I monetized my YouTube channel in 2021 faster than I imagined. It took roughly 7 months to get 4,000 watch hours + 1k subscribers.
When I started the YT channel, the goal was simple - share my experiences with products and tools and document my journey to making money online. The end game is full-time income with part-time effort. To achieve that, you often need full-time effort for (less-than) part-time income.
May 2021, My girlfriend and I purchased our first house. We moved to South Carolina and the next 7 months I spent learning about house-stuff + painting, unpacking, decluttering, renovating and doing yard work. Writing it all out doesn't sound nearly as time-consuming as it actually was. Needless to say, I neglected my YouTube channel.
January 1, 2022, was as good a time as any to wake-up and get back to work on the YouTube channel. It took a couple of weeks for me to find my groove again, but by mid-month I was 100% all-in committed to aiPROFITz. It helped that my Real Estate photography business was incredibly slow, and the weather was quite frigid.
This month, I've struggled with deciding how I can truly grow this channel into a more full-time endeavor. Initially, when I started the channel, I was going to focus on making money online and reviewing products + providing tutorials in order to earn affiliate sales. The biggest issue with this focus is that most people doing this and most products that are being promoted are sugarcoated infomercials.
When I found Appsumo, I found a fantastic ecosystem of amazing tech products with a wonderful community of enthusiastic business owners. It makes reviewing products a breeze, even if some still have a ways to go... I'd love to talk to product creators themselves (those launching on appsumo) and figure out a way to get to know them (and the product) without just being another webinar/promo podcast that wastes everyones time.
The commission structure of affiliate sales with Appsumo is 5% for returning sumo-lings and 100% up to $50 for new customers. This isn't as bad as it looks on the surface, but it can be a bit limiting. They offer a 60-day money-back period so any affiliate sales I make today are a few months from actually hitting my account. I've grown this channel largely by re-investing those funds while also using the tools within my local business clients businesses.
I'm mostly writing this backstory to publicly state where I am today. Last year, aiPROFITz generated roughly $12k in commissions between Appsumo and YouTube Adsense. This was better than anticipated and could have been absolutely life-changing had I not disappeared for many months.
January provided $130 from YouTube and $294 from Appsumo (that will go down a bit as some purchases are refunded over the next 60 days). For reference, in December I earned $104 from YouTube and $97 from Appsumo and produced 1 video. I effectively doubled my sales in January but to do-so I spent roughly $500 on the products I covered to do so - putting me at a net loss for the month... That doesn't even include the products I picked up and haven't reviewed yet 😂
The videos I created in January are here:
- Best Booking Calendar Tool 2022 [Trafft Review]
- How To wite High-Converting Emails in 2022 [EmailWritr Review]
- Build Your Own Custom GPT-3 Tool in under 60 seconds with Nichesss [ Demo]
- How to build an app (PWA) EFFORTLESSLY (No Code) in a weekend with Tapps [Review + Demo]
- How To Write 1000 Word Articles in 10 Minutes With Rytr [AI For Content Marketing] My Process
- quickblog and Tapps | Embed A Blog Anywhere With quickblog [Review and Demo]
- Tapps + Sendfox Integration using KonnectzIt [Tutorial]
- Custom GPT3 Showdown [nichesss vs ryter]
It was a busy month for the channel!
I am still working on organizing my total expenses + purchases and figuring out how exactly I am going to grow and scale this. That is where you come in!
I have created a simple 3-minute survey that I'll use to help guide the channel + the content I create in February and beyond.
For February, I have the following content ideas planned:
- Mini-course Generator With AI Assistant Review + Demo
- Nichesss vs Rytr (Longform Editor Showdown)
- Creating a digital product (Appsumo Purchases Tracker in Notion)
- AISEO video - this was a bit buggy the first time I tried to record - it gets one more chance...
- Hy.page video review + demo (how I'm planning to build a low-cost membership + sell digital products)
- Predis.ai Video Review + Demo
- Cheat Layer Webscraping + Automation video (putting the gpt-3 ai coding tool to use)
- Phonesites video - no more need for clickfunnels or expensive funnel builders
A lot of my content spurs up when products drop on Appsumo, so I'll likely make more than those 8. I may scrap a couple of them, but most of this list is stuff I have purchased and have already put together my video outline.
When I grew my channel the first time (this time last year) I went into the whole in a big way to generate the content. I eventually recouped those costs through the affiliate links in my descriptions and plan to do the same here. More than that though, I've learned that building a business based on other peoples products and affiliate links + AdSense is not only difficult, but it is subject to change at any time.
I'm working this year on learning how to build my own products + monetize my channel more directly (less 60+ day waits to see payment). This is tough for me because I want to balance the overall income potential an online business provides (open 24/7/365) with the authenticity you have come to expect.
Don't worry, it is in my blood to be 100% real, but this level of honesty makes monetizing yourself that much more difficult - I'm far from perfect and why would anyone want to give me money or buy anything I'm selling... That is the perfectionism (excuses) in me speaking. I do have some decent-enough ideas but the results will lie in the execution. #ProgressOverPerfection
This month I'm participating in the Phonesites bootcamp (2x per week for 4 weeks) and also attending the FREE Cheat Layer Coding With GPT-3 bootcamp that is starting on Feb 12.
In addition to all of this, Appsumo is currently running Last Call - a plus member exclusive- where they bring back prior deals for a limited time (96 hours). I'm not 100% what I'll pick up there but if I can get a client or two onboard with something like consulto or nexweave then I might pick one of them up.
I'm happy to see Suitedash back in the appsumo store. I have a potential client that might be PERFECT for that solution so the timing could not be better. I have Suitedash and use it for Rocketstripe, however, it is a bit more cumbersome than its worth for my use-case today. It seems geared more towards small and midsized businesses with teams/employees/systems and less for the run-and-gun nature of a solopreneur. That is why I changed my booking calendar to Trafft.
I thought it would be fun to put quickblog to use today and share some thoughts + recap January and look ahead to February. If you filled out the survey to help me make better content, then thank you so much! If you're asking what survey? You can take 2-mins and do so here.
