E-Commerce Ideas # 5 – YouTube Channels
I bet you have heard of YouTube. Of course you have. It’s one of the most searched websites on the Internet. People go there looking for videos for education, entertainment, and information. I’m a HUGE user of YouTube content. However, I will admit that one of the most annoying things about YouTube are the ads that come on either before, during , or after the video I want to watch. But let me tell you a secret about those ads. First, they are highly targeted ads. Second, the YouTuber (that’s the person who’s video you are watching) gets to share in the ad revenue from ads that run on their page. It’s called monitization (remember that word).
There are folks on YouTube that are making as much as a million dollars a month on Youtube from ad revenue. In fact, as of the writing of this blog post, two of highest paid YouTube content provider for 2019 are Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, that host Good Mythical Morning, one of YouTube’s most popular daily show on which they eat foods like Cheetos-flavored Pop-Tarts and sing with stars like Kelly Rowland. They’ve expanded their brand of comedy to four channels, a podcast, two books and, earlier this year, purchased the multichannel network Smosh for a reported $10 million. Oh, I forgot – they earned nearly $18 million in 2019 from YouTube alone.
I have a fellow that I watch Graham Stephan, a 29 year-old real estate agent that started a YouTube channel in his garage in early 2017. Today, as a realtor he earns about $8,000 in monthly commission from the sales of homes in Los Angeles. However, his YouTube channel with over 300,000 followers earns him an monthly income of over $90k per month (yes, I said per month). And he uses his channel to promote his online real estate course that he developed. That course on Teachable (one of the e-commerce ideas I regularly talk about) brings him another $28k per month. Finally, his affiliate and sponsorship income (because he has so many followers and provides such great content) provides another $7k per month. That income has allowed him to purchase real estate as an invesment – which brings in another $15k per month. So all together, Graham Stephan has a monthly income of over $150,000 per month and he’s only 29 years old. YouTube is the engine that drives his streams of income.
Let’s take another one (and trust me I have plenty). Reyes The Entrepreneur.
One final one is my favorite down home cook. One day, the YouTube algorithm realized that I like food and enjoy cooking. So it recommended this video to me of a woman and her recipe for delicious salmon patties. It was 4am in August of 2018 when I saw her video recommendation and it was good. After I watched it, I went out the next morning to get my ingredients to make that recipe. At the time, I believe she had about 35k subscribers. According to her page, she started her channel around Thanksgiving of 2017. In June of 2018, she thanked everyone for helping her get to 1,000 subscribers. A month later (July 2018), she hit 10,000 subscribers. And in Sept of 2018, she hit 50,000 subscribers. Let me tell you what I believe happened. When YouTube promoted her Salmon patty recipe, that video when viral and it’s her number two video with over. Her other video, which was recommended to me (and which me and my daughter made) was a honey garlic chicken thigh recipe. It currently has over 2 million views. As of this writing, Gina now has over 484,000 subscribers to her channel. She’s not the greatest cook either (my opinion only). But what she has is a really great spirit and personality that comes through when she’s cooking. And she only uses a mobile phone on a tripod to record her videos. And if I was to guess how much she earns from her channel, basically cooking for her family, I’d guess it’s around $4-5k per month from advertising. Not bad in my opinion.