How long did it take to go Full-Time on YouTube? 0-500k Sub Journey

I crossed 500,000 subscribers earlier this year and I wanted to make a video to outline this journey because I feel like there are so many important lessons I've learned over it that I would like to share with you. But first I want to start off with an interesting piece of information that a lot of people don't know. Did you know that on average it could take two to three years for you to have your first viral hit on YouTube? I've talked to a number of successful YouTubers and almost always everyone's like, somewhere in the two to three year range something happened and YouTube finally gave love to one of their videos. And that was the catalyst that made their YouTube channel be so successful. Alright, so if you're a YouTuber and you're posting content and you're feeling frustrated, don't give up, keep going. You never know which video is going to take off, so you got to keep putting that content up there. Now for those of you who don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman and I have a very successful guitar teaching channel. And my goal here with this new channel is to help educators learn how to leverage YouTube so that they can make six figures or multiple six figures here on YouTube, teaching what they love. And again, the biggest question I get is like Lauren, one, how did you do it and how long did it take? And the answer for me was it did take about two and a half years, three years for things to really get going. Took three years, I think for me to finally be able to make a full time income and really dive in on YouTube. So let's start with year one. So I've gone through and I've looked at all the details for YouTube, how many subscribers I got, how many videos did I upload? And there are some interesting trends as we go through this data that I'm going to talk about and some lessons on I learned that hopefully will help you move through YouTube a little bit quicker. So my first year was 2017. I did a lot of work and I felt completely overwhelmed and exhausted because when you're first starting on YouTube, you're doing the content, the uploading, the editing, the thumbnails, the title, you're doing everything and it is a lot of work. So my first year I did 39 videos and I only got 236 subscribers from those videos and probably got only about 40, 40,000 views. And, and I will admit I was a bad Lauren. I went and bought one of those like 5 views for your video and I bought like 5000 views on one of my early videos, the views went up, and then the next day they went back down. I got no benefit from buying views. So do yourself a favor. Do not buy views. Do not buy subscribers here on YouTube. You actually can get your channel shut down, so definitely don't do that. And I did record my course at the tail end of that year, and I made my first $590. I didn't make any money from YouTube because I wasn't monetized yet. And year two, things changed just a little bit. So year two, this is now 2018, I only recorded 17 videos. Okay. And I remember when I looked back at that, I was like, that's really shocking. I thought I had done more work, but I think what happened was I was so exhausted from all the work I did in year one, and again, you heard I only got was 236 subscribers. That's a lot of work for nothing for $590. So I think I got a bit overwhelmed and I think I got a bit exhausted. And I only ended up putting out like one and a half videos per month, which is. Which is the math on that. But surprisingly, because I'd done all that work in year one, and this is an important thing, as we go through these numbers, I want you to pay attention. It's the accumulation. There's a compounding effect of having all this content here on YouTube. So even though I only did 17 videos, in year two, I gained 1,200 subscribers. Interesting. It means those older videos started to marinate a little bit, and we're starting to get a little bit of attention. I got 147,000 views. I did get monetized with YouTube advertising. I was making pennies at the start, So I made $109 on YouTube ads. I got monetized, I think, in August of 2018. And courses, I sold $3,329 for a total of $3,438. So again, nothing to write home about. Nothing. That was super inspiring. And I think for a lot of people, they would give up at this stage. But I'm fortunate that I did, and I'm going to tell you why in a second. Let's go through year three numbers. So again, I did 15 videos. So I did even less than I did the year before, but I gained 8,100 subscribers. Interesting. And I got 525,000 views. Okay. I made $2,045 on YouTube ads, and I sold 800, 250 or $8,250 in courses for a total of 10,295. And most of that was done in Q4. Okay, now let me tell you a quick little story. I almost gave up, but this was a period of my time where I almost quit on YouTube because I'm like, great. I'm doing all this work and I'm only getting a few hundred views on my videos. This really stinks. This isn't what I thought it was going to be. And I got an email from a student, and they were a veteran, and they emailed me and basically said that they were about to. To end their life. They were in a very, very dark period of time. They went over on YouTube, they had a guitar, and they were searching for YouTube lessons. And one of my videos came up and I helped them learn to play the guitar. And it helped them work through a very, very dark time. And that was a wake up call for me. You know, in the beginning, I was so focused on the money, making the money that I forgot why I was doing it. I was doing it to help people like this, this gentleman. I didn't even think of that as a scenario. That email really woke me up to be like, wow, I'm actually really helping, literally saving people's lives. And I've gotten that email and I've had in person conversations with so many students, and they were like, you literally saved my life. And that changed for me. So I stopped paying attention to the money. And I was like, you know what if I just help three or 400 people? That's awesome. I could be happy with that. Okay. And what happened was YouTube was like, okay, you get it now. The end of that year, I went on my honeymoon. I think it was towards the end of October. One of my videos went from getting like 20 views a day, 10 views a day, 20, to getting a few hundred, to getting like over 4,000 views a day in a matter of like a couple weeks. This video was one of those first videos that I recorded back in 2017. So the video sat dormant for about two and a half years. Okay. And this happens all the time. This just happened to a client of mine. He had a video that was sitting, I think it was 800 days. Over 800 days, this video is just petering along. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it took off. And this happens all the time on YouTube. And that's why I say, don't give up. You never know when this is going to happen. It happens, though, one of those old video, and it's always the Video, you don't want to go viral because it's like the worst video you've ever made in terms of quality and stuff. But this video went viral and it really catapulted me into my YouTube career. So 2020, obviously, we all know what happened in 2020. Covid happened. But it was the year that I decided I was gonna go all in, okay? Because I was riding on the back of this video that had just taken off perfectly before the world shut down. So I did 96 videos that year. I was doing two videos a week. I said, I'm gonna get really serious about putting content here on YouTube. And how I was able to do that, this is very, very important. How I was able to do that was I hired an editor to edit the videos for me. It was taking me so much time. And while I enjoyed the editing, it's not what I should have been doing. I should have just been focusing on making the content. And when I handed off the editing to someone else, I was able to make more content. So I made 96 videos that year. I got four. 45,400 subscribers, almost 3 million views, 2.9 million YouTube ads. I made $17,090 courses. I sold 112,295 for a total of $129,385. So, wow, okay, that's definitely a full time income. That's more than I was making off of my music schools at the time, or about. I think I was making about like six figures off the music schools. So here I am doing work very part time online and making a six figure income. Now I want to tell you another crappy story, because when Covid happened, there was this huge surge, okay? So In April of 2020, I sold $16,000 in courses. My whole business had shut down. YouTube literally saved my life. Having YouTube in a course literally saved my life because my business got shut down. And it was just. It was just a crazy time. So we got this big boost, all right? But then when everyone went, you know, kind of when Covid phased out, I went back to only making like two or three thousand dollars a month. And that was very depressing. I admit that it was very depressing as a creator to go from such a high to such a low. But it gave me a taste. And I knew if I could do it once, I could do it again. And now I had the bar of what I needed. I was like, okay, I need to get to this many views to make that much money again. And it really gave Me a target to work towards. Okay, so always be working towards a target to try and elevate yourself to get out of those funks and out of those grooves. So after 2020, we go into 2021 and you're just going to see these numbers are going to keep going up. So I'll just do 21 and 22 very quickly. And then in 2023, something starts. Special happened. So again, both years, I did 96 videos. I was still doing two videos a week. In 2021, 96,400 subscribers, 4.8 million views now, 52,000 in YouTube advertising, 437,000 437,000, for a total of $490,000. In 2021, 2022, 96 videos, 8.1 million views, 83,000 subscribers, gained about $65,000 in YouTube ads, 564,000 in courses, for a total of 629,505. Now, something happened here. I was getting worn out. I really was getting burnt out on, on the constantly uploading content, making new videos. I've been doing this for six years now, okay? I felt like I had said everything I wanted to say on YouTube and I was really losing a bit of my purpose. And you're like, lauren, wow, tough for you. You're making all this money and like you're feeling exhausted and overworked. And I just wasn't enjoying the process as much. I was getting stuck in the weeds too much. You know, I was working with a lot of coaches and we're looking at click through rates and thumbnails and titles and all the nitty gritty stuff that makes your YouTube channel better. And it was taking out a lot of the fun for me. So what I decided to do in 2023 was I decided to actually cut back on content. You know, most people will be like, no, lean in. Make more. You're being successful. Make more. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to cut back because I wanted downtime for myself and I wanted to step back and actually enjoy the process of being a creator again. And you would think that by stepping back and doing less, that I would actually make less money, but actually the opposite happened. So in year seven, I made about 52 videos. Okay? It's just one video a week and 11.8 million views. So more than the year before, 132,000 new subscribers. I did about 80,000 in YouTube ads, 767,000 in courses, $847,000 in a single year. And then 2024. I'm like, hey, I'm going to stick to this same process now. Things started to flatline here a little bit in 2024. 52 videos, all right, 11.3 million. So my views actually went down a little bit. My subscribership went down a little bit, 124,000. My YouTube ad stayed about 80,000. And then I did a hundred, 800, 3,000 in courses. So eight, eight, four. So about a 40,000 increase from the year before. But here's what I was doing in 2024 that has made a huge difference in 2025. So 2025, I'm still just doing one video a week. I'm trying to do really, really high content. But now I'm like, how do I increase revenue without killing myself? I didn't want to be in this content wheel. Okay? How do I. I always want to make the process enjoyable because now this is my ninth year going on year nine. I got to keep it exciting and fun for me. So what we did this year is we leaned in a lot more to our email marketing, okay? And I said, I'm doing all this work on YouTube. Let me really, really lean in onto the email marketing. And so far this year, we've done $457,000. And that's just in courses. I didn't even look what I did in YouTube ads yet. And we will very likely do over a million dollars this year doing less because I'm now focusing on the more important things, which is connecting with the people that I get off of YouTube. Okay? I'm putting out very, very specific content on YouTube to find the right people. I'm less worried now. This will be interesting for you. I'm less worried now about getting tons of subscribers and tons of views. I want the views if they're the right person. I want the subscriber if they're my person, which is an older adult that wants to learn to play guitar. I did a video that got 4 million views. It's one of my biggest videos. The demographic, 90% of the demographic on that video was under the age of 45. So only 10% of the people who watched that video, which is still a lot. That's 400,000 people were in my demographic, okay? So I want videos that are specifically for the people I want to teach my ideal client. I don't want, no offense, if you're 20, I'm sorry, I don't want 20 year olds watching my videos. My stuff isn't for them. I want people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s to be consuming my content. So that's what we're focused on this year is really getting micro about who our audience is and over delivering for them. Not for the subscribers, not for the views, not even for the money. Because the money will naturally come, if you've noticed. The money just naturally came by putting in the work, by connecting with my audience and putting out content that they love and that they want to interact with. Because chances are they're going to watch one video, two video, three videos, then they're going to go over your website, they're going to buy your courses, your programs, and they're going to want more from you because you help them here on the YouTube platform. Now, if you found this inspiring and you're someone that's on YouTube that's just getting started, or you've been grinding a little bit, but you feel like you're kind of in the weeds, go watch this video over here where I tell you what I would do If I started YouTube all over again working a full time job. Go watch that video right over there.