My last article on this site was over 2 years ago, in April of 2023. That was prior to HCU and even then I felt like things were flat and growth was stagnating… little did I know what was to come.
I’m not gonna go into a whole thing about how Google spanked me for the last two years because frankly I’m over Google. IT accounts for less than 5% of my traffic these days and is nothing more than a blip on my traffic sources radar.
In recent months I’ve continued to “diversify” and open new source sources of income while building up lesser ones. The two main ones I’ve opened this year are Mediavine Journey and YouTube. Yes, I finally got a site monetized on YouTube. My original niche site, the first one to really take off anyway, finally made it into the partner program.
How long it took
I think I created the actual Channel in mid-2019 so it’s taken a full 6 years of barely trying to get this thing monetized. I say that in jest, but last year I actually did put in some effort. Over the course of 2-3 months I pumped out maybe 20 or so halfway-decent videos. One was actually pretty good… and that one video really takes the credit for taking the channel to the promise land.
Since it was published, it’s brought in over 26k views and 1.4k watch hours alone. Since monetized just 5 days ago it has already brought in almost $8 in revenue. I wouldn’t have been monetized this summer without it. Now I can learn from it and improve upon it to make similar and even better videos.
Why did it take so long to get this channel monetized?
It’s totally my fault. I could have done it sooner it I’d put in more effort, but I am more comfortable creating blog posts for the websites. However, that’s something I’m going to have to get over. It’s still just creating content, just a different type of content.
There’s new earning potential and I plan to exploit it. And while I am still reliant on Google again (it’s hard to escape them!) – it’s a different ecosystem and a new way of earning that has way more opportunities than just video ads. So yes, it took a long-ass time to get here, but I made it and things are looking good… better than expected actually.
How much is it earning?
I’ve only been monetized for about a week, a little under actually. It took about 2 days for data to catch up with my earnings and for it to display in YT Studio, but I’m averaging 6 to 7 dollars/per day right off the bat. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was expecting more of a battle to get to this point. I thought maybe even as low as 1 or 2 dollars/day.
So I basically flipped a switch on about 100 videos (most of which are short and crappy) and turned on an additional $200/month. Not bad!
I initially had some copyright issues with some of the music I had used, but I got that resolved fairly quickly. I also am hoping that my RPM should ramp up slightly in the coming weeks.
Plans going forward for YouTube
I have already published 2 new videos since being monetized, checked out a couple of editors, and mapped out some future videos that I’d like to make. The overall plans are to scale up and make more income while providing interesting and unique content to my nearly 1.4k subscribers.
Fingers crossed but it looks like like things on this little channel are finally begin to pick up steam, so wish me luck in this venture!
How my sites are doing
My sites are doing ok, not great, but they’re all hanging in there. Between my two main sites, another smaller site that I just got onto Journey, a couple of other income sources, and now YouTube… I’m still able to pay myself to do this job. I had to let a lot of people go last year, I actually had to let everybody go!
I am making waaaay less than I used to, but I’m still here and now there are some new things on the horizon. Making money online by publishing various forms of content is alive and well… but it’s even harder than before (for a lot of people at least) and you better be able to adjust to changes now more than ever.