How I started to make money from YouTube

It seems that every other person on YouTube is a multi-millionaire and rolling in cash and making thousands from their side hustle. I must admit that when I started my channel up again a couple of years ago I thought I would be able to use it to make a significant proportion of my income and be able to say pay the food bills from it or the mortgage, I was wrong, so very wrong. It is not all doom and gloom though, let me explain how I started to make money from my channel…

How did I get here?

Thanks to my YouTube Channel, I was PAID to go down to London to talk at the Clinical Pharmacy Conference with MORPh.

I had to take a pause from my YouTube channel back in 2018 when I left my current practice and didn’t have regular access to SystmOne. This is a piece of Computer Software that General Practitioners use (famliy doctors for those not in the UK), to record medical notes. My channel initially focused on making training videos around this.

Leaving the Army…

I left the Army back in 2021 and in the final couple of months prior to getting a job, I thought it would be good to use the channel again to start to make videos and get a sustainable source of income. I was worried that a lot of my job role (as a doctor) was based around being able to think and treat people. As I had some time off for my own mental health, it scared me to think that I risked not being able to work.

The reality of YouTube…

I admire the creator who upload video after video week after week. The reality is that maintaining that regular output and workflow is very hard with little initial reward. The payment that I thought would come in thick and fast from advertising is a high mountain to climb.

The YouTube Partnership programme

Everytime you watch a video and there is an advert, someone is getting paid. If you are in the ‘YouTube partnership programme’ then the creator is elligable for a slice of that. To get into this programme though YouTube asks that your channel has the following:

1) 1000 Subscribers AND

2) 4000 hours of watch time in the last year

3) OR 10 Million YouTube shorts views (yes…. 10 million)

If I am being honest, I agree with the standards. By having a relatively high bar, it drives the quality of videos higher (overall) and so keeps content creators driving to push forward.

My channel is roughly as follows:

1) 740 subscribers

2) 470 watch time hours in the past year

3) 230 Short views

YouTube Studio

YouTube gives you some handy graphs to track your progress!

Other income ideas

This is not the only way though to make money and it is often recommended NOT to rely on this income source alone for many reasons. As you are creating videos though, it then provides a platform to build an audience to then sell essentially goods and services. This could consist of any one of the following:

1) Having your own shop

2) Sponsored links (click below to buy this item!)

3) Sponsorship from an external company.

4) Using your channel to advertise your other services

So how did I do it?
I had read two books that really helped me focus on what I was going to create videos.

The Unfair Advantage; Ali & Kubba

Excellent book to really focus the mind. It kept me inspired to what would be appropriate to include on my channel.

My Unfair Advantage is that I am a doctor, I am a GP, I wanted to be a trainer (so that I could bring on the next generation of GPs).

The book also highlights that even simple things as ‘you have read this book’ is an advantage and ‘you have been on x course’ is also an advantage.

Show your work; Kleon

A very short and easy book to read. It focuses on the idea that whatever you are up to, even though you may want to be quiet about it, DON’T.

Share your ideas, show what you are up to and even if they don’t come into full fruition.

‘My Red Whale Application’

Using the following ideas, this led to one of my videos about applying for a job with ‘Red Whale’. Red Whale is an educational company that run regular courses to teach members of primary care to keep up to date with the local guidance. I love the company and try to go regularly to their events.

As part of the job application you needed to provide three things:

1) Covering letter

2) CV

3) A short video explaining a topic that they gave you

As part of my YouTube video I then explained how I approached this and showed my own video. You could argue that this shot me in the foot and didn’t put me ahead of my competition.

I didn’t get the job - but it did start to open doors

So, the video was one of my highest viewed videos initially. It led as well to several people reaching out asking me for my work. With the books in mind, I though why not and shared my work. It seemed unnatural at first, but I thought I would follow through with the process.

This led to discussion with a member of MORPh, who are a seperate company who educate Pharmacists. MORPh Consultancy then basically said, we have seen your videos, would you be interested in doing some work with us?

Several events later and discussion with them led to an offer of coming down to London to appear be in their Clinical Pharmacy Conference. I got my hotel, travel and PAID for the event.

Getting paid to teach

I LOVE teaching, so being invited to teach is superb and really adds a bit of variety to the working week.

Don’t worry, I am not going to quit my job…

So, I am not going to quit my job anytime soon. It was a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but it was nice to know that the work is available.

My take home messsages then would be:

1) Don’t use YouTube to make money as the sole reason

2) Think of it as the potential to demonstrate what you can do and passionate about.

3) What have you done that not everyone else has? That is your unfair advantage, use it!

Good luck!

Feel free to drop me a line if you want to chat through anything

Dr David Hindmarsh

gptemplates@gmail.com