How I Use YouTube To Make $20,000+ Each Month (& its not YouTube Adsense!)

You probably clicked on this video because you want to start making more Money on your YouTube channel or in your business. And I'm really going to show you the bottom line of how much money I have actually made in these first three months of 2021. But before I jump into all the numbers, I need to make it very clear about two things. And that is two major beliefs I live by when it comes to growing my YouTube channel and building my business. That first belief is I'm not aspiring to be a seven figure business owner. Absolutely, I think it's fantastic if I could make a million dollars in my business. But that's not my goal. That's not the end line or the finish line for me. We are so often hit over the head with so much messaging that you're not successful unless you hit $1 million. And that is totally not true. And what I found when I got started with my business, I thought that's what I needed to do. So I hustled. I worked hard. I worked hours and hours and weekends because I thought that's what would make me successful. And so finally I took a step back and I thought, what do I need in my business? I do not need to push myself to burnout just to make seven figures that I don't really need to live on. And I don't need to jeopardize the time that I have to spend with my family to work to hit an abstract number of $1 million. So that first belief is I don't need to make a million dollars to be successful. The second belief that I live by is I take three day weekend. When I started my business, one of the best parts was being able to create my own schedule and having a three day weekend if I wanted to. And again, going back to that first belief I had in my mind that I needed seven figures to be successful. So I kept working. I didn't get those three day weekends. I was working into the weekends. And that wasn't the point in starting my business. So going into 2020, I had decided right then and there, I'm taking off every single Friday. Canceled everything on my schedule, blocked that schedule. Obviously some things came up in 2020 that had to really allow me to be flexible. And I ended up working half the amount of time in 2020 than I did in 2019. But the major rules that I live by in my business is I don't need to hit seven figures to be successful and I always take three day weekends. I want to throw in a little bonus belief here. I want to be super clear. It was not easy to get to the point where I am in my business. I. I started my business in 2016 when I literally could not force myself to go to a job that I hated so much. When I pulled into that parking lot at work, I felt like my soul was being sucked out of me. I had a 10 month at home and I didn't really want to be a stay at home mom. That wasn't the reason why I ended up quitting my job. But I didn't want her to see growing up that hating your job is okay, but or it's a normal thing. And that very first year in my business, I only made $10,000, which honestly is not what I thought I would make. I thought I'd be making a lot more because I quit a job where my yearly salary was $80,000. Luckily, I had saved enough before I quit my job to have a little nest egg to keep me Afloat in 2016. But then I also ended up having baby number two at the end of 2016. Then in the first half of 2017, my second year in business, I struggle with postpartum. And it took about that first half of the year to find the right medication and to get myself feeling like normal again. But once we got to that point and I got the right medication, my business was able to thrive. And we ended up three times ing our revenue in 2017 from 2016. And we've continued to thrive since in 2018. We ended up doubling what we made in 2017. And then the same for 2019 and 2020, we ended up doubling revenues for those three years. Now, I wanted share that with you because I want you to understand that this success in this business did not grow overnight. It's been five years and I've taken the turtle journey. Slow and steady wins the race. Right now here in the first three months of 2021, I've made what I made for the whole year in 2018. Let me break this all down for you so you can understand how I'm actually making money by putting videos up here on YouTube. Let's first talk about the revenue I receive from YouTube through AdSense. A lot of people think posting videos on YouTube and making money from AdSense is going to be the silver bullet. Right? Is going to be the way you're going to make money. It's not. Last year in 2020, I got over 1 million views on my channel and I made less than $5,000 the entire 2020 from YouTube. AdSense. This is a core reason why I don't count on YouTube, AdSense or I don' as part of my financial planning in my business because I can't control it. I also want it to be clear that I don't have an AdSense strategy for my videos, like how I'm going to get the most money out of my videos. If you want to learn more about AdSense strategy and monetizing your channel, I would really look at Katherine Manning. She does a great job of breaking down how to make the most from AdSense on your video. So I will link her up above and in my description box to some of her best videos. The other reason why I don't really focus on AdSense is because, like I said, I can't control what I'm making like I can in my agency and with my programs that I sell. I know I need to get so many leads through my agency to book so many clients to make so much money, right? It's a mathematical equation. The same thing with my programs. I need so many people to see the sales page converting at a certain rate to make so many sales to make so much money. Again, another mathematical equation that I can control, whereas adsense I don't have control. And for for a control freak like me, I don't like to play that game. Another important thing to realize here is the amount of money you make through AdSense can vary dramatically. Like I said, my channel has over 40,000 subscribers with over a million views last year making just around $5,000. A client of mine has half the amount of subscribers, just under 20,000 subscribers, and she only had around 250,000 views and she made just under $9,000 from YouTube ads. So you can see how the discrepancy can be depending on who your target audience is, what kind of content you're creating, and why that stream of revenue just isn't a key factor for me in my business. YouTube AdSense is not going to get me to my $20,000 a month in revenue. So my two core revenue generators are my YouTube production agency and my digital products. But let me share a little bit more about what that means because it's not just me grabbing the money from these re stream. So every time I make a sale, I'm not bringing that money into my bank account. And I want to be totally transparent with you. A lot of revenue or income reports that you may hear on podcasts, on Facebook, here on YouTube, while yes, they're telling you the bottom line of how much money they make, they aren't always completely sharing the truth on how much money they're actually spending. What are the expenses going out? Because sometimes people are making, you know, $50,000 a month, but they may be spending, spending 45,000 of that as well. So in actuality, they're only profiting $5,000 a month. So I want to break down what my expenses look like for both sides of my revenue stream. So in our agency have a team and what we do is we craft the entire strategy for the client. We tell them what titles for videos, what thumbnails we need from them. Basically we tell them what to film and then they film it. They give us the raw footage and we edit it for YouTube, we create a thumbnail, we create additional video assets, Instagram TV versions and Facebook versions, and Instagram stories. Then we also upload the video to YouTube, optimize it and publish it for them. And at the end of every single month, we give them a report and let them know what we can do in the next month to get better results. Spoiler alert. I don't do all of this. It's not me in charge of this. Remember, I want three day weekends. And for me to have three day weekends, I need to have a strong team that can support me to provide this to multiple clients every single week. So I have a video editor, I have an assistant strategist, and I have a client happiness coordinator. Yes, the hires that I do have can get expensive. But we have a system in place now that we did not have over a year ago. In fact, this really didn't even exist over a year ago. But because of the system we put in place and the time I took to create a process, we can now scale this agency to as many clients as we want. And it's still not going to affect the time that I'm spending on it because I have a management team in place, I have a process in place, basically a training manual that we could hire anybody to continue to provide our clients the top level service that we are doing right now with a small team. And it's totally possible because we've spent no money advertising this agency. I've hardly talked about it much. I don't have much of a website for it either. And we still made about $25,000 in the past three months from the agency side of my revenue stream. And I've honestly, like I said, kept it pretty quietly because I wanted to set this system in place so that I can continue to offer top level service to these clients without me having to sacrifice My time in my weekends. I wanted to be able to make a system in place that could run without me. And we had the biggest test this month to see if the agency could run without me. My family came down with the virus that should not be named out loud. And I wasn't able to work for about 10 days between my husband being sick and my kids being quarantined. And we were still able to get our clients videos done, uploaded, optimized. My team just came together and worked seamlessly without me and YouTube. The time I put into these videos has been a huge asset to my agency because these videos right here is how I'm getting leads into my agency. My clients generally watch me here on YouTube first before they even submit a client application. They know from watching me whether I'm a fit for them or not. And that really helps me weed out the problematic clients or the clients that we're just not going to have that synergy with, which is really important for me. Like I said, I want to build a strategic agency full of the right people. And right now, 100% of my clients are all women entrepreneurs who are also moms. Pretty crazy, right? And YouTube is how they decide whether I'm that fit for them or not. Okay, so I just talked about my agency and more like the services side of my business. And that's about 35% of my total revenue. But the major source of revenue and how I can help the most amount of people is my program, video Strategy Academy 2.0. While yes, this is a hybrid course group coaching program, it could be what you consider the passive income income side of my business. But there's nothing passive about it. In February, we did an entire live launch for the brand new version of Video Strategy 2.0. We also did an online summit to really hype up how important video is and how easy it can be for you to start using video. So that got people used to hearing about video and seeing the possibilities. So when I dropped into their lap, the program that I had to help them do it, it allowed us to convert a lot higher. And that live launch alone generated over $40,000 for us. And while yes, it was a whole lot of work, we actually started planning for it back in November. We now have the system and the process and a lot of the assets in place is it's going to be really easy for us to duplicate over and over again. But again, it's by no means passive. I also wanted to be clear that my program isn't passive income either. Because when Students come inside a video strategy academy 2.0. I don't just GH them. I'm incredibly active with these students. This program has an active Facebook community where I'm in there almost every day, Monday through Friday, answering their questions. We have weekly one hour calls where they get their questions answered from me. I also do monthly training for them. I bring in guest experts for them. So even though passive income sounds great, I'm still working for my students once they've enrolled to make sure they're getting the most out of their money and I'm helping them get those results. There's really nothing passive about this stream of income, but I literally love everything that I do to help my students. Okay, now before I show you my bottom line of how much I made in three months, there's one more stream of income that I want to talk about. And it's a stream of income that I'm going to be focusing on a little bit more here in 2021, and that's affiliate revenue and sponsorships. So in 2020 I made about $12,000 total from affiliate revenue and I'm setting a goal this year to triple that. So affiliate me talking about something and you potentially buying the software, buying the camera I talk about and then I get commission on that. So we're gonna be talking more about different types of products and programs that I really like that have helped me grow my YouTube channel and build my business. But we also are getting our very first sponsorship opportunity that's going to be starting in April. So we are well on our way of reaching that three times our revenue stream from affiliates. Alright, so have you been keeping up with the math? The total amount of money that I've made so far in my business for the first three months of March is $67,000. And I still have about 10 more days in the month as I'm filming this. That's four streams of revenue that are helping me get to that point. I share this with you to really show you how having a YouTube channel for your business can be a huge asset. And if you are just using YouTube AdSense right now to make money, how building a business can be so important to hitting those revenue goals that you want to hit. And if you want to learn more about anything that I talked about here today, it's all going to be linked in the description box. So if you want to see more about my agency and more about Video Strategy Academy, it's all down below. If you liked hearing more behind the scenes business stuff, make sure you give this video a thumbs up and that you subscribe to this channel because I'm going to be weaving in more business tips to help you make more money. If you're here on YouTube and if you've got some questions or ideas for videos, drop them in the comments because I literally look down there and take your suggestions and advice all the time. Are you ready to get serious with YouTube now? Click the video that is on your screen right now because it's going to walk you through everything I would do if I was starting a YouTube channel today. I'll see you in that video.