this video is sponsored by squarespace which i use to make my photography portfolio and my blog
hello my name is beatrice i am 19 years old and i only have a couple months left to use
the clickbaity as a teenager in my video title so i am making the most of it in this video
i want to explain exactly how i a teenager have made money both online and in the real
world money is often a weird and uncomfortable topic and i think it should be less of that i
got a comment on my how i started a photography business video where someone basically said that
in order to try and make easy youtube money i was revealing the insider photography secrets and
making it more difficult for current established photographers and oh that comment really got me
worked up at first i didn't really understand why i had such a strong reaction to it it wasn't until
i typed out like this five point argument that i realized how strongly i believe in the concept
that i think jessica whittaker in her build and bloom facebook group for photographers called it
collaboration over competition or something like that i think it is really freaking cool
that we live in an age where it's possible to make money doing what you love with a computer and an
internet connection but i also think that it's relatively new and there's a lot of
misconceptions about it so my experience won't be representative of the experiences of all content
creators out there but my goal with this video is to sort of add my experience to the data pool
in order to empower other young people to start building something and cultivating
their passions as early as possible so let's get started it's time for bliss bean business school
so the first work experiences that i had let's pretend i'm writing a resume i did some
babysitting but i'm not the biggest fan of kids so that was kind of draining and not the best match
for me i did an unpaid communications internship with my school district which was super aligned
with what i was interested in so that was great my first experience with making money like for myself
was with photography so i have a whole video on how i started my photography business which has
received some pretty rave reviews if i may toot my own horn so if you want a very honest simple
step-by-step perspective of how to make some money doing photography especially in this modern social
media age and also especially if you want to do senior portraits i definitely recommend watching
that basically though a friend of mine asked me if i did senior portraits because she knew that
i liked taking photos and had a nice-ish camera i had never taken senior portraits but i told her i
was willing to try i ended up just doing like a practice shoot for fun with her and i realized i
really like doing portrait photography now looking back on those photos are kind of trash but as i
was editing them i was like wow this is pretty good i think i could do this and get paid for it
so i did some practice shoots and i started professionally officially taking photos the summer
before my senior year i registered my business i had the system for keeping track of clients
i was mainly doing senior portraits but i also did some family and some couples photos
and i was really enjoying it not just the photography but also the business side of things
i love feeling independent and just like i was running the whole show so i did that for
like two and a half seasons i did do some senior portrait sessions this year i think i did like 12
but honestly the spark was just kind of gone for me because at this point youtube is a much
better creative outlet for me and i was getting really sick of basically taking the same photos
over and over again so i have put the photography business on pause but it was really great while
it lasted and i'm very very grateful for that experience how much can you make doing photography
obviously a lot of factors are involved like how good you are how long you've been doing it
and also where you live in my photography video i explained how i set my prices in the beginning and
then how i gradually increased them over time as i got better i wasn't the best at keeping
track of my finances at this point because this was really my first experience like doing any
sort of freelancing but i was able to dig up a spreadsheet of my september to december 2019
expenses and income so i was taking photos from september to november during that time period i
made 3235 from photo shoots and two video projects and i spent about 200 on parking permits equipment
rentals website hosting things like that thank you so much to squarespace for sponsoring this
video and for helping me to run my photography business at first i was super scattered so my
instagram was my only portfolio i kept track of clients in a note on my notes app and i
literally just communicated through dms when i was ready to get serious though i used squarespace to
create this beautiful professional website for myself if you really want to get serious about
photography and show people that you are a serious photographer who is organized and is going to get
the job done then i think having a website is essential my website is where i displayed my
portfolio featured testimonials gave people a way to contact me the frequently asked questions page
saved a ton of time and back and forth messaging and probably most importantly i had all of my
offerings explained in a super simple way all of this was ridiculously easy because squarespace has
these pre-made pages and drag and drop buildings so you can effortlessly put in a contact form
you can put in a gallery page you definitely don't need any coding to do this stuff i was
able to get it done really quickly so that i could actually get back to taking photos and
i knew my website was out there doing the work for me while i was busy taking photos you can
head to the link in my description and get 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain
i'll make this a separate category but i have also done some freelance work outside of just
photography it's not something that i advertise but once in a while some sort of a project will
just float my way through personal connections so i've done a website and branding for a small
business for my former architecture family i did branding and thumbnails for a youtuber just
stumbled across my channel basically i did a video for a local hospital where my former principal's
wife contacted my former video teacher and he recommended me so i think getting involved in
your school and your community in any way that you can is really important i don't really know
how networking works it's probably something i'll have to learn at one point or another but
basically my version of networking in high school was doing that media internship taking photo and
video classes being involved in the newspaper and the school news going for leadership positions
and just trying to do my best and make a good impression on people in everything that i did
okay so now let's talk about how i make my main chunk of change blogging or youtube is not really
something i would recommend starting just for the money i think you really have to be interested in
what you're doing because it will take a while to build up your channel build up your blog to
a point where you can monetize it obviously the timeline is different for everyone and maybe your
first video will go viral and you'll just be set but for me i started blogging in july 2017
i started my youtube channel in april 2018 and then i didn't get monetized until june of 2019
and i didn't really start making enough money to where i felt like i could call it my job until
like march 2020 so it's been a journey chris whose last name i really do not want to butcher so i'll
just put it up on the screen has this fantastic piece on how he was able to grow a blog to the
point where he was making the medium income for a city through writing in 276 days i highly
recommend checking that out whether you want to write a blog do youtube videos or just any kind
of business where the internet is involved like if you are an artist trying to market yourself
online for example he does a really good job of explaining how it is that someone goes
from putting stuff out there for free to actually bringing in some dollars through what you're doing
so there are four main income streams under my blogging umbrella and i would say this is
pretty much what everyone has you've got digital products sponsored content adsense and affiliate
links active income means you have to do work for the money passive income means you invest
initial time and effort into it but after that it takes little to no effort to keep it coming
so digital products what was here digital products are generally passive income i have one at the
moment which is the 21 days to productive flow video email course with workbook that i created i
mainly market it through my email list and that's totally automatic once in a while i just answer a
question for someone or like fix something that goes wrong with the email software so i pretty
much don't have to do anything for it at this point in august i made a thousand thirty three
dollars from that and in july i made 585 so it really varies a lot the next category is sponsored
content and in the videos that i've watched from other youtubers explaining their income streams
it seems to me that this is generally the largest one so sponsored content is when i
work with a company to promote something for them by integrating it into a video and or social media
posts when i started on youtube i thought that i would have to do all the leg work of reaching out
to companies and pitching my channel to them but really they kind of just start coming to you at
first it's an email here there and then it starts flooding your inbox and i would say like 80 of it
is just spam and so at that point you have to look through and pick out the few that might actually
be good opportunities for your channel so if it looks like it was just a copy and pasted email and
they didn't even bother to learn my name or they said like hi blogger that generally goes right in
the trash every time i put this word in my script i always forget to look up how to say it i'm gonna
go with niche so if you're a niche channel it might be different like if you're a travel channel
maybe you reach out to a hotel in some place that you're traveling to or maybe you review like
camera equipment and so then you would reach out to a specific camera company whose products you
want to review but i would say for the most part especially if your channel is more of a general
lifestyle channel like mine is opportunities will just start coming to you once you've built up
enough of a following just make sure to put your email somewhere like in the description or in your
youtube about page one thing you should prepare when you're ready to start doing sponsorships
is a media kit and michelle b has a really good video on how to do that basically it includes what
your channel is about your analytics your rates and what you can offer to companies maybe some
testimonials from companies you've worked with in the past for me how much i get from sponsorships
varies a lot so currently it falls in the range of 350 to a thousand dollars which is a big range
and i don't know which end of that range is more in line with what other youtubers are getting this
is one of the reasons i'm making a video like this and i like to watch other people's videos
about this because i feel like we just don't know much about how this whole youtube thing works
and so it's hard to figure out the value of our work and i've heard stories about people
basically being extremely undervalued because they didn't know that they could ask for more
and so they were being paid way way less than other content creators so
yeah sponsorships are probably the most confusing part of all of this for me
all right so ad revenue is the cut of money that youtube so generally shares with me from
the revenue that they earn when someone watches the ad before the video in some of these kinds of
videos that i've watched i feel like people tend to downplay the adsense side of things they'll be
like oh it's not my main source of income it's not the biggest piece of the pie but i think we have
to remember that it's passive income so like you could go on vacation for a week and not touch your
youtube channel at all but views would still be coming in and adsense money would still be coming
in without you doing anything and that goes a long way toward reducing the amount of pressure that
you feel to constantly be producing videos and seeking out sponsors for those videos so how much
do you actually get from those little ads before the videos i actually had to do research on this
because i had no idea what some of these acronyms meant so let me share the knowledge that i've
gained with you cpm is cost per thousand views and that's how much an advertiser will pay youtube to
get their ad viewed a thousand times the average cpm is about six to eight dollars and that depends
on where you live how advertiser friendly your content is things like that you do not get all
of this money you get how much youtube decides to give to you so rpm is how much your channel gets
per thousand views this is after youtube takes their cuts and this also takes into account the
videos on your channel that aren't monetized for whatever reason so this number will obviously be
significantly lower so with all that taken into consideration from adsense in august i made a
thousand four hundred thirty three dollars in july i made a thousand one hundred fifty and that
number has been increasing steadily and hopefully continues to do so i don't know maybe it won't
okay finally affiliate links an affiliate link is a special customized link that you share
with your audience and whatever they purchase using that link you get a small percentage of it
i share affiliate links in my video descriptions and my instagram stories and my newsletter i
actually had never taken the time to properly total up this number because i think this is
the one that's hardest to keep track of adsense is like one number that shows up in your bank account
every month affiliate stuff is like but i did sit down to do the math and in august if i counted
correctly i think i made about 552 dollars from affiliate links so let's make a fun little pie
chart now keep in mind that sometimes it is months after you upload the video that you actually get
the payout from a sponsorship but let's just pretend that we live in a world where the day
that you click publish is the day that you get the money so if you add everything up in total in
august i made four thousand five hundred seventy dollars now there are expenses too it's definitely
way less than the expenses for a physical business like i don't think anyone's taking out a business
loan to start a youtube channel but it's not free so there are some one-time purchases this year
especially i made some big purchases because a lot of my equipment was aging and i felt like it was
a good time to kind of up level so i got a new laptop a new camera a special freaking xqd card
for that camera which was so annoying the special adapter because apple said no you don't get to
have an sd card reader you don't get to plug usbs directly into your computer you're gonna suffer if
you want a thinner lighter computer and then some of my recurring purchases so i spend 46 dollars a
month for the squarespace commerce plan which you need in order to sell products i spent 179
dollars to send out my weekly newsletter before i started my newsletter i remember i got an email
from this one newsletter that i was subscribed to and it basically said hey notice you haven't been
opening these emails if you want to keep receiving them click this link otherwise will automatically
unsubscribe you in a week and i was just like why why would you do that why would you not want to
have a bigger audience like why would i dm someone on instagram and be like hey i noticed you haven't
been liking my posts do you want to unfollow me otherwise if you don't respond i can just block
you and save you the time and the trouble and then when my email list started growing i realized oh
you have to pay depending on how many subscribers you have so yeah i do use my email list to promote
my course a little bit i include affiliate links once in a while but in general it doesn't have
that much return for me my newsletter is more of a way to provide some more free value to my audience
connect with them keep them updated and almost like remind them every monday that i exist and
don't you dare forget about me i paid 20 a year for my domain 1054 a month for adobe photoshop and
lightroom about six dollars a month for vimeo paid annually 15 a month for tubebuddy paid annually so
yeah the expenses aren't that much but there are some so i thought i would tell you about them and
then of course there's taxes on top of all that again squarespace has been essential to my blog as
well i started my blog on squarespace all the way back in 2017 and then when i released my product
i upgraded my squarespace subscription so that i could access their commerce features they made it
so easy to create a sales page set up a product upload the digital file and accept payments
through stripe and paypal so it really grows with you when you just start out even if you do
envision yourself selling something in the future i would say just start with a blog start by adding
value to people's lives and growing an audience before you offer them something more you have to
build that trust in that relationship first so is it too late to start a youtube channel no i
don't think so i remember when i was starting out on youtube i thought i was too late to the game
because i saw all these videos with titles like is it too late to start a youtube channel in 2018
and i didn't watch any of those videos because i was afraid they would tell me that yes i was too
late but guess what people make those videos every single year there is a is it too late to start a
youtube channel in 2020 and there will be a is it too late to start a youtube channel in 2021 as
long as youtube as a platform is doing well which i think it is i don't think it's too late to start
a youtube channel in the sense that oh there's already so many youtube channels out there like
what am i doing adding one more to the millions that are out there but you have a unique voice and
there are bound to be people out there who want to hear it the youtubers that i watch didn't start
out when youtube first began they as well could have very easily said like oh there's already
so many channels out there why would i bother starting my own but i'm so glad they did because
i love the videos they make and i love the unique perspectives that they share what i wouldn't do
is put all of my eggs into one basket and only make youtube videos because if youtube were to
close their doors for whatever reason i would be screwed but i do have my newsletter audience my
instagram audience and i'm trying to branch out into other things as well so it wouldn't be like
all of my ties with my audience would be severed so yeah that's it for this video please take this
knowledge and do something with it squarespace is the perfect place to start whatever project
you've been dreaming about so head to the link in the description and get 10 off your first purchase
of a website or a domain it was two years before i made any money for my blog but my gosh was it
worth it because now i get to basically make money doing something that i love and i hope
that you guys can do that as well i hope i don't get any angry messages saying that i'm revealing
all the youtube secrets and revealing how much money a person can make with a youtube channel
positive empowering comments in the comment section only so thank you so much for watching
this video and for the two tenths of a cent i probably earned from you watching the ad that came
before it give this video a like and subscribe to my channel and i will see you next week bye
you