 2020 revenue. All right, so this was a very interesting year to say the least. So at the beginning of 2020, I had around 7,000 or so subscribers on YouTube and 6,000 of those I gained in the last month and a half or so of 2019. So on November 10th, I got monetized and my channel pretty much just took off after that. And as you can see over the last year, I've gained just a few subscribers since then. And I did a poll a while back where I asked everyone if they thought I should do an income video where I show how much money I make on YouTube. So around 58% of you said yes, 26% said it depends and most of the comments just said, only do the video if you feel comfortable doing it or if you want to. But a lot of them kind of hinted at, yeah, we kind of wanna see. However, 16% of people said that they don't wanna see a video like this. And because of that, because of the fact that the illness struck and a lot of people ended up losing their jobs, losing their businesses and being in a bad place financially, I thought it would be a little bit tone deaf for me to post a video like that. And so I didn't. But I realized that watching videos like this in the past inspired me and helped me get to this point. And so for that reason, I decided to do it anyways. And if you're one of those people, one of the 16% that doesn't wanna see this, then please just go ahead and click off now. And yes, I realized the irony. It's pretty much a meme at this point of creators, making millions of dollars, talking about how they make millions of dollars. But the videos I've seen from Graham Stephan, Shelby Church, Nato Bryan, et cetera, just to mention a few of them revealing how much they make on YouTube and their journey in order to get to that point, inspired me and helped me out so much in my personal journey. And a lot of people leave these videos inspired, motivated and feeling a lot less guilty about using Adblock. And I don't wanna get too woo-woo here, but there really is something to this a lot of the time. You won't be able to do something until you actually see that it's possible. That's why nobody was able to run a four minute mile until 1954 when Roger Bannister did it. And it was incredible because nobody thought it was possible for hundreds of years. And then 46 days later, someone else ran a four minute mile as well. And then within a few decades, thousands of people had also run under four minutes. And now it's not uncommon to see high schoolers do it. And you know, I'm not special. And I thought it was impossible as well until I saw other people do it. And thank goodness some of these YouTubers were extremely transparent because it inspired me to try myself. And so hopefully I'm also able to inspire a few people with this video as well. Okay, so first, just as an experiment, I'm gonna go to Social Blade and they like to estimate how much creators make. And we're gonna see if that's accurate. Okay, so according to Social Blade, I make around 2.4,000 to 38,000 a year. And I make around 198 to 3.2,000 per month. And they think that on an average day, I'm making around like eight to $121 a day on YouTube. And then if you go to detailed statistics and you scroll down a little bit, you'll see that back in the day. Okay, so you see that on January 1, 2020, I had 7,190 subscribers. So in one year, I went from around 7,000 subscribers to about 110,000 or so. So it was over 100,000 subscribers in one year. And I am just like, it's super grateful for that. I mean, I did not expect it to be that good. That it's just beyond my wildest expectations. Now, if you go back to 2019, you'll see that around like July, here's a week where I gained zero subscribers, right? One week I gained 14 subscribers. So that was like two a day, another week zero, another week zero, 156. So basically I got pretty serious about YouTube around this time. Like I started uploading regularly around this time, whereas before I was kind of just uploading a video here and there and it was mostly just for fun and I wasn't really taking it seriously. And you can see that I start consistently, getting more and more subscribers, 19, 26, 51. It's going up and up and up and up and up. And then all of a sudden, the algorithm takes off right after I get monetized. So right after I get to 1,000 subscribers and get monetized, the algorithm finally picks me up. So this was several months. And I actually uploaded videos before that. I think I kind of started taking it seriously. In like May or June, somewhere around there. And I wasn't really getting much traction. So there were many months there where I just pretty much wasn't getting any views from the videos that I was uploading. And technically the first video I ever uploaded was back in 2017 and it was just kind of a joke video. And I ended up deleting it later on because it was so bad. But yeah, if you go back far enough, you can see that I'm not really getting any views in all of 2017. And then I start getting like a couple views a day. I think that's when I uploaded the joke video. I think somebody ended up posting it to Reddit or something like that. And I got a couple more views. There was one day where it got 100. That was pretty exciting. One day where it got 400. I think that's when it got posted to Reddit. And actually I was the one sharing it on Reddit but then somebody else saw it there and posted it on a different subreddit. And so that's when it kind of blew up and got like a couple hundred views. But then you see here that I stopped posting and my videos are only getting, you know, one to 10 views a day all the way through 2018. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then finally around April of 2019 I decided to start uploading more videos. Upload some videos here. I think one or two and they do decently well but it's kind of sporadic. And then a long time of just getting a few views a day. Same thing, same thing. And then around this time, June, July, somewhere around there is when I started getting relatively, you know, a regular schedule of uploading like one video a week. And you can see the channel does way better when you're regularly uploading. And then all of a sudden, you know, after doing that for a while I get to a thousand subscribers finally in November and the algorithm just picks me up. So for all of you smaller creators out there just keep grinding, keep grinding. There's gonna be a long period of time probably somewhere between three months to a year where you're not really seeing much of any results. But eventually, especially after you get monetized the algorithm will pick your channel up. And it makes sense because, you know they're making money and you're making money at the same time after you're monetized. So it's kind of incentivizes them to show your videos more. And then yeah, this entire year has been pretty good. I had a few dips here and there when I kind of stopped uploading as much after I did like 30 day challenges, I would take a break. But yeah, it's been pretty consistent. It's just been going up and up and up. Okay. And like I said, I got monetized on November 10th and my very first day being monetized I made a dollar and 27 cents, awesome. And then you can see a few days after I start making, you know, a few bucks here and there I can go buy myself a Starbucks coffee or some McDonald's or something, which is awesome. I mean, it's awesome because it's pretty much just passive at that point. And then I have an amazing day where I make like $21 and the next day I make $44 around December. Usually in December, they kind of like all the companies will just dump their marketing budget into advertising. And so you tend to make more money overall at the end of the year kind of goes down a little bit and then boom, towards the end of the year, I just absolutely takes off. I have some days where I make like $180, $300, $130, $101. It's just, it's amazing. So all in all in 2019, I made $2,600 from YouTube. So if you count up all the hours that I worked it's around 500 hours or so of making videos, doing research, writing scripts, et cetera. And so I pretty much was earning around $5 per hour from YouTube in 2019. And that is less than minimum wage here in the United States. Now one of my favorite quotes is if you award failure you're gonna end up awarding success. And basically what that means is you're gonna fail over and over and over again and when you keep failing eventually you will get success. There's always that one video that's gonna break out that one video that just is a total game changer that's going to change your channel. When I was first posting all my videos would get like a hundred views max. And I thought, oh man, they're really bad but when I had that one video break out it made a stream of views go to pretty much all of my other ones and many of them end up getting like 10,000, 20,000 views. And that's like a year later but still they ended up getting a lot of views just because of the fact that people were interested in my content. And one thing I would like to note here is when my channel broke out was initially when I did my first 30 day challenge. Now I failed this challenge. You know, I was trying to upload a video a day for 30 days and I failed this challenge. It was something I think it was kind of like I saw Gary V thing where he was just like upload a video a day. And so I'm like, all right, I'll try it. Why not? 30 day challenge. And that is when my channel took off. Now these videos were not the best videos. In fact, a lot of them were really, really bad. I was still in the learning process. I didn't know how to use a camera. I'm really bad when it comes to like technology and cameras and stuff. So it took me a long time to learn how to use it properly. Some of my older videos have awful lighting, awful sound, et cetera. But I ended up failing the challenge around halfway through or so. I kind of got a little bit sick. And so I think I uploaded 20 videos that month instead of 30. But you know, around, you know, the 15 day mark, you can kind of see here, I start making a lot more money around like the halfway mark or so. And I think doing 30 day challenges, especially when your channel is small can really kickstart the algorithm. I continue to do 30 day challenges even after that. And they can still be pretty good. I noticed that you do end up getting more views. But when your channel gets to a certain point, you need to start focusing more on quality rather than quantity. But in my opinion, when your channel's small, you should really just focus on quantity. And there's a YouTuber I really like. His name is Roberto Blake. And basically he said one time in one of his videos, just make 52 bad videos. One video week, you know, 52 weeks in a year, make 52 really bad videos and see what happens. And through this process of making videos, even if you don't think people are gonna be interested in what you have to say, and you know, just put your opinion out there, give it your own perspective. And in this process of making all these videos, you're going to learn how to be a good YouTuber, okay? You're gonna learn how to make better videos whether you try or not. Because eventually you're gonna get bored making bad videos. You're gonna see the same comments over and over again. And you're also just gonna watch your videos and compare them to other people's and just be like, wait, oh, my lighting's really bad. I mean, it took me a long time to figure that out, but I had really bad lighting for a long time on this channel. The most important thing when it comes to a video like blowing up is the topic. And so you can make the best video with the highest quality, spend like 100 hours on it. But if nobody's interested in the topic, it's not going to do all that well. However, you can make a video where the sound's not great, the lighting's not great, you're using a potato for a camera like I was for a long time. And if the topic is interesting, if it's a topic that people really want to hear about, the video will likely do well. It might take a while for the algorithm to pick it up. In my case, it took several months for one of my videos to start blowing up. It was the top five college degrees that are actually worth it. That was my first banger video. I think it has over a million views now. But if the topic is interesting, people want to hear about it and there's not enough people on YouTube talking about it. Eventually the algorithm will pick it up. Now you might be wondering here, Shane, how do you upload a video a day for 30 days while you have a full-time job as a legal drug dealer? Well, my secret to this, and I haven't told anybody up until now, the answer is onions. Don't believe me? Think I'm making it up? Well, it makes you stronger. It increases your testosterone and other things. That's right. If you're not eating at least 10 raw uncooked onions a day, then you are bound to fail. That's right. Oh my God! Yeah, I feel so manly now. Ready to grind for 36 hours straight and pump out like 10 videos. Oh my God, I'm gonna cry. Oh my God, this is so bad. No, that was obviously a joke. The real secret is basically what I just did right there. So I did something to illustrate what the secret is. The secret is to basically have your own unique personality and your own unique brand of humor. So my channel is obviously an educational channel and specifically we talk about personal finance. What I noticed when I watched a lot of these personal finance videos is they were way too serious and just uptight and stuff like that and they didn't have very much humor in them. And there's a lot of people out there that would be interested in getting into personal finance but they just don't find it entertaining enough and they kind of just get bored hearing somebody lecture them about why they should sign up for a 401K and a Roth IRA. So basically what I did is I talked about a lot of these topics that I thought were really important but I did it in such a way where I showcase my sense of humor and my personality. So basically you wanna provide quality content but add a little bit of entertainment and a little bit of spice in there as well. Now a lot of the time people are not gonna think you're funny, they're not gonna like your personality and that is totally fine because there's lots of people out there that do think you're funny and they do like your personality and those are the people who you want to subscribe to you. And obviously not every person is gonna want comedy. Some people really just do want like a step-by-step video without any comedy, any entertainment or personal perspective, they just want like a robotic step-by-step type of video and that's fine. But I have noticed that overall most of the time when you see these types of videos on YouTube, they don't end up doing very well. So my personal brand is providing really good well research content and then sprinkling in a little bit of entertainment and maybe a little bit of cringe in there as well. And a man can only handle so much cringe in a lifetime. So by my course today, onion eating Chad Baster only $1997. No, seriously though, the biggest secret is being consistent, posting videos regularly and having your own kind of brand or flavor of humor and entertainment. And the way I think about this is like swinging a bat. So, you know, if you look at the greatest, you know, home run hitter of all time, the person who hit the ball more than anybody else I believe it's Ty Cobb and he hit it around 36% of the time. So even the best of the best, one of the greatest of all time only hit the ball when they were swinging the bat around 36% of the time. So most of your videos are going to miss. No matter how good you are, no matter how skilled you are most of your videos are not going to hit unless you're Mr. Beast. That's okay though, you just have to keep going and eventually you will succeed, you will hit a home run. And there's that saying that a rising tide raises all ships so when one video hits all of your other videos you're going to get a bunch of views to them as well. So I would say just commit to posting at least 30 videos that you think people might find interesting and there's a very good chance that one of them is going to blow up. Okay, so now for 2020. So I'm around 7,000 subscribers and we're going to go month by month all through 2020. You can see exactly how much I made. All right, so January 2020 started off made around $87 in a day, 145, 160. This was all like really amazing. I mean, I'm really happy about this. My best day in January was the sixth and it was $179 in a day. Overall, I made around $3,000 in January. Now, one thing that's very interesting is a playback based CPM is basically how much money you make per 1,000 views. So that's $13 per 1,000 views that I made in the month of January. Now, when you look at videos like this from finance YouTubers, you're going to see comments that are just like, bro, your ad rights are crazy. And to be honest with you, there's certain sections, certain niches that have ad rates that are like $50 CPM, okay? Sometimes even more than that. And if you don't believe me, just wait a few minutes because I'm going to show you. And as you see with a lot of creators, they actually target these really high paying niches. We're talking like credit cards, stocks, e-commerce, that sort of thing. And my channel is a personal finance channel but it's definitely on the lower side of things just because of the fact that I don't make a ton of videos about stocks or credit cards. I just make videos here and there because I think that it would be redundant if I just made lots of content about credit cards. I'm just going to tell you which ones I think are the best and that's that. I can't see myself making any more than like five credit card videos in a year and even that would be a stretch. And for me, I just like to make the videos that I think give the most value and the ones that my viewers want to see. And a lot of the times those are not going to be videos that have the higher CPMs. So in February, the revenue went down a little bit around $3,000. I wasn't posting as consistently. I think I was maybe doing two videos a week-ish but I probably missed here and there. In March, it went back up just a little bit. You know, $2,900. My best day was around $177. In April, it went up just a little bit more around $3,000 in a month. And it was pretty consistent. I didn't have any like really amazing days. It was basically just consistently like $100 a day. In May, we had a big jump. So $5,600 in a month. And that is, I mean, that's amazing because that's like, I think that's above average for the full-time income of people here in the United States even with a college degree. And so, I mean, that's amazing. This is a side hustle and it turned into a full-time income in May. My best day here was around $241. And you can kind of see, they show the videos here at the bottom. This is when I started uploading consistently three videos a week, okay? So, the more consistent you get, the better. When I started uploading three videos a week consistently, that's when the channel started doing really, really well. In June, it got even better, jumped up to about $7,000 in a month. And my best day was a little over $300. So, you know, that's pretty amazing. I also got 11,000 subscribers that month which was a record at the time. And another thing to note about June is as you see down here, I did another 30-day challenge in June and I actually completed it. So, you know, some of these videos, I think I ended up deleting them because it didn't do very well. But, you know, I posted a video every single day for 30 days and I completed it. And as you can see, there was a pretty big reward when it comes to how much money I made and also how many subscribers I got. So, you know, at this time, I was still a relatively small channel. I think I was probably like 30,000 subscribers somewhere around there. And so, you know, doing this 30-day challenge when you are a small channel, I cannot recommend it high enough. I think it's a fantastic idea. I will probably never do a 30-day challenge again just because of the fact that, you know, I'm 100,000 subscribers now and I think the algorithm wants me to just upload kind of like quality videos at this point. But when you're trying to figure out what types of videos you want to upload, what types of videos people like, all kinds of different things. When you're trying to learn how to make videos, I think 30-day challenges are the best thing that you can possibly do. Maybe you don't do 30 days. Maybe you just try it, you know, with a 10-day challenge. Something like that. But it can be absolutely amazing to just upload a video for 30 days. Don't worry too much about the sound or the lighting or anything like that. Just talk about interesting topics. Now, if you look at July, you see I think I uploaded maybe six or seven videos the entire month. So, you know, I was a little burned out after June doing a video a day. And so I wasn't as consistent in July. But, you know, the cool thing is it didn't actually go down all that much. I still made $6,000. A lot of this is just kind of somewhat passive. So my videos continued to get views all the way through July, even though I wasn't uploading nearly as often. And then August happened. And this was just an incredible month. So I got back to uploading regularly in August. I think I did three videos a week all throughout August. I probably deleted one of them. But I got 1.2 million views and I made $12,439 in August. My best day was August 6th at $528 in a single day. And if you look at the CPM, it's starting to rise. So it's starting to get higher in August, you know? It's like $17 on average per day CPM. And before it was only $13. So it's starting to get higher. And you'll notice this towards the end of the year. It just starts going, you know, up and up and up. In September, the revenue did go down a little bit. I got less views and it went down. But still really good, $11,000. I mean, that's way higher than it was before. And my best day in September was around $502 on the 23rd. And also if you look at the playback based CPM, it's $20.96 in September. So basically what I think happened here is companies kind of work on a quarterly basis. They've got Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. And at the end of each quarter they kind of just dump their ad budget. So at the end of the year, they really dump their ad budget. But at the end of each quarter, they also dump it into ads. And so you see the CPMs going up just because all the companies are doing it at the same time. And so in the last 30 days of the quarter, Q3, which would be September, they really increased the ad budget. So there was one day here, I think it was like $24.92 CPM on average. Now that is really good because, you know, if you look at like vlogging channels, for instance, a lot of the time you'll see their CPM is $1 to $3. And so a $20 CPM is fantastic. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's not nearly as good as like card to card channels and, you know, some of the e-commerce and things like that. But hey, I'm not complaining. $20 CPM is amazing. If you go to October, pretty much the same thing. I was consistent again here at the bottom and you see the revenue was a little bit less, you know, around $11,400, but still, you know, fantastic. Best day was around $590. And then if you look at November, it goes up just a little bit more, $12,194. And my best day was 531. And then if you look at December, I did another 30 day challenge and I was able to complete this one as well. I already deleted some of the videos because they weren't very good and they didn't do very well. But, you know, what I learned here, and this was just, you know, last month, you know, 30 day challenges when your channel is bigger, it's not really gonna help all that much. Doing it early on when the YouTube algorithms trying to figure out what your channel is all about is fantastic because it helps the algorithm basically index your channel and figure out, you know, what types of advertisers are gonna, you know, advertise on your channel, et cetera, and what your channel is all about. But later on, when you're starting to get bigger, you really wanna start focusing on quality. And so for 2021, I'm gonna be all about quality. After I've done, you know, the videos that I've already recorded, I'm really gonna start focusing on, like, you know, doing videos in the new set and all that sort of thing. And I'm gonna try to make my videos as good as possible because not only is it more fun to make quality videos, but I think when your channel is a little bit bigger, it's also just better in general. So, you know, this month, 11,800, you know, good way to cap off the year. And I think the best day was like $468 on the seventh. And then if you look at the CPM, it was $22 throughout December. And the highest day, it looks like the highest day was $25 CPM. So, you know, really amazing CPM, especially towards the end of the year. So overall, a lifetime of my channel, it's made around $97,000. And, you know, this mostly just started in the last year or so. So, you know, I started making money in November, but I wasn't really taking it all that seriously. I wasn't uploading, you know, all that regularly. And then in the last year, I made $97,000 on the channel. But yeah, you know, this, I'm extremely grateful for this. It was my best year ever. It was pretty much my first year uploading regularly on YouTube. And I mean, it was just an amazing year. You can't beat like day trading channels, stock channels, e-commerce channels. They make like $50 CPMs. Some of them you even see getting up over $100. I think the most insane one I saw was $300 CPM. But Shane, why don't you talk about stonks more? You know, I don't expect it to be this good next year. I think a lot of people were watching YouTube instead of doing other things because of the illness that's going on. People were spending a lot of time at home. So that probably has a lot to do with my success. And I'm not expecting it to do better next year. You know, I'm just tempering my expectations. If it does better, that's great. If it doesn't, then you know, that's great as well. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, you probably want to see some like exact videos. This was my best video ever. The most useless degrees. It got, you know, it made $13,000. Just one video made $13,000. It's been consistently making money for a long time. It's also gotten me, you know, 17,000 subscribers. This is a fantastic video. It also is one of my most controversial videos. This, out of all my videos, by far, this is the one that gets the most angry comments. And I can kind of see why I was a little bit harsh. In my opinion, I was kind of in a little bit of a mood that day when I made it, and I was a little bit harsh. And I've tried to kind of like tell people that, you know, hey, I'm not judging you if you got this degree or you like something like this. I'm just saying, probably not worth it to go $40,000 in debt for a degree like this. And that's kind of the nature of YouTube as well is kind of extreme content tends to do really well, controversial, extreme, dramatic content. I remember watching the actual YouTube creators channel and the guy who's the head of all of them, he's like in charge of all of them, he actually recommend drama, like creating drama as a way to grow your YouTube channel. So, I mean, hey, it is what it is, I guess. I try not to make too many videos like that, but they tend to do extremely well. This is my second best video ever, top five college degrees that are actually worth it. Something interesting to note about this one is when I first posted it, it did decently well. It got, you know, 500, 600 views. I think I posted it on like Reddit or something like that. And then somebody else started sharing it too. But if you look, the first 100 and first half a year that it was posted, it got less than 10,000 views, right? And then all of a sudden, when my channel got monetized, it just blows up. Boom, it blows up to over a million views. So, you know, I think a lot of people imagine that you're just gonna post a video and it's just gonna blow up right away. And in reality, that doesn't always happen. So, you know, in the case of this video, it took half a year for the algorithm to pick it up. And overall, it made about $11,000 and it's still consistently getting quite a few views. So, you know, this has been a really good one. Another one I wanna look at really quickly is the stockbroker tier list. Now, this isn't one of my highest earning videos, but, you know, it earned around $2,200 or so, 2,300 almost, got around 60,000 views. But what I wanna show you is the CPM on this. I mean, stock-related videos, the CPMs are just, they're insane. It's just, that's all I can describe it as. $62 CPM, this is the highest on my entire channel. So, you know, if I wanted to just make the most amount of money possible, I would just talk about stocks all the time. Like I would talk about stocks and stockbrokers and all that sort of thing. Clearly that is the way to make the most money. $62 CPMs, but I probably make, I don't know, around maybe 10 videos a year that are related to stocks and like stockbrokers and all that sort of thing because I think that I would just be a little bit redundant and I would just be saying the same things over and over again. And my channel is a little bit more focused on careers, college degrees and personal finance in general, rather than just focusing on stocks. So yeah, that's it, I'm trying to rack my brain for any other possible things you would wanna see. If there's anything that I didn't include here that you guys wanna see, just mention it down below. And when I do this, maybe next year or later on this year, maybe I'll do it again. I will include all of those things that you wanna see. Yeah, you know, I'm an open book. There's nothing I'm not gonna share with you guys. You know, anything you ask me, I'll be willing to show you. I mean, maybe I wouldn't show you my tax returns. That's a little bit weird and I probably wouldn't give you my social security number but anything within reason that you guys ask for, I will show you on this channel. And yes, I know I'm gonna get this question because I get it at least once a day. I'm a full-time pharmacist. I work full-time as a pharmacist. This is something that I do on the side. I have not quit my job as a pharmacist and people always ask, you know, are you going to quit your job? Maybe, maybe I will, maybe I won't. You know, I really enjoy my job but, you know, YouTube is also really awesome as well and it might make more sense for me to go full-time on YouTube at some point so that I can spend more time making great content for you guys. And again, this is only meant to inspire. Please, you know, if you're in a desperate sort of situation, you're in a situation financially that's not very good right now, I can completely empathize with you. I have people in my family that have had to lay off all their employees and their business and it's just, it's heartbreaking to see and a lot of people are in a really bad situation right now and I really just want this to inspire you to see what's possible because there's nothing special about me. I'm just a nerd who likes memes and has a weird sense of humor and likes to post it on the internet and, you know, I also have a passion for personal finance as well. So, you know, there's nothing really all that special about me. I was in the same situation as a lot of you in terms of like, you know, making money online just a few years ago. I wasn't really making much money, you know. So I just hope this can be something that shows you guys what's possible and this, you know, this is something anybody can do. You know, a lot of the time it's gonna take consistent effort over a period of time. It's not one of those things where you blow up overnight. There's a few cases out there. I know Janelle Eliana, the girl in the van who has the snake or whatever, she grew up to a million subscribers in one month but that is the exception of the rule that almost never happens in real life. Most of the time it's gonna be consistent grinding and in order to, you know, get monetized to the point where the algorithm is gonna pick you up you're probably gonna have to make videos anywhere from like three months to maybe even like one year before the algorithm picks you up. And that's just me being realistic. I don't wanna say, hey, don't do it. I'm not trying to be a dream killer or anything like that. I just try to give you guys realistic advice. Usually it is gonna take a period of time before the algorithm will pick up your videos. But with that being said, if you haven't done it already go ahead and gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below and eat out the comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video. And before you leave, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.