How This YouTuber Makes $1 Million a Year
Just so you know, he’s an ex-Facebook employee
His wife left him.
Then he got fired from Facebook — for having a YouTube channel.
Don’t know his legal name, but he calls himself Tech Lead and his YouTube channel has 760K subscribers. His videos are full of gossips about the tech industry and his personal life.
And his channel is doing pretty well. After all, most people love drama, controversial discussions, and sensational news.
But that’s not always enough to make a good income. There are so many Instagrammers with millions of followers and entertaining content, but not all of them can monetize their social media accounts. For instance, an Instagrammer with 2.6 million followers couldn’t even sell 36 T-shirts!
So why is it that some people with a massive social media following make hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others can’t even generate $300? And how to use massive social media following to generate six figures?
Well, let’s understand how Tech Lead does it.
Sponsors and Affiliate Deals
Tech Lead is one of those YouTubers who adds a dozen affiliate links in his video description. But that’s not it. Even within his videos, he mentions his main sponsors and puts an affiliate link in the description to direct visitors to his sponsors’ websites.
In one of his YouTube videos, he talks about losing his job and getting divorced, and then he says, “And at a dire time like this, what we really need to do is: take a pause and thank our sponsor…” Then he goes on to read a very generic description of his sponsors, which is so basic and uncreative that you’d think, “Excuse me? WTF?” But it works. Why? Because it goes with the overall dull and sad mood of the video.
However, you must realize that having hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube wouldn’t make your affiliate links get more clicks. The secret is creating content that’s focussed on a niche.
For example, if you’re creating content about vegan recipes, then an affiliate link for buying an IKEA chair will most probably fail. However, if you add an affiliate link that redirects people to a website that sells cooking equipment, then it’s more likely to succeed because the visitors might potentially want to use the same equipment that you’re using in your vegan recipe videos.
YouTube Ad Revenue
Tech Lead says that he makes about $20,000 a month through YouTube’s monetization program. Not too shabby for someone who has only been on YouTube for just two years. His most popular videos, the ones with most views, are mostly about his life tragedies, leaving or getting fired from big tech companies, and a little bit of coding.
Now you must realize that to even get monetized on YouTube, your channel needs at least a thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours — hours, not minutes. And if you want the YouTube algorithm to bring more eyeballs on your videos and push your channel higher, you will consistently need to earn as many watch hours as you can.
So if people only watch 30 seconds of your 10-minute video and move on to another video, it will affect your ranking on YouTube. When Tech Lead talks about things like “my wife left me” or “I quit my job at Google,” it’s hard to move on to another video because his content is so intense and almost shocking.
His best videos, the ones with the highest watch time, reached that level because they’re so good that viewers are compelled to watch them completely before clicking on another video.
Online Courses
Even though he’s been fired from Facebook and voluntarily left Google, he knows that there are thousands of other people who are desperate to work with these silicon valley tech giants. He has already experienced what other people are dying to experience — he knows it, and teaches people how to get there through his courses.
But here’s the deal — a lot of people create courses that don’t sell. And the reason for that, according to me, is lack of exposure. However, exposure is not a problem for Tech Lead who has several videos with more than a million views.
Closing Thoughts
In one of his videos, he said that the job at Facebook was paying him $500K a year, but when he lost it, he used YouTube, affiliate links, sponsors, and courses to generate another $500K.
When life kicked him down, Tech Lead used it as a stepping stone. He used his sadness to create a famous YouTube channel and several other sources of income through it.
He converted losing his livelihood and family into content and monetized it. That’s what hustlers do. That’s what entrepreneurs do. They find opportunity in every difficulty.
Hope this article motivates you to do the same.
About This Publication
How They Made Money is a publication that’s focused on analyzing how rich individuals exactly generated their income. Feel free to stay in the loop if you want to use this knowledge to reach one step closer to your own financial freedom.
