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How much I spend in a month…

2021-07-14 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

Ali adds up for the first time what his business costs each month: food, a WeWork office, payment and accounting fees, hardware, software, freelancers, coaches, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and team salaries, about $84,400 a month or just over $1 million a year, against hoped revenue of about $3 million.

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 what the business costs; the first tally in four years

  • ★★ Ali is open about how much his channel and business make to show that if you put in the work, stack up unfair advantages and have a healthy dose of luck, you can build a reasonably high-revenue business. — 00:00:00
  • ★ This is the first time in four years that Ali has added up all his business's numbers to see where its money goes every month. — 00:00:29

00:00:44 — Food, the WeWork office, payment fees and accounting

  • ★★ When Ali meets team members, coaches or contractors in person he treats them to lunch, and dinner if they work late; the business's food bill has been around $700 a month. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali and his team member Agnes have dedicated desks at the WeWork coworking space in Cambridge, at around $700 a month each, about $1,400 a month in all. — 00:01:27 · Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali calls his coworking space 100% worth it for the value it gives, and cannot imagine going back to working fully from home without a coworking space to meet people in. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali's business spends around $2,000 a month on bank, PayPal and Stripe fees; PayPal's foreign exchange fees on converting US dollars into pounds annoy him most. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Because Ali's business files VAT returns and sells digital products across Europe, where each country has its own VAT rate, its accounting bill is around $2,200 a month. — 00:02:37

00:03:07 — Hardware and camera gear; software subscriptions, ConvertKit and Ahrefs

  • ★★ Upgrading computers and camera gear when Apple or Sony release new products costs Ali's business around $40,000 a year, about $3,000 a month, varying by season. — 00:03:07 · Apple, Mac mini, MacBook, iPad, iPhone
  • ★★★ Ali calls his hardware and camera spending very much worth it: even a slight rise in production value pays dividends long term, and a device that makes him a little more efficient easily pays for itself. — 00:03:36 · MacBook, iPad
  • ★★ Ali's business pays about $3,600 a month for software subscriptions, from Adobe, Airtable and Calendly to Xero and Zoom, counting only the apps he could see in the accounts. — 00:04:05 · Zoom
  • ★★ ConvertKit, the business's email provider, is its biggest software cost at around $1,000 a month; Ali notes that email providers charge more the more people are on your list. — 00:04:34
  • ★★ Ali calls ConvertKit, his email provider, a very good service and recommends it. — 00:04:34
  • ★ Ali's business pays around $200 a month for Ahrefs, a search engine optimisation tool. — 00:04:34
  • ★★ Two freelancers, Laura and Joe, repurpose the business's content for the social platforms; with a few other freelancers this costs around $4,500 a month. — 00:05:03

00:05:12 — Freelancers and coaches

  • ★★ Ali has about five coaches and Angus one; the business pays about $6,000 a month for coaching, a bill that will probably rise as it hires coaches for other team members. — 00:05:51 · Angus
  • ★★★ Ali says hiring a coach, even at $500 to $1,000 an hour, has a positive return on investment, because improving your own skills benefits the whole business. — 00:05:51

00:06:20 — Running the Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohorts

  • ★★ Ali's business has run three cohorts of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, his six-week live online course, this year (2021) and aims to run four next year (2022). — 00:06:20 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Each live cohort of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy costs around $80,000: helpers for the course and data, housemasters who are pro YouTubers coaching students, and affiliates promoting it. — 00:06:20 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:07:12 — The team: who works how much, hiring plans and salaries

  • ★★ Seven of Ali's team members work full time, two about four days a week, one three days and one two days; the work is fairly remote and flexible. — 00:07:19
  • ★★ If viewers are interested, Ali will make a video explaining what the people on his team do, the question everyone asks when he mentions it. — 00:07:19
  • ★★ Ali's team of 12, including him, is nowhere near enough for what the business wants to do, so it is looking to hire around five more people in the next few months. — 00:07:48
  • ★★ Ali's business pays around $483,000 a year in team salaries, excluding his own, about $41,000 a month; he will not share individual salaries. — 00:07:48

00:08:26 — The total of just over a million dollars a year, hoped revenue and margin

  • ★★★ In all, Ali's business costs about $84,400 a month to run, just over $1 million a year, a number bigger than he expected. — 00:08:26
  • ★★ Ali hopes his business's revenue this year (2021) will be around $3 million, which against costs of a million dollars would be a margin of about 66%. (hedged) — 00:08:49
  • ★ Ali has heard that a lot of businesses have margins of about 5, 10 or 15%. (hedged) — 00:08:49
  • ★★ Ali puts his business's margin at around 60 to 70%, which he calls pretty good. — 00:08:49

00:09:24 — The extended edition on Nebula, the CuriosityStream sponsor read and the 2020 income video

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Answering a viewer's remark about the cost of living in Cambridge, the channel says only one of Ali's team members is based in Cambridge; the rest are all over the place. — creator comment · Cambridge

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

People: Ali Abdaal's mother · Angus

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Organizations: Airtable · Amazon · Apple · Google · Nebula · PayPal · Standard · Stripe · WeWork

Concepts: lifelong learning · unfair advantage

Places: Cambridge

Products: Ahrefs · Calendly · ConvertKit · Ecamm · Figma · Frame.io · iPad · iPhone · Kindle · Loom · Mac mini · MacBook · Patreon · Riverside · Xero · Zoom

Only in the description or credits: business expenses

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