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How much I made as an "indie" YouTuber in 1 year

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    Just a 6 minute video I made, in case anyone here finds it interesting.

    My goal was never to be a YouTuber, but having a programming channel helped me connect with a lot of people, and hear about their challenges.

    If anyone is sort of between ideas / looking for a new one, I think content creation (whether YouTube, twitter, or blogging) could be a solid use of time, you might even gain more traction than you expect and make a little money

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      hey Aaron, Thanks for sharing so openly. I've just started doing tech videos on YouTube (just hit 1k subscribers) but am planning for revenue based on monthly subscriptions to my website https://www.semicolonandsons.com/

      I've been living as an indie-hacker for a decade (always in the education space——mostly law though), so if you ever want to trade strategies -- especially for marketing, get in touch. The same offer goes for anyone else reading this and in a similar space :)

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        nice! the first 1k is hardest for sure
        feel free to twitter DM / email me if you wanna talk more
        @_aaronjack

  2. 2

    i tried making money via youtube and it worked for my biz channel but not for my personal. it's hard to get right and it does take time!

  3. 2

    Nice video. Subscribed. It looks like you haven't uploaded a huge number of videos, yet you have a high number of subscribers. How did you achieve that?

    1. 1

      chose the right video topics and luck I guess

  4. 1

    Super dope video Aaron! Thank you for the insight :)

  5. 1

    Hey Aaron, thanks for sharing! I have watched quite a few of your videos and I didn't even know you had a course. Maybe talk about your course more often.

  6. 1

    Thanks for sharing, super interesting to see this breakdown! How do you like teachable?? I've talked to some creators who have shifted to it from other platforms and have heard mixed reviews.

    1. 1

      in general it's been good.
      the video player and fact that they just take a flat rate is excellent.

      my main complaint is the website builder / editor is not great.

      it's very simple so your site will inevitably look a bit amateurish (may negatively impact conversions).

      so if I was to do it again, I'd set up a separate landing page that links to the sales page... might still be worth a try

  7. 1

    Wow! Thanks for sharing that. I've never seen youtube financials analysed like that before nor how it works so that was some great insight. Super excited about the 1 minute personal website builder definitely will be supporting :)

  8. 1

    Thank you so much, your video is really inspiring me to also create a youtube channel.
    And may I know how do you promote your content?

    1. 1

      I just posted to Reddit in the beginning, eventually the algorithm just started pushing my videos

  9. 1

    Thanks for sharing - lol to the 'distractions' in serbia!

  10. 1

    Wow. I love how honest and transparent you are with how much you're making. It's really inspiring. Thanks for sharing!

  11. 1

    Congrats, that's awesome. Pretty wild to have gained so many subscribers in 1 year and with a fairly small amount of vids.

    Just about to start my own Youtube channel so this is inspiring and a reminder to get cracking.

    1. 2

      thanks (: 1 tip: don't overthink it too much
      videos you put a ton of effort into don't always do better

  12. 1

    I started my youtube channel about 3 months ago. I have zero subscribers.
    I wish to know how you attracted people to subscribe to your channel.

    1. 1

      posted on reddit when starting out (gained a couple hundred)
      eventually the algorithm found my videos after I made about 10-15 of them

  13. 1

    This is awesome, I'm going to share this on https://indiestack.org/ :)

  14. 1

    This is awesome, Aaron. Thanks for sharing this.

  15. 1

    Can't complain about that revenue, from my understanding it can get quite a bit better from here, though you haven't seemed to be increasing in revenue the past few months.

    Your course sales, what do you think about them? You mentioned that maybe you are bad at marketing, but are they really niche or anything?

    1. 1

      yeah, it went back down since I took 2 months off to make the course and hasn't really recovered. I don't think it's very stable as a main thing.

      The course, yeah, is pretty niche and there are also a lot of competing products.
      So regardless of how good the product is, I think the circumstances limit it too.

  16. 1

    One of the key figures here is $11/1000 views for a tech channel, which is decent as far as YouTube revenue goes.

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      This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  17. 1

    Thanks for sharing! Actually watched the whole video - it was pretty cool to see all the numbers and details as I am at the start of building my own channel, so this was definitely an extra encouragement for me :)

  18. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      thanks, been getting a lot of messages / new ideas after posting this (:

  19. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

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