My Journey to Becoming a Best-Selling, World-Famous YouTuber

New month, new data.

• January 2024
• 8 videos (0)
• 2 shorts (+1)
• 2327 subscribers (+191)
• 16.4K views (+2.3K)
• 1.2K watch time (0K) +2.2K shorts views +1.2K post views
• +191 subs (-52)
• $43.69 AdSense revenue (-$10.32)
• 49 Patrons (+8)
• 12 Paying Patrons (+5)
• $51 Patreon Revenue (+$21)
• $0 TeeSpring (-27.36) - 0 sales, 0 items
• $130.94 Total Revenue (-$60.04)

Last month was level to growing on most metrics as far as views, reach, etc, but the AdSense was down ~20% again, which is the 4th month in a row. It's clear that Google/YouTube/AdSense is completely screwing up. The new ad policies are alienating viewers, ad blockers are getting more aggressive, and the ad payouts are dropping like a rock. If this keeps up, it might not be worth being on YT anymore.

Moving on, the other channel got 2 videos and 1 short for $45.25 in ad revenue, totaling $176.19, a $14.79 drop from last month. The lack of teespring sales really hurt. *However*, I did add a new service on my Patreon for paying patrons to order custom sorted bits (extra parts to convert minis, like extra model car parts) and I made $100 worth of sales in January for that, making my overall total $276.19.

For February, I'm trying something for the "Shortest Month" by doing a Short everyday. Looking at the very specific metrics (YT is actually great about supplying all the data very granular), the Shorts are about the only thing that is still doing well on ads (likely because the Shorts ads are all skippable after 5 seconds, so nobody is running away from them).

Oh, also, I *finally* got paid by Amazon for referrals, and they kept $15 to process the check. Now that I received a single payment, I was able to change to DD into a bank account with no fees. That really sucked.

I also did 1 stream on Twitch for 90 minutes, averaging 3.5 viewers, 15 unique, and 8 new followers. Might have to switch to a lot more streaming.

Are we linking to our social media here? yes? no?

My wife has been a Blogger for over 10 years.  It's a blog about camping and camping recipes.   The key is "owning" your own platform.  you don't Own yourtube, you are at their mercy as to what pays and what doesn't pay.  they will change it without notice.

With Blogging, my wife owns everything.  She has an ad curation company solicit ads on her behalf, the split is 90% and 10%, my wife gets the 90% (actually it is now 91%).  She selects what types of ads run so, no cigarettes, no alcohol, stuff like that.

The blog in 2020 earned enough to buy us our Motorhome, she payed for it outright with cash.  In the months of May, June, and July it is not uncommon to have a single $1000 day in revenue, though there are never back to back days over $1000.  

The problem is that it is seasonal, camping is a summer activity and she has to make hay while the sun shines.  Dec-April are dismal earnings, but averaged over the year with the good months it earns enough that we had to hire a tax lawyer and we settle taxes with the state and fed governments every quarter. 

The other way to get paid is through sponsorship.  Have your videos sponsored by someone or some company.  We use to work with "gorving.com" but they required too much of our time and we have put them on hiatus for now.  The terms of payment were good, but required us to go to only places they had standing contracts with like "Jellystone" campgrounds and we were more "state and national park" people.

See if you can get sponsorships, that's where the big youtubers make money, not from the youtube overlords, but from sponsored content.

Currently we have a child going off to college in the fall and the plan is to have the blog pay for that, so we have been putting money away for the last few years.

In reply to EricM :

That's amazing! Could you link her blog please?

 letscampsmore.com

You will see me on there too, I'm the one with the beard.....

This blog post is our "heavy hitter" it gets cross posted to some big facbook camping groups every year and drives 60% of our income by itself https://letscampsmore.com/smores-nachos/

It was a process to get the blog as successful as it is, the first few years most months earned like $100 a month, but then in 2019 the post above got found by a person on facebook who had thousands of followers and she linked it.  Since then Google has ranked us as "domain authority on camping and camp recipes" 

I'm about to launch my YouTube career and this thread is helpful. My final motivation was editing my first ever video for my sons 1st grade project. I'm ready. Hope the world is ready for my ugly mug. 

Scotty Con Queso said:

I'm about to launch my YouTube career and this thread is helpful. My final motivation was editing my first ever video for my sons 1st grade project. I'm ready. Hope the world is ready for my ugly mug. 

Post it when it's live!