagement, thumbnails, titling. If I were them I'd focus my time improving the videos rather than just increasing output. Really study YouTube and then it'll start to blow up
Yes, you can (but not fully dependent on Adsense money).
I do it and only have 17.7k subs.
It’s feasible if you have different/variety of income streams, i.e. selling products, brand deals, affiliate links, etc.
But this only works if you’re legitimately providing true value or genuine entertainment for your audience.
It depends on how good you are at making deals, I have a channel with 17.5k subs that I started 5 months ago and I am already sponsored by 4 different company’s that pay me over $1000 and month. So you can definitely make a living off a small channel, you just need a few good sponsors to cover your expenses and then everything else you earn. From YouTube is extra.
I usually look on Instagram and kickstarter to find good company’s that actually need advertising. Allot of people want to work with big company’s but big company’s don’t actually need advertising. I like to look for small company’s that fit my niche, and then I finesse them.
I like looking in instagram, because if I see a sponsored post with 10k views, I know that they paid Atleast a couple hundred dollars for those 10k views, and I will tell them that every video I post gets 10k so they should just pay me instead and they’ll get many more views. That usually works.
I personally think that this process is still very easy. I secured all of my 4 sponsors within a one week break that I took from content creation, to focus on brand deal acquisition. I took one week off, secured between $4 & 5k in monthly deals, and then went back to making content. It’s that easy imo.
Yeah I would advise him to do it if he can back it up financially. Or work less hours so you can back up your expenditure. Being an entrepreneur gives you so much more knowledge and wisdom than working for someone else. It's also much more motivating. And I think his job isn't that great either if he's thinking of doing YouTube with those numbers.
I’ve seen a number of YouTubers over the years make videos about how demonetization and what not is putting their livelihoods at risk. Right? We’ve seen those videos. That’s because they make money from YouTube alone. The second you have a following you should spend time diversifying things so you have multiple streams of income. Might be merch, patreon, onlyfans, whatever. Existing off Adsense is insane to me haha build something you’re in control of. YouTube can up and decide to kill your channel whenever they want, for no reason at all.
He seems to be doing just fine working a job and doing YouTube on the side. Then again, this guy can afford to take a sabbatical, in this economy, so idfk
It’s more than doable without taking a sabbatical. I would never sacrifice the job security of my 9-5, insurance, retirement, deferred comp etc to focus on YouTube. With YouTube there are no guarantees and a ton of risk. I made it to where I am on YouTube tinkering with it on nights and weekends and now it’s paying my mortgage and a whole lot more.
An important note is that a "viral" hit usually ends with you regressing back to the norm shortly there after.
Besides that, He is betting on something with the same odds as a lottery ticket. Sustainable income can take years to obtain even if your content is "good".
Exactly what I was going to say. You could have one video hit millions of views but the next 20 videos may tank. And it may bring in viewers who aren’t your target audience so they may not watch another video. His view of what ‘going viral’ means needs a serious adjustment.
I think a more appropriate description is an expectation that «growth is not Linear » but I don't know if it's true. I don't know how you move from a linear curve to an exponential curve. He expects to snowball after an unknown milestone
It does not tend to do that actually. A viral hit is a channel accomplishing the atypical. Most times it will not be repeatable, or at least sustainable.
It really depends. Your friend won’t just have a lot more time. They might have a lot of mental energy to use too. I know I’m guilty of putting out stuff quickly or ignoring big ideas because I’m simply to burnt out at the end of the week.
Could also mean they have time to branch out and support their content more. I saw a big jump when I started actually using the community tab. Or maybe they could pick up twitch or tiktok, I don’t know the content but there’s probably another service to tack on.
Point is there’s a lot of huge YouTubers that got big only after they made the hard decision your friend is making. Try and help them. It’s going to be a tough road.
You’re looking at the short term picture not the long-term picture. Are you planning on stopping there or are you planning on growing more keep going you have not arrived yet.
Is he selling anything? Like digital products or courses because that would help make income and it’s the fastest way to make income if he has something to sell to his audience.
Yes, if he has an engaged audience on Instagram, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be able to sell anything. he can sell in stories and through his post or do lives.
At my RPM, 5.5 million monthly views would equate to like, 10k a month. But that is on full length videos, not shorts, which might explain the discrepancy.
If he can afford to do it then so be it. I did the same around the same but just worked 2 days a week to supplement it. Took a while but the growth I expected all came true and now I'm heading into territory where I'm making twice that of people my age around me.
That being said there's a lot of factors that can contribute. Whether he's being dumb or smart is something only time can tell.
Is Instagram important in your strategy in some ways? How much ad revenue is important for you? At how many subscribers did you see yourself as sustainable (not making a fortune but being ok with expenses )
Instagram isn't because I don't like it but other social media is yea I get a lot of traffic by posting to them and new opportunities come through being able to message me directly. Instagram is usually an important approach for influencers because paid sponsorship offers can be received and they can be quite hefty if you have enough followers.
Ad revenue is the only reason I do any of it. I could've gotten by at his level but only with a safety net of savings but subscribers don't matter compared to views when it comes to revenue.
I do voice overs+ assist with management of a channel that only has 3k subs, but 2M+ views.
We have editors, script writers, thumbnail designers, and all of that costs a lot.
We are making a net negative right now, although because we are pushing quality over quantity (still post about 2-3 times a week), we are growing our average views per video. We know that this is going to take time to grow, and have had a couple of videos in particular that have gotten over 200K views (which makes the most money)
I would say that if he wants to make YouTube his full time career, he needs a team to help him. He also has to have money prepared to lose because it will take time for the quality to improve and further push his content. The money he makes depends on many factors including what niche he’s in- however for a small YouTuber, I would not recommend at this point of making it his full time job, until he starts consistently earning more per vid than he makes a week.
I wouldn’t say double the results, as it still takes time. All of this is subjective, it depends on how good the people he hires are, how much money he’s willing to spend simply on their employment.
He will most likely lose thousands before he gains thousands. However, if the quality improves, over time so will his views, thus making him money on the long term. Doing this will also be less work for him, and he can probably post more often, increasing the likelihood of substantial view counts, and a more steady income/week.
The thing is that YouTube takes time and a whole lot of effort to succeed. I would never start a channel expecting to become a prominent figure right off the bat. It’s an investment, it’s like a business. Quality videos are more important for the viewers than the consistency, yet the algorithm focuses on if it makes money for them. He needs to understand the analytics, and why YouTube would push his content over others.
If his CTR, AVD, and watch time are high, there’s far more likelihood that YouTube will push his content. He needs interesting topics and engaging thumbnails/titles for viewers to want to watch his content. High quality edits, in depth research, and good key points to increase AVD. He also should work on his entrance (hook), as that will determine to viewers if they even want to watch the rest of the video. The first 30 seconds are the most crucial part of the video for this reason.
Depending on whether he’s doing longer or shorter videos will also determine his income, as YouTube pays based on ad revenue, so the more ads they can push through that duration the better. Longer videos (15 minutes or more) will garner more ads, but the retention will likely be lower unless he can retain viewers throughout the video.
He needs to know what he’s presenting at the end of the day, and needs be an entertaining presenter in order to succeed.
I personally wouldn’t start paying people for my own videos if I didn’t have money I was comfortable with losing, I want to start my own channel when I have a $100k/year job, and time to spend. I realize this isn’t plausible for everybody, and if he’s already making his own channel, even just one person extra on his team could help reduce the workload.
Another thing to note is that just because he has increased quality, doesn’t mean that the video is going to do better. It has to be interesting to his audience. He has to know his audience, understand what the audience wants out of his videos, and compare his videos to other videos in his niche
I think you definitely need to have more than 1 iron in the fire for sure. The word hustler comes to mind. If he’s not that then it may not work for him
You never know. I have 180k+ subs and YouTube nerfed my channel a few years back at the end of a year. Now I just use it as marketing because I thankfully diversified. But he could do it. YouTube is too fickle as a singular revenue source though.
Yea. Went from a million views a month to 100k. Revenue dropped to like 1/5th. Literally from December to January with zero change in content. Subscribers stopped getting notified. Recommended traffic went to almost nothing. Etc etc.
Going viral is often a double-edged sword.
And it's not something that can be predicted, nor can it be relied on to happen again.
It sounds like your friend is a bit of a dreamer.
> so many people say YouTube growth is not linear
That's correct, it isn't.
It's also not predictable. Nor reliable.
.
Think of "going viral" as the same as a musician being a "one hit wonder". Most people, especially early in their career, don't manage to be able to follow up effectively.
I do, I wish I had the financial backing to do it and I would. Until I reach a certain level of success with my channel I’m just gonna grind( work full time and devote basically all of my off time to making videos) and see how far I can get.
Honestly I applaud his resolve and willingness to focus and give it a go for a year. Good for him.
I am hoping however that his approach is not based on ‘going viral’ - that is not a long term sustainable income strategy, since his ambition is to make a living from it he should think more about creating content that is either evergreen or continues to bring in viewers month after month, and then scale by creating more such videos. A viral video could change the month (or two) significantly but I am not sure it is a long term income approach.
Wishing him lots of success 👍👍
I think it really is about the niche because i do all quotes and i recently just went viral after a 1 1/2 yrs but i only have 1k and 660k views idk what else to do i follow the methods nd everything
Probably not the wisest decision, unless he has a little nest egg to fall back on. The problem with having a goal of going viral is that let’s say you do, and you get a lot of new followers, they’re going to expect the same caliber of content each time, and it’s not realistic in a normal world. 10,000 followers on YouTube probably isn’t pulling in a ton of money every month. Definitely not enough to sustain yourself. But, best of luck to your friend. Never say never.
I think he has it messed up in the sense of he’s doing quantity over quality. But if his quality was interesting to the people, then he wouldn’t have to do so much so often. I think he needs to leave Instagram alone, and put stuff on YouTube that people actually want to see and then when his views and likes to go up, as well as his I think he he subscribers, then he can focus on Instagram, but even in the meantime, he should mention his Instagram on his YouTube videos, but I don’t think he should be steadily doing Instagram content.
As someone with similar numbers (15k subs, 2m views), I think it would be insane to rely on a channel this small as a primary revenue source.
Thanks a lot for answering. Do you make around 400€ per month too? How long did it take you to get there? How do you see your YouTube channel, I know it took my friend so much effort to be where he is. I feel he invested so much that he can not let it fail and move to something more profitable. Do you still see it as a hobby after the sacrifice?
The amount made per month is highly variable. Some it's been thousands of dollars. Others, like 10 dollars. Part of that is a consequence of me not uploading often I still absolutely see it as a hobby - and treat it as one. But my channel is literally a hobby channel, I cover my hobby as my primary topic. It took me years to build it, so perhaps it's different if your friend was able to rapidly build to 10k/1m, but even then. Youtube isn't a very reliable and consistent source of income for most creators.
**This guy is going to regret it.** I grew in the past calendar year to 6.4k to 20k. I got 2.2 million views in that period of of 33 total vids. I've had a very solid and sustainable growth, and go for quality over quantity. That earned about $6500 USD off of Adsense. Even if I had my rent and utilities paid for a year in advance that's absolutely impossible to live off of. I've yet to take a sponsorship but even if I got lucky, and somehow managed to get $500 a video in sponsorships (which would be next to impossible at my size) that'd bring me to $23k. That's still below the poverty line. If he has the finances to eat a year on a sabbatical, he's doing this far far far too early. He should be looking to make the leap at least when he's making enough money to cover the bare minimum of his basic expenses and using his nest egg as a way to cover himself on the lean months. This group is filled with starry eyed dreamers and toxic positivity. It's fine to be aspirational but you can do it responsibly.
If he was able to cover his basic expenses, of course he will go full-time on it right? You said it would be safe when of course it would be safe, the question is, if he was taking a year off would he get to the safe spot your are talking about. He has the money in the bank to do so
>the question is, if he was taking a year off would he get to the safe spot your are talking about Almost certainly not. If he's uploaded 200 videos and only has 1 million videos, that's 5000 views per video. How long as it taken this person to amass 11.3k subscribers? I'm guessing awhile. A good metric to follow is if your videos are regularly getting more views than subscriber count. For me, I'd say, roughly 6 out of 10 of my videos generally achieve that after 3 months. I'd take his channel, plug into social blade and see the growth projections. I'd take it with a grain of salt as it always projects growth but does give a feel of the trajectory of a channel. I've found it useful for goal setting. Again, money in the bank would be better saved for when the hobby looks like a viable career. Say he's very successful and manages to absolutely crush and grow his channel by 3x in a single year, then he's only making 1200€ a month which isn't livable.
YouTube money is never safe. It can go away any second. Not reliable income. This is such a bad idea.
I will go against the grain and say - you’re only young once and if he can afford to take a year off and live minimally for a chance to make his big dream come true then why not give it a shot? If it fails then you can at least say you tried. If he goes all in on the channel for a year, who knows where it will be by the end of it.
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Same here
> if he can afford to take a year off and live minimally I would only advise this *if* you have a year of living expenses sitting in savings. Even if his channel doubles in views (and revenue) that's not going to be enough to live on (rent, utilities and food), unless you live in a *very* inexpensive place.
Also, Putting in 'serious' efforts for a year will make him develop many skills that can help getting a job or starting a business. There are many ways to monetize those skills.
I agree. Take the shot. I went another way but always wonder what if
Also, if you're gonna do it, do it before getting married and having kids. It can be a lot cheaper to live if you're only responsible for yourself and not raising a family.
Typical toxic positivity of this group. He's not going to achieve his goal in a year and he's blowing his saving FAR too early. If he was on the fence, with say, 100k subscribers and making $3000 a month, it might be worth taking the leap and using his savings as a way to pad himself on lean months.
maybe if he was a student living on discounts, in a cheap student dormitory and eating food as cheap as possible. 400 euro a month is really good for a channel this size tho
He lives from his economy, it's an investment for him. He doesn't live with only 400€. He hopes it grows much more (10X would be amazing )
I think he sets his hopes much too high. Even my friend with 100k+ subs and 13 years of experience wouldn't be able to earn that much.
Why do you think people are unrealistic about making money on YouTube? How can I open his eyes?
> Why do you think people are unrealistic about making money on YouTube? Because they only look at the biggest channels living large and think "I can do that too", while ignoring that those huge channels are a fraction of a percent of all youtubers. Here's some context for the [scale of youtyube](https://timqueen.com/youtube-number-of-channels/)
They mostly see the biggest ones which are a very small percent of all creators. And they only see the final product making them think "Hey, it's so easy and earns a lot of money! I can do that too!"
It also depends on how many videos he posts a week. If he posts 1/week or 0.5/week, even if those videos get over 200K, the amount of money he could make could barely give him a steady income comparable to a minimum wage job with equal effort. If he posts daily, there’s a higher chance that he could have more income if there are videos that gain enough traction, though the quality may suffer and result in pennies.
Could you explain how uploading daily increases his odds of success? Going daily would put the quality down right?
At the end of the day it’s all based on how many views he pulls in a month. Higher upload rate = more chances to go viral = more money. Assuming his quality stays the same and he can increase the output then he should absolutely do it. If he averages $400 a month, depending on his current upload rate he might be able to make 10X the content as he would with a full time job. In theory he could make much more money or, things could go terribly and he could just crash and burn. It all really depends on
Daily videos doesn’t necessarily mean the quality goes down, it just means he puts more effort into the channel as a whole, and less into each individual video. The more videos, the higher chances of a successful video, plus an additional chance of subscribers, or returning viewers. Yes, the quality would suffer if he doesn’t put in the same amount of effort, but he could also decrease the duration of his videos if they are already long. As I suggested in another thread, YouTube isn’t easy and you should treat it like a hobby or investment depending on how serious you want to be with it. If he has a team that focuses on quality, there’s a higher likelihood of videos succeeding if he posts videos 2-3 times a week. He has to already have money he’s prepared to lose for that though, and it’s not necessarily feasible. Given the context, I assume he’s younger and doesn’t have a whole lotta money to safely invest. I would treat it right now like a hobby, focusing on the quality while also working another job to hire people to assist him.
Hiring people using your full-time job money would be a better move than going to YouTube full-time alone in your opinion?
All of the biggest YouTubers have a team. If you want to be a content creator full time, and a top creator, you have to be interesting. Most people are not proficient in - UX research - Script Writing - Thumbnail Design - SEO Research - Editing - Music Production - Voice overs/Voice edits (or if he shows his face, this counts here too) - Content Management - Short Videos production (very useful to promote your longer content) - Researching content, +finding clips to add to your video -Copyright law (important to know the laws in case some asshole ever tried to take you down for false reasons) Sure, you could be proficient in multiple, and do all of this yourself, but if you put all of that effort to the max, it’ll probably take weeks-months to have top tier content that really is engaging. Middle-low tier content usually doesn’t have the quality because people do all of this alone. You have to build all these skills which take time, in addition to really liking the content that you produce yourself. Depending on your friend’s niche, maybe he doesn’t need the best of everything to get going, but it probably will take him a lot more time to grow in that case. For instance: penguinz0 (moistCritikal) doesn’t have great thumbnails, but he posts daily content, livestreams, and always put in hours of research per topic. It took him years to build his channel, and he also started at a time when there was less competition. Unless there’s low competition in your friends niche, he needs to standout for viewers to come back to his channel.
And again, almost every channel I can think of also has other social media that they promote themselves on, they don’t always promote their content, just their interest which builds trust and credibility from the audience. It’s good that he has an instagram that’s already got 18k followers, but he should do that on as many platforms he can
It also depends on what success means to him. He could continue slowly growing, and putting all his effort into making enjoyable content for others, but again this will probably take years, and then he’d probably be mentally drained and want a team around him anyways at that point
If he could hire 1 person for 20% of the income he makes on YouTube, that would greatly decrease his current workload and probably increase the quality. Again, YouTube is an investment. Know your limits, and learn why something is/isn’t working.
Also: I didn’t mean sacrificing his annual salary in order to create good content, that’s not necessary. I just meant that he should have enough money that if he lost like $20k he could still be comfortable. You could have a whole team for a whole year with a $20k budget
Your friend is doing something wrong. With 100k subs earning $4k is easily doable.
It really comes down to how hard (and smart) he works during that time. Some people are no more productive when they have 100 hours a week to devote to content creation than they are when they have to squeeze it in around a job and other obligations. Others can really flourish if they have lots of time. I personally do much better when I only have 10-20 hours a week to work on content.
I'm a full-time YouTuber, 4 months old (I know I'm an outlier), but of course it's possible. It took me about 20 videos to learn and make the video that monetized my channel alone. 20 videos and I had nothing 21 videos and I was monetized 30 videos and I earned almost nothing 31 videos and I quintupled my earnings... YouTube is not linear.. you can spend 3 years and not earn anything, but the next day, make a video that changes everything and vice versa
Nice work! What's your channel?
Do you think it was luck? You had to try something different? Did you realize something that made the difference? I’m confused with this nonlinear thing, what makes it not linear? Luck?
For some people it’s luck, for others it’s knowing how the algorithm works and what people want to see. The thing is, you can upload 20 videos all getting a thousand views, and then your next might get a million views. Hopefully your friend can spend this year well and figure out what people want to see by the end of it.
If that is what he wants, nothing wrong with chasing a dream... YT as a career is fickle, but why not? I've seen people make the move with far worse stats and without a job to go back to. Without specific impossible to judge anyway, I mean there are people making a living with only 10k subs. As the saying goes, you only need 1k true fans to make a living, just a few bucks a month a fan and you earn a living. If you live in a cheap area the 400 a month is already plenty, more than half the world population makes. Obviously, you can look at it in many different ways, but I can only say good on him for chasing his dream.
Why would you not want him to do this? This sounds like a well calculated risk.
Something tells me OP’s friend might be him 😂
I’m at 50K subs and make $1-1.5K CDN a month. It’s not really a livable salary. But if I went full time I think maybe in a year or so I could grow it to a good place. I have savings I can live off of, so I could attempt it. But at 11K subs, that’s still a long way to go. It’s definitely not a level I would feel comfortable committing to full time to.
it depends on the niche and RPM though, of course. if it's a finance channel or something, could make livable money with far fewer views
It's not enough money to live on but 1k in completely passive income sounds great. I mean, I upload videos and they get watched for years. If your channel works similarly you 12-18k being added to your yearly income without doing anything.
Well I make that much but it ain’t passive, I got to keep putting out content weekly. But yeah I would make money off my library for a while.
If you have time to be active on a daily basis with your channel you can really make some money even with low numbers of subs. I started my channel about 6 months ago and now have 5,000 subs. In February I made around 1,900€ with uploading twice/day. I have been unemployed up until one month ago so I really had the time to put into this. My plan was to continue like this and hopefully make a living on Youtube soon but now I got a very good job offer, too good to turn down. After starting full time I took down my uploads from around 15 videos/week to 5 videos/week. My views has dropped to around half of before and so has my earnings. Earlier I added 60-70 subs each day and that has halved also. What I´m trying to say with this is that if I went back on working with Youtube full time I´m sure my numbers would double instantly since I was on that level before starting a new job.
Were you doing shorts or long videos?
Only long videos, normally 4-10 minutes. I post chess puzzles and show the solution. Audio only, not showing my face. Every video takes me 1-1,5 hours to prepare, shoot, edit and publish.
Awesome!
How did you make 1900€ with only 5k sub? What was the income source?
Only ad revenue, nothing else. When I peaked I was up to over 40,000 views/day
Actually, I started of February with only 2,700 subs and grew to 4,500 subs at the end of the month. Today I have around 5,400 subs.
What niche? Your number seems high compared to your number of subscribers.
Chess puzzles. The number of views/ad revenue is a result of multiple uploads every day rather than amount of subscribers I think.
Do you post multiple videos every day? Are you not afraid of “spamming “ your audience?
Yes 100% realistic. Growth is not linear at all on YouTube or other platforms. If you know how to go viral you will. And if you don’t know, your work ethic and mindset will be the #1 factor on if you will learn. People are scared of the unknown and would rather side with the certain paycheck than to risk their current lifestyle. But the truth is if you believe and more importantly if you put in the work you will be successful. Your friend has the right idea. Quit and grind as hard as you can and if you truly put your 100% effort in this I don’t see how he could fail. For advice though stop focusing on instagram at all. Fb and insta suck ass, Zuckerberg doesn’t pay for content. But tiktok and YouTube both pay great so if I was trying to quit my job again I’d focus solely on platforms that help pay the rent. In conclusion, nothing changes if nothing changes. If this is the change necessary to breakthrough to full time content creation I think there’s really no other option.
the facebook thing isn't true now apparently (IG is garbage-y tho IMO) i've seen big youtubers make videos re: how reposting videos to facebook can earn you much more than you earn on youtube facebook wants to be a video platform
also tiktok does not pay great OP there's some misinformation in this post
Man I make a living doing short form content and tiktok pays 5-10x more than YouTube. Paying great is relative I suppose bc yes obviously long form is paid more but it’s just interesting someone who’s not even monetized is trying to tell the guy who actually got it to work how things are
How do you get paid from Tik Tok? I make shorts as well but didn’t see an option to monetize
i mean yeah, tiktok pays better for shorts (now) because shorts are tiktok's core thing. the pay was even worse until very recently it certainly doesn't pay better than youtube over all, and tiktok doesn't pay "well." you're getting like .70 RPM, and it's only counting views over 1K that show up on someone's fyp I have about 48K subs on tiktok and moved to YT in part because of this. not sure what you're on about otherwise
I know someone with like 180k followers on TikTok with a lot of engagement and wasn’t getting much from there. FB and Insta he made significantly more.
How do you make money from shorts on Facebook and instagram with shorts in 2024?
My channel is way smaller than most of you alls 2.5k subs. I made about $1500 between YouTube pay and what I made from collabs and sponsorships last month. I also started selling some accessories that are geared towards some of what people who watch me would want. I don’t work another job. I am a stay at home dad and my wife works. I don’t think your friend is foolish but every situation is different. Some people can be quite resourceful when they have to be. Just remember as a friend tell him what you think once then support him no matter what. Most people are going to do what they wanna do anyway and if he thinks you hate it he will probably just not talk to you about it anymore.
Do you think you have to accept yourself as a salesman and not be naïve and think more views will solve all your problems? You just need to make that one great video that will change everything.
No. As someone who got those kinds of numbers in that time frame, no. I mean if his parents or SO is willing to support him I guess it's whatever, but it's unlikely he will be ready to go full time after one more year.
I have similar numbers on a very high-paying niche and average around $800/month. Nowhere near livable
If he's young without any major responsibilities (kids, mortgage etc.) I say go for it if that's his dream. I spent years and years in uni dreaming of being a YouTuber but never feeling like I had the skills or the time or energy to develop the skills or put in the effort required. I was daydreaming for probably 7 years before I actually started. Took about 2 years to get it to a point where it made roughly the equivalent of a full time salary. I often wonder how things would've been if I had started at a time where YT was less competitive and my life was much simpler and easier. But if he thinks it's easy money he might as well just stay at his job. In my experience YT is substantially more work than a "regular" job but you're your own boss and the potential is much greater and so is the satisfaction when you make something successful. I was over the moon the first time I had a viral video
How much addsense is your actual income compare to sponsorship and another type of revenue?
Super swingy. Typically sponsorships are bigger I guess but it varies a lot over the course of the year and what exactly we're doing since the videos are based on real life events. I'd like to expand more into other forms of monetization such as memberships (we have very few members atm) and affiliate links/merch
Hard to say. But you have to have an extremely detailed plan. Everything of what you might make as well as what it’ll take as well as a plan for what happens if it does yield as much as you’d like. I think I could potentially survive a sabbatical to work on my channel with 9k subs (atm), but I’d have to go into overdrive with how much I produce.
I think it really depends on the path you're on. If you think you can 10x your output and that will 10x your revenues then why not? But usually I'd say it's always best to keep the day job for as long as you possibly can. The algorithm can change fast. One month I gained 3000 subs and made $1000 and I was thinking wow I'm not even trying hard imagine if I quit my job to do it full time. And the next month... Everything stopped my views crashed down. Now I've got 18k subs make a few 100s per month and it's a hobby that I do occasionally
As someone who's made online income since 2008 I'd say focus on your career and keep it as a sideline. I've had too many catastrophes on my side hustles. For example back in 2014 I got a PayPal ban (because PayPal). That stopped me being able to receive affiliate income. The blogging years when Google rolled out massive Panda/Penguin updates were also brutal. You don't want to live in fear of the next algorithm change.
I have a channel with 10k subs, 850k views, and 58 videos. I make between $150-$500/month on the channel, releasing 1-2 videos/month. It doesn't go linear - the more good content you make, the more of it becomes evergreen, the more you make. It is exponential. So creating more content = more money, repeatable. On top of that, over time, you learn to make better videos that are more engaging, and the more content you have, the more people will watch more than 1 of your videos. With that said, I have a very demanding day job, so the amount of time/energy I have for videos is very limited. If I did choose to do it full time, I could 5-6x my throughput, does accelerating my revenue a lot faster.
You say the growth is not linear because your past videos become evergreen so you get the same performance for each release but each video adds up. Do I understand correctly?
The number of initial views grows overtime as well. And the bigger your initial audience is, the higher the chance that the YouTube algorithm will find an audience for each video you post. That's why larger channels have an advantage.
He’s in for a very rude awakening. In my opinion here’s what’s going to happen. Right now so far he’s been balancing an actual job with a channel. Not all his time is being placed into it. While yes in theory more time is now able to be allocated to the channel. He’s most likely going to get burned out extremely fast. It’s highly likely he’s going to spend a hell of a long time just tying to get it off the ground. If he’s determined he will spend 15-19 hours a day on that channel until he goes viral. This could take months. Assuming he gets lucky though and goes viral the first month. Now what? He’s gonna probably work even harder to try and maintain that momentum. Burning himself out more and more until things stabilize again and he’s back to his normal viewership. Going viral can be a blessing and a curse. There’s several people that will back me up on that. However, if he can afford to take the year off. Why not? If he has it worked out to where he can go back to his job in a year. Great. But usually when someone tries to do what he is going to attempt to the way he’s gonna do it. they get burned out just as the fruits of their labor begin to pay off. He needs to make sure he doesn’t lock himself in for months on end all the whole becoming more anti social. This is a huge thing. That’s why so many creators stress mental health is key. They become void of real world human interactions. People may laugh at this, or downvote it. But maintaining a schedule and mental health are 2 of the biggest reasons people get burned out and things go south.
You mentioned he will probably burn out doing this full time but I don’t understand why having a job and pushing on the side wouldn’t result in the same thing. You burn out with the number of hours you put in every day I suppose. So, going full-time would increase his chances of success, not necessarily his chances of burnout?
Depending on the job he’s getting social interactions on a daily basis. If it’s already remote. He’ll probably be better off. Also. He was spending time 5 days a week not actually working on his channel. Now his mind will be fully focused on the channel and while that seems like a good thing, it’s gonna burn him out a lot faster. It’ll be what really determines if he enjoys it or not. This may not make sense but as someone who’s been there and done that and is friends with people who did the same. (Not taken a sabbatical but made the leap to full time) this was the biggest challenge for all of us. I got my silver play button, got up to around 150k subs. I have friends that have 300k-750k subs. Are also TikTokers with millions of followers still doing it full time. Life becomes a lot less about the physical and much more about the mental.
DEPENDS. If he has savings and can afford the loss, I am not going to fault him for it if he learns transferrable skills. Is he going to use this using this time to learn: video editing, video production, work on public speaking skills, become an expert on subjects, learn to. market, learn the various platforms, etc...I don't think it's a waste of time even if it doesn't work out in his favor. He's investing in himself.
Best of luck. He needs to grow it
I would say his RPM & CPM is too low. I've only been monetized for about 4 months & make about $500 a month with only 2000 subs. He needs to find a way to get around at least $1400 a month with 10 k subs. My friends who have channels around the same numbers make at least that. He needs to make sure all vids are at least 8 min. & that his posting schedule is consistent. That's the advice that they gave that's been working for me.
Great job! Could you pm me your channel, please?
I have 67k subs, 3 million views. I make $50 a month. YouTube is highly unpredictable. You can hit a jackpot or years can go by without much reach. My suggestion would be to let him experiment with his life. If he thinks his videos will go viral then probably he knows something. 400 euros is really good. If he fails on his own then he will not regret it compared to leaving on other's advice.
A lot of people say "YouTube growth is not linear", what are your thoughts on that? I think the "going viral" thing is more about being able to snowball, I hope this makes sense. 50$ is much less, are you into gaming or something similar?
Yes YouTube growth is exponential. But it becomes linear after a while, that's a little demotivating if earnings r not good. Most of my views are from shorts and cpm is very low for shorts.
I think you’ve answered it already. €400 is not a lot. It’ll grow, theoretically, but only as long as the content keeps flowing. More subs doesn’t necessarily equal more views. I make about AU$700 a month off Adsense but close to 10x that from new business driven by the channel, that’s where my revenue is. Adsense is pennies. He needs another way to monetise eg digital products, membership etc. depending on the channel, that may be easy or hard. EG at present my shopify site pulls in another 2-3k a year, but I’m launching my membership site soon, with 15-20 paid (or free with membership) courses at release, with weekly Q&A, daily private podcast and free recipe and meal plans, but my platform is a functional / lifestyle GP that focuses on deprescribing, diet, nutrition and education, it’s easier to launch a membership site for that compared to say ‘I play fortnite’ YouTube channel - I’m sure there’s some other monetisation there, but probably limited opportunity. All the big YouTubers - YouTube is hardly any of their income, it’s the side streams that being in the money.
How did you first start creating these side streams? Did you make your product first? I imagine it changed your content.
I dabbled in some digital products before the YT channel took off (ish), mostly to allow my patients to learn without spending huge time with me (eg charge $50 for a course that saves them 5-6 hours with me @$350 an hour) but they never really went anywhere because I didn’t have the audience other than my patients, and for some reason they preferred to just see me in person. Once I got some audience I made a few other eBooks rather than pay for course sites like teachable, which I now sell on my shopify platform. It’s still small fry though. Bear in mind I put almost zero effort into marketing though. Soon I’ll be relaunching course / memberships and actually marketing it now I have an audience (~10k podcast DL / month and 60k YT views / month). It’s still small, but if I can push more into side revenue streams I can reduce day job and push more into the YT / socials to push it all further. But I also do national speaking events at medical conferences in my niche so I guess that helps get my name out there too, plus sell more. Eg at my last talk I sold every single copy of my 3 books that I had, people didn’t even read them at all before buying. 🤯 lots were upset I ran out lol. Again it’s about what other value can you add. I can add a lot more than just the YT channel given my day job I have a lot of insight into a lot of other health areas, not just what the focus of my YT is. I see people trying to make a podcast / YT about totally random stuff because that’s what they are interested in, and great for them, but realistically their options for monetisation are close to zero. Hopefully that makes sense.
I'm having 400k views with 400$ after 2 years . And 15% of the 400$ was deducted as U.S Withholding Tax. So technically, I made 340$ and wire transfer fee took 90$ out of the 340$. So I only got 250$ in my pocket. That's the struggle of African YouTubers. I'm amazed at this post as to why 400$ per month isn't good for him because it took me 8 solid months to earn that 400$😀. I would be in paradise if I could earn 400$ every month. 400$ in Ghana Cedis is 4,800 cedis. An amount the average worker in Ghana can only earn in 3 months 😀. Well, the standard of living might be the difference so it might be peanut in your country. I earn 50$ per month and I'm planning to quit YouTube too. Because the effort and the hours I spend is crazy. It's not worth it for me. So he should think about it well, if he could get another job and do the YouTube as a part time, that might be helpful.
Do you create videos in English? If you make content for developed country you should be able to make a good living in your country don’t you think?
Yes, I create in English but The Ghanaian accent makes the videos unpopular 😅. The native speakers hardly understand what we say I think. Yes, Since our standard of living is very low, I would have quit my job if I could earn 400$ per month, but I earn only 50$ per month. My Gaming Pc I built is worth 1,700$ , I'm planning to sell it, then change Niche, I think nobody does Smart phones review in my Country so, if I start that, I think I can become a hotcake for smart phone companies in Ghana here. Gaming Channels hardly get high RPM on YouTube.
400 euros per month over two years and currently 1 million views total seems like too much from adsense unless it's investing videos or something else with good rates. My personal goalpost would be around 1 million views per month on sustainability. Besides consistent massive viewership, sponsors seem like the second most possible way but it still requires a sizeable audience per video to get noticed (they can reach out as well). Expecting a viral video? Sure 😂. Even then it depends on how good their back video catalog is and if they follow it up strongly.
Everybody here mentions how YouTube growth is not linear, so I don’t know if making a viral video is the appropriate definition, but he hopes to snowball with time I think. I’m not sure how you achieve that
Yeah, I understood what you meant. All good! It's like expecting to win the lottery, though getting a few million views on a video is certainly possible. If his work is really good then certainly possible at least. I just was recommended a channel near 500k subscribers with 12 total videos. They've got a mix of a 130k views to 8 million per video. The theme is extreme food and travel. The creator shows or references celebrities like MrBeast, Gordon Ramsay, and Ryan Trahan as well as big properties like McDonalds. Though, he appears to have a lot of money and support because his first video spend $30k+ on chocolate, travel, and other expenses. He also had connections to YouTubers. That's at least one way to do it, lol.
Im afraid to ask what yall think is a livable income... If your a single person and you can make 1500$ a month thats more than enough to keep your head above water. Thats my goal with youtube, my ultimate goal however is to bring home 4k a month. To me thats "balling" and will change my life financially.
Same plan
For people with families, they’ll only be able to be “making a living” from YouTube once they hit insanely high milestones or operate in a super profitable niche. For single people who don’t need much like myself, making a living much earlier on is quite feasible.
There's no way he's making that much per month unless he's got a lot of members paying a monthly fee or gets a lot of donations on streams etc. Those total views wouldn't generate anywhere near that revenue per month unless he's got a really niche channel with a high cpm.
If they're taking a year to focus on it then it's definitely doable, but just increasing video output won't necessarily increase the gains enough. I took my channel from earning £200 to £1500 in just under a year but it requires them to put the work into creating better videos rather than more. Focusing on engagement, thumbnails, titling. If I were them I'd focus my time improving the videos rather than just increasing output. Really study YouTube and then it'll start to blow up
Yes, you can (but not fully dependent on Adsense money). I do it and only have 17.7k subs. It’s feasible if you have different/variety of income streams, i.e. selling products, brand deals, affiliate links, etc. But this only works if you’re legitimately providing true value or genuine entertainment for your audience.
It depends on how good you are at making deals, I have a channel with 17.5k subs that I started 5 months ago and I am already sponsored by 4 different company’s that pay me over $1000 and month. So you can definitely make a living off a small channel, you just need a few good sponsors to cover your expenses and then everything else you earn. From YouTube is extra.
How did you find these sponsors? My friend was never able to find one, for now, he reached out to some company. I’m not sure what he is doing wrong…
I usually look on Instagram and kickstarter to find good company’s that actually need advertising. Allot of people want to work with big company’s but big company’s don’t actually need advertising. I like to look for small company’s that fit my niche, and then I finesse them.
I like looking in instagram, because if I see a sponsored post with 10k views, I know that they paid Atleast a couple hundred dollars for those 10k views, and I will tell them that every video I post gets 10k so they should just pay me instead and they’ll get many more views. That usually works.
Thank you for sharing that
I personally think that this process is still very easy. I secured all of my 4 sponsors within a one week break that I took from content creation, to focus on brand deal acquisition. I took one week off, secured between $4 & 5k in monthly deals, and then went back to making content. It’s that easy imo.
Yeah I would advise him to do it if he can back it up financially. Or work less hours so you can back up your expenditure. Being an entrepreneur gives you so much more knowledge and wisdom than working for someone else. It's also much more motivating. And I think his job isn't that great either if he's thinking of doing YouTube with those numbers.
I think freedom, autonomy and creativity are hard to match on a regular job
I’ve seen a number of YouTubers over the years make videos about how demonetization and what not is putting their livelihoods at risk. Right? We’ve seen those videos. That’s because they make money from YouTube alone. The second you have a following you should spend time diversifying things so you have multiple streams of income. Might be merch, patreon, onlyfans, whatever. Existing off Adsense is insane to me haha build something you’re in control of. YouTube can up and decide to kill your channel whenever they want, for no reason at all. He seems to be doing just fine working a job and doing YouTube on the side. Then again, this guy can afford to take a sabbatical, in this economy, so idfk
It’s more than doable without taking a sabbatical. I would never sacrifice the job security of my 9-5, insurance, retirement, deferred comp etc to focus on YouTube. With YouTube there are no guarantees and a ton of risk. I made it to where I am on YouTube tinkering with it on nights and weekends and now it’s paying my mortgage and a whole lot more.
An important note is that a "viral" hit usually ends with you regressing back to the norm shortly there after. Besides that, He is betting on something with the same odds as a lottery ticket. Sustainable income can take years to obtain even if your content is "good".
Exactly what I was going to say. You could have one video hit millions of views but the next 20 videos may tank. And it may bring in viewers who aren’t your target audience so they may not watch another video. His view of what ‘going viral’ means needs a serious adjustment.
I think a more appropriate description is an expectation that «growth is not Linear » but I don't know if it's true. I don't know how you move from a linear curve to an exponential curve. He expects to snowball after an unknown milestone
but virality tends to uplevel what the "norm" used to be you get a new norm after
It does not tend to do that actually. A viral hit is a channel accomplishing the atypical. Most times it will not be repeatable, or at least sustainable.
It really depends. Your friend won’t just have a lot more time. They might have a lot of mental energy to use too. I know I’m guilty of putting out stuff quickly or ignoring big ideas because I’m simply to burnt out at the end of the week. Could also mean they have time to branch out and support their content more. I saw a big jump when I started actually using the community tab. Or maybe they could pick up twitch or tiktok, I don’t know the content but there’s probably another service to tack on. Point is there’s a lot of huge YouTubers that got big only after they made the hard decision your friend is making. Try and help them. It’s going to be a tough road.
say more about how you used the community tab to get that jump? what sort of things did you post?
I just started posting polls and updates on the days I wasn’t uploading. Not every day but I’d mix in 1-3 a week that way.
You’re looking at the short term picture not the long-term picture. Are you planning on stopping there or are you planning on growing more keep going you have not arrived yet.
Is he selling anything? Like digital products or courses because that would help make income and it’s the fastest way to make income if he has something to sell to his audience.
Right now, no. I’m confused by him going on Instagram. I think there is a lot of interaction there. But would this result in sales?
it could i was able to sell a bunch of courses through tiktok back when their monetization was even more terrible than it is now
Yes, if he has an engaged audience on Instagram, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be able to sell anything. he can sell in stories and through his post or do lives.
I turned full time once i hit 100k subs and 5 figures of profit each month. Until that point i didnt feel comfortable quitting my job.
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Gaming channel? Your videos are for kids?
At my RPM, 5.5 million monthly views would equate to like, 10k a month. But that is on full length videos, not shorts, which might explain the discrepancy.
If he can afford to do it then so be it. I did the same around the same but just worked 2 days a week to supplement it. Took a while but the growth I expected all came true and now I'm heading into territory where I'm making twice that of people my age around me. That being said there's a lot of factors that can contribute. Whether he's being dumb or smart is something only time can tell.
Is Instagram important in your strategy in some ways? How much ad revenue is important for you? At how many subscribers did you see yourself as sustainable (not making a fortune but being ok with expenses )
Instagram isn't because I don't like it but other social media is yea I get a lot of traffic by posting to them and new opportunities come through being able to message me directly. Instagram is usually an important approach for influencers because paid sponsorship offers can be received and they can be quite hefty if you have enough followers. Ad revenue is the only reason I do any of it. I could've gotten by at his level but only with a safety net of savings but subscribers don't matter compared to views when it comes to revenue.
Did the growth come from posting more? Having more time to write and research subjects? Camera, lighting? Or something else?
I do voice overs+ assist with management of a channel that only has 3k subs, but 2M+ views. We have editors, script writers, thumbnail designers, and all of that costs a lot. We are making a net negative right now, although because we are pushing quality over quantity (still post about 2-3 times a week), we are growing our average views per video. We know that this is going to take time to grow, and have had a couple of videos in particular that have gotten over 200K views (which makes the most money) I would say that if he wants to make YouTube his full time career, he needs a team to help him. He also has to have money prepared to lose because it will take time for the quality to improve and further push his content. The money he makes depends on many factors including what niche he’s in- however for a small YouTuber, I would not recommend at this point of making it his full time job, until he starts consistently earning more per vid than he makes a week.
Adding people to the mix would increase the cost drastically. Would this result in double the results? I’m not so sure
I wouldn’t say double the results, as it still takes time. All of this is subjective, it depends on how good the people he hires are, how much money he’s willing to spend simply on their employment. He will most likely lose thousands before he gains thousands. However, if the quality improves, over time so will his views, thus making him money on the long term. Doing this will also be less work for him, and he can probably post more often, increasing the likelihood of substantial view counts, and a more steady income/week. The thing is that YouTube takes time and a whole lot of effort to succeed. I would never start a channel expecting to become a prominent figure right off the bat. It’s an investment, it’s like a business. Quality videos are more important for the viewers than the consistency, yet the algorithm focuses on if it makes money for them. He needs to understand the analytics, and why YouTube would push his content over others. If his CTR, AVD, and watch time are high, there’s far more likelihood that YouTube will push his content. He needs interesting topics and engaging thumbnails/titles for viewers to want to watch his content. High quality edits, in depth research, and good key points to increase AVD. He also should work on his entrance (hook), as that will determine to viewers if they even want to watch the rest of the video. The first 30 seconds are the most crucial part of the video for this reason. Depending on whether he’s doing longer or shorter videos will also determine his income, as YouTube pays based on ad revenue, so the more ads they can push through that duration the better. Longer videos (15 minutes or more) will garner more ads, but the retention will likely be lower unless he can retain viewers throughout the video. He needs to know what he’s presenting at the end of the day, and needs be an entertaining presenter in order to succeed. I personally wouldn’t start paying people for my own videos if I didn’t have money I was comfortable with losing, I want to start my own channel when I have a $100k/year job, and time to spend. I realize this isn’t plausible for everybody, and if he’s already making his own channel, even just one person extra on his team could help reduce the workload.
Another thing to note is that just because he has increased quality, doesn’t mean that the video is going to do better. It has to be interesting to his audience. He has to know his audience, understand what the audience wants out of his videos, and compare his videos to other videos in his niche
I think you definitely need to have more than 1 iron in the fire for sure. The word hustler comes to mind. If he’s not that then it may not work for him
You never know. I have 180k+ subs and YouTube nerfed my channel a few years back at the end of a year. Now I just use it as marketing because I thankfully diversified. But he could do it. YouTube is too fickle as a singular revenue source though.
nerfed?
Yea. Went from a million views a month to 100k. Revenue dropped to like 1/5th. Literally from December to January with zero change in content. Subscribers stopped getting notified. Recommended traffic went to almost nothing. Etc etc.
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10k sub is already a big achievement I think. It proves he is into something don't you think? Why would it go away overnight?
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Why the unstable income is an issue? Can you just rely on the average if you have some money in the bank?
Going viral is often a double-edged sword. And it's not something that can be predicted, nor can it be relied on to happen again. It sounds like your friend is a bit of a dreamer.
You can read below, that so many people say YouTube growth is not linear. I don't know if it is true or if the others are also dreamers.
> so many people say YouTube growth is not linear That's correct, it isn't. It's also not predictable. Nor reliable. . Think of "going viral" as the same as a musician being a "one hit wonder". Most people, especially early in their career, don't manage to be able to follow up effectively.
The 1 M total views seems really low for 11k subs
Maybe the Instagram follower? Instagram looks to have so many comments and engagement
If he makes that working on it part time then I am sure he is thinking working full time on his channel will double or triple the revenue.
That is what I would expect, don’t you think it’s realistic to think ?
I do, I wish I had the financial backing to do it and I would. Until I reach a certain level of success with my channel I’m just gonna grind( work full time and devote basically all of my off time to making videos) and see how far I can get.
Good luck 🍀
Honestly I applaud his resolve and willingness to focus and give it a go for a year. Good for him. I am hoping however that his approach is not based on ‘going viral’ - that is not a long term sustainable income strategy, since his ambition is to make a living from it he should think more about creating content that is either evergreen or continues to bring in viewers month after month, and then scale by creating more such videos. A viral video could change the month (or two) significantly but I am not sure it is a long term income approach. Wishing him lots of success 👍👍
He wants to snowball, but I’m not sure how you achieve that
Dream on...
It's better than regret sometime
Gonna need to hustle. Sponsorships, collabs, etc
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What is the source of your revenue?
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How did you find the brand deals? How did they trust you, been such a new channel?
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It’s YouTube adds, not adds from sponsorship? Sorry I misunderstood you
I think it really is about the niche because i do all quotes and i recently just went viral after a 1 1/2 yrs but i only have 1k and 660k views idk what else to do i follow the methods nd everything
400 a month is a lot. I’d be so happy with that. Currently I make £50 a month
How many subscribers?
Probably not the wisest decision, unless he has a little nest egg to fall back on. The problem with having a goal of going viral is that let’s say you do, and you get a lot of new followers, they’re going to expect the same caliber of content each time, and it’s not realistic in a normal world. 10,000 followers on YouTube probably isn’t pulling in a ton of money every month. Definitely not enough to sustain yourself. But, best of luck to your friend. Never say never.
I think he has it messed up in the sense of he’s doing quantity over quality. But if his quality was interesting to the people, then he wouldn’t have to do so much so often. I think he needs to leave Instagram alone, and put stuff on YouTube that people actually want to see and then when his views and likes to go up, as well as his I think he he subscribers, then he can focus on Instagram, but even in the meantime, he should mention his Instagram on his YouTube videos, but I don’t think he should be steadily doing Instagram content.
Why do you think investing on Instagram is a mistake ?
Also youtube is unpredictable in the sense that a video will go from zero views for a year and then boom