First $100 on YouTube!

The number is small, but this is HUGE.

I've previously shared some success with affiliate marketing on my channel for as small as it is (~1200 subscribers), but since getting monetized at 1k, I'm averaging ~$50+ a month in AdSense as well.

As part of my creative freelancing, I've been growing my own channel. It gives me something that is entirely mine while I help others with their work on a contract basis. And if I have to stop my full time, freelance experiment and go back to only on nights and weekends, then I'll already have some momentum on a side project to keep me motivated.

My channel is built around camera lens reviews. I've been lucky enough to find some sort of evergreen success with a few. Search traffic drives their continued watch time, long after they've been published. As such, my views are fairly constant and so is the ad revenue. Combined with the trickle of affiliate income, these two small sources are enough that I should be able keep renting gear for photoshoots and reviews almost entirely funded by the channel itself 🙌