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How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber

2020-05-01 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 31:07 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, His own products discussed, Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

Ali breaks down his income for the week of 23 to 29 March 2020: $1,389.44 from his job as an NHS junior doctor and $4,093.69 from YouTube AdSense, Skillshare, affiliate links and his online admissions courses, and argues that passive income makes work optional.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why he shares his income numbers

  • ★★ Ali breaks down what he earns in a week from his full-time job as a junior doctor in the NHS alongside his sources of passive income. — 00:00:00 · NHS, passive income
  • ★★ Ali says seeing people such as Pat Flynn, Graham Stephan, Mr. Money Mustache and the Indie Hackers community share real income numbers inspired much of what he does today. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — His pay as a junior doctor in the NHS: salary, payslip and a day shift

  • ★★★ Ali works for the NHS at a hospital in Bury St Edmunds, on the obstetrics and gynaecology placement, for an annual salary of about £38,000. — 00:00:58 · NHS, Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★★ Ali's payslip as a junior doctor shows a basic rate of about £15.36 an hour: 173 basic and 25 out-of-hours hours a month make £3,054.76, plus about £200 for working one weekend in three, £3,255.07 in all. — 00:01:27 · NHS
  • ★★ A normal nine-hour day shift, 8 am to 5 pm, earns Ali £138.24; he gives all figures as top-line revenue, before tax, national insurance, pension contributions and student loans. — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Day-by-day breakdown: AdSense, Skillshare, affiliate links, Amazon Associates and his online medical admissions courses

  • ★★ YouTube pays a video's creator whenever a viewer watches one of its ads; on Monday 23 March 2020 Ali made £95.66 in AdSense from 97,723 views, about £1 per thousand views. — 00:02:26 · YouTube
  • ★★ Skillshare pays teachers for every minute that viewers with a premium account watch their classes, like streaming royalties; Ali has two classes there. — 00:03:24 · Skillshare classes
  • ★★ On Monday 23 March 2020 Ali's one Skillshare class then live, on editing videos in Final Cut Pro, filmed in one day in September 2019, had 3,086 premium minutes watched and made $169.73; it has made over $100 a day since. — 00:03:53 · Skillshare classes, Final Cut Pro
  • ★★ Ali makes $10 from Skillshare's affiliate programme for each person who signs up to a free trial through his referral link. — 00:04:22
  • ★★ Ali's biggest affiliate partnerships are the Paperlike screen protector for the iPad and Epidemic Sound, which supplies the music for his videos; on Monday 23 March 2020 they made him $123.43. — 00:04:52 · Paperlike, iPad Pro
  • ★★ Amazon Associates, which Ali calls the world's biggest affiliate programme, pays between about 1 and 10% commission on purchases made through an affiliate link. — 00:05:21 · Amazon
  • ★★ A photography YouTuber like Peter McKinnon probably makes a lot from Amazon affiliate links because his viewers buy expensive cameras and lenses; Ali's viewers buy books, pens or board games, so he makes little. (hedged) — 00:05:50 · Amazon, Peter McKinnon, YouTube
  • ★★ On Monday 23 March 2020 Ali's active income was $172.42 and his passive income, money not directly tied to giving up his own time, $313.90. — 00:06:49 · passive income
  • ★★ On Tuesday 24 March 2020 Ali's channel got about 30% more views, mostly on a demonetised video, so AdSense paid slightly less, £94.83: only monetisable videos earn revenue. — 00:07:18
  • ★★ Ali set up SixMed in medical school; it runs classroom courses and question banks for medical school applicants, has run since about 2013, and is its own company, so he leaves its money out of his personal income. — 00:08:16 · 6med
  • ★★ A couple of years ago Ali made his own online video courses for the UCAT, the BMAT and medical school interviews. — 00:08:16 · UKCAT, BMAT
  • ★★ Each sign-up to Ali's UCAT crash course online brings in £99, about $123; one person signed up on Tuesday 24 March 2020. — 00:08:45 · UKCAT
  • ★★★ Ali's AdSense CPM, revenue per thousand views, varies by content: maybe £5 for his tech videos and maybe 10p for his book videos, depending on who advertises on them. (hedged) — 00:09:44
  • ★★ Maybe 10% of Ali's audience is in India, where ad rates are very low; the 25% or so in America bring in much more, because advertisers want American viewers, who have more money to spend. (hedged) — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Creators like Graham Stephan, who make videos about real estate and making money online, get enormous ad rates because finance companies advertise on them and have more money than tech companies. — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Ali's long day shift on Friday 27 March 2020, 8 am to 9 pm, 13 hours, earned him £199.68. — 00:12:20
  • ★★ Weekend shifts are 13-hour long days with a bonus: Ali worked two weekends in March 2020 and counts the £200 bonus as an extra £50 a day, so Saturday 28 March earned him £249. — 00:13:19
  • ★★ After Ali released his iPad review video on Saturday 28 March 2020, AdSense paid $264.41 that day; iPad videos tend to do well with advertisers. — 00:13:48 · iPad Pro
  • ★★ Saturday 28 March 2020 was Ali's record day of the week: $1,077.46 in total income. — 00:14:17

00:15:16 — Weekly totals from his doctor job and how UK doctors' pay compares with the US

  • ★★★ In the week of 23 to 29 March 2020 Ali worked 63 hours as a doctor, an overall rate of £17.67 an hour with the weekend bonus, roughly $20. — 00:15:16 · NHS
  • ★★★ Fully qualified American doctors, after three or four years of residency, earn on average four times as much as UK doctors, Ali says. — 00:15:16
  • ★★ A UK consultant starts on about £70,000 or £80,000, around $100,000, while the median income of US doctors is about $400,000, depending on specialty. (hedged) — 00:16:01
  • ★★ With a UK median salary of about £21,000, around $26,000, UK doctors still earn much more than the average person, but nowhere near what doctors earn in the US, Ali says. (hedged) — 00:16:30
  • ★★ Ali's 63 hours of work that week paid £1,113; with an hour's drive each way, 12 hours of travel, his real hourly rate falls to £14.85 before tax. — 00:16:30

00:17:13 — Sponsored videos as an income source; the Brilliant read and learning to code

  • ★★★ Ali's income from sources other than his job now far outweighs his doctor pay, a point he long wanted to reach after trying for about five years to build passive income. — 00:17:13 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali learned to code at 12 or 13 in secondary school, made pocket money doing small jobs for small businesses, and knowing how to code let him set up SixMed in 2013. — 00:17:52 · 6med
  • ★★ For anyone starting out on passive income and entrepreneurship, Ali recommends learning to code, one of the most useful things to do with your time, especially in lockdown. — 00:17:52 · passive income

00:18:35 — How sponsorship deals pay; Casey Neistat's rates

  • ★★ Companies pay Ali an amount he is not allowed to disclose for sponsorship messages in his videos, and track their return through the link clicks. — 00:18:35
  • ★★ Casey Neistat, a YouTuber with over 10 million subscribers, has said publicly that he makes $10,000 to $100,000 per sponsored video, and more on some deals. — 00:19:34 · YouTube

00:20:00 — YouTube AdSense as an income source and what it took to get there

  • ★★★ Ali's YouTube AdSense revenue for the week was £947, more than his weekly spending of £701 ($879) on mortgage, bills, food, car insurance and apps. — 00:20:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ YouTube is one of the very few platforms where creators make money while the audience pays nothing and advertisers pay, a business model with value exchanged on all fronts, Ali says. — 00:20:29 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Becoming a YouTuber is very doable, Ali says, but takes a lot of time, effort and hard work, and there was a lot of luck in his own case; he takes no credit for it. — 00:20:52 · YouTube
  • ★★ For almost three years Ali has made at least one, sometimes two or three, videos a week without really missing a week. — 00:21:22
  • ★★★ With that level of consistency, Ali says, YouTube income can fund your lifestyle, though it takes ages to build up. — 00:21:22 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali went from earning nothing on YouTube to cents a day, then about $100 and $500 a month; now AdSense alone brings $3,000 to $4,000 a month, enough to fund his lifestyle indefinitely. — 00:21:22 · YouTube

00:22:07 — Skillshare classes as an income source; teaching what you know

  • ★★ Ali tells anyone thinking of starting YouTube to absolutely go for it. — 00:22:07 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali never thought of teaching on Skillshare until a fellow creator told him about his own classes and showed him how much he was making. — 00:22:07
  • ★★★ The aim of passive income is several streams of money not tied to your time, and one of the easiest ways is selling educational material online: an ebook, a digital download or an online course. — 00:22:36 · passive income
  • ★★ One of the most lucrative ways to make money online is teaching other people how to make money online, Ali says, though that is not what he does. — 00:23:06
  • ★★ After his class on editing videos, Ali has made a Skillshare class on how to study for exams and is lining up many more Skillshare classes for the next few months. — 00:23:06 · Skillshare classes
  • ★★★ Ali prefers Skillshare to selling courses on his own website for more money: it has distribution built in, and his mostly student audience gets a two-month free trial, then about $9 a month. — 00:23:06
  • ★★ Ali now encourages every creator he knows to become a Skillshare teacher because it can be so lucrative. — 00:23:35
  • ★★★ Everyone has something to teach, Ali says, and a beginner can teach other beginners: he had edited video for only two years when he made his class, and knew better than a veteran editor what beginners need. — 00:24:03
  • ★★ Ali advises thinking about which skills you can teach to make money, on Skillshare, which he likes, or by selling courses on your own website. — 00:24:33
  • ★★★ Ali's one Skillshare class, filmed in a day and edited by a freelancer in two, made $1,428.86 that week, more than his 63 hours as a doctor, with no work beyond the odd reply to a comment. — 00:24:33 · Skillshare classes
  • ★★ Skillshare's pay per minute watched fluctuates month to month, Ali says, so his numbers guarantee nothing, just as AdSense pay per video is not guaranteed. — 00:25:24

00:25:54 — Financial independence: the lottery question and work becoming optional

  • ★★★ Financial independence has been one of Ali's few life goals since he first read Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek, which he calls an incredible book you should read. — 00:25:54 · work optional, Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
  • ★★★ Asked by Ali over six years whether they would still be doctors if they won the lottery, half the doctors said they would leave at once and half would stay part-time; not one would stay full-time. — 00:26:47

  • ★★★ Financial independence means decoupling the money you need to survive from your full-time job: Ali now earns far less from work than from his other income, so he goes to work because it is fun. — 00:27:16 · work optional

    “if you can decouple the amount of money you need to survive from your full-time job”

  • ★★ Being at work because he wants to be, not because he has to be, makes a big difference to Ali's happiness and, he thinks, makes him better at treating patients. — 00:27:16

  • ★★★ The main benefit of passive income, Ali says, is that work becomes optional: you can leave, go part-time or start something else, instead of being shackled to a job you need to pay the bills. — 00:27:45 · passive income, work optional

00:28:14 — Affiliate income: selling other people's products to an audience that trusts you

  • ★★ Ali's affiliate income for the week was $1,095.82, a little less than he made from his doctor job. — 00:28:14
  • ★★★ Affiliate income is selling other people's products; selling your own is better, but if you have none yet, Ali says, start by selling other people's. — 00:28:14
  • ★★★ Giving content away free on the internet builds an audience that knows, likes and trusts you, so a genuine recommendation sells; Ali points viewers to Gary Vaynerchuk's work on this. — 00:28:14 · Gary Vaynerchuk
  • ★★ Ali genuinely loves the Paperlike screen protector and has ordered one for his 12.9-inch iPad Pro. — 00:28:57 · Paperlike, iPad Pro
  • ★★ Ali has used only Epidemic Sound for his videos' music for three years: a library of copyright-free songs costing perhaps $15 a month, fully worth it. (hedged) — 00:28:57
  • ★★★ To anyone starting on passive income, Ali says to seriously consider creating content in some form. — 00:28:57 · passive income
  • ★★ Some bloggers make six or seven figures from affiliate income, Ali says, because they have built enough authority in their niche that their recommendations fund their lifestyle. — 00:28:57
  • ★★★ In the week of 23 to 29 March 2020, which Ali calls pretty standard, his active income was $1,389.44 and his passive income $4,093.69: $5,483.13 in total. — 00:29:42 · passive income

00:29:59 — Totals for the week and where to start

  • ★★★ If these numbers sound good, Ali recommends starting your own journey to financial independence. — 00:30:12 · work optional
  • ★★ Ali points to his videos on ten tips for entrepreneurs and on three books that changed his life, and says reading those three books will inspire you to start on financial independence and entrepreneurship. — 00:30:12

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Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: affiliate marketing · passive income · Skillshare classes · work optional · YouTube AdSense

Also: People: Casey Neistat · Gary Vaynerchuk · Graham Stephan · Pat Flynn · Peter McKinnon · Tim Ferriss

Works: BMAT · BMAT Crash Course Online · Mr. Money Mustache · The 4-Hour Workweek · UKCAT

Organizations: 6med · Amazon · Brilliant · Indie Hackers · Netflix · NHS · YouTube

Concepts: Obstetrics and gynaecology

Places: Bury St Edmunds · India

Products: Epidemic Sound · Final Cut Pro · iPad Pro · Paperlike

Also centred on affiliate marketing: How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber

Also centred on YouTube AdSense: How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber

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