How to make money on YouTube without filming videos by yourself (feat. @NateOBrien)

I was thinking if I should make like uh I'm leaving YouTube type of video I think I just said everything that I needed to say on on YouTube that sounds like a lot of headache to me I really don't want to make videos have you thought about buying real estate I'm not a real estate person why I'm not sure if I can share it cuz it's like super just competitive one advice for everyone who wants to be like as successful as you are don't reinvent the [Music] wheel guys welcome to Sil com Val girl we have an amazing guest today Nate O'Brien thank you so much for making it meet Nate O'Brien a 25-year-old American YouTuber and investor Nate manages multiple YouTube channels with over 3 million combined subscribers and recently he disappeared from his main YouTube channel so we're going to talk about what happened we'll also talk about his secrets of making money on YouTube and operating multiple channels simultaneously please welcome Nate O'Brien Nate youve been on YouTube for how long it's been too long uh 2016 so what is that 7 years 7 years that's almost 8 years yeah what is going on now where are you where are your videos I miss them um yeah I I think I'm taking a little break a little retirement but uh I'll probably be back at some point yeah you posted your last video in October 2023 when is the next video coming out I I really don't know I was thinking if I should make like uh I'm leaving YouTube type of video but then I was like I'm just going to disappear and just come back and like when I when I feel inspired to come back what happened um I think I just said everything that I needed to say on on YouTube you know like and and there's nothing worse than like someone repeatedly making the same videos like years and years and years and like he feels like a hamster wheel and so once I made all the videos that I wanted to make over like the past like six years or so I was like okay that's everything I needed to say and um now it's time to move on this part of the video is brought to you by drawbox being a creator and an entrepreneur means having multiple teams to interact with and it also means constantly switching from one task to another as a YouTuber with a team of 10 who experience frustration of losing critical content material more than just misplaced notes imagine the agony of losing hours trying to find documents consolidating feedback or tracking files slowing down our entire production process Dropbox just launched Dropbox business and business plus which has been a game changer for teams like mine he has created a workspace where all the tools that you need are integrated bringing our work into one shared space apart from the expected file storage and sharing capabilities that come with drawbox my team's top two favorite are send in track and replay you create a perfect deck and a pitch presented to a brand and nothing happens then you start wondering is it me or was the email even delivered have they even read it sen and track is great for producing those unknowns not only can you track whether your proposal has been delivered but also see whether the company reviewed your slides and how long they viewed each slide it's invaluable to understand their engagement see you can address their concerns or tailor your pitch for Maximum Impact all while having the ability to control downloads another product my team and I collaborate through is replay my team is all remote and our main projects are our videos for this and two other channels with replay we can share feedback in real time all markup from everyone on the team are now in a single location no need to send the video back and forth our editors absolutely love this also what I noticed when interviewing successful people is that they're very organized in the office in their house with their apps everything with drobbox business and business plus you can focus on what matters the most for your business with just one platform it gives you all the tools you need in one place in addition to Seamless app integration with ad dilby Cana and more this has been a game changer for my team and if it sounds like it could benefit yours click the link in my description to learn more now back to the video so what are you doing what is your dayto day now uh right now um saie and I have the Venture fund Road Runner which takes up a good amount of time and then uh my brother and I have a media company we own some YouTube channels and it's a little bit more on the business side so it's like I don't have to be on camera and and so that's kind of where some cash flow comes from uh which is I'm glad I set that up because I think a lot of creators like they get on that hamster wheel and they can't get off because it's like their only income source and luckily I've been able to diversify quite a bit over the past uh few years when did you start doing that was there a moment when you were like okay I am tired of being in front of the camera I'm tired of repeating things when did this click happen so so I I feel like it the click happened before I even started my my main Channel okay because I didn't how old were you by the way 18 18 yeah that's amazing so um but when I started in 2016 I I was like I really don't want to make videos but someone's got to make these Finance videos because there there was nobody making the content back then so it was like a big opportunity um so I said you know what screw it I'm just going to turn on the camera I'm just going to make the videos even though it's like not my natural tendency to like create content um and so yeah I started that in like late 2016 and then probably by sometime in 2018 my brother and I started working on some other things um so that I could eventually plan to phase out my personal brand so can you talk about like how you think about starting a new channel uh where does the idea come from do you think purely uh whether it's going to make money or like what's the thought process so I think the biggest thing that I've realized with a personal brand is that um there's no real like Equity buildup in a personal brand it's it's like hard to sell like you can't like like I I can't really sell the natal bran YouTube channel I mean maybe someone would buy like revenue streams from that but um so I wanted to build something that would be like separate for myself um and then that was that was the main factor and then also it was like what what makes money are you not interested in like growing your personal brand anymore no you don't want to be recognized you don't want to be yeah I'm just a very private person so like do you have a home by the way cuz I see you traveling all the time um I'm based in Pennsylvania um and I'm trying to slow down and not travel as much anymore I see you in all the different places you know Orange County the B I was in Mexico yesterday Mex yeah and so 2018 you started the another like Media company with different how many channels do you have there uh we at one time we had like 15 but now uh We've scaled it down quite a bit so we can just focus on on a couple of of main ones um so you know there's like eight but a couple of them don't really do much and then you know there's like some okay I'm going to ask a lot of questions about that so all of those channels are in finance or like uh finance a lot of like software um lot of tutorials it's like the super boring do you understand software um or you just find people who yeah we find people to do it um so like yeah just just things that like aren't super flashy like we don't go for viral videos it's literally just like what do people search for and how do you just rank how do you think about like whether the channel is successful or not how many videos do you have to make in order to decide whether to shut it down or I'd say like two years oh two years of posting every week um sometimes every week yeah sometimes like less um but just kind of like laying the groundwork for search content is like it takes a long time wow so it's you're not going to like blow up with search content how much does it cost to produce one video depends on the topic but right now it's like um few hundred a video it's like 3 to 400 so or like Clos to like 8 to 900 3 to 800 in that range just depends on who's filming it and who's editing it and so you're paying the person who's in front of the camera you're paying the research right or they do the usually the person who's who's in front of the camera is also the one researching how do you find them though I'll basically just post like um like Google forms uh or like type forms say hey look like we're we're hiring some people for next year um if you want some freelance work then you know fill out the form and we get like hundreds and hundreds of people who apply there and then we just stiff through them all and find the best candidates and then when we hire somebody we just give them a lot of like a lot of trust and a lot of responsibility up front and then see what happens so per chance if you have a channel is just one person or you have multiple faces No we mix it multiple people yeah for that reason easier yeah and and it's also not as big of an issue of like um like we're not worried about a filmer leaving because if they leave there's other people who are mixed in and then also people who watch the videos they're they're finding it by like searching on Google or searching on YouTube and so they're not like connected to the person like they're an influencer um so totally search based interesting how many people do you have working for you for um or I guess nine channels together with yours it's it's not that many we try to keep it pretty lean so it's like around 10 give or take I mean there's a lot of it's a lot of contractors um and then we hired somebody to like hire people so that we don't have to like deal with all the the management stuff um but my goal is always to keep things really lean and really really small cuz I just like my biggest nightmare is ending up like Dave Ramsey with like a thousand employees in a big office and yeah so they're mostly editors or uh filmers four filmers um two editors and and then like thumbnail um some other people in the mix there for other random things like for you know like copyrighting and everything and and four filmers they film for several each filmer is responsible for several channels then right if you have eight yeah that's so cool and for topic research can you give some advice on like how how you do your research vid IQ or just Googling so I used to use a lot of those tools vid IQ and budy and um you know all those SEO tools um now it's just I I I don't know how to explain it's probably just like gut like feeling where you just know in a certain Topic in a certain area that there's like demand and I'm always just searching for that like mentally every day thinking about like what's what's like like a an area that there's there's like a gap in the market where there's not enough content on that do you still feel there are gaps in the market in 202 oh totally totally yeah tons oh that's that sounds promising because I feel like sometimes I feel like if I start researching a niche like oh yeah like this has already been said there's so many YouTubers and this Niche this niche but you feel like every Niche is unoccupied or like what would be the top niches I'd say like Finance is definitely flooded now like that was the opportunity when I started and like when you started uh Silicon Valley Girl 2018 yeah around then that was like perfect time for like Finance content right now yeah it's it's just more like Niche content or different styles of content so like with Finance videos right um the one thing I think I did pretty well was like in 20 like around 2020 I realized that a lot of the finance videos that people were making were like 10 minutes long I said okay what if I just make an hour long or 2hour long tutorial on like the stock market and nobody else had really done that and so I was able to like that those stock market tutorials got like three or four million views each because nobody was like people wanted doing the one yeah the was like okay I'm sick of like the 13-minute video telling me to like invest in a Roth IRA how do I actually do it I want like the full like mean potatoes you know like they want like yeah yeah so that's interesting Okay so what are the what is the niche that you excited about if you can share uh I'm not sure if I can share it it's cuz it's like super just competitive okay maybe like um for people who are just starting out if they're picking a niche that's so tough cuz I think I have like Tunnel Vision on like this specific area Finance right yeah Finance or just like uh like educational info content but there's there's something there for everyone it's like the way to to to find something like that because it's it's hard to like just describe the exact niches it's more of like when you go onto YouTube and specifically YouTube like long form videos and you find someone with very few subscribers but they're getting a lot of views that's like the imbalance that's like the biggest green green light ever and they getting more views than subscribers like how's this person they have like 2,000 subscribers but they're getting 20,000 views a video and like like you can sense that they're like getting ready to blow up especially if you watch videos and you're like they're not even that good like like you think you could maybe improve on them somehow that's like most amazing thing ever and and um it's so rare to find that but when you do like really really take note on that and so every channel is now profitable right so you spend like no no not every channel is profitable we just started a new one um and you're going to give it two years is that two years to to become profitable I think it'll probably start cash flowing in the next like 16 months maybe uh but it takes a long time to like get it off do you share those names of those channels or no but I'll I'll tell you afterwards but like you don't share because you think it's a great opportunity and you don't want other YouTubers to um yeah it's just like I just don't really talk about it too much but yeah I've talked to a lot of YouTubers recently and I feel like a lot of YouTubers are digging into like how can I remove myself from the picture but still use my talent what do you think is going to happen to YouTube like because if everybody realizes you can like Jake Tran he makes videos without even showing his face right if there is a software that can automate b-roll there's 11 Labs that clones your voice with pretty much it sounds like a normal voice do you think it's going to be flooded in a in the next couple years yeah I'm I'm not sure what's going to happen with that I mean it's it's um I think YouTube's going to find a way to to still filter it out and cuz like people have to remember like YouTube is on the Creator side um like where like they want people to stay on the platform as long as possible so they're they're probably just going to get better at like the algorithm with like recommendations and um you know I'm actually not sure though where where that's going to end up but I think that's the question with everything with with AI yeah yeah it's crazy to to just realize everything can now be automated yeah even like the yeah all the work so eight channels some of them were not profitable yet but you're going to invest for the next 16 months can you talk about like um overall Revenue if you're okay with say numbers say numbers if you're not okay with telling me the exact numbers you can say like what's the proportion where where the does the money come from like Number One Source SCE number two I got you yeah um yeah so I mean it's definitely like makes more than my like YouTube channel like my personal brand okay so that will be your media company will be number one well congratulations that's amazing I think it's so cool like for every YouTuber just doing something that's bigger than your primary Channel yeah that's the goal yeah I think that passed it like 2020 maybe or 2021 so it took you like you started 208 so years um and that's kind of why I've also like not really posted much on my channel it's like slowly phed out but yeah from that the actual breakdown from like revenue from those it's it's very heavily like affiliate a lot of those like uh Finance MH apps um and then AdSense AdSense is good but there's like a weird bug on YouTube right now where they'll just like kill your your AdSense it'll drop like 90% it's happened to so many people that I know especially who make like search based videos um where like say your Channel's making like $10,000 a month in add sense and then all of a sudden one day one day just goes down 90% ,000 a month no and we've talked to so many people at YouTube about this and they're like like they don't have a clear answer I think it's cuz they think that like there's traffic coming that's like not um oh bot like Bots or whatever exactly but it's but like I know so many people that this has happened to and they're not driving B like they're not botting so that's that's the part that's kind of weird interesting yeah that's that's the thing with being dependent on one source of income but your number one is affiliate right yeah the second would be AdSense um maybe sponsors probably like flat fee sponsors but we don't do a lot of those anymore the reason why I don't like a lot of flat fee sponsors is like let's say on my YouTube channel right like a company might offer like $20,000 for like a flat fee like mid roll like ad in a video my problem with that is like I'm kind of maxed out then at $220,000 if you insert an affiliate then you can make so much more right that basic unlimited upside um that's great that's great if you figured out the affiliate part yeah and so then it's like I just feel like with the flat fee sponsor it's like I feel like I'm really trading my time for money it's like if it takes me all day to make a video and then I'm maxed out at like a certain amount you still get AdSense yeah and you still can you can still put other affiliate links in in description no maybe it depends we some yeah sometimes they're super strict but sometimes they're like whatever can you give advice on like trying to someone who's trying to to figure out Affiliates um the biggest advice I would say is like just like knowing when people are warmed up to something so like um because a lot of our volume comes from search like people are already looking for something specific and so then we have it there like if they're like okay like what are the best investing apps right and they search that on YouTube M and now the five best investing apps that we talking about we have an affiliate link to each one of those like the conversion is going to be through the roof because because it's so like they're so ready for it but also top five investment apps like Vanguard wouldn't have an affiliate how do you um well so or you just don't include it no no no no no So like um we'll usually either like link to it or um we've do this a lot where we'll just drive traffic to a company without even being like an affiliate partner with them and then like once we like hey like we got like we got 10,000 like clicks sent to your website I'm sure we drove like at least a few hundred customers we should work together were you able to do something yeah we do that all the time with companies where like they don't have an affiliate program and then we just send them a lot of traffic we like you guys should really make an affiliate program that's great that is awesome what about your um VC company you said it's taking up a lot of time do you interview a lot of startups what's the process there yeah so um my partner on the fund is is sebie which you know and hopefully some people know him as well um and we started that in 2022 um and uh you know we raised some money for a lot of it's our own money as well and we just invest into early stage like preed seed companies um a lot of consumer Tech but any exits not yet but it's coming things are looking good yeah I'm I'm I'm very excited in in especially like the past like two or three months um where the the thing with like when you invest into really early stage companies where it's literally like an idea or like they barely have like an MVP is like there's basically like a one to twoe period after you invest where you're like praying and and so doubtful and then all of a sudden and sometimes this can take a long time like look at figma which I guess that figma adobe deal got canell but I mean they they were founded like over a decade ago and for like the first like eight years it was just like flat like it did nothing and then all of a sudden it was hockey stick so um yeah things are looking good we're still investing and like deploying the funds um how many companies do you invest in each month so far we've invested into 14 um since May of 2022 so almost two years 14 companies and we probably still have another um I'd say close to 20 companies that we'll probably invest into in total maybe maybe 15 to 20 yeah do is it only you and sebie yeah it's myself and sebie um who like are the GPS on on the fund is that what you most the most excited about uh in in what you're doing yeah it's definitely the one that like I wake up and I just get super excited about it um and talking to people and Founders is such a great way to just stay in the loop with like what the future is like what the world's going to look like in 10 years um or even in 50 years and um I think the best part about it is like not the returns or the potential returns but like as a person with like investing have like a tiny influence on what the future's going to look like because you know even if like a check that you're writing like an angel check is maybe like $110,000 even like that $10,000 might make or break it for the company so yeah that's that's really cool that's exciting uh can we talk about your personal finance a little bit when like your expenses what's the fraction of your total income right now cuz I know you're you live a fugal life um I say you're like desk setups yeah well no I actually don't think I live as Frugal of a life anymore because you travel travel and then also I I I like eating out a lot like restaurants and guilty pleasures yeah so I definitely spend a lot more than I used to like if people watch like my minimalist videos in like 2020 it's definitely I've changed a bit um but expenses as as a total of my income is probably like maybe like 10% and so you're able to save around like 90% well yeah the the IRS takes half but uh have you thought about buying real estate um not really no I'm I'm not a real estate person why um you know people always say it's great for for taxes but then you're then you're stuck in real estate and you're going to have to recapture all of those gains at some point if you ever sell so then it's like you can't ever sell you you can sell sell and you buy another yeah but then you have houses all over the world that sounds like a lot of headache to me but you can hire a manager yeah I know but uh I would rather be more liquid and real estate just doesn't it doesn't excite me yeah interesting yeah wow you're the first person yeah cuz everyone is like oh I'd love to buy something it just seems boring to me like I I would rather rent and um I'd rather invest in the stock market or so all any other asset all ofia if we take the all of your savings like what percentage is in cash what percentage in is invested what's what's in crypto what's in stocks uh the majority is definitely in stocks individual stocks actually oh risky yeah um yeah and then I have a good chunk in like you know index funds um crypto I'm pretty Diversified with like how much is in crypto um like percentage mhm uh usually around like 5 to 10% I try to keep it in that range is it on Ledger um I I have hard like wallets yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I after 2021 you don't trust I wouldn't trust keeping any crypto on any exchanges yeah so okay crypto um stocks how much do you have in cash in percentage it's probably maybe around like 20% or so uh I I usually don't have like a ton of cash on hand is it in on high high yield savings account uh like short-term treasuries yeah it's a little bit better like higher yield than a where did you buy them uh just through my brokerage yeah M yeah but it's it's like right now you could get like 5% on like short-term treasuries short term meaning like like 6 months you know 3 months one month it could be yeah anything under like a year for some people that might be kind of complicated to buy those specifically you can put your money into like things like uh funds that basically are that but like they're liquid and they're not it's not the actual like bonds or notes themselves where do you see yourself in five years like what's the goal with all of this uh in five years I I have no idea um probably probably Slow Down Start a family I wanted to focus my early 20s on just like building a nice Baseline of like you know have enough money set myself up so that if I don't want to work I don't have to which I think I'm like at that point now and now I can just work on things that that I love you know and that I really want to do and so maybe like 5 years from now I'll just big farm you know cattle or something and like I'll be able to do it cuz I won won't be worried about paying the bills you're living a life that's amazing you're how old are you now 25 25 traveling the world having your income figured out your retirements oh sorry your retirement account is probably all ready for you to retire yeah that is perfect okay let's wrap up this video with one advice for everyone who wants to be like as successful as you are and it's just starting out I'd say don't reinvent the wheel MH yeah like people try to create like some you know crazy new formula or something I would say just like look at what's working for people then just like modify it ever so slightly post just yeah and and for influencers um I guess consistently post but it's more of just like I'd focus on quality over quantity also if if you're trying to do the influencer out yeah but also like for you 16 months I'm I'm just thinking eight channels 16 months you're posting every week right um yeah every week or you know a few times a month and it's yeah that's amazing week that's you know you're really diligent about actually making things happen that's the because I know some people like they posted videos oh they didn't perform it's not for me people don't like me yeah or just like getting started is the like hardest part it's like oh I don't know what like when I was 18 I was like who's going to listen to me about investing in the stock market I'm 18 did you have imposter syndrome when you started totally yeah I mean I still do everyone everyone does you know does anyone ever tell you like oh how can you talk about this you don't have a license or whatever no and that's what I was shocked by when like people were listening to me when I was 18 I was like what this is kind of scary you're also very humble and you're like this is what it looks like for me you know I'm just sharing yeah that was great thank you so much Nate you're super inspiring and I hope more people who are watching their 18s they they will be like oh my God I want to do the same thing as Nate be consistent right and don't reement the the wheel yeah thanks for having me on thank you so much that was amazing bye guys and please subscribe to Nate's Channel I hope he's going to post something

Channel: Silicon Valley Girl

Views: 21,104

Keywords: silicon valley girl, marina mogilko, linguamarina, nate o'brien, how to make money on youtube, how to make money online, nate o'brien affiliate marketing, investing for beginners, affiliate marketing for beginners

Id: E_Mh_SXKCCU

Length: 25min 43sec (1543 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024