Show IH: I quit my job as a financial analyst, kinda-sorta did a startup, and now make $100/day as an NFT YouTuber

Hey IH friends,

Over the weekend, I passed 10K subscribers on YouTube

At the beginning of November, I had:

• 214 subscribers
• 81 watch hours
• 2,300 views
• 12 videos

As I'm writing this now, I have:

• 15,301 subscribers
• 63,000 watch hours
• 795,400 views
• 24 videos

A little background about me. I went to Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, where I studied Hospitality with a concentration in Finance, Accounting, and Real Estate

I had some incredible experiences working at a startup, but ultimately, I sold my soul to international corporate banking (that paycheck was nice and shiny)

I wasn't happy. I didn't love it. I felt like I had so much creativity in me, so much value to provide to the world, that was atrophying with each day spent neck-deep in Excel models

So in July 2021, I quit my job. I gave myself one year to "figure things out" before I returned to the workforce

I kind of had a plan. I had my own startup that I wanted to go full-time on, that I had been working on since March. We were connecting students with internships at startups, and the waiting list for our beta was growing every day

But as time passed, I started to discover that I had a bit of a knack for content. I found a community on Twitter. I found that I was quite good at writing educational threads

My startup took a bit of a pause due to complications with my co-founder, and I dove more into freelancing (content & graphic design.) I felt more creative, more free, but I was still on someone else's schedule - I was still answering directly to my clients

And then I discovered YouTube

I first considered starting a YouTube channel after listening to an episode of the Indie Hacker Podcast featuring Ali Abdaal. I thought "that whole YouTube thing" sounded fun. But I wasn't a YouTuber, right? Only "cool" people did YouTube. Only "fun" people did YouTube. Only people with British accents did YouTube. I fit none of these criteria

But I decided to give it a shot anyway. I figured I would do one video per week and add YouTube to my "portfolio of small bets," increasing my surface area for luck

My YouTube Journey
I started creating YouTube videos about how to grow a Twitter audience. That's what I knew. My growing audience on Twitter already loved that content. So it would work, right?

Wrong

My Twitter content worked so well previously because I put it on Twitter. There weren't too many people on YouTube looking for advice about Twitter. I had a couple hundred subscribers I was able to convert from my Twitter audience to support me on YouTube, but I wasn't being discovered by anyone new

I wasn't growing

That was disheartening. But I stuck with it for a couple months, posting diligently once per week, until I got sick. I missed an upload. And then another. And then I thought my voice hadn't fully recovered, so I missed another

And before I knew it, I hadn't uploaded on YouTube for a full month

Part-Time YouTuber Academy
During this slump, I was reminded of a course I was interested in: Part-Time YouTuber Academy, or PTYA. It was a 6-week-long, cohort-based course designed to help people become better YouTubers

And it was not cheap - the most basic package cost $1500

I decided to go for it

It was pricey, but I figured I was "investing in myself." Plus, the lead instructor, Ali Abdaal, was cool, and I trusted him moderately enough to provide some value

It was the best decision I could have made

Even the first week of that course was life-changing. I remember thinking I would have paid the full course price just for that one week - that's how groundbreaking it was

Part of what's included in the course is a Skillshare class about editing videos. It was game-changing. I had NO IDEA you could purchase transition and effect packs for not that much money, and I discovered that little things like icons, sound effects, transitions, animations, and background music that could do wonders to boost your video production without changing too much about the filming style

There was also an incredible guest session with Charlie Houpert from Charisma On Command. This was a deep-dive on topics, tactics, thumbnails, and titles (why do all of the important things all start with the letter "T"?)

And it wasn't just the content. Yes, the content was incredible. But it was also just knowing that there were 400 people out there all doing the same thing as me, all having the same struggles as me

I wasn't alone

That first week, I started gearing up for our first video assignment. I wasn't planning on following the prompt - going into it, I already had a video idea.

On the recommendation from some people in my Twitter audience, I had launched my very first NFT collection. It didn't do very well. But I had learned a lot from the process, and I had some lessons I felt I could share with others

I had already written a Twitter thread about the journey, and the thread had performed quite well. I figured I could build on the content and turn it into a YouTube video

So I made my first PTYA video. It was a 14-minute video that took me 26 HOURS to edit (I was implementing Ali's Skillshare advice, and everything took me ages)

I also tried some more colorful lighting, new sound effects, new music, and some new text style. I actually made a "hook." I used Charisma on Command's "formula" for titles (How to ___ Without ___). I used their advice for thumbnails, adding a color block for emphasis and slightly tilting the text.

I poured my heart and soul into this video

And it performed reasonably well... Until day 9


That's when things first started taking off. I received 100 views in one day for that video - the most I had ever received before. And then I received 200 views the day after, and 400 views the day after that.

On day 14, I received my first 1000 views in one day

Zooming in on around day 13, we can see that was day Browse overtook Search. That's when things really took off

For reference, this is what that graph looks like today. 92 days later, I'm still receiving 5,000 views a day from that video alone. And for the time being, it shows no sign of slowing down



So at this point, I was obviously ecstatic. I had a video blowing up! I had heard of this type of thing happening to others! It was actually happening to me! Incredible!

Except for one problem

This video was about NFTs. I had hoards of people coming in saying they loved the video, this was the best NFT video they had seen on the internet, etc., etc.

But my niche wasn't NFTs. My niche was growing an online audience on Twitter... right?

This is when I had my first crisis

I thought I didn't want to become the "NFT girl". I had only launched one NFT collection, and it wasn't even a successful one. Sure, I knew more about NFTs than the average person, but I wasn't an NFT expert! I wasn't interested in trading NFTs. I didn't want to be an NFT channel

I struggled with this for quite a bit. I saw 2 paths ahead of me:

1. Delist this video and focus on online audience-building content
2. Lean into NFTs

After much thought and pain put into this decision, I decided to lean into NFTs. But I wanted to approach NFTs in a different way

After some audience analysis, I figured I had 2 types of people drawn to that video:

1. Digital artists who had heard of the "NFT thing" and are wondering if NFTs may be right for them and their work
2. More tech-savvy people who know how to code and can create their own generative NFT project, but have no idea what to do after that to make it successful

These were people who:

• Wanted to make money online
• Needed to build an online audience

And I realized - I can make content for them! I can help demystify NFTs, and then maybe eventually broaden my content to encompass audience-building and other ways to make money online

So I leaned into NFTs, and the videos have performed well

My second NFT video started "taking off" as well, and it occurred to me that it had happened - I had struck gold! I had found audience-creator fit!

And then, on December 3rd, I got monetized

I was absolutely over the moon. If you recall, at the beginning of November, I had 214 subscribers and 81 watch hours. To get monetized, you need1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. I had reached that huge milestone in a month!

And each day, I was making more and more money. On the fourth day of being monetized, I made $110.25 in one day.

Everything was going so well!

But then the messages started coming in. I couldn't keep up with my YouTube comments. My Twitter DMs were flooded. Instagram comments, too. Some people had somehow found my email address, and my inbox got even more out of control than it normally is

Many of these comments/messages were super sweet. People saying that they loved my content, or that my video had really helped them

Lots of messages contained questions - questions I grew increasingly guilty about ignoring when I just didn't have the energy to keep up with them

Many messages were sponsorship opportunities - NFT collections that wanted to pay me to get mentioned/featured in a video. I had no idea what to do about these. How did I know which ones to accept? Should I be accepting any of them? What if I promoted one on my video, and some of my viewers bought in, and then the NFT project crashed? Would my viewers hate me forever?

And then some of the messages were straight-up toxic - people criticizing the way that I spoke (if only I had a British accent), the way that I looked, the way that I thought. People hyper-sexualizing me and making lewd comments about me. People saying they'd never stop at pursuing me, that they'd track me down and win me over eventually, and that even if I ignored them, at least they'd be able to stare at my face on YouTube all day

This is when I had my second crisis

I completely broke down. I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know what to do. I felt alone, isolated, and yet at the same time weirdly tapped in, trapped by the incessant messages from strangers who all wanted something at all hours of the day

Yeah, not fun

I sought out help from some folks I had met through PTYA. Honestly, I don't think I would have been able to get through it if not for the PTYA community. These were the only people who got it - my other, non-YouTuber friends just couldn't understand

So, with the help of others, I devised a plan to keep myself sane:

• I'd block a lot of words through YouTube's community settings
• I'd only check my messages between set hours each day
• I'd be very generous in blocking people

And if things got worse, I'd hire a Virtual Assistant to screen messages for me

Within a week, I started feeling much, MUCH better

So... now what?

YouTube has completely changed my life

I've hired an editor, and it's gotten to the point where I can focus fully on developing my YouTube presence and living off of the profits

I'm also building up my "social media stack":

• YouTube for revenue
• Twitter for connections
• Instagram for behind-the-scenes
• Twitch for real-time conversations

And believe it or not, despite never promoting it, I'm still receiving waiting list sign-ups for my startup's beta each day. The link to my startup is on my Twitter profile and within the description of each of my videos. I'm planning on resuming progress with my startup in early February

I know this was a long post with more information that you probably ever wanted, but I hope it was helpful. Helpful in seeing what contributed to a "YouTube success", but also helpful in showing that "success" comes with its own challenges - it's not all unicorns and rainbows

So I'm here if you have any questions!

It's been quite the journey, and I can't wait to see what's in store for the future

In the end, I am the "NFT girl". And I'm proud