I hit a huge YouTube money milestone (copy me for earnings boost)

When you’re starting out on any kind of business or creative endeavor, small wins can feel huge.

That’s the situation I found myself in this week after a recent YouTube video I posted got off to the fastest start yet on my channel.

Although the dollar values I’m about to talk about aren’t as high as you might expect for a headline that boasts of a “huge YouTube money milestone”, financial victories aren’t always purely about dollars and cents.

In the long grind of building a business, there can be huge value in small wins and psychological victories.

Let’s talk about how much I earned in this case, then I’ll explain why it represents a sneakily important W.

Finally, I’ll tell you how you can duplicate some of that success with a couple of easy YouTube content tweaks.

Nothing is more encouraging than when you work hard on something and your content gets an unexpected pop. (Licensed by the author under the Unsplash+ License)

I wanted to quit YouTube right before hitting my milestone

I’ve been needing something to go right with YouTube for a while.

Yeah, I got monetized relatively fast (about 11 months) and there’s been a steady trickle of passive income ever since (up to around $2.15 per day in 2024), but I’m still waiting for that 1 video to pop and take my channel to the next level.

A gully in views had me so discouraged last week that I was feeling like quitting again.

And while I’m still waiting for truly viral success, my latest video got off to the hottest start in the history of my channel and also gave me my single biggest earnings day yet.

How to think about early-stage YouTube

One way I like to think about side hustling is in terms of working a normal job.

What exactly do I mean by that?

Well, let’s say I decide I need more money and have to work part-time on top of my regular gig.

Part-time jobs with flexible hours that don’t require specialized skills are usually minimum wage ones, and where I’m from, minimum wage is about $15 per hour.

In many states in the U.S., it’s a shade over $7 per hour (yikes).

My baseline goal for any side hustle is this: can I make more doing this part-time than I could by getting a normal job?

Put another way, would you rather make YouTube videos for $15 per hour or work at Wal-Mart?

Now I don’t know about you, but I find creating content a lot more fulfilling and fun than I would stocking shelves. I’m not deriding that work, I would just choose something else.

And unlike working a job that pays an hourly wage, the earnings potential of content is infinite.

My biggest earnings day on YouTube

So with all that in mind, let’s take a look at what I earned on my biggest day yet on YouTube.

My big earnings milestone — the first $10+ day. (Author’s image)

Who cares, right?

Why are you excited about ten bucks?

Let me explain.

In a vacuum, $10 probably isn’t that exciting — though I’d encourage you not to pooh-pooh any amount of money early in your creator journey.

But in the context of an early-stage creator like myself:

$10.98 sets a new record for me, which is exciting
$10.98 is approaching that magic $15 number, which would represent 1 hour working a normal job
$10.98 got me digging around to figure out what exactly worked with this video and how I can duplicate it instead of wallowing around thinking about quitting

The last point is really important.

As a content creator, you should always be evaluating your content to optimize future work.

So what did I learn in this case?

Let’s talk about what I did and how you can copy me and get an earnings boost for your own channel.

Press red button for green. (Credit: James Julian/Photoshop)

Why this YouTube video popped

One dumb thing I thought about doing when I was struggling last week was to try and improve my YouTube prospects by force.

That is, I thought about making one last push and absolutely flooding my channel with content.

I even started making plans to publish a full-length video every day for 30 days on YouTube.

Insane!

Insane from a workflow perspective — I have a full-time job, a family, and other business interests — and ultimately futile.

I think for a lot of people, when things start going sideways, they get a craving for control.

They want to be hugely successful NOW and they try to compensate by working and publishing aimlessly.

That craving leads them to just push out as much as possible — even if it’s junk — in the hopes that something, anything, will work.

I’ve learned in my last year and a half of side hustling that this is a dead end.

I’ve tried over-publishing on the site you’re currently reading and it’s a waste of time.

If you hit a dip, the strategy might not be to speed up, but to slow down and focus on what you do best. (Licensed under the Unsplash+ License)

A new publishing strategy for YouTube

I’ve figured out that if I try to publish more than 4–5 times a week, the returns diminish so quickly that it makes the whole thing totally inefficient.

It’s best to publish your 4 best articles than to flood people with 14 — most of which will be sub-par.

People are likely to tune you out, or worse, unsubscribe completely.

I came around to this harsh truth with YouTube last week.

Instead of trying to drum up 30 YouTube ideas and then getting overwhelmed with how I was going to pull it off, I looked at all those ideas and chose the ONE I thought would have the best chance of performing.

And, as I mentioned, it did, resulting in my first $10+ day.

Now, I’ve recommitted to publishing 1 good video each week on Friday, and we’ll go from there.

So lesson 1 from this video popping is: At the end of the day, you should be thinking quality and not quantity.

The easiest thing you can do if monetized

One last thing I’m going to suggest to give your YouTube earnings a nice pop.

Recently, I watched a video that showed how to manage your video ad breaks.

If your video is longer than 8 minutes, you can add mid-roll ads.

Most people just check the box for mid-roll, but since learning you can manage this yourself and insert even more ads, my revenue per 1,000 views has nearly doubled.

Now I know when you’re about to publish a video, you want to just fly through the settings and get it out there, but it’s extremely worthwhile to take a few minutes and place some ads at key moments.

Think about how TV does this — typically they’ll place an ad right before a suspenseful moment in a show.

I’d suggest you do the same.

Now you don’t want to put so many ads that it’s totally annoying to your viewer, but you shouldn’t settle for the 1 ad that YouTube automatically puts mid-roll either.

Not everyone will see all the ads anyway — this is partly managed automatically by YouTube based on when they saw their last ad — but every little decision you make on stuff like this can add up exponentially over the long term.

Celebrate your wins on YouTube

Back to my earnings for one second.

In the grand scheme of my finances, ten dollars doesn’t move the needle much.

But starting any kind of business — content or not — is a long and arduous process, so it’s important to celebrate your little wins.

Little daily wins are what massive, long-term victories are built on, after all, so don’t dismiss them.

They also show you what’s possible.

When I started my YouTube channel with zero subscribers and zero watch hours a year and a half ago, a $10 day felt impossible.

And here we are.

So how great will it feel to have my first $100 day?

I’ve almost quit YouTube so many times, but days like these are a good reminder that the big gains come later.

So if you have your own channel, hang in there!

You never know what big milestone might be just around the corner for you!

Friends, thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this piece, please give it a clap or two, let me know in the comments, and support my work directly for less than the cost of a Starbucks a month (cancel any time)!

My top 5 trending stories today:

Summarize