- I know there's a lot of people out there
that really question how much money can you really make
from YouTube and what are the best ways to get started
generating income from a new channel
or from your side hustle.
So I thought I'd do something a little bit different
and we share a bit of behind the scenes of Primal Video.
This is something we've never done before,
but we're gonna talk through how we make money
and how we use several different passive income streams
to generate over a million dollars per year
in recurring income from this YouTube channel.
So I'm gonna do a full breakdown of our income sources
and the strategies that we use to maximize them.
And also what I'd recommend focusing on
for anyone who is just starting out,
because some of these will have a much quicker payoff
while others will take longer to kick in.
Now I'm not going to share the exact dollar amount,
and we actually made more than a million dollars per year,
because what's important is the income streams that we use
and the relative breakdowns between them
so that you can see what works for us and how we've used it.
Now I'll also talk through how that breakdown has evolved
over the last few years,
as we've moved from stuff that generates income quicker,
but requires more time
to much higher leveraged income sources
that are far more passive as we've grown.
Now, our revenue breakdown might look a little different
to a lot of the others that you might've seen.
And that's because we have a huge focus
on high leverage income
that isn't tied to the time that we put in
or what a lot of people call passive,
which means that we don't do any consulting, no coaching,
no done-for-you services.
We have in the past, which you'll see,
but we made the decision to get out of those
a little while back.
Could we make more money if we still did those things?
For sure, but instead, we chose to focus
on building a lifestyle that we want
with the flexibility to do what we want with our time.
But we didn't start there though,
which is what you'll see as we go through.
So income stream number one, it's an obvious one,
it's from YouTube ads.
We're a part of the YouTube Partner Program.
We have monetization enabled on all of our content.
So we're able to receive money from YouTube,
a percentage of the money that is earned by YouTube
from them running ads on our videos.
Now, in terms of percentages of our total revenue,
YouTube ads comes in at just over 23% for us.
And it's actually a lot more than what people think.
So this is something
that really hasn't been a huge focus for us,
but it is something that has scaled significantly
since our channel has grown.
So this is one that when you're first starting out
or when you first get your channel monetized,
when you reach those milestones,
that the amount coming in from YouTube ads
for most people is not a lot.
It could be a few dollars per month if you're lucky.
It's really gonna come down
to the type of content you're creating,
how many views you're getting,
and also the niche that you're in
as to how many ads people want to run on your content,
but also how much they're prepared to spend
to have ads running on your videos.
But what I like about this is
it's kind of like the flywheel analogy.
You can build out a library of content over time
that continues to generate views for years
after you make it.
So you're really building this asset
that grows and accelerates
all your other income streams as well.
So if you look over on our YouTube channel
and we go to the video page, then here, you can see
that we upload just one video per week.
Now more recently, we're playing with Shorts as well,
but our strategy is to release one piece
of optimized strategic content onto our channel per week,
that we've done that keyword research
to help us identify the topics that people actually want,
helping our content to be shown in primarily search results,
but also to show up in suggested and recommended
on the platform as well.
So our strategy is very search-targeted,
which is why on a brand-new video,
you might see that it only gets a small amount of views
relative to the size of the channel we have
and relative to some of our bigger videos
in the first few weeks.
Typically this is something that will increase
after a few weeks or after a few months,
but it is something that can show up in generating views
for years after that video is released.
It's not like we're relying on a viral video strategy,
which could be hit and miss,
where some videos will take off and others don't.
This strategy means it's far more likely
that your content is going to show up on the platform
because YouTube is a search engine as well.
So you have the ability to have your content showing up
in search results when people are typing stuff in
that's related to your content
or other places on the platform as well,
because YouTube understands your content.
You've titled it in a way
that viewers can understand what your content is about
and the algorithm, YouTube,
can understand what your content is about
and who should see it.
And the beauty of this strategy,
again with one video per week is that over time
we build out a massive library of content.
So with this strategy, we have videos now
coming up on seven years old on our channel
that are still bringing in views,
still bringing in revenue through the YouTube ads
and still having impact for the rest of our business
and our viewers as well.
Now, if you have someone who is just starting out with this,
then here's a couple of quick wins for you.
I want you to focus on niche topics.
Don't go super broad, super competitive, niche down,
especially in the beginning.
Also do some keyword research or topic research
to make sure that you're able to see
that people actually want the content
that you're going to make.
But also, what are the words that they're using
to articulate their pain, the problem,
or the content that they're looking for,
what would you search for to find your videos
is usually a great place to start,
and then you can validate it by doing some keyword research.
Now I'm gonna link some videos down in the description
to help you get your first 1,000 subscribers
so that you can monetize your content,
but also to help you with things like keyword research,
topic research, thumbnail strategy,
those videos would be linked to kind of like a resource
down in the description box below.
Income stream number two is products.
Now for us, when we talk about products,
we're talking specifically digital products,
we don't have any merch or physical products
that we would send out to anyone.
But for us, in terms of overall revenue,
digital products brings in just over 33%
of that total revenue.
Now this is another area
that we have grown and evolved over time.
And again, I'll have a full breakdown of this for you
really, really soon
so you can see the different milestones we hit
and when we hit them.
But where we started with this
was we created a green screen course.
So we were selling Green Screen Video Academy
to help people get great results using green screen videos.
And we also sold some background templates
to help with your green screens as well.
Now, those two products we don't sell anymore,
we've now evolved to our Primal Video Accelerator program.
And we've built this to be mostly passive.
It is a $37 a month monthly subscription,
and it's likely that we're gonna be putting
that price up soon as everything that we pack in there
has grown significantly
since we first launched at that price.
So this product, Primal Video Accelerator,
we've built out to be the ultimate resource
when it comes to growing an audience,
to creating quality videos and to scaling your revenue.
So think of our YouTube channel on steroids.
Now in Accelerated, there is an active element,
I do two monthly Q&A calls with our members.
This is something I absolutely love.
We have an amazing community.
So this really isn't work for me,
this is more a hangout with great people doing cool stuff
and growing their own businesses with YouTube,
using a lot of the stuff
that we're discussing here in this video.
And we also keep the content inside of Accelerator
up to date whenever something changes.
So that part of it isn't passive,
but the bulk of the content doesn't change
because it's naturally covering
more of the longterm strategies that rarely change,
not relying on short-term tricks and tips
that only work for a short period of time.
So in terms of products or digital products,
some quick wins for anyone just starting out,
you could do what we did
and just start out with some simple templates
or a small course, a mini course,
something that's of value to your viewers, to your audience
or your ideal viewers and audience
if you don't have them yet.
Build something that is going to help them
and add value to them,
but you can start small
and it most definitely does not need to be perfect.
This is something that you can get out there.
Done is better than perfect,
and then you can build, improve, evolve over time.
So that brings us to our third income stream,
which is affiliate revenue.
This is where essentially we are paid a fixed price
or a commission for referring a lead or a sale
of another product or service.
Now, this one for us in terms of total revenue
comes in at just over 43%.
So this is the biggest percent of our income
at Primal Video.
Now this is something that we absolutely love
because it creates a win, win, win scenario.
It's a win for our viewers
who are watching and consuming our videos
because we'll have affiliate links to the products
and tools that are gonna help them
with that specific outcome based on the topic of the video.
It's a win for the company that we're mentioning
and linking off to
because we're sending them qualified leads,
people that are actually interested
in their product or service,
not just spamming links out and sending them bogus traffic.
And this makes it a win for us too,
'cause we receive a commission or a fixed price
from making that connection
and helping that person and that company
really meet in the middle.
Now, in terms of how we're implementing affiliate marketing
in our business,
this is where under our YouTube videos
where any specific products or services are mentioned,
then those links are in our YouTube video descriptions.
We also have a dedicated page on our website
for all the stuff that we recommend,
all the recommended tools, resources, courses,
everything that we use to run Primal Video
and that we know is going to help
and add value to our audience is listed on that page.
So it's one page that we can share out
that we can have also linked in all of our YouTube videos,
in our email signatures, in emails that go out.
It's one page that has all of the stuff that we use
and that we recommend.
And a lot of the things on that page
actually have affiliate links associated with them as well.
Another great place to use affiliate links
is inside any mini courses or trainings
where you're showing people
how to use those tools or services
to get the results that they're after.
So for us, we've done this
with an email list growth training workshop,
where we're showing people how to grow their email list.
So we start off by talking about our top two options,
ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.
And we take you through the process
of setting everything up.
And then in that training, we have our affiliate links
for ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.
So again, it's something where you're able
to come from that place of:
How do I help people with this stuff?
How do I help them with a buying decision
or using the product and service?
Then it kind of becomes a no brainer
for some of them to click through
and use your affiliate link
when they do take action with that.
Now there's lots of different types
of affiliate programs out there and how they're structured
and how they pay out.
Some of them will give you a one-time fee
for sending over a lead onto the website,
or most likely a conversion where someone is signing up
and purchasing a product or a service,
and there's also the recurring affiliates as well.
These are more common if it is a monthly fee
that someone is paying that it can be a percentage
of that monthly fee that you're able to receive.
Now, sponsorships is another model
that you could quite easily start with,
but it's something that we've generally avoided.
We receive emails daily with new sponsorship opportunities,
but most of them aren't a fit.
And even the ones that are,
we generally turn down any way,
because even though we wouldn't skew our opinions
for any review or any sponsor.
We don't want to even create that perception that we would.
So it's a whole stream of income
that we really haven't touched.
Instead though, we find affiliates are a great balance.
We're completely free to change our recommendations.
There's absolutely no obligations.
And it's clear to the viewers
that we haven't been paid to say something,
not that we'd ever do it.
Some quick wins for any beginners
or someone just starting out with affiliate marketing
come from that place of:
How do I add value?
How do I help people?
Look at the tools, the systems, the software,
the physical things that you are using day-to-day
that help you, that you would share to your best friends,
your family members,
that your ideal audience needs to know about
and write out a list of those.
Then you can go and research and see which ones of those
already have their affiliate programs set up.
And you can normally do that
either with a quick Google search
or just by going to the bottom of their websites
and looking for the affiliate programs or partner programs.
Now we have a few videos on this channel
around affiliate marketing and how to get set up,
best practices, do's and don'ts.
I definitely suggest checking those out,
they'll be linked in the description below.
So those are the three income sources
we have right now at Primal Video
that are bringing us in over a million dollars a year.
If you notice, there was no consulting
or one-on-one stuff on there.
We used to do it,
and I still recommend it as a great revenue stream
for anyone who is starting out.
But if I bring up some fancy graphs and charts now,
then I can show you how our income breakdown
has evolved over the years,
and I can show you the different income streams
that we haven't discussed yet.
So let's go back in time to 2016
and let's have a look at our income streams at that point.
So the bulk of our revenue at that point
was from consulting and video production work.
This is where we also started dabbling
with digital products.
This is long before our Accelerator Programs.
This is where we were selling
the green screen backgrounds and the green screen course.
You can also see at this point
that affiliate revenue and YouTube ads
were almost non-existent.
Fast-forwarding a year,
you can see that consulting and production
has decreased down to around 73 1/2%,
but we increased our digital product sales
to around 11 1/2%,
our affiliate revenue increased to around 10 1/2%,
and YouTube ads was making up just under 5%
of our revenue at that point.
And as we continue through to 2018, 2019, 2020,
you can consistently see
the consulting and the production work
dropping off to nothing.
Those digital products we phased out.
And this is where we started to introduce
our Accelerator program.
And at the same time,
we were steadily increasing our affiliate revenue
and our YouTube ad revenue as well.
And that's what we continued through into 2021 as well.
So you can see here how we started off
with the one-on-one stuff, the consulting stuff
really making up the bulk of the revenue in our business
and how over time we were able to phase it out
as the higher leverage income started kicking in.
Now, for those of you who haven't started yet,
or you're just at the early stages
then I want you to remember that,
yes, this wasn't an overnight thing.
You've seen now that it takes years
to kind of build this stuff out.
These high leverage revenue streams,
they do take some time to kick in.
But if you're looking to bring in more money now,
to start building this,
then we started back doing the more coaching,
the consulting, the done-for-you services,
where I was filming and creating videos,
where I was freelancing.
And these are the things that you can do
to bring fast money in the door,
trading your time for money.
And while you're doing that,
you can start to build out some of these more high leverage,
less trading time for money things,
things like affiliate marketing
that you can start from day one,
but they will take some time to kick in
and to stop paying off big time.
Now, I can't finish a video on revenue and making money
without highlighting the biggest thing
that's allowed us to grow the streams,
and that's email marketing and automation.
This is where at a high level, when someone opts in,
when they enter their email address
to receive one of our free PDF guides, checklist,
or exclusive training,
we're able to automatically send them out emails
over a period of time
with links back to our existing video content
that's relevant or related to the thing
that that user has opted in for.
So if it was a video editing checklist
or a video editing guide,
then we're able to send them links to more videos
specifically on video editing.
So this drives traffic back to our YouTube channel,
and it benefits the viewers by sharing them out content
that they likely hadn't seen before,
but we know is going to be a fit for them.
Plus in these emails,
we're also sharing out the tools and the services
that we know will help get them results as well,
and these can be affiliate links.
This is something that really accelerates results
for our email subscribers and income for our business.
It also allows us to link to,
and to easily share out about our Accelerator Program
when the doors are open.
And again, all of this can be completely automated
and just happening 24/7 whenever someone hops in
or joins your email list.
Now the top two tools that we recommend
that will help you build all of this out,
are ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.
Now, to help you really quickly decide,
if you're someone who identifies as tech-averse,
someone just looking for simplicity
but still once a lot of those features,
then I would say, go with ConvertKit.
Whereas if you're someone who loves the tech,
loves all the features, loves all the control,
loves to be able to dive into the nitty-gritty
and customize everything up,
then that's where ActiveCampaign will be the fit for you.
Now, I did mention this a little bit earlier as an example,
but we actually have training on how to get started
with both ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign
and how you can start growing and building your email list,
because this is such a critical element
of building a real business
and maximizing sustainable passive income.
And it's also a really great case study
to see a lot of what we've been talking about in this video
and to see it all in action,
including how we use affiliate links
and how we always focus on adding value
and helping our subscribers.
So I definitely suggest checking that out.
There's also now a link on screen,
and don't forget about the amazing list of resources
all around growing your income,
growing your YouTube channel, growing your YouTube business
that are linked in the description box below.
I'll see you in the next one.