How I Made Six Figures (My First Year On YouTube!)

so this is how much money people think youtubers make but this is how much money they actually make 20 30 40 wait okay I think that's all of it no wait so today I want to share with you exactly how much money I made my first year of doing YouTube except instead of making you wait the entire video I'm gonna show you the total amount right now right there yeah magic except it wasn't it's palming in my hand and I totally ruined someone's career now the first six months of doing YouTube I made six thousand eighty three dollars and 25 cents but I finished the year at a hundred thirteen thousand ninety-four dollars the year end will be closer to somewhere in the one hundred fifteen thousand dollar range there's a few days left in 2019 I don't know why I checked my wristwatch I'm even wearing a watch and wouldn't tell me that anyway thanks for watching you all the weakest link goodbye literally nobody understood that reference I spent 50 hours per week editing the videos shooting them researching scripting uploading thumbnails answering comments tagging the videos completely not in that order because that didn't make any sense but if you were to convert how many hours I worked per week 50 and that's 200 hours per month 1200 hours in the first six months convert my YouTube ad revenue which is the only thing I was making the hourly rate for that is five dollars and seven cents per hour that's almost less than half the minimum wage which is kind of insane started from the bottom now we're here right still at the bottom but if this was you and you were doing this would you have given up at this point be honest my life has changed in 2019 and whenever a friend of mine asks how I'm doing I genuinely don't know how to respond so I just kind of stumble through like you want you want pizza doing so much you could do anything I love that kid I think that's my favorite clip on the Internet also I don't think he's a kid anymore I think he's literally older than me by now but this is why I'm so passionate about personal finance and financial minimalism and credit cards and credit scores why do we invest Andre what is the point this is why so that you can do what you love and get paid for it for me that means not having a boss waking up without an alarm clock and not having to ask another human to go on vacation to enjoy my life this is why we invest and since I didn't make youtube rewind which is where YouTube rewinds and highlights all these amazing YouTube videos throughout the year I'm gonna rewind and take you back make my own and share with you exactly how I got here to six figures in less than one year let's begin so starting in January I made a whopping zero dollars I don't even have to look I just instinctively know I made nothing because I didn't know what I was doing I was a greenhorn a newb a nooblet a muggle but I just didn't know how to do that thumbnail the topic the structure the pacing no clue how to do any of it which is why I worked really hard to make zero dollars in January fun now in February I also made zero dollars but I did discover something called CTR which stands for Crash Team Racing the greatest crash bandicoot game of all time I changed my mind now what it means is click-through rate which is a combination of a great title and a great thumbnail working together to get people to click your video and the more people that click the video the more YouTube will show that video to more and more people and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy but because I sucked at CTR none of my videos were ever recommended by YouTube which is why I worked really hard to earn zero dollars in February but I also discovered that you can have on amazingly incredible video the best video you've ever made but if your CTR your title and your thumbnail are not good YouTube won't recommend it the reverse also true you can have a terrible video with a great CTR great title great thumbnail you will be seen by millions of people and that's something called click bait and click bait is great except it isn't when people click on it they're gonna realize wait this video is click bait it doesn't apply to me or it's not a good video the algorithms gonna say aha that guy click baits low retention time we're not gonna recommend that video but on a deeper level it teaches people on YouTube to never click on your videos ever again because you click bait so don't abuse it because eventually your video has to deliver its promise of the premise of whatever it is you were promising at some point or another that was really wordy but I hope that made sense anyway that's what I learned in February while earning zero dollars and in March I made 90 dollars and 48 cents yes we finally started to get monetized except there's one catch you need to earn at least $100 for YouTube to send you anything so I got paid $0 again in my first three months of YouTube now I think most sane people at this point would have just quit but obviously sanity is not one of my strengths I've kept on going and in April I earned 1500 11 dollars and 57 cents I had one video go viral it just popped and it properly monetized my channel with 1000 subscribers 4000 hours of watch time and it was the fuel the spark that I needed to just keep on going except I got paid zero dollars in April because YouTube pays you one month behind and I earned 90 dollars last month so YouTube paid me nothing in my first four months of YouTube what would you do if you worked your job right now full-time and earned zero dollars goodbye scarlet and in May I hit 1920 three dollars and seven cents I had another video pop called how I made 781 dollars and forty seven cents with dividends from Robin Hood that was the investments that were keeping me alive but that video got way less views than the now you see me video and yet it paid me so much more money why how come and the two reasons that I found was that it was a longer video but the second reason was that it was a different topic I did not know that some topics paid you like a dollar for every 1000 views other topics like in the personal finance space just pay you so much more it's not literally this much and no this is not real cash this is just printed I'm not that pretentious weird flex 2020 goals but this is where I learned about ad rates and how they can just fluctuate depending on what you're talking about took me five months and in June I earned a little bit more with two thousand five hundred fifty eight dollars and thirteen cents but I learned another big lesson and what I learned was that you could put ad breaks in the middle of your video what yeah if your video is over ten minutes long you can put ad breaks in the middle of each video so I went back in time and for every single one of my videos I just peppered ad breaks and still we're six months into this video and at this point into this video into my career and I have earned six thousand eighty three dollars and twenty-five cents which is still super cool because it surpassed my one thousand dollar goal in 2019 but also that's five dollars and seven cents per hour which is kind of hard for someone who's turned thirty years old and who's used to earning twenty five to thirty dollars per hour and in July I made three thousand eight hundred ninety five dollars and sixty cents now things are starting to look really interesting because the ads that I placed and all my other videos are starting to have an effect now YouTube denies this but every creator I've spoken to says they have seen a direct correlation between views and monetization which makes total sense because YouTube's a business they want to make more money they're gonna push videos that make them more money it's been the truth for me and also I do think YouTube just felt really bad for me and was like let's show this poor guy some love and push his videos I think and then August was my biggest month yet with five thousand eight hundred eight dollars and 33 cents this is incredible but after this point everything's about to change imagine making fifty thousand dollars per year except instead of being paid that regularly spread out pretty evenly like a normal person would you would earn forty five thousand dollars of that in the last four months this is exactly what happens to me after this point the growth was nonlinear doesn't go in a straight line it just kind of floats at nothing then continues to be a little bit nothing and then just takes off like crazy September's ad revenue five figures so in September I made fourteen thousand eight hundred seventy nine dollars and four cents three videos of mine popped the credit card video why I get paid to sleep and broke at fifty at this point in time YouTube was like okay this guy makes financial education videos and my ad rates went through the roof and I started getting paid anywhere between twenty to thirty dollars per thousand views and also the last four months of the year companies just throw away their advertising dollars and that's why it's so high but compare that to my first viral video where I was averaging roughly $1 per thousand views insane 30 times less so October was a little bit slower for me because I didn't have any videos that popped but still a five-figure month in October I made eleven thousand six hundred twenty two dollars what right but the next two months November and December is where things got scary and I say scary because the progression is nonlinear and as quickly as it comes I'm terrified it's going to go away so I'm saving every single dollar but here's what's about to happen November the income was thirty thousand seven hundred eighty two dollars and 18 cents that right there is someone's annual salary but I had everything go for me three videos that popped ad rates that were sky-high insane this was only two months ago but December crazier still you're not believe this I didn't and I still don't but this is what happened in December December's income was 40,000 $23 what that doesn't make any sense what is my life coming to right now doesn't feel real saying that out loud but that's only one of the income sources I have four more somewhat directly tied to YouTube that are paying me more money for example my patreon page where I earned 14 thousand one hundred four dollars and this is where I created a Google spreadsheet where I linked up to a stock market data provider and it automates your investing by keeping track of all of your investments in the u.s. Canadian UK and Dutch stock markets so by plugging in a stock it automatically tells you whether or not it pays dividends what the price is what the ex-dividend date is what the diversification of your portfolio is your income and a few more other things and on patreon I'll also show you when I buy the stock the moment that I buy it or I sell it now admittedly I don't do a lot of that right now because I wasn't making much money in the first eight months I was barely making a livable wage but in 2020 that will all change I'm going to be a lot more consistent and I'm gonna buy a lot more stocks that I can promise and it's a really invaluable cool tool but also unbiased another source of income is Amazon affiliate links where I have earned 1941 dollars this year I will take that any day it pays for my Amazon Prime membership so I'm really happy about that and all I do is leave a link below my videos to two free audiobooks from audible and that's it and I never talk about it I never promoted other than subtly right now another source of income that I have is from affiliate marketing where this year I have made fifty four thousand five hundred eight dollars and twenty seven cents incredible considering that I didn't start doing this until just three months ago but it's the one source of income that I'm so hesitant to talk about because I think this is how channels stagnate and stop growing nobody wants to watch somebody review an app or a product where you realize they're getting paid to sign people up I don't like watching those videos and I'm sure you don't either which is I limit what I'm doing here substantially unless it's financially helping you directly with your money or literally giving you free money I'm very selective about it and the two major affiliates I try to incorporate in every video is Robin Hood if you sign up you get a free stock and we bull sign up get a free stock up to $500 and if you fund your account any dollar amount a stock that's worth up to $1400 so that's two free stocks from we've all one free stock from Robin Hood and the reason that I try to talk about them in as many videos as possible other than yes I make a small commission from it is because it's literally giving away free money and my whole goal is to start people with investing as early as possible and I truly believe that one of these days either Robin Hood or weevil or maybe both will be bought out by a bank or a brokerage and when that happens no more free stocks and I'm just thankful that somebody's giving free money away because I can think of no better way to get people to start investing then giving them away literally free money so if you haven't done it already please go sign up get yourself some free stocks you don't even have to use my link just please go get some free money the other source of income is dividend income it's not at all related to YouTube but it's the most important one to me and the one that I'm gonna build up the most and focus on in 2020 its dividend income where I earn seven thousand five dollars in 2019 amazing my goal in 2020 will be to invest at least two thousand dollars every single month but that's a separate video for another day my last source of income is Shopify it's not like drop shipping but a friend and I made a real product where we sell Bitcoin playing cards inside this beautiful puzzle you have to solve it and mind the plain coat it's the most nerdiest most amazing thing ever I don't promote it on my channel but this is why I didn't make that much money I'm still super happy with it because in 2019 I made seven thousand seven hundred four dollars and 66 cents but 2019 the grand total was a hundred ninety six thousand four hundred fifteen dollars and seventy seven cents by the year end it'll be closer to two hundred K unreal especially considering that I didn't have single course to sell and not a single sponsored video of course I'd love to be able to do that stuff in the future but for now I haven't done it but I would love to set up a website where you can publicly track my income from let's say sponsored videos in real time and I would love to be able to donate a large chunk of that money to you for watching my videos and I'd love to get people to start investing by giving them away pre-built portfolios filled with let's say an index fund or maybe fund your Roth IRA maybe I could do that for 10 people give $1,000 away in a portfolio that would be so cool to me unfortunately right now not a single brokerage can do this and maybe in the future Robin Hood I'm on Finance or weevil can implement this incredible feature and then I can start giving away portfolios I would rather do that then give you hash because I don't want you to spend it on the ear pods Pro to waste your money I would rather have you start investing again it's a super cool thing and if that sounds exciting join me for 2020 where I'm gonna try to do that and guys happy new year I'm gonna see you next year hindsight is 2020 how many other dad jokes can we come up with love you guys I will see your lovely faces on soon in 2020 I love you guys bye bye Oh master gave Dobby a dollar Dobby is free he's a minimalist dog oh no he's not we so spoil him his like all the treats in the world he doesn't even eat his kibbles

Channel: Andrei Jikh

Views: 160,778

Rating: 4.9255075 out of 5

Keywords: six figures, how I made, how to make money online, work from home, affiliate marketing, dividend investing, robinhood, how i quit, robinhood app, investment, stock market app, best brokerage, how to invest, how to build wealth, investing in stocks, investing 101, how to make money, investing for beginners, andrei jikh, dividend stocks, personal finance, i quit my day job, financial independence, compound interest, passive income, 6 figures, minimum wage

Id: 0XOcTJuSizw

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 30 2019