A Masterclass on How YouTubers Actually Make Money

what's up everyone sarahi a rhymes with PG here today we're going to kind of do a uh what did I write in my notes framework for starting a business as a creative Master Class A lot of this is based from my experience and as much as I would love all of these Twitter questions and Instagram questions to be about the craft of video making about video editing about filming about The Artsy side of things most of the questions that people have whether it's you guys or I'm in the back of an Uber is how do you make money with this so I thought I would drop kind of like a framework that I've had in my brain talk about some of my experiences and the goal is that well one everyone has to go through their own experiences and so a lot of this you have to try and you learn through failure but my my main goal is that maybe I save you some time maybe you don't have to have as much failure as I've had throughout the past decade and you know I can save you a few failures because you listen to the smart Sarah peachy girl and hey man free 99 you don't have to pay anything but thank you to our sponsor printful for making this possible we are going to be talking about making money as a Creator today and well if you need to make merch where you have complete control but you don't have to take on the headache of having inventory and doing everything yourself printful is a way to do it it's what I use and I should definitely have my phone on silent how unprofessional me more about them later okay let's get into this I even we're going to take we're going to have some notes in this video okay so as I was trying to put my anecdotes and life lessons into more of a structure I actually went to a few YouTube subreddits to see what people had the most questions about and honestly it was a lot about brand deals and AdSense and I think AdSense is the obvious one so you make a YouTube channel you get ads on that YouTube channel after you meet certain requirements and then YouTube puts an ad in front of your video and you get a split of that rev share now that's probably the most obvious way to make money on YouTube and I will say it's not the easiest because in order to make a living from that you need scale you need a ton of views and so that's why this video is going to focus on pretty much everything else that you can monetize with as an online creator doesn't have to be a YouTuber you could be a writer have an email newsletter so that's kind of where I want to get the juices flowing there for example my YouTube channel is based around me so there's a face to it a personality to it and the type of videos that I make attract Brands so I'm not focused on the sheer scale of how many videos I can put out how many views I can get per month to Rack in the AdSense I'm more focused on like you know having a cohesive brand that a brand would want to sponsor a piece of content of mine right and so my YouTube AdSense is actually not a lot at all you can get as low as 1,000 and I would say the average is like 2 to 3,000 a month now if you're new to this world you might say oh my gosh what that's that's crazy crazy money and it is if you told High School Sarah that I could make that just off of YouTube AdSense I would freak out but the reality is like this job can actually be you know kind of expensive as you hire Freelancers or full-time people and you know you got to keep up with the flow and buying gear and stuff I mean I don't have to buy I buy a lot of camera gear so you know I got to do some extra stuff so that's why we're going to be talking about like the three stages because hopefully this video is helpful for you if you're just starting out with this whole online content creation thing or maybe you have some momentum and you're wondering hey how can I take this side hustle and like actually make it into a real thing so here's my little chart here so these are going to be like the three stages so we got freelancer we have Services Agency then we have selling a product these are kind of the steps that I've taken through my Online Career throughout the past decade and then I was like I feel like this is a good framework for honestly anyone and some important context for what we're going to be talking about when I say building a business we are talking about a lifestyle business okay so there are several different kinds of businesses you know you can't fit every single business into like this pretty two category situation but people consider lifestyle businesses something that is just very minimal you know you don't need a ton of employees but the revenue is going to kind of like top out at around a million dollar okay you're not striving for more of that but you're just like hey if I can make six figures with something that I love to do something creative that is a win for me a startup and a big business think hundreds of employees you're trying to scale as big as possible and the outcome is going to be either to sell to another business and have a big exit or to list and be public so over here you're burning a ton of startup Capital you're raising money and you're you just want to go big or go home lifestyle business you're trying to make this sustainable you're trying to run just like a proper business okay so everything I'm gonna talk about here is like you running a lifestyle business so step one on this journey you are a freelancer you need to learn a skill that people will pay for so in my world I Need video editors I need videographers I need YouTube thumbnail designers all things that I pay people to do like an example of just a videographer here in La I'll pay a $500 day rate for like you know 6 hours of filming to help me film a YouTube video video when I need a second camera or I need b-roll or something like that and I did all of this stuff before I was actually a YouTuber right and it's a great way to learn how to create so I started as a bcam shooter at a wedding um back in the day I think you know they would pay me like $250 for the day which was was a very high stressful situation um but then I got into more editing the wedding videos as well and so you know back in my day I'd probably get only paid like 500 bucks maybe a th000 for both a a film and edit but weddings nowadays y'all you could rake in the dough I'm pretty sure people are paying like an average of $5,000 for a wedding video and I know that might seem a lot but the amount of stress that it is and the quality that is coming out of some of these wedding videos it's it's worth it I I think if you want to pay that you know you can still just like hire your cousin or do it yourself if you're creative um I actually had a ton of fun editing um my own wedding video but we're getting off track so learning a skill that people need right weddings corporate I did a ton of corporate interviews in the beginning where you just set up an A and A B cam people need stories told of course I'm using the lens of video but people need writing people need photography you know it is out there and all YouTubers need help so if you can just identify what you think is something a YouTuber will need and give them the solution slide into the Twitter DM email them guys YouTubers need help okay and this is going to get you to thousands of dollars per month depending on where you live in the states everything is just impossibly expensive so you're going to be charging more here right and so hopefully like when I was a freelancer my rent was only like 700 bucks in Nashville but before I dropped out of college I was already able to pay my rent with my freelance video gig so this is step one solving a problem for someone else and freelancing for them now a lot of people stop here and that is fine it can be very stressful if there is no element of delegation cuz then really The Buck always stops with you and that can be frustrating right but being a freelancer in this creative world is very viable it is something where you can bring in 40,000 to 100 150k a year again I'm coming from their perspective of being in the states and if you really put your head down put in the work and you find something that you're good about that you're excited about this is a lifelong career okay step two if the freelancer wants to expand this is probably where they go they start some type of Services Agency so the first step for that is really you're just taking what you were doing via freelancing and you're hiring other Freelancers to help you scale that to get more clients to charge more money and to just increase your output so for me what that looked like as going from a freelancer to a full-time YouTuber now I wasn't having wedding clients and corporate clients but I have another type of corporate client that now sponsors a YouTube video not only do they need a piece of content you know to advertise about or share about their product but they also like the idea of like oh wow this is going out to an audience as well so they get built in distribution with the piece of video content that they already would have hired an agency for in the first place right so for me the type of business that I run I'm still pretty kind of stuck in the service agency middle I have several Freelancers that help me day today and I have probably anywhere from three to sometimes seven clients per month and get get a little hectic that's why I'm so burnt out with branded content and that lives on my YouTube channel my socials Instagram Twitter Etc I actually still do a lot of stuff for Brand's YouTube channels for their YouTube channels so that's almost similar to the work that I would have done pre YouTube right but now I am also the talent in front of the camera so as you can imagine yeah the way I'm doing it is very exhausting because I still like to have control you know I don't have full-time employees but usually at this middle sector when you're earning you know mid to high six figures you got a scale baby you need people to help you um and so I have a lot of Freelancers that help me but I honestly am just a terrible boss because I freak out a lot right I'm still very emotionally attached to videos because it's just the way I express myself and so I'm not someone who's going to be on it every single day giving tasks to people right so this takes a little bit more self-awareness do I want to run an agency style business right so other things that you can do a lot of people on the Twitter are starting like copywriting business that's like super hot right now so a lot of these tweet threads that you're seeing from entrepreneurs and um you know the stars is Ghost writing so writers will take on clients and they ghost write threads for them uh whether it's writing for their Twitter or their email newsletter um copyrighting agencies is a big deal right now other things just a classic production Studio content creation Hub right you're doing everything that I'm doing but the in product isn't your own YouTube channel but it's to create content for other people now you can take this anywhere everyone needs content how many times have I said content in this video you could do this for other YouTubers you could do this just for corporate clients who need um social and YouTube videos this can be taking your wedding business to the next level I know a ton of people who just have you know 5 to 10 Freelancers on their roster and they're shooting like 10 weddings per month at the you know High wedding season which is just crazy so here you're going to be able to scale a little bit more more money right more money but more responsibility a little bit more stress okay now step number three is where I'm going to I'm going to talk a lot about step number three because in my YouTuber Circle it's what they stress out about the most but probably what we are the worst executing on because we're so busy with this middle thing this like Services Agency that we have going on and selling a product digital or physical takes so much effort it takes expertise that a lot of YouTubers honestly don't have and so a lot of the time they Farm out that expertise to a third party or partner and a lot of times you get fudged over okay and so a traditional business right we just start here okay well let's create an MVP right let's create this digital or physical product make sure it's good make sure it's needed in the market and then we'll worry about finding customers uh slowly after the fact we'll we'll figure out all the marketing after the fact but doing this as a creative right this is probably going to be your last step okay I have an audience okay I have this skill in this certain creative industry and maybe I want to create a physical or digital product but this is going to be the hardest thing that you do probably has the most likelihood to fail but probably has the most upside okay so one time or reoccurring purchase I don't know how to spell okay don't judge me guys to a B2 b or more commonly if you're a Creator B to C see this is a fun video because you get to learn that I have the handwriting of a Fourth Grade boy okay examples merch Advanced merch we'll talk about that later digital information product so this could be courses ebooks Etc software get that reoccurring Revenue right building something useful for people digital products like we got notion templates Luts is a big one for the video crowd Etc right and the upside for this is actually huge you take the initial time that it takes to make this up front cuz this is the hardest part is making the thing cuz you're probably already going to be so busy and overwhelmed you have to set aside time to actually make this thing but once you make it is the easy part cuz then people just buy it if it's useful right and then you can see that reoccurring Revenue coming in without you doing any work right it feels like magic even though you got to take that initial time to to make it right and so that's why there's so much upside if you really figure out something that crosses over well with your YouTube Twitter email newsletter audience but there's so many downfalls to this third step that we're going to talk about but hey you see that first guy right there merch hey have you ever thought about creating your own merch you know how beautiful this is by the way made with printful beautiful stitching on the trucker hat the embroidery somebody and it fits well too that's something about trucker hats that you got to watch out for is they're just they're kind of weird and so I got a ton of samples from printful before I was like oh this is the one and then I worked with my husband John he's a great designer um to design the beautiful stay peachy logo and we put it on some different items and I'm just stoked on how they turned out you you guys have them too out there I love seeing you guys wrap the peachy merch I've actually used several different third parties for Merch and it's never really worked for me but printful is literally perfect my favorite part is the fact that you don't have to compromise on anything they have really great inventory of like blank hats and shirts and sweatshirts all kinds of things but they also have amazing services that go beyond just a normal screen print but they have embroidery you have so many options to make the merch that you want to make but then on the other side on the business side it is very transparent you see your customer information the name email addresses and how much money they spend that money goes directly into your account and then you pay the printful fee it's all very transparent when you're selling a t-shirt or a hat in that process you say how much profit you want to make it estimates the shipping cost you can change the shipping costs accordingly and so you know almost exactly how much money you're going to make with every single purchase and that way they can't take advantage of you like honestly a lot of third parties have in the past that say hey we're going to take care of everything you sit back we'll just pay you monthly we got everything handled and this is what I'm going to talk about later in the video never trust people who say that okay cuz if you don't see your own customers if you don't see the money coming in you don't own that product that's not yours and then they can just yank your chain and it's not so it's one of my favorite Parts about printful you don't have to hold inventory because they print on demand but they have warehouses all over the world so they actually ship pretty pretty quick it's like The Best of Both Worlds printful connects with a ton of different websites you guys know I use Squarespace and so now for the first time I can have my merch live natively on my Squarespace website that is also used as my creative portfolio so it just works it's so beautiful to have it all in one space and they effortlessly connect and just above all else you know you guys have already seen it the the product that they make is quality it's not that cheap stuff you know and again you can always get samples of different types of clothes before you put your design on them so hey I would check them out if you need to make some merch today you can check out my link in the description below this is something that I use that you can find on my website so I'm not I'm not just blowing smoke thank you PRL for sponsoring this video and guys I mean we're just getting started so I hope you enjoyed the warmup but we're we're going to dive in even even further I'm going to be honest my dinner got here like 20 minutes ago so part two Sarah might be a completely different looking Sarah but we're going to pretend like we didn't future jump till tomorrow okay printful printful thanks for sponsoring I'm back you guys have gone nowhere okay we're going to get back to this selling a product I have many stories and anecdotes that will hopefully you creators out there that already have some momentum and you're looking to do that I will say If you think far enough where this is the first thing that you do when you start to create something whether it's a newsletter or a YouTube channel you already have those Luts or those programs ready to go and you can instantly monetize from yourself um you can instantly somehow have that credibility maybe you came from an industry where you work decades in and so you have that credibility to start selling your own products immediately that that is kind of like the ideal situation cuz then you can have complete creative control um when you are monetizing through other ways whether it's through brand work or other stuff I like to think that I am 99% Sarah peachy here on this YouTube channel but you know I'm not going to go on some political rant that has me like riled up during the day um just because I'm like Oh my brand is being creative and showing up for you guys and making good stuff you know that is My Lan and you just you really have to stick in a lane when you're monetizing uh you know with other companies but where you don't have to worry about that is if you have your own product and then you can just say whatever you want as long as that like aligns with what you're selling right and I think that's why outspoken podcasters are so successful on patreon because oh there is the feeling of if I don't support this person and pay them monthly who will right and honestly I probably should have put um patreon over here you know you would probably think that oh Sarah isn't that like kind of under the the Services Agency or even the freelancer but keeping up with a patreon is its own like project product it is it's a lot of work I've tried it before but I just I can't handle it and so here see I'm already going back to selling a product Freelancers I was reminded when I watched the most recent MKBHD video about the new iPhone 15 so they have a videographer there that sets up sets and does really cool b-roll he is like The Vibes guy his name is Brandon Harvard and he does one thing and he does it really well and this is where I think being a freelancer has the most freedom and fun because you can choose one thing and you know even video editing is super broad but maybe you're like the fastest rough cutter in all the planet or maybe you are a visual effects artist who specializes in more graphical things you know the YouTube scene right now loves this like educational um I'm about to have a heart attack sound effect whoos whoo whoo whoo whoo things on the video every two seconds right maybe that can be your specialty right where this is actually really cool being a freelancer being a Brandon Harvard is you can specialize in something and you can make DEC ENT Bank I know for a fact that YouTubers out there will pay a six figure salary to someone who can come in and maybe they're not starting at a six figure salary but they are reliable and they know if they need like a banger 30 second intro with a lot of crazy b-roll or they need a perfect brand script perfectly written in the YouTuber's voice where the YouTuber doesn't even have to worry about rewriting it those things are worth so much and if you can get in there and prove your value a full-time employee or a freelancer a contractor there is actually really good money in it and the thing that you maintain as a freelancer is a little bit of Sanity because you don't have to worry about getting a ton of views or have a ton of influence to get work right you just have a few clients you show up you do great work and then you live your life you can have like Hobbies I feel like every hobby I pick up I swear I have to like instantly monetize it once you get into this middle sector where like you're working 247 everything is content right again I'm going YouTube brain again but just everything kind of mushes together there's more upside but you know the lows can be low so that's the last thing that I wanted to add about the freelancer is yes I'm saying it as step one but you don't have to leave that step one it can actually be a very fulfilling life you know I follow some of these F1 videographers even like a NFL videographer and they go to the games they go to the Races they capture some really awesome like interviews and some Vib b-roll and they put together Instagram clips and social clips and maybe sometimes you know fulllength YouTube videos and they're just living their best life and they're doing such a good job and I know how valuable those jobs are to these organizations and so there are These Blueprints out there for these creative jobs where you don't have to worry about oh my God I have to build up a YouTube channel and get sponsorships and get this and that and I have to hire people like no you can be the person who people hire and you just knock it out of the park and you make a good living right and one more thing I wanted to mention about this middle tier the services agency is I kind of wanted to go um back to this chart on like what type of businesses we're talking about right we're we're talking about lifestyle businesses essentially all of those three steps are lifestyle businesses but within those and I think specifically once you move on to this like Services Agency step you you kind of need to make a decision and this helps if you can make it sooner cuz this is a problem that I'm running into right now in this world of content right you can be 100% personal brand baby that is definitely the path that I took you know Tech and cameras that has always been a thread through all the types of things that I make on YouTube Instagram Twitter wherever but at the core my YouTube channel is saredi and so I share parts of my life right and I think that's why people enjoy it but it's also very difficult at times because you never have like the North Star I have so so many videos in my head that I want to make all the time but it gets very difficult to say well wait are people not going to like that cuz it's not a tech video like oh these types of videos are doing well on my Channel right now but what if I just want to sit down and talk about money like I'm doing now I this probably won't do as well if I made an iPhone 15 Pro review but guess what because my channel is an extension of me and I'm I am burnt out on Tech right now guys on the whole Tech cycle okay so I don't want to make this video so I'm going making another video that hurts the bottom line that hurts views right but if I was just 100% a tech Channel and I had a format and I could sit down and delegate everything because everything is the same well that's actually way easier but there can be less upside right 100% personal brand it's Sarah Pichi I get paid well with brand deals because people know whether a video has 20,000 views or 400,000 views that the people there are going to care what I say they're GNA care about my endorsement because it's coming from me Sarah Pichi not like this faceless blob who's just like regurgitating facts on a YouTube video right but there are upsides to more focused Brands a focused brand so if I'm an example of a personal brand a more focused brand would be wired it would be like a magazine brand right or it would be short circuit from Linus Tech tips that is only unboxings there is one format it is much easier to crank out that content than even ltt's normal videos just because ltt's videos are Big Ideas ever green and they can change from day to day on the formatting right there's not one strict format so it's harder to delegate with that and that's always been my struggle with my own YouTube channel is I got into this because I love making YouTube videos I love every step of it and delegation has been hard cuz that's just like boring to me like writing Sops and all that I'm just like uh lame right but recently I actually figured it out took a while took a couple years but you know I started with getting help with video editing that was painful um because I am a video editor first so that just took like years and years but hey now Kyle is on the other side helping me out edit this video thanks Kyle right I've trained and hired videographers throughout the years etc etc and recently I got really serious about hiring writers and I started with writing um the Branded content cuz I just I really do not like looking at a six page PDF distilling the points down on what I need to say relating it back to my content Etc and because that's a little bit more straightforward I had some success with that hiring um a writer and getting the ball rolling with that but in order to make delegation more successful you have to fit things more into a format and so as I started to try to do that I was like oh wait no I hate this though I just want to make a video when it pops in my head and a lot of it has to come from my head it can't come from a random writer and like I said there's there's benefit to that you know there's like a more genuine connection you have with your audience but the biggest downside is scale and so there are times where I'm like I wish I just had an apple Channel I wish I had just like a strictly Tech this is what you get every time you log on super easy to delegate I don't feel like I need to hop into the edit or the film or the writing for every single thing and I can just pull up a chair and be the talent right having a focus brand there's a ton of benefit to it it's an extension of you but it's not all of you you can establish formats and you can establish predictability for an audience which actually has benefits with a personal brand I think there is more money in it but it's less sustainable you're more susceptible to burnout so I feel like you're not as likely to sustain it more than like 5 to 7 years 5 to 10 years if you're lucky I mean think about the most iconic personal Brands you have Casey neistat at his Peak he was one of the most influential I don't even want to say creators but just like one of the most influential people online period the brain in projects he was doing I'm sure were astronomical because it's so him in the videos people were so invested he got opportunities to Angel invest in companies that just no one else would you know upside upside but the peak of his vlogging even though it was insane to do it every day for like 3 years four years it stopped it had an end date there's no way that you're vlogging every day or just vlogging once a week sharing your personal life for more than 5 to seven years it's it's just not sustainable so hopefully you're kind of visualizing those two buckets and you can start thinking about this early on in your journey and not kind of like looking in the rear viw mirror and and like wishing right you can build like a real Services business too it doesn't have to be what you know all these YouTubers are doing like I had this idea the other day which I feel like would be so fun but I don't know if a ton of people need this I love camera gear so much and setting up sets if I could replace like a fraction of my income with going and setting up Podcast sets for people or video sets um putting together like a Sony package a black magic package you know Canon what do you need you need life switching hire a couple Freelancers and just you know I'm in La I bet people need that companies have internal podcast it's it's a thing that would be such a blast for me and then there's not as much pressure on that front end to like be a personal brand to get the views because I mean that's an exhausting game right so you can steal that steal that idea I'm I'm probably never going to do it um but there's a lot of stuff like that where if you think maybe what is your service first and then think of content and the background to Market it um it might be just a more sustainable way to build that focused brand first right you don't have to go and get views go and get influence and then figure out how to monetize it okay oh I didn't anticipate talking about that for I mean guys I this is just a podcast this is what this is this is a podcast this will probably be like a 40-minute video all right step number three here selling a product we're going to set the iPad aside it's just you and me and my stories let's start with something I call the Elon Musk effect I feel like everyone nowadays feel like they have to be an Elon Musk to be successful you got to have SpaceX Tesla Twitter AKA X boring company you got to be running four to five different companies or projects to feel successful YouTubers get in this trap all the time they build up influence they're making good money but this is what what I hear all the time and I was victim to this too I said this for like 3 years man I just want to build something that's bigger than myself I just want to build something and just like retire to the Maldives and sit on the beach right or maybe it's like the dream like the levels IO dream right where you're just like I'm just going to build a I'm going to be an indie hacker build a few tools and sit on the beach and just break in the money man okay where this is so wrong is people don't understand that if you were going to be a content creator first doing anything with video specifically I don't think people realize how many hats you have to wear there are so many things that you have to do and it is a very rewarding job but it is exhausting and you can't be a successful YouTuber and also like a successful CEO but Sarah Mr Beast but Sarah Elon Musk there's always exceptions but look at the huge team that these people have around them Mr Beast is not an artist he is not worried with how his video looks and feels and Vibes he is views he's taking a very pragmatic approach to YouTube right um and so that is not the majority like the Elon Musk and Mr Beast thing guys that is the minority and I think a lot of people striving for that is leading to the craziest burnout that I've ever seen in my life me included right I've I've given up on that and what is such a big bummer about that is a lot of times it's when you're in the height of your influence when you could make Bank from doing those brand deals you can make Bank by doing a very more simple version of it of like building a course or making Luts or or you know selling merch right but you split your focus on this big idea I mean think about Casey putting all of his focus into beam instead of doing like the Samsung brand deals times 20 right I mean he ended up selling Beam for 25 million so I wouldn't say that was a failure at all but again that's the minority and it is so hard to do both so I'm here to just say it's okay to just be a YouTuber to just be a creative you do not have to have aund million exit to feel successful if you want that if that's what you're striving for the lifestyle business startup diagram just do that do that first don't worry about being a YouTuber is you know it's like CEOs want to be YouTubers YouTubers want to be CEOs it's it's just chill guys they're both a lot of work another huge reason why this Elon Musk effect can be a problem when building a product again physical or digital is because if you are a Creator first you just have such limited time that often you farm out a lot of the responsibility to a partner I wish I could put a factual percentage to this but just my vibe My Vibe is this goes wrong like 90% of the time multiple examples in the news happening right now you have that podcast ad Network that basically promised oh my gosh you're going to get crazy podcast ad rates all of the money just sign the dotted line here we're going to do all the work you don't have to to be in the emails you don't we're just going to send you a check every month it's going to be easy and guess what they got scammed huge podcasts like theovon podcast Whitney Cummings all of those comedians scammed okay cool another example fanjoy they're getting sued right now they are a merch company that went to these creators and said hey we're going to do everything for you you don't have to do a thing oh that sounds good sign me up right wrong they owe so many people money and in the documents there's actually like creators Nam like that super cute Tik tocker she makes really relatable Tik toks I forgot her name I'll put her up here you can see in the documents they owe her over 8,000 I've been on the receiving end of this like you guys don't get it how often creators get taken advantage of but the biggest red flag that you have to look for is when you have a little bit of success and someone comes along company comes along oh hey you want to do that thing you want to make merch you want to make this product you want to do a course oh but it's so much work hey we'll come do all of the work for you but the only thing is you just have to put your product on our platform but we'll take care of all the work oh oh that sounds great right you're so busy already you're so tired already so of course you say sign me up right you're not getting paid if you do not own your customers if you don't see the first last name and email and a little number of how much money they spent in your online portal or wherever you are you are probably not getting paid you do not own that customer and so that's like the biggest thing I want to say about this section the step number number three the physical or digital product taking that next step for the success of this product it has to start with you get real comfortable saying no get super comfortable saying no I'm just now practicing this skill you got to learn how to like Heisman people okay there's going to be hey oh my God you need to do this no shut up I don't need to do it hey what about this have you already thought about this oh I have thought about it it'd be really cool if this existed in the world great I'm going to go do it make it so no and a lot of those times you don't even want to make that thing in the first place so this product has to be so ingrained in you that you will figure it out how to make that mvp that minimum viable product so this person over here who said he'll be my co-founder and they're just like an amazing coder and I can just hand everything off to them no stop don't do it just the the small difference that you have to do is yes go find that co-founder that's going to help you but everything from the start has to start with you so that means you go on upw work and you hire a programmer to make the MVP if you can't do it and if you don't want to do that initial work then you don't have enough time anyways and don't do it you can tell by how passionate I'm getting is because this is me talking to Sarah from a couple years ago I wish I had this Sarah on my shoulder that was like don't do it or not don't do it just do it different because then if you do that it's all on you you have the control you get to see if really if there's even any traction to it because you don't want to spend several years developing a product that you don't know that people will even use a specific example of this three or four years ago I was friends with a coder buddy and he showed me something really cool a a software tool and I was like oh my gosh this blows my mind if I could take this and do this and here's my idea on what we could do it would be so useful and there's two parts of this it was essentially AI software before the structure was actually there for that nowadays in the Heyday of AI and all of these products being made oh yeah it would have killed if we created it one year ago but because we were thinking about it 4 years ago and the things that we were using via AWS and transcription Tech just wasn't there um that was a big problem but the second biggest problem was kind of like clashing viewpoints I know what it's like to be a video editor it is so hard for us to use new programs Premiere ruined my life for like 3 years but it took me that long to switch to resolve because I was so comfortable in Premiere I knew it like the back of my hand why would I want to learn something new and so my ideal world for this AI software was a plug-in a plug-in that goes in other software but the upside for a plug-in monetarily just isn't as big as it would be if it was his own dedicated app and so we tried to build this own dedicated app which was you know my co-founders thinking CU he was more from the place of go big or go home right and it just it just didn't work out of course the timing was was not the best but the own dedicated app thing if it's something that I'm not going to use it's not something that other people people are going to use right so yeah when you're building a product and you're not building a product that is going to be a hundred million business or you know is going to go public you know you're not building that you just have to have ownership over the customer you have to have ownership over the vision because ultimately it has to be something that is coming from you like the problems that you have throughout your day it has to be a business that solves problems that aligns with your audience so that it can be an extra Revenue generator and the thing that I'll end with with products is digital products are just so much easier than physical okay if you're thinking about making a physical product don't and then number two if you're just like okay Sarah that's rude what if I was meant meant to make physical products like the advanced physical products Beyond merch right merch is easy now CU you have awesome services like printful so you don't have to worry about going to China and looking at samples right but the advanced physical product is so hard and the margins are so low that that is more of like a 10year journey and that's why I would say if you want to build physical products like do it like Peter McKinnon he has Pete's pirate life it's small collections they're collector items right so they're a little bit higher in price but the stress is less because he's not trying to like compete with like a Logitech or something think collector's items so that's the brain space that you want to be in um and yeah the successful physical products Advanced Physical products companies I would instantly put them in just oh you're going to start a real business this it's very rare to have a good lifestyle physical product business because you need so much scale in order to just make hundreds of thousand dollars of profit and it's exhausting right and so yes okay man there's actually guys there's actually more things I want to say but this is just going to turn into a 2-hour video I don't like I literally have more pages of notes but I I'm glad we talked about the partner thing I mean just that's something that I hope you take out of this is just always try to do it yourself you know if skillshare comes along and says hey we're going to promise you this that and that and it seems like a good deal and oh my gosh I'm making so much money the first few months but oh wait why am I you know only getting paid $20 $30 a month now uh I'm on month six and I feel like I'm selling it and it's doing well well their payment structure changed right you don't own the customers you don't own the people that are watching that course so you are at the behest of skillshare now skillshare is good if you don't have an audience and so maybe you make a killer course and you build a brand off a skillshare because they have an audience right but if you already have an audience do that extra little work and build your course build your program around tools that you can own so that you can have full control full ownership of that and you see you know uh Bob coming through buying your course for x amount and you know exactly the amount of money that you're going to get after like transaction fees and stuff like that so I think we're done here are you guys tired after watching that video cuz I'm exhausted I'm sorry if this was so much but I'm hoping it helps some of you and if it does just hit that like button hit that subscribe button down down there and hey if you want to make some awesome merch with a trustful partner where you have full ownership on what is going on check out my printful link in the description below and until next time everyone stay peachy okay bye [Music] yeah sorry I failed that Tech tember toober I just opted out this year I said no no thank you that's it

Channel: Sara Dietschy

Views: 50,435

Keywords: how to make money as a youtuber, how creators make money, how to transition from freelance to youtube, sara dietschy advice, advice on making money on youtube sara dietschy

Id: vpb8yYfwi-g

Length: 40min 50sec (2450 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 09 2023