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How Much Money I Made as a YouTuber & Entrepreneur (2022)

2023-01-05 (said on 2022-12-15 — implied: date said in the video; uploaded 21 days later) · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 46:15 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

Ali breaks down twelve income streams of his channel and business from 2017 to 2022 (AdSense, Amazon Associates, other affiliates, sponsorships, podcast, newsletter, Instagram and TikTok, merch, a website theme, Skillshare, self-hosted courses and the Part-Time YouTuber Academy): about $4.6 million of revenue in 2022, but costs of about $2.5 million left a profit of about $2.07 million, lower than in 2021.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Twelve income streams over six years; no flex, no overnight success

  • ★★ Ali says nothing in his yearly income breakdown is meant as a flex; since sharing his numbers candidly he has had hundreds of messages from people inspired by them, and the six years show it is no overnight success story. — 00:00:29

00:01:03 — Income stream one: YouTube AdSense, RPM and the finance niche

  • ★★ Through AdSense YouTube pays creators 55% of what advertisers pay for the ads on their videos, and a creator is paid whenever a viewer watches or even skips one of those ads. — 00:01:27 · Google, YouTube
  • ★★ A channel's RPM, its ad revenue per thousand views, depends on how much advertisers bid on its topic: finance channels get very high RPMs, while content for students or for countries with low purchasing power gets much lower ones. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali's channel was monetised around April 2018, when its RPM was 70p per 1,000 views. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali's RPM reached about £3 by the end of 2020 and spiked around April and May 2021, probably because of the pandemic and because he started making finance-themed videos then. (hedged) — 00:02:26
  • ★★ A handful of Ali's videos on passive income and investing skew the RPM of the whole channel, which is now about £6 to £7 per 1,000 views. — 00:02:55 · passive income
  • ★★ To be paid for ads a channel must join the YouTube Partner Program, which needs at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time; many creators take months or years to get there. — 00:02:55 · first in: 2020-09-09, How to make money on YouTube in 2021 (and how much I earn)
  • ★★★ Ali's channel made $2.27 in AdSense in 2017, before monetisation, and $16,459 in 2018, after it was monetised in April. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ Ali's channel grew from zero to 1,600 subscribers with 65 videos in 2017, to 125,000 with 85 videos in 2018, and to 487,000 with 64 videos in 2019, a year of full-time work as a doctor that brought $42,385 in YouTube ads. — 00:03:53 · YouTube
  • ★★★ In 2020 Ali's channel grew from 487,000 to 1.32 million subscribers, almost certainly a pandemic effect, and made $129,262 in AdSense. — 00:04:32
  • ★★★ In 2021, which he calls his first full year as a full-time YouTuber though he still did the channel only part-time alongside other business work, Alis channel published 86 videos and 12 Shorts, grew to 2.5 million subscribers and made $464,552 in AdSense. — 00:04:57 · YouTube
  • ★★★ In 2022 Ali's channel published 58 videos, just over one a week, and 25 Shorts, grew to 3.6 million subscribers and made around $653,299 in AdSense. — 00:04:57
  • ★★★ Ali's video of nine passive income ideas, made a year or a year and a half earlier, has made £164,500 in ad revenue on its own. — 00:05:27 · passive income
  • ★★★ Ali's video on how to invest for beginners has made over £100,000, and with his passive income ideas and how to build a website in 2022 videos it accounts for a third of the ad revenue of his roughly 510 videos. — 00:05:56 · passive income
  • ★★★ Starting a YouTube channel from scratch today, Ali would probably choose a finance or business niche, because he would need less than a tenth of the views for the same money. (hedged) — 00:06:25 · YouTube

00:06:37 — Income stream two: Amazon Associates

  • ★★ Anyone can join Amazon Associates, the world's largest affiliate programme, and earn a small percentage, such as 0.1%, 1% or 2%, of purchases made through their tagged links. — 00:06:54 · Amazon
  • ★★★ Ali made nothing from Amazon Associates in 2017, then $548 in 2018, $1,554 in 2019, $7,194 in 2020, $29,886 in 2021 and $44,160 in 2022. — 00:07:23
  • ★★ Ali's evidence-based skincare routine video went viral in 2022; he was not sponsored by CeraVe, Altruist or anyone, he just mentioned products he liked, with Amazon affiliate links in the description. — 00:07:53 · Amazon

00:08:47 — Income stream three: affiliate income and the Paperlike screen protector

  • ★★ Ali has affiliate deals with around 10 companies whose products he already uses, such as Epidemic Sound, which he has paid $15 a month for background music since 2017. — 00:08:51 · Ghost
  • ★★ Dealing directly with a company that likes you can bring affiliate commissions of 10, 20, 30 or even 50% instead of Amazon's 1 or 2%, which makes affiliate income one of the larger income sources for many YouTubers. — 00:09:49 · Amazon
  • ★★★ Since affiliate income needs no particular audience size, Ali recommends signing up for Amazon Associates from day one: earning a few cents when someone buys a book you mention fuels the motivation to keep going. — 00:10:23 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali's affiliate income was nothing in 2017 and 2018 and $37,561 in 2019, mostly from the Paperlike screen protector he thinks, almost exactly what he earned as a full-time NHS doctor, around $37,000 to $38,000. (hedged) — 00:11:06 · Paperlike, NHS
  • ★★ Earning a doctor's salary by plugging an iPad screen protector made Ali realise, three years into YouTube, that it might become a viable income outside his day job as a doctor. — 00:11:37 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali's affiliate income was $162,859 in 2020, $178,315 in 2021 and around $235,665 in 2022. — 00:11:37
  • ★★ Ali prefers affiliate deals to sponsorships: with no deadlines he adds a link only when a product makes sense to mention, which is natural and easy, while sponsorships are more arduous. — 00:12:14

00:12:39 — Income stream four: YouTube sponsorships, his rule for sponsors, and how the numbers were converted

  • ★★ For bigger YouTubers, sponsorships can often be a far bigger source of income than AdSense. — 00:12:44
  • ★★★ Ali takes no sponsorship from a company whose product he does not already use; offered a large amount, he tries the product and says yes only if he is still using it consistently months later. — 00:13:13
  • ★★ When Ali found himself filming a plug for a product he did not actually use, he cancelled the sponsorship rather than make it. — 00:13:42
  • ★★ Sponsorship rates are opaque, Ali says, but a number often given is about $15 CPM, so a channel averaging 100,000 views would get about $1,500 per sponsored video. — 00:13:42
  • ★★ Some sponsors, such as Google or Facebook, care more about brand awareness than views, while others value a sponsorship by its conversions: Skillshare tracks Ali's link and raises or lowers his rate. — 00:14:46 · Skillshare, Google, Facebook
  • ★ An agency, 16th (as heard), now handles many of Ali's sponsorship deals, and he has a good idea of what his channel is worth to sponsors. — 00:15:15
  • ★★★ Ali's first sponsorships came in 2018 at about 80,000 subscribers, from Primark and Rosetta Stone; three more deals were never paid when the marketing company behind them went bust, and 2018 brought $7,609 from sponsorships. — 00:15:44
  • ★★★ Ali's sponsorship revenue was $39,721 in 2019 and $174,583 in 2020. — 00:15:44
  • ★★★ Ali's sponsorship revenue was $440,000 in 2021 and about $598,744 in 2022. — 00:16:14
  • ★★ Ali's business earns in pounds; he gives the figures in dollars at each year's average rate, 1.2389 in 2022 and 1.3757 in 2021, which skews some numbers in favour of 2021. — 00:16:42
  • ★★ Filming in mid-December 2022, Ali's 2022 figures are partly estimates: accounts are reconciled to the end of October, and the last two months are estimated from invoices and extrapolation. — 00:17:12

00:18:10 — Income stream five: Not Overthinking and Deep Dive podcasts

  • ★★ Ali has two podcasts: Not Overthinking, a casual podcast with his brother since 2019, and Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, started about a year earlier, where he interviews entrepreneurs, academics, authors and creators. — 00:18:10 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal, Deep Dive
  • ★★ Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, started from zero about 12 months earlier, has grown to about 150,000 subscribers on YouTube; Ali tries not to look at its numbers. — 00:18:39 · Deep Dive, YouTube
  • ★★ Not Overthinking made $400 from sponsorships in 2019 and $7,400 in 2020, when Ali and his brother dropped sponsors because the pressure to publish consistently was too stressful. — 00:19:08 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★★ Deep Dive made $29,258 in 2021 and around $153,461 in 2022, a year in which it reached the top 1% of podcasts shared and listened to globally, by Spotify's yearly summary. — 00:19:38 · Deep Dive, Spotify
  • ★★ A year earlier Deep Dive was losing money, its sponsorships not covering one and a bit full-time staff; it is now profitable, though Ali would run it anyway because interviewing people is so much fun. — 00:20:07 · Deep Dive
  • ★★★ Ali recommends starting a podcast, though it is genuinely hard to grow one: podcasts often grow through YouTube clips and TikTok, and it takes a lot of work to reach monetisation. — 00:20:07 · TikTok, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali has sent his weekly email newsletter, Sunday Snippets, every Sunday since around March 2018, and it still continues. — 00:20:36 · Sunday Snippets

00:20:50 — Income stream six: the Sunday Snippets email newsletter and writing online

  • ★★ Ali's newsletter started with about 200 readers and now goes to almost 200,000 people, he thinks. (hedged) — 00:21:05 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ In 2022 Ali's newsletter was sponsored for the first time; each issue now carries a sponsor, such as Skillshare or Morning Brew, and many sponsors are booked for 2023. — 00:21:05 · Sunday Snippets, Skillshare
  • ★★★ For newsletter sponsorships the size of the audience matters less than how targeted it is: a few thousand entrepreneurs or CEOs can earn more per reader than Ali's big untargeted list. — 00:21:05
  • ★★★ To be a creator you do not need to be a YouTuber, Ali says: you can make a full-time living writing online on Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Medium or an email newsletter. — 00:22:19 · Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali recommends The Art and Business of Online Writing by his friend Nicolas Cole, an internet friend he met in person when Cole came to London for a podcast recording. — 00:22:19
  • ★★★ Ali's newsletter made nothing from 2017 to 2021, though he wrote it every Sunday from 2018, and made $97,739 from sponsorships in 2022. — 00:22:48 · Sunday Snippets

00:23:19 — Income stream seven: Instagram and TikTok

  • ★★ Instagram and TikTok made Ali basically nothing until 2022, when they brought $37,061, mostly sponsorships upsold from YouTube and newsletter deals; he wants to try a few more sponsorships and maybe affiliate deals there in 2023. — 00:23:47 · Instagram, TikTok, YouTube
  • ★★★ Instagram and TikTok pay far more for the effort than YouTube, but Ali thinks YouTube is the better platform for longevity, mature monetisation and evergreen content, which is why big Instagram and TikTok creators want to grow there. (hedged) — 00:24:45 · Instagram, TikTok, YouTube

00:25:19 — Income stream eight: Essentiali merch and a new physical product brand

  • ★★ Ali's merch, the Part-Time Productivity Planner and a most-important-task to-do pad, was a side hustle and an experiment in making physical products after years of digital ones; it was fun but not very profitable. — 00:25:23
  • ★★★ Margins on physical products are annoyingly low: viewers complained about a $25 notebook, but printing one cost Ali's team $15 at their small quantities of hundreds or thousands of units. — 00:25:53
  • ★★ Ali does not think his team will continue the Essentiali stationery products in 2023. (hedged) — 00:25:53
  • ★★★ Ali's team is working on another physical product brand, around tech, keyboards and bags. — 00:25:53
  • ★★ Ali promises more details on his team's new physical product brand in 2023 and says they will document the journey as they go. — 00:26:22
  • ★★★ The Essentiali products made $63,603 in 2022; several of Ali's team members still use theirs. — 00:26:22
  • ★ Ali used to use his own Part-Time Productivity Planner but switched to the Bullet Journal Method for journaling. — 00:26:22

00:27:01 — Income stream nine: digital products and the Ghost website theme

  • ★★ Grace Beverley, a former fitness YouTuber Ali interviewed on his podcast, sold PDF workout and nutrition plans at about £35 and seemed to sell around 300,000 of them, which Ali reckons comes to over £10 million. (hedged) — 00:27:20 · YouTube
  • ★★★ A digital product takes a small effort to make once and sells for a smallish amount; sold to enough people, Ali says, it can make absurd amounts of money. — 00:27:20
  • ★★ Ali's one digital product in 2022 was the Ghost theme a designer and developer named Dan made for his website, sold after many people asked for it; it made $462. — 00:28:10 · Ghost, aliabdaal.com

00:28:48 — Income stream ten: Skillshare classes and watch-time royalties

  • ★★ Skillshare works like Netflix, a subscription to watch as much as you like, and pays teachers like streaming royalties: a small amount for every minute someone watches their classes. — 00:29:09 · Skillshare
  • ★★★ Ali's first Skillshare class, on editing videos in Final Cut Pro, took him a day to film and a freelancer two days to edit; since September 2019 it has made a few thousand dollars a month completely passively. — 00:30:04 · Skillshare, Final Cut Pro, passive income
  • ★★★ Ali's Skillshare classes made $8,470 in 2019, $449,295 in 2020 and $859,106 in 2021, probably his second-highest revenue source that year. — 00:30:33 · Skillshare

00:31:02 — Skillshare sponsor read

  • ★★ Because Skillshare also sponsors his videos, Ali can plug his own Skillshare classes in its sponsor reads and earn from both the read and the watch time, a synergy he calls almost unheard of with any other sponsor. — 00:31:02 · Skillshare

00:32:42 — Skillshare's pricing change cuts his revenue

  • ★★★ Around mid-2022 Skillshare changed its pricing structure and Ali's monthly revenue there took a hit: $778,131 in 2022, against $859,000 in 2021. — 00:32:42 · Skillshare
  • ★★ Ali suspects his Skillshare revenue will be even lower in 2023, as Skillshare, hit by the recession, tries to save money; keeping his classes there is still very profitable. (hedged) — 00:32:42 · Skillshare
  • ★ Ali likes that Skillshare is free with a trial, which gives students a free alternative to his paid courses. — 00:33:10 · Skillshare

00:33:45 — Income stream eleven: self-hosted courses, Creatorpreneur Course and Camera Confidence

  • ★★ Ali's team released the Creatorpreneur Course in 2022, a self-paced course with three modules (workflow, cashflow, outflow) on treating creative work as a business, sold for around $800. (hedged) — 00:34:38
  • ★★ Camera Confidence, Ali's cheaper self-hosted course of a couple of hours on being confident on camera, sells for $149, with free scholarship places for those who cannot afford it. (hedged) — 00:34:38
  • ★★★ Seeing that Skillshare's payments were too good to last, Ali told his team to make and host their own courses: with your own product you are not reliant on a third-party platform and its rules. — 00:35:07 · Skillshare
  • ★★ Skillshare's change cut Ali's Skillshare revenue by 50% overnight, and YouTuber friends banned from Skillshare lost all of theirs, which is what happens when you rely on a platform you do not control. — 00:35:37 · Skillshare, YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali's self-hosted courses made nothing until 2022, when the two courses brought $179,026 without much marketing. — 00:36:04
  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy, a live cohort course on Zoom launched at the end of 2020, has run seven cohorts (one in 2020, three in 2021, three in 2022) of a few hundred people each. — 00:36:34 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom

00:36:38 — Income stream twelve: the Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohorts and their mistakes

  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy made $282,414 in top-line revenue in 2020, before its large costs for a team, student supporters and infrastructure. — 00:37:03 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ In 2021 the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's three cohorts made just over $2 million; Ali now only shows up to teach, while a team does most of the work. — 00:37:41 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ The cheapest package of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy now costs $2,000, after the team kept raising prices while cohorts sold out. (hedged) — 00:38:05 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Sales people told Ali that $2,000 is usually the point where buyers need a phone or Zoom call with a real person before paying, so raising the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's price beyond it was probably a bad idea. (hedged) — 00:38:34 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom
  • ★★★ Fewer people reached the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's page in 2022 because Ali, focused on his book, made fewer videos about being a YouTuber, the videos that sold the course; its conversion rate stayed the same. — 00:39:25 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali suspects that as the world came back to life in 2022 people cared less about online courses and live cohorts; everyone he knows who runs live cohort courses had a dip. (hedged) — 00:39:25
  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy made $1,759,238 in 2022, a decrease Ali puts down to neglected sales and marketing, the recession and the price rises. — 00:39:25 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy has a very low refund rate: it offers refunds to anyone who does not like the course, no questions asked, and very few take it up. — 00:40:00 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Asked whether he would recommend running a cohort-based course, Ali says probably not: it is so much work and effort, and that time could have gone into more videos or his book. (hedged) — 00:40:00 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ What fulfils Ali is reading, writing, learning, teaching and sharing things for free online; if his business did not need money he would probably run no paid courses. (hedged) — 00:40:42
  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy's success led Ali's business to hire many people and raise its fixed costs, so it had to keep running cohorts in 2022 to stay profitable, a hamster wheel. — 00:40:42 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy, meant as a side hustle, took over Ali's business; he does not want to teach YouTube live on Zoom for long, since what makes his heart sing is sharing things in videos and moving on. — 00:41:25 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali does not know yet whether or in what format to continue the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, is discussing it with his CEO coach, and will tell viewers once they decide. (unsure) — 00:41:25 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:42:07 — Total revenue, costs and profit from 2017 to 2022

  • ★★ Ali is unsure whether to keep making yearly income videos: as his numbers become absurd and unattainable for most people, sharing them feels more like a flex than education; he asks viewers what they think. (unsure) — 00:42:31
  • ★★★ Ali's total revenue was $2.27 in 2017, $24,615 in 2018, $130,091 in 2019 and $1.213 million in 2020. — 00:43:00
    • a number in question (doubtful): "$130,091" — check against the recording
  • ★★★ Ali's total revenue was $4,051,116 in 2021 and so far $4,600,593 in 2022, subject to change once the accounts are final. — 00:43:23
  • ★★★ In 2017 Ali's costs were about $5,156, mostly gear for starting YouTube, for a profit of minus $5,154. — 00:43:48 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali's business made its first profit in 2018, $11,266 after $13,349 of costs, mostly camera equipment; in 2019 revenue of $129,691 and costs of $25,544 (gear, a new Mac and the first outsourced editing) left about $104,147. — 00:44:17
  • ★★★ Ali's costs were $256,740 in 2020, leaving a profit of $956,267; in 2021 revenue of $4.05 million and costs of $1,525,402 left a profit of $2,525,714. — 00:44:46
  • ★★★ In 2022 Ali's business costs rose to $2,527,356, a whole million dollars more than in 2021, so its profit of $2,073,237 was lower than the year before despite slightly higher revenue. — 00:45:16
  • ★★ 2022 is the first time Ali's business has had a dip in profitability, with a massive spike in costs; he discusses its failures that year in another video. — 00:45:45

In the description and comments

  • ★★★ Ali says there is no legitimate way to make money online without large amounts of work, luck and unfair advantages, of which he has had plenty. — video description · unfair advantage

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: affiliate marketing · Amazon Associates · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · RPM · Skillshare · YouTube · YouTube AdSense

Also: People: Grace Beverley · Nicolas Cole · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Ali's tech, keyboards and bags product brand · aliabdaal.com · Camera Confidence · Creatorpreneur · Deep Dive · Essentiali · Not Overthinking · Sunday Snippets

Works: The Art and Business of Online Writing · The Bullet Journal Method

Organizations: Altruist · Amazon · CeraVe · Facebook · Google · Heights · HM Revenue and Customs · Instagram · Kajabi · LinkedIn · Morning Brew · NHS · Podia · Primark · Teachable · TikTok · Twitter

Concepts: cohort-based course · CPM · passive income · watch time

Products: Epidemic Sound · Final Cut Pro · Ghost · Medium · Paperlike · Part-Time Productivity Planner · Rosetta Stone · Shortform · Spotify · YouTube Partner Program · Zoom

Only in the description or credits: unfair advantage

Also centred on affiliate marketing: How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber · How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber · 9 Passive Income Ideas - How I Make $27k per Week · How Much Money I Make as a YouTuber (2021)💰

Also centred on RPM: How Much YouTube Paid Me For 10M Views

Also centred on YouTube AdSense: How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber · How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber · How Much Money I Make as a YouTuber (2021)💰 · How Much YouTube Paid Me For 10M Views

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