did you ever wonder how much people actually make on youtube well after making a thousand dollars
here maybe three thousand dollars there and last year well over six figures today i'm going to let
you know in this video how much money i made on youtube last year now i struggled in actually
doing this video i actually said man do i want to do it do i not want to do it but then i remembered
something when i was starting off with youtube i was inspired by all the different creators that
were sharing how much money they were making as a result of staying consistent and showing up every
day to do youtube and i'm like you know if they can do it maybe i could so then i thought well
why not share my results with you to pass that inspiration forward and that's exactly what we're
doing in today's video because you know i'm just an average everyday guy and i want to help inspire
you get the results that you deserve and live your ultimate suite life so before i share my
overall income from this past year it's important to talk about what we've done in the past because
i've been on youtube for a long period of time a lot of people think that youtube is an overnight
success that all of a sudden these creators are coming out of the woodwork and they're
making thousands of dollars some people do but you know if you're the average everyday person
it might be a little bit of a struggle and it was for me i've been on youtube for 10 years
i actually started my youtube channel in 2011 and started posting consistently in 2013. this
channel actually started a little bit different than it is today it actually started as a fitness
channel but not only just a fitness channel it was a fitness channel specifically made to talk about
products within the beachbody organization you know p90x insanity and things like that
so really the idea behind the channel was i was doing some product reviews in the hope that that
would transition people over to buy programs in 2020 i decided you know what there's something
i'm a little bit more passionate about and i'm very very passionate about personal finance
so i thought you know what why don't i actually become a youtuber instead of just being like this
product guy on youtube i'm actually gonna become a youtuber and help people with their personal
finance right here on youtube so september 2020 i totally pivoted the channel away from fitness
with the focus of personal finance right now here we are at 118 000 subscribers as of the recording
of this video thank you all so much i really appreciate you and this amazing community but you
look back here look here it's like june 11 2012 and i had four total subscribers let's be honest
two of those were probably other channels that i owned subscribing to myself comment down below if
you're a youtuber who has done that you know we all have as we flash forward here we are in 2015
and i was super excited i had 3178 subscribers but look ahead here for a second look at this graph
way up here in 2021 you can see a sudden spike up and another sudden spike up to where we are today
well and i think it has to do with what i'm going to share with you in today's video about how to
actually do the right things when it comes down to youtube so that you can actually see this kind of
growth instead of this long boring graph that i was dealing with between 2012 and 2020 before i
pivoted the channel so let's start right back there so in 20 i think it was 2014 right here
we are you can see that my top content was things like p90x versus insanity p90x3 shakeology stuff
like that and you can see the total revenue at that period in 2014 all of 2014 was 1 191.92
certainly not something to leave your job and do this full-time because the ad rates were not as
high because i was only talking about programs and products that i was trying to get people to
ultimately go over to the website and buy right so if we go over here to the estimated revenue look
at what has actually happened i didn't actually turn on monetization until august of 2014. now
the reason i didn't turn on monetization was actually because i had it shut off by my own
desire now back in those days you actually didn't need to have 1 000 subscribers as a minimum
and 4 000 hours of watch time in order to get paid on youtube in fact you were able to get monetized
almost right outside the gate but i decided to shut it off because i didn't want people
to actually be annoyed by the ads on my videos but then i thought well what if i just turn it on and
we'll see how it goes well i didn't realize that as soon as i did that i would make like five
dollars a day there's a seven dollars every day and i'm like well that's kind of fun look at that
fifteen dollars in one day and i thought that's a kind of a fun way just to add some extra revenue
into what i'm doing every day but it got so much better as we moved on here we are in 2018 at two
thousand three hundred and dollars and then let's jump ahead to 2019 we hit apply and right here we
are 2052 total of 490 000 views in 2019 again this is all focused on the fitness channel in
2020 you can see i had a total of 840 000 views 4 500 hours of watch time and 3 400 new subscribers
now you're gonna see a big bump up here but back in these days that was during the pandemic
everybody was locked down and it was kind of funny because people started referencing my old fitness
videos because they were locked down and they were looking for some type of fitness program to start
but right around september right about here at the end of september i decided to announce that i was
pivoting the channel and focusing specifically on being an actual youtuber and you can see what has
happened now it took a little bit of time for my videos to catch on but then right around the end
of 2020 i started getting more views as a result i also started getting more money look at the
difference here so in 2020 made a total of 10 259 starting out you know back here i was making like
18 20 which was actually kind of good every single day but then at the end of the year look what
happens i start making 62 dollars a day all the way up to 100 a day look at that 142 dollars i'll
tell you when i started this i'm like oh my god i just made 142 dollars in one day this is actually
possible oh my gosh but i will tell you the honest truth and the honest truth is this was frustrating
it was consistently frustrating because i had to stick to a plan i still got a full-time job i got
a family to watch after so i had to sit here and say okay i have to stick to being consistent with
uploading new content every day that my audience actually wants to watch and that is tip number one
for you if you're an aspiring youtuber don't just put out videos that you think are going to be cool
put out videos that actually are being searched for well how do you know what videos are actually
being searched for well there's a couple things i've done first of all i looked around at what
some of the other finance youtubers were doing let's say you're passionate about fitness and
you're actually going to help people with fitness and not just promote programs like i was doing
well look around what other fitness youtubers are doing try to duplicate some of their success
to start off at that point you'll start getting some views and your audience will let you know
what they want to watch next look at the comments see what they're saying see what they're watching
and duplicate that success but you've got to do it consistently and that can be very hard if you've
got a full-time job you've got a lot of different responsibilities you got to decide to commit to
say i'm going to do this at a minimum of 2 three four times a week whatever that needs to be so
that i can start building my youtube audience another great thing that you can use is using
a tool like vid iq now vid iq is not sponsoring this video at all but i do have an affiliate link
in the description below what i've used since i started this in 2020 is vid iq i can search for
certain keywords or certain topics that i'm maybe thinking about doing from a video perspective
vid iq will break down all the data about how many average searches per month happen on youtube as
well as what the interest score would be based on the video topic that you're looking at doing
this gives you additional data and on top of that helps you ensure that you're titling your
video correctly that you're adding the right type of tags in it and that you're putting the
right type of stuff in your description if you're a youtuber and you're not using a tool like vid iq
check it out i'll include a link down in the description below now youtube is very spotty
you can see right here it shows like i did some videos here and there but actually this data isn't
always accurate so i actually started tracking it myself within excel i was also not being
consistent look at this in january of 2017 i only did one video followed up by absolutely no videos
from february to june then i did five in july and august and then one in september and october that
is extremely inconsistent so of course people are going to start to forget about you look at this
10 videos in january 7 in february 8 in march 10 in april 14 in may consistency consistency
consistency you got to keep paying it forward and doing what your audience is expecting and then the
moment you're all waiting for it what does 2021 bring well things change significantly in 2021
and it was absolutely amazing with all the work and all the sacrifice and all the frustration
let me be honest with you how many times my camera shut off in the middle of me
how much my audio shut off in the middle of me doing something how many times my computer
started acting up in the middle of trying to edit a video these are the frustrations that
you may see but you gotta power through them and trust me there's gonna be days you don't want to
there has been days i'm like why am i doing this i have i'm absolutely insane because i have so
much going on in my life on top of my youtube career this is absolutely insane why am i doing
this but it paid off and let's look behind the curtain to see what that looks like so in 2021
got a total of 4.4 million views highly targeted finance content i did a total of 142 videos in
2021 scattered out throughout the entire year 439 000 hours of watch time 83 000 subscribers
added thank you and welcome to all of you and the overall revenue from adsense in 2021 was a total
of a hundred and thirty thousand three hundred and thirty seven dollars i'm not messing with you
i'll click on it this isn't photoshop i'm actually behind the scenes recording my screen so 130 000
earned again a lot of sacrifice this isn't easy money a lot of people think it's easy money trust
me trust me it's not it's not easy money um my top content for what really helped generate that
was really the investment side of things you know you had the investment apps how do you use your
debit card versus how do you use your credit card things like how do you use the robinhood app we
talk about etfs we talk about stocks those are the type of things that made me the most money
at the end of the year there was a big hype over certain things such as the investment apps certain
etfs and also cryptocurrency really blew up in october of 2021. i will say my cryptocurrency
videos especially chibi inu that actually didn't make as much money as people think it did what
what actually happened is i had such a foundation of all my investment videos that were pumping
on top of the fact that i had the shiba inu content and that really blew us up as far as the
overall estimated revenue and views but that's not everything because on top of the adsense revenue
of 130 000 i also did sponsorships and i did affiliates and things like that and that stuff's
really important to think about as well here's how this all tallied up now i can't give you specifics
because i want to maintain the private nature of these particular sponsorships and these affiliate
revenues but let's say for example you're going to talk about something well if you're going to
talk about something that involves a product let's say you're going to talk about how to better clean
your kitchen and you find an incredible solution you know some type of cleaning material to clean
your kitchen well why not go on something like amazon see if that cleaning material exists
and then use that as an affiliate link that way you can say hey i'm gonna share some value with
my audience about this particular cleaning product that i found and by the way if you're interested
in buying a cleaning product i have an affiliate link down in the description below it's up to
your viewer if they want to click that link or not but if they do you earn a little bit of a kickback
based on the value that you provided your audience so let's break that down so outside of the 130
000 that we just talked about on youtube here's the other breakdown total amount of sponsorships
total amount of affiliate revenue and that overall equals a total of 260 836 dollars now i got to say
i am completely humbled by that i'm blown away by that i cannot believe that here's a guy that was
trying to for like 10 years figure out how to make money online right i was doing the beachbody thing
i had a youtube channel you saw i was only making about like you know a couple thousand dollars a
year a couple hundred dollars a month and you know on top of that i wasn't making a whole lot on the
back end of promoting the products either and i'm like you know at the same time i'm also not
really that passionate about continuing to talk about products i want to actually help people and
even if it's something that they get for free like we talk about how to use your credit card
the right way well that i don't make money on i just talk about the fact that here's how i use
my credit card and hopefully it inspires you and hopefully it helps you to do it yourself and it
that's all i do i'm not trying to say you need to necessarily buy something off of me i'm just
saying here's what i do and then as a result yeah you're going to make some adsense revenue
now i took most of this money and i reinvested it and i also paid down debt significantly this has
been a complete blessing and that's what i used it for so technically i don't even have any of this
money left over anymore but that's kind of what's cool about these side hustles if you really focus
on the grind if you're okay showing up every night after work if you're okay doing it once the kids
go to sleep you know that consistency can pay off it may take a long time it may be extremely
frustrating i had to learn a ton of stuff so i hope this video inspired you i'll come back
again at the end of this year and let you know how 2022 is going but until then i'll continue
to show up every day and bring you great personal finance content for your everyday life hey if
you want to check out another cool video right here it is and we'll see you on the next video