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2020 In Review - 150k audience. $21k course. $10k eBook.

2020 was definitely a troubled year for many (including me) but at the same time, it was a year of growth. Massive growth I'd say.

In this post, I'm going to give you an overview of how it went for me.

My YouTube Journey

I started the year going strong on my YouTube channel, posting over 250 videos and live streams, and although I didn't hit my 100k subscribers goal, I'm really happy with the number I'm currently at 83k subs.

The main reason why I didn't hit the goal was that in the 2nd part of 2020 I burned out several times and I stopped posting that much. I'm confident that if I would have continued to post 2-3 videos per week, the goal would have been achieved. But that's ok. Hitting 100k is now just a matter of time.

I also moved away from streaming on YouTube to streaming on Twitch because I wanted to keep my channel clean and only upload highlights of those streams. But that didn't really happen either. Bummer.

All-in-all, with all the ups and downs, I'd say that it was a great year and I'm happy about the progress.

Launched my first digital products

Since February 2019 I've been creating a lot of free content: Twitter posts, articles on my blog, videos for YouTube, live streams on Twitch, and much more...

After almost 2 years it was about time to create a paid product. Long story short, I created a Course with my good friend Brad Traversy and I also wrote an eBook - which was the hardest thing I did this year.

So far the course made me a bit over $21k and the eBook is hitting $10k soon. All of this income came in December which made it the highest month income-wise I ever had in my life - by a long shot!

Other achievements

I tend to be all over the place and do whatever I feel like doing (which is not necessarily the best thing to do). Here are some other things I did in 2020:

  • Grew my Twitter audience to 67k followers

  • Completed the entire freeCodeCamp Curriculum in 29 days while live-streaming everything

  • Streamed for 10 hours straight while creating 10 JavaScript projects - this turned out to be the most viewed video on my channel at over 500,000 views, and it was also the reason for my channel explosion from 30k to 60k subscribers in the month of September.

  • This is one of my favorites: I got to extend my network and meet a lot of very interesting people, some of whom I admired for a long time!

  • I got fat 😅 (I know, I know! This is not relevant for the story but I wanted to leave it here to remind myself that I need to lose some weight in 2021!)

  • I burned out. Thrice. So lame! 🙄 I need to be more careful in 2021.

Closing thoughts

For me this year had it all. High highs and low lows. Now I just want to enjoy the highs and try to learn the most out of the lows while preparing for 2021 - which will be legendary (as I have some new, exciting goals 🤩)!

What were your accomplishments in 2020? Share them down below so we can enjoy them together.

I wrote this post to inspire you as I am personally inspired by similar posts. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'd be happy to answer!

Cheers! #purplerullz 💜

  1. 2

    Congrats on this mad growth, Florin! Anything specific you learned from burnout to prevent it in the future?

    I definitely feel you on working too much and then just needing a massive recovery break 😬

    1. 1

      Haha. The bad part about it is that I can’t say that I did 🙈

      I just take it slow now and break down tasks in small chunks.

  2. 2

    Congrats! I've been following your successes on Twitter and you are a constant source of inspiration. I also appreciate your transparency with numbers in this post. Best of luck next year :)

    1. 1

      Thank you! Best of luck to you too! 😊

  3. 2

    Congrats! I hear ya about YouTube burnout

  4. 2

    You’ve had an amazing year, Florin! The consistency at which you’ve put out content is incredible.

    I’m so happy to hear the year is ending on a massive high for you! 🚀

    1. 1

      Thanks buddy! You had an amazing year too! I'd love to read your story! 😁

      1. 2

        You’ve inspired me to write one 😉

        Watch this space!

        1. 1

          Perfect! Can't wait to read it. 😁

  5. 1

    Amazing progress. Congrats, Florin!

  6. 1

    Well done and I love all the purple! It's been an epic story so far.

  7. 1

    Impressive, thanks for sharing.

  8. 1

    Great year for your journey - thanks for sharing.

    How did the burnouts happen? How long did they last? Did you find ways to help pass through them?

    1. 2

      I can’t say exactly. It was probably because I put too much pressure on myself to finish the ebook.

      It lasted for 1-2 months. I just had to take a break and eventually push through by breaking it down to smaller steps. I also had some calls with my coach.

      1. 1

        Cool, thanks for sharing - I think it's great that you had someone to talk to (coach)!

        I know for a fact that sharing and talking with others helps me a lot to release the pressure of work sometimes. 😊

  9. 1

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