How I Use YouTube To Make $20,000+ Each Month (& its not YouTube Adsense!)
You probably clicked this because you need to start making more money with your YouTube channel or your business. And I’m going to show you the bottom line of everything I’ve made is just the 3 months of 2021 BUT I want to preference this video with two major beliefs I live by when it comes to growing a YouTube channel and building a business.
I DON’T aspire to be a 7 figure business owner… yes, that would be amazing if it happens but I’m not going to push myself to burn out OR take away my time with my kids just for a “cool” income number. I know what I need to make and what I would like to make and that’s what my goal is
I take 3 day weekends… when I started my business the best part about it was setting your own schedule. If you are chasing after a random number (like the 7 figure business owner), you are going to be working A LOT! So I decided at the beginning of last year I was no longer working Friday. Now with 2020, some other issues came into play and I actually ended up working half the amount of time in 2020 as I did in 2019 and STILL doubled my year end revenue.
Okay, let's add a bonus belief. I want to also be super clear that this hasn’t been easy to get to this point. I started my business in 2016 when could not force myself to go to my job anymore. I had a 10-month-old at home and while I never wanted to be a stay at home mom, I didn’t want to normalize for her that you HAVE to go to a job you hate.
That first year I made a total of $10,000. Which isn’t what I thought I would make that first year since I was leaving a salary job of $80K! Luckily, I had a nest egg that kept me afloat and had baby number 2 at the end of 2016.
For half of 2017, I dealt with postpartum depression and tried to work on getting myself to feel normal again. Once I found the right medication, I started to find my groove with my business and I more than TRIPLED what I made in 2016.
2018 we then doubled what we made in 2017.
Same with 2019 and 2020.
So I share this with you to be clear that the turtle wins right? Slow and steady wins the race!
And now I’ve made in 3 months what I made the entire year in 2018!
Let’s first talk about revenue from ad sense… and I will tell you I do not make much at all.
With 1 million views last year I made LESS than $5000! That’s why I don’t use ad sense as a stable source of income for myself.
I don’t have an Adsense strategy. After all, my goal is to get people into my business because I can control that. If you want to learn more about monetization strategies I would absolutely watch Cathrin Manning because she’s got that process down!
Like I said I can CONTROL my revenue by selling our agency services and my programs.
It’s also important here to understand you are at the mercy of YouTube because I have a client who receives a QUARTER of the views I did and has HALF the number of subscribers I do and still made just under $9K from YouTube last year!
The 2 revenue generators for me are my YouTube Production and Management Agency and my program, Video Strategy Academy. Let me share a little more detail about this because I’m not just grabbing the money and running, there are expenses associated with each of these revenue streams and I want to be as transparent as possible…
A lot of the revenue or income reports you hear from people aren’t always showing 100% of the truth. Yes, they are probably sharing with you their TOTAL revenue but they aren’t sharing the expenses it takes to get to that amount.
In my agency, we craft the strategy for our clients. Basically, we do all the YouTube research, keywords, competitors, title, and thumbnail ideas. Then we get the client to film the video. From there we do everything else- edit, upload to YouTube, create social media videos and give monthly reports to help them continue to grow their channel which in returns helps them drive more leads to their business.
Spoiler alerts… I don’t do this all! Remember I want my 3 day weekends so I need to hire people to help me manage the agency.
We have our video editor, we have an assistant strategist, and a client happiness coordinator.
Yes, this can get expensive BUT we have a system in place, that wasn’t there a year ago that we can continue to scale our agency to 50+ clients… and that’s totally possible because we’ve hardly advertised our agency, we haven’t updated the website in over a year and we are making over $23,000 just in the past 3 months.
And honestly, I’ve kept the agency pretty quiet because I wanted to make sure we could handle bringing on new clients before we did.
But I’ve taken the time to invest in my team, invest in the processes and systems so I’m not 100% attached to it. That way if something happens to me… like it did this month when my family got “the virus that should not be named” my team kept on going and it was as if I never left!
YouTube is a huge way for me to convert those clients on the agency side because they can see my system and get a sense of me and my personality! It allows me to weed out the wrong people before they even show up! If they don’t like me on YouTube and my personality we are probably not going to be a good fit and that’s why, at this time, 100% of my clients are female entrepreneurs who are also moms! Pretty wild right!
Now I just talked about YouTube being a huge lead generator for my services which brings about 35% of my revenue this month but the major source of income and really how I can help most people is through my digital programs like my signature program Video Strategy Academy 2.0.
Some may call this “passive income” but there is nothing passive about it!
We did a complete live launch in February along with an online summit that helped us bring in over $40,000 in revenue!
And it was a whole lot of work BUT since we have the process in place and we have everything already done once, it will be easier for us to replicate time and time again! So there is nothing PASSIVE about this…
Also - once students are inside my VSA program I work with them. I didn’t create a program where they buy the course and I ghost them. This program has an active community inside a private Facebook group that I’m in almost every day. We have weekly coaching calls and I’m constantly bringing new training and guest experts each month to help them grow their YouTube channel and build their business!
So nothing passive about it but I LOVE what I do and the students inside…
There is one last stream of income I’m going to be focusing a little more on here in 2021 and that’s affiliate income and sponsorships. Last year I made about $12,000 in affiliate income and I’m really hoping to triple that this year. We are already working toward that goal since I recently signed my first sponsorship deal starting in April!
If you’ve been keeping with the math the total amount of money I’ve made so far in 2021 is $67,000. And that's with 4 different streams of revenue.
Again I share this with you to show you how having a YouTube channel can be an asset to building your business! If you want more details about any of the things I mentioned in this video we will have it all linked below and if you liked hearing more about the business side of YouTube hit that like button now and let me know what other business topics would you like me to talk about in the comments below!
