Alright so this is update number four of 12 of my attempt of trying to go from
zero dollars to one million dollars in earned revenue in 12 months
What's up everyone my name is Ben and welcome to rareliquid a channel where I
draw from my experience as a former JP Morgan investment banking analyst
to cover tech investing and career advice. In case you are new to these
update videos, at the beginning of each month, I provide a progress
update of my attempt of trying to go from zero to one million dollars in 12
months and really it's not about necessarily
hitting the goal but really showing you how I build rareliquid in real time,
but of course hitting that goal would be nice. If you have been following my
journey so far you know that in update number one
I gave myself a less than five percent chance of being able to hit the goal
and update number two I gave myself a five percent chance
and in update number three I gave myself again back to less than five percent
chance because I had a pretty subpar April. Today in the review of
may's results basically I would give myself now a five to ten percent chance
of being able to hit my goal I have gotten some more extra confidence
because I've had a pretty solid month and why don't we just go straight into
that. Alright so today's agenda looks like this I'll first
discuss May's results, I'll then go over some strategy updates,
some reflections on my journey so far, and end with some giveaway info
First up, let's go over May's results. If you have been following my updates then
this chart should look pretty familiar and green means that the goal has been
met red means that it hasn't been met and yellow means that I'm somewhat in
between and that's pretty much how I would define the month of May
In terms of subscribers I saw a 14,452 subscriber jump which really
breathed life into this whole documentary and made
hitting 1 million dollars slightly more probable. As you see in April I only grew
by about 1,700 subscribers which is less than the 4,600 or so I gained in March
so I was pretty concerned in my last update
As you could probably guess the subscriber count is really what drives
my entire business pretty much right now and so that's why I was pretty concerned
last month when the progress was a little bit slow and
actually decelerating but we had a pretty good month in May
and I'll kind of go more into how exactly that happened
in a few moments. But going back to the chart with the increase in subs and
video views on my page, I was able to earn 4,188 from YouTube
ADs, which was just really mind blowing to me
as we blew past the three thousand dollar goal
looking at my youtube analytics, you can see that I had a huge peak in the middle
of the month for views, watch time, subscribers, and revenue,
and all of it really is the result of this
one video that went viral on how I spent my JP Morgan investment banking salary
That video got 406,449 views in May and a lot of the other banking-related
videos on my channel also did pretty well
At the peak I gained 1,900 subscribers in one day
and about $417 which was just wild and I really couldn't believe it was happening
to be honest Another probably interesting fact for
you is that one video with about 400k views earned me $2,745
in YouTube ad revenue I think the video did well because it
might just be kind of a more innately interesting topic and
applicable to a lot more people rather than a lot of my other investing videos
or other career related videos that are
kind of more niche. Going back to the chart as a result of that video
and just the month in general, I also saw a really big increase in Patreon from
358 dollars to $1,492 and it would have been great to hit the
1500 goal but I do think hitting next month's goal
may be possible if I'm able to hit my subscriber goals. The payout for this
month was $1,492 as you can see here but currently on patreon it shows $1,033
and this isn't because I lost a lot of patreons
but because the settings on patreon are set so that those who
sign up are charged right away and then all users are again charged on
the first of every month thereafter This wasn't the setting that I had
before but I noticed that a good number of patreons that were
signing up just kind of signed up kind of looked at all the information I had
on Discord and my buy sell alerts and things like that
and then would kind of de-pledge so that's why I made this change
Like I've said in previous videos, I'm really trying to make my Patreon the
most valuable and kind of bang for your buck
Patreon that exists for investing and one really important key update is
that I signed a distribution agreement with Factset which is an institutional
level kind of financial database that I used
even at my time at JP Morgan and costs the average individual investor 15,000
a year. I send a weekly financial database that I personally use myself
all downloaded from FactSet and obviously I'm biased but I think
that this weekly database itself is pretty much worth it to sign up for
my Patreon for those who kind of know what these
financial figures mean and are interested in doing some research
themselves Over the coming weeks, I'm also working
on a newsletter that I'll be sending out There will be a free version and also
will be special ones for patrons according to
their tiers so I think the Patreon in general will be a lot more stickier as
time goes on with more and more that I add to it and
so yeah we'll see how it goes moving forward in the next few months
Now going back to the chart I severely missed the affiliate and sponsors goal,
but let me explain why I'm optimistic about hitting next month's goal
Over the past month or so I've gotten more than 20 requests
from sponsors but I've been really really super picky because I only want
to promote products that I would either use myself or currently use myself
With that said I currently have five sponsors lined up that want to
sponsor 60 second ads in my videos and multiple
videos for some of them, and they're offering somewhere between $500 to $1,000
per video and so that's why I think I can hit the $3,500
goal in June. I know that ads in videos is not super ideal but I do plan to make
all of the ads that I do super well integrated
into the videos so that it's hopefully helpful also to viewers who are get to
be introduced to some products that I
personally use myself and also I think I'm pretty committed to
just trying to make it a win-win for sponsors and myself and the viewers just
because you know the more people that convert,
the better it is for the sponsors and the
more that they will be willing to pay in the future but also you know from my
previous business with Asthetic Studios which was a
clothing business, I worked with over 90 influencers and sometimes I
would send them clothes and they wouldn't even post on their
instagrams or TikToks or whatever uh with the clothes on and that was just
super super frustrating so I'm really committed
in being a really really good partner for sponsors and
yeah hopefully over the next few months or so
I'll see what kind of feedback I get if people
think that the ads are a little bit too much maybe I'll you know try to take
some of them out or you know we'll see how that goes but
it's a new part of the business and I'm kind of excited to see how it goes
The other thing I wanted to mention was about affiliate links and I didn't
actually even know that I was gaining some
pretty decent traction with affiliate links until I started putting this video
together I have links that I leave in my video
descriptions and for the companies you see here when people use these links I
get free money through Bitcoin, Stocks, or cash
I'm going to be updating all the previous descriptions in my previous
videos with the new affiliate programs I've signed up for
and so in addition to the sponsors that I'll be working with
in June, I feel relatively confident I guess that we'll be hitting the $3,500
goal for sponsors and affiliates in the month of June. Once again going back to
the chart though I haven't started the courses or clothing part of the business
yet so there's no revenue there but one important thing to note is that
I think the courses will almost 100 percent be pushed back by two
to three months This is just because I've been pretty
busy over the past few months so I haven't
been able to make a lot of progress with the courses so far, so I just think that
it'll take some time and I also want to make sure that it's a really really
really good course and something that's really worth the
money and so I'd rather have a really great fantastic product versus something
that I really just push out there to try to
hit my revenue goals. As a reminder I'm not going to be changing any of the
initial goals I set out in my first video so they'll be
consistently the same throughout all of the update videos
and overall in the month of May, I was able to hit $5,849 dollars which was super
super close to the $6,000 goal. In general, even though I didn't
necessarily hit my goal for the month of may
I am pretty excited about the progress made so far and I have a lot of really
good videos in the pipeline for the month of June,
and so I think there's a good chance I'll be able to hit this next upcoming
month's goals Next up, let me provide three key
strategy updates the first one is that I decided to stop
translating the captions into other languages
Over the past few months and as I kind of stated in my previous update videos I
hired translators who would translate our captions from
English to Korean and Chinese and we were just putting a lot of
resources and energy into this we were posting on some korean blogs and
things like that we got a little bit of traction here and
there but basically didn't really see enough
from all the money being put in and all the time into it so
basically I decided to kind of just not focus on that and think
more about and work on what has been working. The second strategy update
is a pretty big one and it said I decided to focus rareliquid on two
niches which is tech investing and career advice and I
know I was kind of already kind of making these kinds of videos before
but beforehand I was kind of just making whatever videos I felt like
and now I decided to really commit to to these two niches
and you know I think there's a lot of pros and cons to this I think if you
only have one niche then YouTube can much more easily feed your
videos to the right audience, but your growth might be a little bit
capped and with two niches you kind of have the opposite problem where the
youtube algorithm might be a little bit confused
when they try to push your videos to different kinds of audiences in your
subscriber base, but at the same time I think in the long
run if I'm able to pull it off, it will provide more opportunities for
growth. And the last thing I'll mention about this probably is just that
you know I think the two niches that I have of kind of finance
and investment banking career stuff and the tech investing side
do have some overlaps so I think that I can make it work and you know we'll see
of course how it goes over these next few months. To keep things organized, I'll
be posting career related videos on the weekends
and stock and crypto and tech investing type related videos on the weekdays
and in addition to this, I also started a rareliquid careers
Patreon and Discord- no one has signed up for it yet as of today because I haven't
been really pushing it too hard but hopefully over time I can build it out
and it'll be an additional revenue stream
The third strategy update is that I decided to focus on less marketing
channels and really kind of hone in on the ones that have
been working or are the ones that I think are most important
In my last video I had 14 different marketing channels but that was really
spreading things out way too thinly and now I'll be focusing on these top five
channels here and the remaining three whenever I have
the time. The one channel that I haven't really talked about before
is the newsletters and I haven't started sending any out yet
but actually hired someone to join the team to help out with this
and I'm pretty excited for it I think he's gonna do a great job and basically
over the next two weeks or so you should be
getting newsletters if you have signed up for it- if you haven't already check
out the link in the description below Next up I wanted to share some
reflections I've had on the journey so far
The first one is that truthfully, I kind of oscillate between the
idea of whether or not this whole documentary is kind of a good thing for
me or a bad thing I think it's especially true when things
aren't going super super well like last month
or I mean the month of April where I really was
super far from hitting my goals and then in the month of May everything was going
kind of great and so it was kind of like easier for me to
digest and you know really want to post about this
documentary but you know in the next few months or six months you know
the goals that I have laid out are really really ambitious you know I'm not
super confident or trying to get you know all cocky that
just because I had one good month, I'm gonna be able to like you know scale
up to all the numbers that I have because it's not easy- I need to keep
producing really good content and I need to you know build out this space
and there's no guarantees that it's gonna happen
On the good side of things, having all these goals made public kind of really
helps keep me disciplined, motivated, and always
thinking about you know keeping myself accountable and I
actually think that's pretty good thing, but on the opposite end of the spectrum
you know it kind of forces me sometimes to make sure that
I'm producing content and things like that and
I got pretty tired at the end of May and so I actually didn't post for
almost a week and now I feel energized you know I'm better and
kind of ready to keep producing good content so you know I'm not too worried
about like burning out or anything because I really do enjoy building out
rareliquid I think I just kind of needed to take a break
and so yeah there are some good and bad parts to just publicizing this whole
documentary and I think overall though, I would say
that it is a net positive because it does you know really keep me
motivated and going and I think also the more important thing is
looking back after this whole you know journey is over
I'm going to be able to see all of you know the progress I've made
and all the real-time updates that I have, right? And so
you know I think it'll just be maybe a little bit nostalgic and just basically
something good to look back on The second reflection that I've had is
that I'm increasingly realizing that time is my most valuable asset
Now I think this is something that's true for everyone, this is just something
I'm personally bringing up right now because
my channel is not even really that big in the grand scheme of things and
compared to other channels but I've just been getting so many requests
on linkedin, instagram dms, discord, you know
everywhere people are kind of constantly asking me
questions and things like that and sometimes you know I can't reply or I'll
just you know delete an email it makes me feel really bad and
I used to reply to you know every single YouTube comment, every single message
that I got, and now it's kind of kind of realized that if I
don't prioritize the other more important things like
you know focusing on producing really good content which is the number one
priority, then you know I'm not going to be able
to grow the community or build out the business in the way that I want to so
you know if you're part of the Patreon or Discord community you know and also
in some a lot of the YouTube comments I still do reply
whenever I have the time so you know it's not like I'm not replying to
anything but yeah overall I'm just realizing that I
need to really really prioritize them really really important things. The
third reflection that I have is that I'm just pretty amazed at the power of this
YouTube business Especially compared to my previous
entrepreneurial experience Asthetic Studios where I
started a fashion brand, you know, when I was burning through a ton of cash
and in order to produce products every six months show the world okay here are
the clothing products I have and then you know here crickets crickets no one
buying anything you know it's like a six month feedback loop
versus something like YouTube where I post a video and someone
instantly tells me if they like it or don't like it through either comments or
liking the button or disliking and you know not only that
but there's like almost zero cost if I really wanted to for this business as
well so it's really like asset-light, meaning like you know I already bought
my camera I have my computer if I really wanted to I could just be a
one-man show and do everything myself and basically have
zero cost except just my own food and whatever right? And so yeah it's just
crazy that I could scale this business up to a certain degree, now of course
I personally don't think that you know doing it all by myself is the way to go
because I want to grow things a lot bigger and a lot faster
so I've hired people out and things like that I paid for software services like I
mentioned FactSet which are kind of relatively expensive and I'm
going to be adding a few more kind of investing
related software that's also kind of expensive so
um basically you know but in general I guess what I'm trying to say is that
I feel like YouTube or content creation you know I think if you are someone who
is maybe in the rat race or is kind of stuck in the nine to five kind of thing
and you're just thinking about oh whether or not I should create content,
I really really think it's worth it. To be honest I never
never never thought that I'd be a full-time content creator having a
public persona and everything at the beginning it was just so weird to
me and it kind of I guess still is, I'm only
four months into this journey so I'm still relatively
small channel and not a lot of people know me or whatever so
you know I don't really even care about becoming an influencer or anything like
that- that was never never my goal I just want to create some really really
good content and I think having a big subscriber count and whatnot
is kind of proof that I would be able to create
good content right? And I think that's what kind of excites me, it's not like
I'm a super hot, good looking girl or
anything like that right so anyway I don't know why I went on
that tangent, basically what I'm trying to say is that
if you are thinking about making content I think TikTok or
YouTube are really the best two channels right now, and if you can get over that
hump of just getting your face out there and you know
creating content or whatever I think that it's a super super great
business that you can scale up pretty well
um really great opportunity for a lot of people no matter who you are
Last up, let's talk about giveaways and how to get some free money
In my last update video, I promised to give away 10%
of my May youtube earnings and that came out to $584.90
I found this random comment picker for instagram and so
as you can see our winner is
@saturatedpositivity and so if that's you please dm me on instagram and I will
send you your winnings Okay now let's talk about how you can
get some free money. First of all, for June's giveaway I'll still be giving
away 10% but splitting it up into two pieces
The first portion will be five percent that I give away
and look for this Warren Buffett picture on my instagram it's gonna be
pretty much the same thing that I did for my last instagram giveaway- just
follow the account like the picture and
tag three friends and there's unlimited entries. For the remaining five percent I
mentioned in my previous update video I think my
first one that I wanted to be able to generate a lot of revenue and money and
basically give away as much of it as I could as well, and so
I'm gonna be starting a minI kind of scholarship fund
for this starting with this first five percent later on I'll try to
make everything more legit but for now just check out the Google survey link in
the description below and it'll be only for those who are
students in high school or undergrad, and later on you know I'll try
to do some verification to make sure that whoever the winner is
you know is a student and in addition to the giveaway basically, I'll also
be offering a one hour kind of career
consultation with me Of course, you don't have to chat with
me if you don't want to but just something that I wanted to offer in
addition as well In addition to the giveaway as I have
mentioned in my previous videos I give ten dollars to the first commenter and a
random comment, so here are our winners for today and so if
that's you just dm me on instagram and I'll send you the cash
Lastly, you can earn ten dollars in bitcoin if you sign up for Coinbase or
Gemini using my link in the description below
You can also sign up for Weeble or Moomoo and you'll be able to get some
free stock and there's some other affiliate links down there below
and for ways for you to get some free money so check those out in the
description if you're interested With that said, that concludes the video
I hope you found this journey so far interesting
and yeah thank you so much for tuning in as always- hope to catch you in the next
one Peace out