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I have a Linux/Programming/Tech Career YouTube channel ( https://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux https://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux ) that just hit 50k subscribers (

I have a Linux/Programming/Tech Career YouTube channel ( https://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux https://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux ) that just hit 50k subscribers (yay!), and it makes around $450/month in ad revenue. I also made a poorly targeted and marketed practical system administration Udemy course last year, which does about $500/month. These projects, along with a few other small things, are on track to make around $15k this year. That's after about 3 years of putting lots of time, effort, and love into creating content on YouTube. Unfortunately that 'passive' income just barely approaches 10% of what I make at my full-time job (Sysadmin/Ops/Automation/DevOps? stuff), so the idea of working on my 'passive/hobby' projects full-time is not an attractive proposition yet. I like building, running, and automating large distributed systems, so I'm not really itching to quit my full-time work and "just" be a teacher. The ideal situation would be 'regular' IT work 3 days a week, and working on YouTube, my own web apps, and additional tech courses the rest of the time.

chippy 9y ago
How much time do you put into the YouTube channel per week / month? I'm seeing on average three 20 minute videos produced per week - so it's at least one hour, but I'd imagine each video takes longer to edit etc?
- bespoke_engnr 9y ago
  As I've started trying to be more professional about it, the time it takes to produce content has grown quite a bit. 20 minutes of me talking into the camera takes 2-4 hours to plan, outline, film, and edit. 30 minutes of screencast takes about 8 hours to script and film, and edit. The planning/research phase before that takes really long, because I try REALLY hard to avoid dependencies on jargon and specialized knowledge, to make the material accessible. I'm actually about to experiment with a series targeted at more experienced sysadmins, where I can just improvise and work on a practical project without much planning or gradual explanation of the fundamentals. I'm hoping those videos will be much faster to create. I spend a LOT of time thinking up and planning material, though -- not really sure how to count that.
  - smnplk 9y ago
    Congrats on your channel. I will subscribe!
    - bespoke_engnr 9y ago
      Aw thanks, I hope you get something useful out of it! Feel free to message me with feedback; I read all of it.

chippy 9y ago

How much time do you put into the YouTube channel per week / month? I'm seeing on average three 20 minute videos produced per week - so it's at least one hour, but I'd imagine each video takes longer to edit etc?

bespoke_engnr 9y ago
As I've started trying to be more professional about it, the time it takes to produce content has grown quite a bit. 20 minutes of me talking into the camera takes 2-4 hours to plan, outline, film, and edit. 30 minutes of screencast takes about 8 hours to script and film, and edit. The planning/research phase before that takes really long, because I try REALLY hard to avoid dependencies on jargon and specialized knowledge, to make the material accessible. I'm actually about to experiment with a series targeted at more experienced sysadmins, where I can just improvise and work on a practical project without much planning or gradual explanation of the fundamentals. I'm hoping those videos will be much faster to create. I spend a LOT of time thinking up and planning material, though -- not really sure how to count that.
- smnplk 9y ago
  Congrats on your channel. I will subscribe!
  - bespoke_engnr 9y ago
    Aw thanks, I hope you get something useful out of it! Feel free to message me with feedback; I read all of it.