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Background: I live in Los Angeles and have three VERY close friends who are Youtubers. They’re all in the niche of reviewing gear for amateur heavy metal and ro

Background: I live in Los Angeles and have three VERY close friends who are Youtubers. They’re all in the niche of reviewing gear for amateur heavy metal and rock audio engineers (my singer is one of them). They have similar subscriber counts (between 200k-350k subs), in a similar space. One channel pulls in $80k a year, one about $200k a year, and one over $200k A MONTH. This is largly because of outside deals. YouTube CPMs for music content is generally garbage. However, outside deals and affiliate marketing for gear reviews is pretty lucrative. More lucrative is online courses. My friend pulling in $200k+ a month has gone heavy on the online course side. That being said, this sounds cheesy, but DO NOT do Youtube for the money. You will make FAR FAR more cash in the short term by either: 1. Studying leetcode for job interviews at FAANG companies. 2. Taking up contract work on the side. 3. Being an uber driver. For real. Youtube is a GRIND. My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years. While working full time. Before they had ANY significant traction. For your first year expect to make MAYBE $10k, if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week. I’m currently growing my own Youtube channel now, I’m only at one video a week but I do genuinely enjoy making them. I’m also growing my LinkedIn too (organic reach on LinkedIn is BANANAS, I trend every four posts). But again, I ENJOY doing these videos, I writing scripts, I enjoy public speaking. So to answer your question: it is 1000% not too late AT ALL. It’s still VERY VERY early. There is MASSIVE MASSIVE oppertunity on these platforms. However you HAVE to make content you love or you WILL quit. Hopefully I’m not discouraging you from posting, please post, but only do what you enjoy!

flashman 6y ago
Also, to expand on this point: > My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years. For every ten people who did this, maybe one made it big. There's no guarantee the grind will pay off.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  This seems to imply that success in this field is randomly assigned rather than being attained through persistence and attention to the audience. For anyone who presumes this to be true, it will be inevitable. Anyone who produces content consistently for a long enough period of time, pays good attention to how their content is received, continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants, and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc, will find success eventually. The people who make it big do all those things. Those who don't have generally gotten discouraged too early, before they've put enough effort and persistence into those key ingredients. Sure, natural charisma helps, and can make it look like some creators just "got lucky" with huge growth from the start. But plenty of creators started out seeming awkward and unpolished early on, but over time were able to improve their delivery style and other aspects of their production, and hit it big eventually. (Edited to clarify position.)
  - rdgthree 6y ago
    Agreed, but I don't think you're necessarily in disagreement with your parent. Some people struggle to understand how to improve on their weaknesses and think they're paying attention to how their content is received, adapting to their audience, etc, but in reality they're missing the mark by a mile. In this sense it's essentially entrepreneurship. The founders who are simply not doing a good job don't always realize it. Some people will continue their efforts for years without knowing it's their own inability holding them back.
    - tomhoward 6y ago
      The parent commenter wasn't clear about whether they meant success comes mostly down to random chance vs persistence and responsiveness to the audience. I've expanded (and edited) my comment to try and clarify what I think is an important distinction. But to be clear, I highly doubt it's true that for every creator who builds a big audience, there's another nine (or even one or two) who put in the same effort, persistence and attention to their audience, over at least 2 years, and get nowhere. I can believe that many start out then get discouraged and give up early, because they don't know how to gauge their results and improve their product, but that's a different issue.
      - rdgthree 6y ago
        I agree largely, I'm just not sure that insufficient effort/persistence so heavily outweighs low quality content as a reason for failure over time. I'd imagine there are actually a large amount of "zombie" YouTubers that consistently put out videos that very few people (relatively) end up watching. A lot of startups end up in this "zombie" state rather than shutting down[0]. So I agree most probably just get discouraged and give up early. But I can easily see 9 long-time "zombie" YouTubers for every channel with a big audience. [0]https://yclist.com/ https://yclist.com/
        tomhoward 6y ago
        I guess it's that kind of topic where once you discuss it enough you reach consensus on a position that is neither particularly controversial nor insightful :) I gather the people who've found my earlier comments disagreeable are assuming I'm advocating that people blindly persist at something for countless years, even if they see no signs of success, which of course I'm not. My point assumes that by doing something with sufficient dedication for a sufficient amount of time, you'll learn the necessary skills, including learning how to learn, and learning how to gauge success, and learning when it's best to quit and try something else. I actually don't think it's likely there's huge numbers of "zombie" YouTubers, slogging away for years with no success. Sure, plenty of stuff gets posted that gets very few views, but not by people who are serious about making a career of it. Career-focused people either see signs of success or realise they need to find a new career path. As for the YC list, I know a lot about that list as my company is on it, as are several others run by people I know. There aren't many actual zombie companies on that list. There are companies that didn't become unicorns, but did become solid small-medium businesses that employ a decent number of people and provide important services to their customers, and will likely eventually be acquired for a decent return to the founders and investors. And there are others that have been abandoned, but provided valuable lessons to their founders, which helped equip them for greater success in the next stages of their career. My opinions expressed above are from having spent 10+ years running and observing others running startups, and by seeing what persistence and long-term success look like. I've never seen persistence work out badly for people, as long as they are adequately able to gauge their success along the way. I get saddened at the thought that people with the potential to do great things might be discouraged from giving something a go because somebody else tells them "you know, for every successful person you see, there are 10 people who failed", when the truth is not nearly that simple or dismal.
- michaelbrave 6y ago
  There is luck sure, but there is no luck without the work first.
- jameshush 6y ago
  Here's the thing though, ten people DO NOT do this. Most people give up after one video. Or never post anything to begin with. I pretty much gave up for 6 months after trying to make one video and got back on the horse recently a few months ago. Even if the grind doesn't "pay off" in views, it's paying off in other ways for me regardless. I'm way better at speaking in front of a camera now than a few months ago. My writing ability has improved drastically because I'm writing 1-2 scripts a week now. I've gotten a lot better at video editing, which I always enjoyed a bit anyway. You can't really lose. Even if you never become "middleclass YouTube famous" you're still building skills that are handy in other fields (especially writing and communication ones!)
ApolloRising 6y ago
Just curious did pursue the outside deals or did the big subscribe base have the vendors find them?
- jameshush 6y ago
  For my one friend it started with gear companies reaching out to him offering him free gear. Then he became friends with other YouTubers who told him to start charging. Nowadays it’s a mix between outreach and inbound.
  - ApolloRising 6y ago
    Thanks for the update, always curious how the youtube ecosystem works.
Winterflow3r 6y ago
Can I ask what kind of content you post on LinkedIn? Is it articles or links to videos or just posts?
- jameshush 6y ago
  I started with video clips of my tech presentations I gave at a JavaScript meetup group in Los Angeles. I now mostly do posts, I have a backlog of video footage I want to re-edit for LinkedIn that I'll get to eventually... I try to spend 30 minutes a day or so responding to comment threads on LinkedIn on trending subjects. It's a grind, but again, some people play Animal Crossing, some people play LinkedIn hahaha. I got this tip from my friend who grew his Instagram page the same way. When I'm in the writing mood I'll bang out 5+ LinkedIn posts on a Sunday afternoon and use hootsuite to release one a week. LinkedIn you reallllly gotta focus on the individual conversations and not chase views though. The goal there isn't to get a million people to see something, the goal is to appear in a senior manager at a FAANG company's feed and start a conversation. This happened to me last year and ended up me being able to skip the phone screen for a FAANG interview (I can speak in front of 100 people but I'm still terribly nervous for whiteboard tech interviews). I didn't end up getting the job because I failed the tech screen but that's an example of an opportunity that appeared from nowhere by just posting value adding content.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Side note... > if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week. My kids watch kid YouTubers, and I recently found out that one of these “home made” quality channels actually has a full on media crew behind the production! I was blown away.
- RNCTX 6y ago
  > I recently found out that one of these “home made” quality channels actually has a full on media crew behind the production! I was blown away. Wait, it gets worse. If you have a teenage daughter you will eventually have the “25 year old pretending to be 16 year old with a full production crew shilling for xyz makeup brand.” Assume that most of them have a full production crew.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    Wow damn. That really disgusts me :(
- jameshush 6y ago
  It's totally worth it. Watch time definitely increases when production quality goes up. However when you're first starting out it's more about building the habits, learning the basics and actually posting content. You have to walk before you run!
- jonnypotty 6y ago
  Money takes over.
akudha 6y ago
Just curious, are you able to link to their channels? Also, what is your channel about?
- jameshush 6y ago
  Sure! I fizzed up the numbers I originally posted quite a bit, I wanted more to show the point that "2x views !== 2x money". My friends are Trey from GearGods (I play bass in his band https://www.youtube.com/user/geargodsnet https://www.youtube.com/user/geargodsnet), Glenn from Spectre Sound (https://www.youtube.com/user/SpectreSoundStudios https://www.youtube.com/user/SpectreSoundStudios he recorded my college metal band 11-12 years ago and lived with me for a few months in LA), and Warren from Produce Like A Pro (https://www.youtube.com/user/WarrenHuartRecording https://www.youtube.com/user/WarrenHuartRecording) The one I've started is still brand new and pretty small. It took me a few months to build up the courage to actually post anything. I'm just finally starting to get used to talking to a camera hahaha. I've been mostly posting computer science career advice and clips from the technical presentations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ixAoKOp9_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ixAoKOp9_E . I've had quite a bit of success repurposing content on LinkedIn though. A clip on YouTube might get 12 views for me but the same clip with subtitles reaches 2000+ people. More importantly though, LinkedIn has been great because old colleagues/classmates I haven't talked to in YEARS view my profile and that reminds me to reach out to them and chat on the phone.
truckerbill 6y ago
Do you know how they negotiated those deals? Do these companies approach you with a big offer if you've got the views, or is it the result of renegotiating upwards over the lifetime of the channel? Always wondered how these big numbers come about...
- jameshush 6y ago
  Every deal is different, some are flat fees over time(an amp manufacturer paid one friend a few thousand to just have their amp in the background of every video for a year), some are paid demos for one off videos, a lot is affiliate marketing (they get a % from every sale they make from an affiliate link). Honestly it’s about relationships and numbers. It’s not a perfect science. E.g. My friend was able to say ”I brought this online store $450k worth of sales over 6 months so I want $X to do a video.” Also all three of them sell their own online courses on guitar playing and audio engineering and take comissions from one another to promote them on their channels. Out of every source of income the courses have been the highest ROI, but a lot more work then gear demos.
_curious_ 6y ago
I FOUND the MARKETER! Seriously though: what is the topical nature of your content, or if comfortable, share a link to your channel?
- jameshush 6y ago
  Hahaha, I actually got interested in marketing from reading patio11's stuff back in the day! However marketing is definitely still more of a hobby for me, my main focus and day job is frontend DevOps. I do love treating this whole social media game as an engineering problem though. My channel is still small, it's mostly software engineering career advice and personal finance (videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YeX6tbR60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YeX6tbR60).
  - _curious_ 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Maybe it was the use of CAPS? Either way keep on creating!
minhazm423 6y ago
Hey could you expand on the part of contract work on the side? You mean in tech right alongside your full time job? How can one pull that off if both jobs are 9-5?

flashman 6y ago

Also, to expand on this point: > My friends who ”made” it posted three quality videos a week. For 1-2 years. For every ten people who did this, maybe one made it big. There's no guarantee the grind will pay off.

tomhoward 6y ago
This seems to imply that success in this field is randomly assigned rather than being attained through persistence and attention to the audience. For anyone who presumes this to be true, it will be inevitable. Anyone who produces content consistently for a long enough period of time, pays good attention to how their content is received, continues to adapt their content to what they find the audience wants, and is attentive in engaging with their audience's messages/comments/etc, will find success eventually. The people who make it big do all those things. Those who don't have generally gotten discouraged too early, before they've put enough effort and persistence into those key ingredients. Sure, natural charisma helps, and can make it look like some creators just "got lucky" with huge growth from the start. But plenty of creators started out seeming awkward and unpolished early on, but over time were able to improve their delivery style and other aspects of their production, and hit it big eventually. (Edited to clarify position.)
- rdgthree 6y ago
  Agreed, but I don't think you're necessarily in disagreement with your parent. Some people struggle to understand how to improve on their weaknesses and think they're paying attention to how their content is received, adapting to their audience, etc, but in reality they're missing the mark by a mile. In this sense it's essentially entrepreneurship. The founders who are simply not doing a good job don't always realize it. Some people will continue their efforts for years without knowing it's their own inability holding them back.
  - tomhoward 6y ago
    The parent commenter wasn't clear about whether they meant success comes mostly down to random chance vs persistence and responsiveness to the audience. I've expanded (and edited) my comment to try and clarify what I think is an important distinction. But to be clear, I highly doubt it's true that for every creator who builds a big audience, there's another nine (or even one or two) who put in the same effort, persistence and attention to their audience, over at least 2 years, and get nowhere. I can believe that many start out then get discouraged and give up early, because they don't know how to gauge their results and improve their product, but that's a different issue.
    - rdgthree 6y ago
      I agree largely, I'm just not sure that insufficient effort/persistence so heavily outweighs low quality content as a reason for failure over time. I'd imagine there are actually a large amount of "zombie" YouTubers that consistently put out videos that very few people (relatively) end up watching. A lot of startups end up in this "zombie" state rather than shutting down[0]. So I agree most probably just get discouraged and give up early. But I can easily see 9 long-time "zombie" YouTubers for every channel with a big audience. [0]https://yclist.com/ https://yclist.com/
      - tomhoward 6y ago
        I guess it's that kind of topic where once you discuss it enough you reach consensus on a position that is neither particularly controversial nor insightful :) I gather the people who've found my earlier comments disagreeable are assuming I'm advocating that people blindly persist at something for countless years, even if they see no signs of success, which of course I'm not. My point assumes that by doing something with sufficient dedication for a sufficient amount of time, you'll learn the necessary skills, including learning how to learn, and learning how to gauge success, and learning when it's best to quit and try something else. I actually don't think it's likely there's huge numbers of "zombie" YouTubers, slogging away for years with no success. Sure, plenty of stuff gets posted that gets very few views, but not by people who are serious about making a career of it. Career-focused people either see signs of success or realise they need to find a new career path. As for the YC list, I know a lot about that list as my company is on it, as are several others run by people I know. There aren't many actual zombie companies on that list. There are companies that didn't become unicorns, but did become solid small-medium businesses that employ a decent number of people and provide important services to their customers, and will likely eventually be acquired for a decent return to the founders and investors. And there are others that have been abandoned, but provided valuable lessons to their founders, which helped equip them for greater success in the next stages of their career. My opinions expressed above are from having spent 10+ years running and observing others running startups, and by seeing what persistence and long-term success look like. I've never seen persistence work out badly for people, as long as they are adequately able to gauge their success along the way. I get saddened at the thought that people with the potential to do great things might be discouraged from giving something a go because somebody else tells them "you know, for every successful person you see, there are 10 people who failed", when the truth is not nearly that simple or dismal.
michaelbrave 6y ago
There is luck sure, but there is no luck without the work first.
jameshush 6y ago
Here's the thing though, ten people DO NOT do this. Most people give up after one video. Or never post anything to begin with. I pretty much gave up for 6 months after trying to make one video and got back on the horse recently a few months ago. Even if the grind doesn't "pay off" in views, it's paying off in other ways for me regardless. I'm way better at speaking in front of a camera now than a few months ago. My writing ability has improved drastically because I'm writing 1-2 scripts a week now. I've gotten a lot better at video editing, which I always enjoyed a bit anyway. You can't really lose. Even if you never become "middleclass YouTube famous" you're still building skills that are handy in other fields (especially writing and communication ones!)

ApolloRising 6y ago

Just curious did pursue the outside deals or did the big subscribe base have the vendors find them?

jameshush 6y ago
For my one friend it started with gear companies reaching out to him offering him free gear. Then he became friends with other YouTubers who told him to start charging. Nowadays it’s a mix between outreach and inbound.
- ApolloRising 6y ago
  Thanks for the update, always curious how the youtube ecosystem works.

Winterflow3r 6y ago

Can I ask what kind of content you post on LinkedIn? Is it articles or links to videos or just posts?

jameshush 6y ago
I started with video clips of my tech presentations I gave at a JavaScript meetup group in Los Angeles. I now mostly do posts, I have a backlog of video footage I want to re-edit for LinkedIn that I'll get to eventually... I try to spend 30 minutes a day or so responding to comment threads on LinkedIn on trending subjects. It's a grind, but again, some people play Animal Crossing, some people play LinkedIn hahaha. I got this tip from my friend who grew his Instagram page the same way. When I'm in the writing mood I'll bang out 5+ LinkedIn posts on a Sunday afternoon and use hootsuite to release one a week. LinkedIn you reallllly gotta focus on the individual conversations and not chase views though. The goal there isn't to get a million people to see something, the goal is to appear in a senior manager at a FAANG company's feed and start a conversation. This happened to me last year and ended up me being able to skip the phone screen for a FAANG interview (I can speak in front of 100 people but I'm still terribly nervous for whiteboard tech interviews). I didn't end up getting the job because I failed the tech screen but that's an example of an opportunity that appeared from nowhere by just posting value adding content.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Side note... > if AND ONLY IF, you post 3 quality videos a week. My kids watch kid YouTubers, and I recently found out that one of these “home made” quality channels actually has a full on media crew behind the production! I was blown away.

RNCTX 6y ago
> I recently found out that one of these “home made” quality channels actually has a full on media crew behind the production! I was blown away. Wait, it gets worse. If you have a teenage daughter you will eventually have the “25 year old pretending to be 16 year old with a full production crew shilling for xyz makeup brand.” Assume that most of them have a full production crew.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  Wow damn. That really disgusts me :(
jameshush 6y ago
It's totally worth it. Watch time definitely increases when production quality goes up. However when you're first starting out it's more about building the habits, learning the basics and actually posting content. You have to walk before you run!
jonnypotty 6y ago
Money takes over.

akudha 6y ago

Just curious, are you able to link to their channels? Also, what is your channel about?

jameshush 6y ago
Sure! I fizzed up the numbers I originally posted quite a bit, I wanted more to show the point that "2x views !== 2x money". My friends are Trey from GearGods (I play bass in his band https://www.youtube.com/user/geargodsnet https://www.youtube.com/user/geargodsnet), Glenn from Spectre Sound (https://www.youtube.com/user/SpectreSoundStudios https://www.youtube.com/user/SpectreSoundStudios he recorded my college metal band 11-12 years ago and lived with me for a few months in LA), and Warren from Produce Like A Pro (https://www.youtube.com/user/WarrenHuartRecording https://www.youtube.com/user/WarrenHuartRecording) The one I've started is still brand new and pretty small. It took me a few months to build up the courage to actually post anything. I'm just finally starting to get used to talking to a camera hahaha. I've been mostly posting computer science career advice and clips from the technical presentations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ixAoKOp9_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ixAoKOp9_E . I've had quite a bit of success repurposing content on LinkedIn though. A clip on YouTube might get 12 views for me but the same clip with subtitles reaches 2000+ people. More importantly though, LinkedIn has been great because old colleagues/classmates I haven't talked to in YEARS view my profile and that reminds me to reach out to them and chat on the phone.

truckerbill 6y ago

Do you know how they negotiated those deals? Do these companies approach you with a big offer if you've got the views, or is it the result of renegotiating upwards over the lifetime of the channel? Always wondered how these big numbers come about...

jameshush 6y ago
Every deal is different, some are flat fees over time(an amp manufacturer paid one friend a few thousand to just have their amp in the background of every video for a year), some are paid demos for one off videos, a lot is affiliate marketing (they get a % from every sale they make from an affiliate link). Honestly it’s about relationships and numbers. It’s not a perfect science. E.g. My friend was able to say ”I brought this online store $450k worth of sales over 6 months so I want $X to do a video.” Also all three of them sell their own online courses on guitar playing and audio engineering and take comissions from one another to promote them on their channels. Out of every source of income the courses have been the highest ROI, but a lot more work then gear demos.

_curious_ 6y ago

I FOUND the MARKETER! Seriously though: what is the topical nature of your content, or if comfortable, share a link to your channel?

jameshush 6y ago
Hahaha, I actually got interested in marketing from reading patio11's stuff back in the day! However marketing is definitely still more of a hobby for me, my main focus and day job is frontend DevOps. I do love treating this whole social media game as an engineering problem though. My channel is still small, it's mostly software engineering career advice and personal finance (videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YeX6tbR60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YeX6tbR60).
- _curious_ 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Maybe it was the use of CAPS? Either way keep on creating!

minhazm423 6y ago

Hey could you expand on the part of contract work on the side? You mean in tech right alongside your full time job? How can one pull that off if both jobs are 9-5?