Dan Yosua Creative

But I'm calling it quits.

Sort of an accomplishment, sort of a failure. I only truly expected to make it about 6 months, so I'm calling 13 months a win even though it feels very bittersweet.

Early in January I'll start another full time W2 role, one that I'm legitimately excited about. But I do have to scale back much of the freelance work which is disappointing. I wish I could both, but alas.

On the photography front, I've adjusted expectations with my two clients that I'll try to keep — shooting will have to happen on a weekend, and I'll need an additional weekend at least to cover editing time. Some people watch TV after work, I'll edit photos while I listen to podcasts for a few nights after those occasional shoots.

For the podcast production work I plan to keep, I'll run a several month trial to see if I can keep a few of those shows on nights and weekends. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to handle it, but will scale down again if not. If you haven't already checked them out, "UI Breakfast", "Better Done Than Perfect", and "Slow & Steady" are all shows you may want to check out as an Indie Hacker 😀

Finally, I'll definitely continue with my YouTube channel. This will be my non-negotiable personal project in my spare time. By the time this year is out, I'll have gone from ~150 to ~1500 subscribers for the year. I'd love to shoot for another 2000 subscriber gain and a ~$1000 AdSense year for 2022. Those would be positive signs as I continue to test the viability of YouTube for me as a time-consuming side project long-term🤞

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 🙌

Growing on YouTube turns from incredibly difficult when trying to get those first 100 subs to strangely addicting as you gain traction.

It's difficult to quantify or explain all that I've learned, but it's immediately apparent when I watch any one of my older videos 🙈

Starting a channel is one of the best ways to learn about pitching your ideas (title/thumbnail), telling a story (watch time), video editing, affiliate marketing , and more.

If you are inclined to work with visual medial, give it a shot!

Well... not quite halfway yet I suppose, but close enough to check-in:

I've been on a road trip — I drove to Colorado and have been working here and crashing with family for the last month. Next week, it's time to pack it up, swing south to catch some friends, drive 3,500 miles back to Pennsylvania, and really buckle down for the second half of the year.

Am I on track? I think so. I hope so. It's close enough for now.

I'm behind where I want to be financially but feel that I'm still steadily building momentum since I switched careers and started freelancing full-time last December. I'm learning, growing as a photographer, am enjoying this considerably more than my last few years of work, and have had full, remote flexibility to do some of the "life" things I've wanted to do (the biggest being the road trip).

To keep the dream alive and extend the runway, the second half of the year looks a lot like this:

1. Continue growing my YouTube channel — it seems small, but I'm closing in on $500 in affiliate sales for the year so far, with only ~800 subscribers. It feels a lot like the "slow SaaS ramp of death" that I hear so much about, but it's extremely exciting to have some semi-consistent, semi-passive income. My original goal was 1000 subs for the year, now bumping that to 2000.

2. Double revenue — I don't need this to happen overnight, but the runway is looking shorter and shorter. The good news is that I originally planned to not make it this far. So on one hand everything beyond now is gravy. Most of the work I'm doing is fun AND flexible, and I could still swing most of it on nights and weekends with a normal W2 job. If I can get to $4k/month, that's probably enough to live frugally and keep growing.

3. Plan an "exit" — exit is the wrong word for fleeing your own sole-proprietorship that doesn't make enough money to sustain itself... but you get the idea 🤣 I think I'll need one more half-time+ gig or two smaller ones by the end of the year to keep rolling into 2022. Ideally, at this point, I'm only entertaining new gig opportunities that I could see myself working full time at. That way, if it comes to it, I have a chance to evaluate the role for plenty of time leading up to that decision.

Because mid-year coincides with the end of my trip, and finally some normal-looking life for the first time (post-vaccine), I'm feeling invigorated to attack the back half of the year recharged.

Anyone else have big goals for the second half??

The past month represented a lot of big wins that will hopefully help me sustain my full-time freelancing for longer than expected. Some of the bigger wins:

1. 500+ subs on YouTube — continued momentum toward making this an income stream.

2. First $100+ month with Amazon Affiliates: Starting to see how this stream could start to pay for camera gear.

3. First Referrals from LensRentals — a big portion of my traffic is coming from organic search of lens review videos and these referrals will help me sustain making that type of content. I like making these and I'm getting great feedback from viewers, both existing ones and new ones. I plan to rely on these videos as the backbone of content that will allow me to enter the YouTube partner program at 1000 subs and 4000 watch hours.

4. New podcasting gig! — so far this one has been lots of fun, will help me grow my writing ability, and represents 5+ hrs/wk of very flexible, completely remote work. This type of work is key in allowing me to maintain work as I start to travel around in May.

5. Contacted Small Brands — I took a quick weekend trip to bolster my outdoor/adventure photo portfolio. I then reached out to several small brands to gauge interest in potential sponsorships moving forward. Too early to tell how those will go, but I'm feeling hopeful!

A lot of these wins were a long time in the works. They were all things that, even a month ago, felt just beyond my reach in a way that I wouldn't have expected to hit them for another quarter. To reap the rewards of that past work all at once is extremely motivating.

It took nearly 3 years and 3 different channel directions to get to 100 subs, then 3 months after that I'm past 250 and blasting off!

YouTube is strange compared to building products. In this community we often value a lean approach. One in which we wouldn't want to build or sink lots of time into something before having signups, having paying customers, etc. YT is almost the opposite - it requires some sort of long term view and a stubbornness to continue when engagement in the early days is abysmal. It's a good fit for those who love making videos regardless.

On Friday I resigned from my data analytics role and starting Monday, I'll be a full-time creative entrepreneur! Well, uh, actually I already did my first photoshoot yesterday morning. It's funny - I've been working nights and weekends to make this happen for awhile. The last month especially has been a bit of a grind. But now more than ever weekend days feel filled with endless possibility and I feel renewed to chase down items on the backlog. I'm looking forward to the client work I have lined up and am especially ready to start mapping out how I can productize some of my services. And hopefully create a few products of my own for small businesses, small YouTubers, Instagrammers, fellow creatives.

I expected to feel this excited but didn't expect to feel this free. That part is a bit overwhelming in a good way. No matter what happens over the course of my runway, this feeling and the skills I develop will no doubt stick with me. If anyone is on the fence about coming over to the dark side, has some revenue, has some momentum and is fortunate enough to have the means to give it a try for a bit... this is my official vote to go for it! 😃

FINALLY crossed this threshold on my main channel. Building a following on YouTube is a lot like building a software product, where your videos are your incremental product features and a subscriber becomes a "sale" or a "download". I've seen some good traction on my channel of late. Videos are getting a steady trickle of organic search and recommended traffic. I have a handful of videos now that are targeted for beginner and intermediate photographers/creatives that lean toward monetizing their hobby (the channel I want to see, basically). Enough that they might watch more than one and they stick around by subscribing. Very much feeling like I've started to hit what could be "product market fit" for the first time ever on a project...

Last Gumroad post for a while, I promise. But this sale came a day after the first and it was for the initial $19 stock photo pack that I listed. 99 cents was still very cool to get as the first sale, but getting the notification for something at a higher price point really starts to solidify the idea that digital products are powerful. Powerful as the seller AND as the buyer. If I had licensed the same number of photos as an ad hoc, scheduled shoot I would have needed to charge more. But because, in theory, these photos can be licensed to a wider audience multiple time, the consumer also wins!

It might only be 99 cents, but getting that first Gumroad notification was a great feeling. Friendly words of advice - you'll never get your first Gumroad sale without listing any products on Gumroad! This was something that took 5 minutes to create a product for, one that I had no real hope that it would sell. But it was good to go through the listing process and make a sale today on a one-time effort that I had already gone through in the past.