Hello, my Badass, let's talk about making money on YouTube.
Making money on YouTube specifically, I think has a very special place in my heart because as you'll know, my first real side hustle which actually bought in the bacon was this YouTube channel that I founded, Not Even French. When I was living in Paris for six years, about three years into my journey, I started this YouTube channel around the French language and French culture. It was my first real taster of entrepreneurship and I really saw it through - I built it, I grew it, and it taught me so many skills about creating content online. I was a human resource professional, I had zero digital marketing skills whatsoever. And so, it taught me a lot. And through this YouTube channel, I made my first $100,000 online and at its peak and bought in 100k in one single revenue year.
So, I'm going to share with you though, the tale of two very different YouTube channels, because I think it'd be very, very interesting for you to see how important it is to get your business model and your strategy behind your content machine right from the get-go. Although you could categorise Not Even French as a success story and it absolutely was in so many ways, I have 180,000 subscribers on that YouTube channel. I haven't touched it in a while but you know, it was doing well, it was thriving, it cracked the 100k subscriber mark and got my YouTube Award, which was lovely. My silver play button. I was bringing in 100k in revenue. But if we compare that to my Badass Careers YouTube channel, I've got, after four years of consistent effort, 26,000 subscribers. It's a very different model which we'll talk about. And yet that channel has helped to bring in over $1 million in revenue. So, how can that be? Less followers, fewer views but more money?
So, we'll talk about that today because it's important that we get this right from the get-go. There is no point in creating content just to create content. You've got to have the business plan behind your content to fuel your revenue and lifestyle. So that is what we are going to get into why that is and why the strategy and business model beckon on YouTube channel changes everything in terms of earning potential.
So firstly, I'm going to break down my Not Even a French strategy and the five revenue streams that helped me to get to that 100k mark in one year. And then I'm going to compare that to Badass Careers YouTube channel. And you'll see in the comparison and the difference because there's a gap between a 100k YouTube channel and a $1 million dollar YouTube channel. Let's dive in.
Not even French, my first baby. Not Even French is a channel dedicated to helping expats navigate France, the French culture, the French language, and the French administration system. And even though it was for expats and fully in English, it attracted a lot of French people as well who were really fascinated to see how their culture was perceived by another culture entirely especially coming from New Zealand, I think the edit is a point of difference as well. And they often used my YouTube channel to improve their English and Learn English as well, which was cool. So that was a nice surprise. So that was the concept of the channel. So, I started it in 2017. I was working in a very demanding very full, very busy corporate role at the headquarters of L'Oreal and France. I was working as a leadership development manager helping to develop employees’ millennials, and high-performing executives from all around the world and helping them to become better Eat is more emotionally intelligent change agents within the company and become essentially better at leading themselves leading their teams and leading the business towards success. So, it was a cool job.
But as you know, from my origin story, there was a turning point when I married the Frenchie, and I said to myself, you know what, I want to explore the concept of making money online, the digital nomad life. This was pre-COVID. No way in the world could a human resource professional really have a fully remote career to the quality and extent that I did. I wasn't doing just recruitment or payroll or anything, it was a very strategic role, which involves meeting and coaching a lot of people and it was just unthinkable back then.
I start my side hustle. I started my YouTube channel in 2017. And I work on it on average, I would say about 10 hours per week, some weeks, I wouldn't work on it at all. Other times, I would take annual leave and go quite hard on it for a while. But I would say I averaged out to about 10 hours per week. And in my first year, I grew the channel to 55,000 subscribers and I got over 5 million views. In its first year of existence as a side hustle, which is incredible. And then year two, I almost doubled my subscribers. I had 104,000 subscribers by the end of my second year. And that year, I got another 6.7 million views. And then by the end of year three, I was at 132,000 subscribers, and I got another 4.2 million views. As you may notice, it's starting to go down, which is completely normal, because that was the year of fully focusing on Badass Careers. So Not Even French was a beautiful gift to me because when we moved back to New Zealand, I was able to live off Not Even French, and some consulting work I was doing for L'Oreal still, while I built up Badass Careers. Usually, I would recommend if you're starting a business to do it as a side hustle on top of a part-time role or your full-time role or whatever, but have a financial base, and build up your business at first on the side. And that's exactly what I was able to do but in a kind of different way.
And so how was I able to make money on this YouTube channel? How do you make money on YouTube? Let's pull the curtains back. Now I'll tell you about my five different revenue streams from not even French. So, the first revenue stream and this is the classic revenue stream for YouTube is Google AdSense. So, once you have hit a certain milestone on YouTube, I believe it's 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours, something like that, you can start earning Google AdSense, which is where they run ads, before during or after your videos, it'll pop up ads underneath your video, you name it, whatever. There's advertising around your channel. And the amount you get paid varies a lot between channels. It's calculated on a factor called CPM or cost per mil. Mil is the French word for 1000. So essentially, it's how much money are you earning. Or how much are advertisers willing to pay you or pay YouTube and who then pays you per 1000 monetized playbacks of your video? So, for example, if your CPM is $1, for every 1000 views, YouTube gets paid by advertisers $100 for 100,000 views of your YouTube videos, and $1,000 for a million views across your YouTube channel across your YouTube videos. So that's what YouTube's getting. And then there's what you get, which is RPM, which is revenue per mil, and RPM is about half of that. So just say the CPM, the cost per mil, what YouTube's getting paid by advertisers to play ads on your videos, is $1 per 1000 views, and you get 50 cents per 1000 views therefore as a payout, so it would mean that you would get $50 for 100,000 views and $500 for a million views. I know that may not sound very exciting, and it's kind of not and we'll talk about that. But Google AdSense is probably the least exciting way to get paid on YouTube of all. Now the average CPM sits at about $3 and therefore $1.50 rpm in terms of what you get paid. So why isn't there a standard CPM for every video? Well, it depends on a lot of different factors, like not all views are equal, especially from the perspective of advertisers. It depends on where your viewers are from the age of your viewers their buying power, and other kinds of profiles who can purchase the things that they're advertising. It depends on things like a video topic. So, my video topic on my Paris apartment tour, it attracted much more luxury ads from big French luxury brands. Therefore, the CPM on my video that individual video was a lot higher than other videos, you also have different niches that attract much higher paying advertisers, for example, tick how to grow on social media entrepreneurship, because advertisers are willing to pay more to put an ad on those kinds of videos because they're attracting the kind of person who is hungry to learn and make money online and is willing to invest in themselves to make money online kind of thing. Right? So, your niche is important as well. Watch time is important short videos are worth less than longer videos. So it's about engagement and, and how long, you know, people are willing to spend with you essentially, and your video and that determines a sense of sort of relationship and authority, and therefore, there's an association between you and then the ads that play on your video pins on things like the time of year and what you're speaking about the engagement on your video, the past performance of similar ads that have been played on your videos. And, of course, the content itself. If you are creating controversial topics sensitive topic using swear words, it's going to repel certain advertisers. So, there are a lot of things that will factor into how much YouTube is going to pay you per 1000 views.
Now, if we go back to Not Even French, my CPM hovered around $6, which was not bad. And that allowed me to be paid by YouTube, about $3 per 1000 views. So, this means in year two, although I got over 6 million views across all the videos on my channel, my payout was about $19,800. So just under 20 grand. So, it's not that much in the grand scheme of things. But also, it’s cool when you think about it because largely, especially at first, I was just creating these videos for fun. And one of these videos was about what not to do in France and when I look at my lifetime earnings on that video, it's $3,300. And the idea that I can get paid $3,300 to create a video that took me about an hour, and I found really fun to do is pretty awesome. So at least it's something right. I do kind of view this as one of the least favourable and reliable ways to earn money on the platform. Because it's not within your control. It's changeable. What if the payout levels change, but it's a massive bonus? From my second year, I would use my Google AdSense to pay my video editor and a translator who would upload French and English transcripts to my video. And I was able to use it to develop my channel and do all sorts of cool things as well as, of course, taking it as profit out as well. So, it's really cool, but it's definitely not the be-all and end-all you'll find yourself always having to chase more views and more volume. And that's why creators want to get millions and millions of views per video and do stupid pranks and stuff like that because they're hoping to attract views, which will give them a lot more money.
The next revenue stream I had on Not Even French was drop shipping. So essentially drop shipping is when you're able to create products that you can sell online, but you don't need to create them or host any inventory or anything. You upload your designs onto the products. They might be T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, phone cases, whatever. And the distributor, the wholesaler will print your product, create your product in their warehouse and send it out to your customer directly. So, for me, I had a red bubble store called Francophile Designs. And I just put honestly, just for fun, I didn't take it too seriously. And I really didn't promote it at all, essentially in my videos ever. But it was this red bubble store Francophile Designs, and it had funny French slogans and sayings and essentially designs that might appeal to Francophiles. They were cushion covers, tote bags, T-shirts, stickers, and all sorts of cool stuff. And essentially, all I would do was link to that store in my description box that went underneath all my videos. And passively in the background. I'd be selling some merch and selling some T-shirts. And for example, if a t-shirt was $30, I might get $7 per t-shirt assault. So, I was making a couple of 100 bucks per month regularly off that until I stopped making videos on the channel. And now it's probably only about $50 a month but still, I'm like that is the definition of passive income. I'm not doing anything to sell those T-shirts or those cushions or whatever. So that was another way that I explored making money.
The third way that I explored making money was through affiliate marketing. So, you'll see in the description box of most YouTuber accounts, links towards products, you know, this is the gear I use, or, you know, these are the items I was wearing in today's video, or here's where you can buy this thing or that thing. And so, for me, I would curate genuine recommendations on things like French grammar, and books that I had used to help learn French and accelerate my French language learning process. It could be the gear I was using for YouTube; it could be a book that I referenced or reviewed on the channel, just whatever it is. And I would do this using Amazon, Amazon Associates and be using Amazon affiliate links. And the cool thing with Amazon is that you get a cut of the sale. So, for example, depending on the product as well, it could just say that the average is about two to 4%. But the cool thing with Amazon is that if your link takes them to the platform, and they're looking at the grammar book, and they're like, okay, no, I don't actually want this grammar book but then they go on to purchase a $2,000 drone, you'll get a cut of that purchase. It's like whatever they purchase in that session, you will get a cut-off. So that is sort of the one-on-one of how affiliate marketing works. And I had affiliate marketing links in my description box on YouTube as well.
And then the big moneymaker, my fourth revenue stream was brand deals. Of course, brand deals are probably the most lucrative way of making money in this more sort of content creator model where essentially you are sharing more about yourself and your personal life rather than being an actual expert or selling services or products in something specific. So, this would mean companies would partner with me and sponsor my videos. So, for example, I would do a two-minute shout-out to the brand at the beginning or in the middle of my video and they would pay me for that slot of personalised advertising. And after I hit that 100k subscriber mark, and because my audience was so engaged, and lots of other factors, I was earning pretty good money for most brands. I did have a bit of a unicorn brand who I signed a 12-month contract with for one video per month. They were paying me five grand per video. So, I would speak about them for two minutes and I'd be making 60 grand a year, like in one video per month, and five 5k per month. So, 60 grand a year. So that was life-changing. And then I had other sponsors as well because I was making a video per week. So, I still had three other quote-unquote, “sponsor slots”. And I usually would do two unsponsored videos and two sponsored videos. So, the lucrative sponsor was a language learning company. And then I had things like VPN services, which allow you to watch foreign media and foreign TV from abroad, which was obviously relevant to my audience. I had some major apps sponsor me with language learning apps and things related to general French culture or things that would appeal to francophiles. So, they would typically be paying me about 1500 to $2,000 per video. So that was, of course, the major driver when it came to me cracking that 100k Yeah.
And then the fifth revenue stream for Not Even French was actually consulting. So, I was scouted by a video game company, to become a consultant for them on the New Zealand culture. They were a video major video game company headquartered in Paris. And they make some really, famous Xbox and PlayStation games, and one of them that was highly confidential, but the world was essentially inspired by New Zealand. And so, they got me in as a consultant to teach them about how New Zealanders might speak what they might say, in response to certain events happening in the game. The kind of, you know, chit-chat and banter that the characters might be having between them and that kind of thing. So that was completely random but really, fun. And paid well because it was so nice as well.
So that's the other thing about having an online brand and prisons and sometimes you can surprise yourself with the way money can flow in all of this might sound fun and really exciting. And there were definitely months where I out-earned my corporate salary through my YouTube channel. And so, in terms of paying down my student loans and travelling and being able to save and all that kind of thing, it was cool and I loved Not Even French. I loved it. But as you can imagine, if I had kept going with this model, when I moved back to New Zealand, it would have involved so much hustle. It's all about the volume, all about the views, more and more selling of other people's products. So drop ships or affiliate marketing, neither of which are inside of my control. And I would have had to be proactively hunting down brand deals or consulting gigs, like it would have been quite hard to scale up to the multiple six-figure mark.
Now let's compare and contrast this to the Badass Careers YouTube channel. How can this YouTube channel make so much more money with way few of yours way less subscribers? Well, essentially, when my business hit 2.5 million and total accumulated revenue last year, I was looking at the breakdown, and I was looking at my web analytics, and I saw that 67% of all of my web traffic, aka the traffic, the views coming towards my landing pages, getting people to sign up for my free training, which then pitch my paid courses AKA get people into my funnels, all of that traffic 67% of that traffic was coming from my YouTube channel on Badass Careers. And this is because Badass Careers has far fewer views because it's a search-based channel. Okay, so if people are typing in how to write a resume, or, or how to do this, or how to set up my LinkedIn profile, you know, firstly, there are far fewer people searching for that, then people will just be wanting to, you know, chill on YouTube and binge content and watch people vlogs and things like that. But yeah, it's a little bit, let's say, a dryer topic but I mean, I'm passionate about it but whatever. So, it's search-based. And there are less views coming through, but they are continuous, right? So, I can put a video out on how to write a resume, and it will still be getting views 2, 3, 4, and 5 years later because my videos are search engine optimized. And so, it's very evergreen in that way the content and that it can be found and consumed over and over and repeated. But in saying that it's still relatively far fewer views than a fun entertainment-based channel like Not Even French. Yes, Not Even French can be super helpful but in general, it was more entertainment than education. And that's not necessarily always the case. Like I have people in the career space career coaches who have YouTube channels with a million subscribers and hundreds of 1000s and millions of views. But that wasn't the case for my channel, or at least not yet. And so, by default, I'm just making way less Google AdSense, compared to Not Even French, I mean, I'm talking about a couple of $100 per month. I don't do any brand deals, and I don't do any affiliate marketing. And you know, those revenue streams that I had on Not Even French, I don't have them on Badass Careers. However, that 67% of web traffic for that gave me and had people coming into my funnels, that created a system where I had evergreen content, giving me highly qualified leads, coming into my funnels getting to know like, and trust me and say that they like my expertise, my way of educating and so on a proportion of those people purchasing my paid courses. And if you take 67% of 2.5 million in revenue, well, that's well over a million dollars. So, the big difference was focusing on just having one revenue stream, which is my digital products, my own online courses and the services that I provide. So how it works essentially is that people will watch a video on resumes, and sign up for my prerecorded webinar which is playing all the time on replay in the background without me having to do anything. And then at the end of that webinar, I will pitch them my course and let them know, hey, I hope this was helpful but if you want to go further and have the full roadmap, the full solution, all the examples, all the answers in one place, I do have this course. And a certain proportion of people will purchase that course. In this case, if there if it's gone from resumes, it would be my prerecorded webinar on personal branding. And that leads to my personal branding course, which covers resumes cover letters, and LinkedIn. And so, you can see how if one video gets 1000 views, and of those 1000 people 100 Sign up for the full-length training. And of those 100 people who signed up for the full-length training, three of them purchased my $400 course, you've got $1,200 in revenue. Now if you've got 20,000 views across one video or several videos, because again, that content is evergreen, it's always working for you. So, if you've got 20,000 views across branding-related videos, your resume cover letter, LinkedIn, and that brings 2000 people into your funnel and 60 of those people purchase your course. That's $24,000 in revenue here, and that's how it starts to work. So, more videos, more views, more leads going into your funnels, and more people purchasing your online products and services. And that's the kicker, that's the difference. And this is why the strategy, the intention, the business model, behind your YouTube channel, or Instagram, or TikTok, or podcast, whatever it is, this is why it matters so much, you've got to have your offer, right, you've got to have your pricing, right, you've got to have your content machine, right. So that with fewer leads and fewer people and fewer views, you can still make so much more money than you could with hundreds of 1000s of followers, but no decent business model backing up like I had with Not Even French. So, it's more money with fewer views and way less hustle. So, this is where business design comes in. An expertise-based business model really reigned supreme because it opened the door to this kind of model. And hey, if you blow up and you get hundreds of 1000s of subscribers, and millions of years, and your AdSense is popping off, and you're doing affiliate marketing to and selling your own stuff, like good for you, that's amazing. But you don't have to, certainly not to make your first 100k not to make your first multiple, six figures. And you can scale to a million dollars in revenue per year using this exact system. Just rinse and repeat, tweak and refine, get better and better, more and more streamlined. Rinse and repeat and it will work out for you.
So that's the big difference. I'd love to know if that surprised you! I'd love to know if that sort of blows your mind in terms of how you thought things had to work and thinking maybe you had to have hundreds of 1000s of followers to make hundreds of 1000s of dollars that's often a shortcut a mental shortcut that people make in their mind. Does it surprise you that I make a lot more money on Badass Careers YouTube channel than I ever did on Not Even French?
Alright, I would love to hear from you. Let's keep the conversation going. You can send me a DM as always, over on Instagram @badassempires_ and if you are tuning in today, take a screenshot of the episode tag me in it, and share it to stories so I can see where you're tuning in from and otherwise my Badass keep building that empire of yours and I cannot wait to hear of all your wins and the moves that you're making in the DMs, flick me an email, I want this to be a two-way conversation. And until next week, stay badass and I will catch you in the next episode.
