$20k to $30k per month as a small Youtuber
Not sure if anyone on here would like tips on growing a Youtube based business but I will gladly answer any questions or hop on a phone call with you if you’re interested in learning social media strategies.
My channel has 200k subscribers with high engagement and I use my channel to market my e-commerce store that sells courses and sound effects. My channel teaches music production tutorials and my viewers purchase my courses (for more in-depth learning) and my sound packs which contain drum samples and other sound effects.
My business is all marketed through my YouTube channel and earns $20k to $30k per month without any advertising. As a small YouTuber, I only make around $500 per month in Adsense, so I’m entirely reliant on properly monetizing my subscriber base with my own products.
Anyway, I’m pretty happy with where I’m at currently and would love to share some strategies with anyone interested.
Once you build your channel and storefront, you only have to post once a week on YouTube and the business practically runs itself. I only work a few hours a week on videos now.
Here are some topics I can help you with: organic social media growth, SEO, Shopify, traffic monetization, lead magnets, email marketing, launches, digital products, courses, and anything relative to e-commerce.
Feel free to reach out or leave a comment (:
It's the course that earns $20k to $30k ? Not the videos, right?
My e-commerce store earns that income, yes. My videos net around $500/month.
Thanks for sharing!
Wow, I would think 200k subs would get you a lot more than $500/month.
Would have expected that as well. Perhaps the costs per 1,000 impressions that advertisers are willing to spend are not so high for the music niche? Would be interested in an opinion as well.
Do you also do sponsorships or affiliate promotions for other companies? Would you mind sharing why or why not?
Congrats on your success by the way! I've stumbled across your channel on YouTube before although I'm more of a hip hop than EDM guy. Keep up the great work, Alex!
I don't do affiliate marketing very much and sell promotion space for one video once every six months for $2500. I don't like to clutter every video with sponsorships because I can make more money promoting my own stuff in my videos. Also, doing sponsored videos is pretty distracting to me.
Every video I do usually has a goal of supporting my store. When I do sponsored work, I have to enter a whole new mindset to create what the sponsor wants and I find that difficult for me.
I estimate that if I didn't own any products and strictly sold products as an affiliate and sold sponsorship space, with a channel my size, I'd probably make around half of what I do now. That type of money would still be nice and that model would be a lot easier than managing my own store, but, I enjoy making the products I do and will probably stick with my current model for the long run.
sum up: sponsored videos and affiliate marketing I find distracting to my long-term plan, however, these are stick lucrative options for creators.
Thank you so much for explaining, Alex! That's super, super helpful.
And I totally agree with you: It's extremely valuable to focus on one thing and to do that properly. If you feel like something distracts you from that mission, it's probably best not to do it.
Furthermore, I would have never guessed that there is so much money to be made with drum kits, etc. That explains why basically every producer on YouTube has their own drum and sample kits.
Again, thank you so much!
Congratulations 🎉 onwards and upwards—thanks for sharing!
Impressive, I wouldn’t have guessed that. How long did it take you to gain traction and reach this point?
I tried YouTube at one point. I love teaching and made programming tutorials. Unfortunately, it’s just not the same: making videos vs. in-person.
A lot of those topics sound interesting to me. I plan to make a SaaS for designers.
I’m curious what worked, and what didn’t. Top tips? What’s your favorite part of the your business?
First question: it took me 5 years to get the machine moving the way it does today. I was very inexperienced in e-commerce (and social media) in the beginning though. Knowing what I know now, I could probably recreate this model and momentum in a year and half.
My top tips:
Friction is everything. Friction is getting traffic from one website to another. So, getting traffic from my channel to my website is and always will be the game. This is done with free giveaways (free samples, check lists, courses, workshops). If I launch a product and tell my viewers to go buy it, I might get 100 visits to the page and 10 sales if I’m lucky. If I launch a dedicated free sample that leads the traffic to the new product, I’ll get 1000 visits and 100 sales (10x).
My second biggest tip is regarding YouTube growth… focus on search optimized titles when you’re starting out. Use this time to get good at editing and increasing your average watch time. Once traffic becomes steady, you can focus some videos on suggested video optimization (clickbait). The more search optimized videos you do in your first year, the better off your channel should be. Once traffic is steady, you can begin a more scheduled regimen with suggested targeted videos once per week.
My fav part of this model is that it sells evergreen products on autopilot. All I have to do is make videos once a week. So I have tons of extra time to work on other ventures and travel.
Thank you @AlexMartinelli!
I definitely feel that when it comes to different skills. And some have many more resources to learn from than others.
Good advice, I like it. The examples help drive the point home.
Sounds great. And you’ll only grow from here 📈
Enjoy 😄 hopefully I’ll make it there someday
How do you create search optimized titles?
Search optimized titles should align more with what people search for rather than what people would click on when recommended a video.
So, quick example...
a video topic could be about how to lose weight in 1 month using the Keto diet
The search-optimized title for this topic would include hype search terms that people would be most likely to type like
"How to lose weight in 1 month using Keto diet"
The popular search terms here are 'how to' and 'Keto diet"
If you're optimizing this video topic for suggested videos, you'd name the video something that people would CLICK on instead of SEARCH, like:
'Everything You Know About Keto is WRONG (do this instead)'
Hope this makes sense.
Hi Alex, super super interesting post by you, thanks for that. First focusing on search-optimized titles and later on shifting towards optimizing for "suggested" traffic is an interesting take and makes a lot of sense to me. On that topic there is a really good video by Film Booth that I was reminded of when reading your comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-LtYGA6UOc
Alex, how do you structure your videos to maximize the chance someone will buy your course?
Great to know and being so supportive as I would like to know do we need real proof to motivate people or how can I present my knowledge in a great way without any proofs
Hey Alex. Congratulations! And thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. I'm in the programming tutorials space (I teach software development), and my channel has almost 10k subscribers.
This kind of content takes a long time to produce, and developers tend to want everything for free. If they buy digital products like courses or ebooks it's from well-known platforms or famous people. I don't want to speak on stages - I prefer the model you use.
What kind of strategy would you use to build trust and turn viewers into customers? Why should they buy from me? I'm afraid creating a product like an online course would be a waste of time right now.
Great post.. What tips do you have for someone who is considering starting a Youtube channel? I have been thinking about it, but can't get myself to sit in front of a camera.
What's your process for creating videos when you started vs now?
I've recently started a channel (34 subscribers) doing tutorials (design/web design).
Is it a bad idea to try to output a bunch of videos without editing the video heavily, I'm thinking of just regularly posting to improve my ability in running tutorials before delving into polishing my video presentation.
Woah this is so wild seeing you post here.
I actually got really into EDM production for a few months at the start of COVID and followed a few of your tutorials haha
I'll gladly take you up on hopping on a phone call if that's still open :) would love to get your opinion on how I can be leveraging YouTube/Social media more for a few of my projects
If you're serious about jumping on a call I would love to take you up on it - I have 60K followers on Instagram and they make me 0 money. I've been gearing up to move to YouTube but can't decide if my area (dev careers/how to get your first dev job) just isn't something people will pay for or if Instagram is a terrible funnel
Congrats. Why are you not using Shorts?
How much equipment do you need? Is just a laptop + microphone + free video editing enough to get started?
You can even get by with an Iphone 13 pro as the camera shoots very well. I have shot YouTube shorts and Tiktoks with it.
Exactly. A decent mic you can get for $100 and smooth audio is more important than image quality. A DSLR camera is recommendable though, it just shoots much better footage than a smartphone. And the rest, as you say, you do with your laptop and editing software (DaVinci Resolve is quite the professional one - and for free!). And then it's all about what you have to say ;)
I launched my saas app this month and got a few paying clients but now I am on a stalemate on where to market it further I don't have a huge budget to market so I wanted to know a few things about how I can use organic social media growth to get new users.
It's great that you got some people to pay for your saas. DM me a link on twitter and I can brainstorm how it can get to the next 1000.
Sounds good! Can you share your channel's link please?
That is awesome! I've basically started SUALVI with that same model in mind a bit over 2 years ago. But I am nowhere near those amounts. I am not sure if it could be because the market might be way smaller, but I'm still working on figuring it out.
My goal for that is to sell those video templates, animated elements, etc. I know of a couple of companies that had a lot of success, but it seems that most of them only rely on paid ads. Except one that I know of, but they have like 500k subs.
Maybe I have to work on making it more frictionless as you mentioned in another comment.
Also, 200k ain't small lol That's top .6% of channels! Which is incredible either way!
I want to get back to this tonight. I checked out your channel and think you have plenty of improvements to make. You have decent engagement and I'd like to help you monetize that better. Also, at 250 uploads, you should be bigger. I can help you change that too. Your titles and thumbnails could improve greatly. Email me at [email protected]... let's hop on a call and talk about it if you're open to it.
I'm just seeing this now. I've Been too busy with client projects. I'll send you an email one of these days. I'll check out your site and see what things I can learn from and then send you any questions that come up.
Congratulations man, sounds like an amazing gig! I just recently started my YouTube channel too, have about 390 subscribers though. Am spending some serious time learning how to edit and put out quality content. Would love to talk privately if you're up for it - guidance/mentorship would be so helpful.
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The other comment that was similar to this was also just created yesterday.... kinda weird.
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wao.
I think you have similar thoughts like me.
Nice to meet you here.
Thanks for your appreciation.
Here you can check more updates
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Youtube.com/alexrome
My store: alexromesound.com