← YouTube Creators Hub
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- [00:00]
A
We actually cut the email list down in half from like 30,000 down to 15, and now we've built it back up to 36 or 37,000. But so, you know, it's just a great tool for being able to send that out to a lot of people really quickly. And everybody is opening up their inbox and, you know, so we get about like a 60, 65% open rate on those emails. So it's very good for that stuff.
- [00:18]
B
Today I'm joined by Daniel Braun. Daniel is a content creator, business owner, currently has over 245,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and over 36,000 subscribers on his newslet. So we'll certainly talk to him about that. The name of that newsletter is called Wiser Wallet. Across his platforms he talks about credit cards, traveling for nearly free with points and miles, budgeting and other personal finance topics. His mission is to help people optimize their everyday finances, save money and live life to the fullest through travel and experience that also fit their budget. Daniel, how you doing today, my friend?
- [00:56]
A
I'm doing very good, Dusty. Thank you so much for having me.
- [00:59]
B
Yep, looking forward to this conversation. So I kind of teed it up for us here as far as kind of what you do and the content you create over on your YouTube channel. And I have it pulled up on a second monitor here. Congratulations on all the success. You have found not only a very well paying niche as I know the finance space is on YouTube, but you're one of the top people kind of in that space. So if you would give the audience listening kind of the origin story of your YouTube channel. How did this whole thing start?
- [01:28]
A
Yeah, I love talking about this because especially now it's been so long. So I started the channel back in January of 2021, so kind of like just coming out of pandemic time. I was a finance major in college, graduated back in 2018. And so I kind of worked a corporate nine to five job for, you know, two, two and a half years after school, Covid hits and then started working remotely from that. So I had a little bit more time on my hands and I just started kind of watching a lot of finance content. I always have been a big YouTube consumer since I was 10 years old. So I've always gone through different niches, tech, finance, sneakers, sports, all this other stuff. And eventually once I got into the real world, I was making some money, not very much, but I wanted to really get good about budgeting and investing. And so I found all these finance creators and that really Became my obsession with watching a lot of that stuff, especially as I had more free time on my hands during 2020. I was also at the time kind of getting into credit cards myself and starting to go out and travel. So I went on this trip with my family back like a few months after I graduated college actually. And that kind of sparked an interest in doing that. But at the same time I wanted to be able to save and invest like I said, and travel can get expensive. So that led me to the world of credit cards and points and miles. And so around 2021, all the, all these things came together and I wanted to join in the converse, join in on the conversation of talking about money and credit cards and traveling and all this stuff through YouTube. A lot of people were focusing on a short form at the time, but I knew YouTube long form content best just from watching so much of it. So I decided to try to play around and again with the extra time on my hands, try to be productive with it. And I always have tried different side hustles and this was a new thing to try out. And really I gave myself the goal to stick with it for, I believe I said a year or 100 videos, whatever came first, still see where I'm at and then reevaluate from that point. And so I did that and actually gained some traction and by the end of 2021, quit my job and went all in on YouTube. I think I had about like 3,500 subscribers or something like that at the time. Wasn't quite like making enough money from it yet at that point. But I knew where it was kind of heading and really wanted to take a chance on myself. It was making a little bit of money. I had some savings, all that stuff that we can, we can kind of dive into a little bit if you want to. But yeah, that was sort of the origin story. It was just wanting to join the conversation and having all these interests and eventually just giving it a shot, seeing if I could do it full time. Because I also wasn't like a big fan of my corporate job at the time. So I wanted to kind of shake things up. And if the opportunity allowed me to go full time on YouTube, I wanted to do that. So I'm glad it worked out. And yeah, fast forward, you know, over five years later and here we are.
- [04:12]
B
Do you remember if there was a moment or a day or whatever the sequence may be where you said to yourself, hey, this thing might be more than just a hobby or this thing might could be full time do you remember that internal process or dialogue? And can you walk us through that?
- [04:31]
A
Yeah, really. Honestly, I would say even before I started the YouTube channel, I just had that thought in the back of my, in my mind that it was possible. Just knowing what I was making at the time in my corporate job, it wasn't anything crazy. And again, I didn't like the job, didn't really see a big path forward in that. And so I started seeing some of these finance creators talking about what they could make from YouTube and their social media presence. And it was a lot of money. And I didn't ever think that like I needed to be on their level. I just thought if I can make a small fraction of what they make, I can replace my 9 to 5 job. And so even going into starting the YouTube channel, I thought of it as a possibility. But then I'd say somewhere around the time when I got monetized was, you know, getting into the YouTube Partner Program. Getting money from AdSense came about six months after starting the channel, so probably around July of 2021, just getting my first YouTube AdSense paycheck and then doing like a brand deal here or there or like mentioning an affiliate link for a certain bank account and then just seeing like $100 pop up into that from being paid, that like that was the coolest thing in the world to me. So I think that was when the, that kind of aha moment happened, that this is a possibility and if I can kind of carve a path, I think there's some room for me to be in the space and make, make some decent money from it and just kept pushing at it. And like I said, I quit my job without really getting to that level at that point. But I knew that it was coming if I saw these, these different avenues play out the way I thought they would. And it worked out pretty well after quitting.
- [06:00]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. I remember this was almost 16 years ago when I got monetized on youtub join the partner program. I remember I was at my then girlfriend, now wife's parents house and I text my dad or I called my dad and I said, you're not going to believe this. I just made $5 today on YouTube and I'll never forget, I was very much younger obviously than I am now. And I was so excited. And I remember every milestone. Like I remember when I had my first $50 day, you know, $100 day. And you, do you remember those milestones? And a lot of them, I even remember where I was and so you kind of set these goals and you set these things that you're. And so it's really cool to hear your story and your journey getting there. Now the finance niche that you're in, you're not in just the overarching finance niche itself. You talk about credit cards and how to travel on a budget. So you've really kind of honed in on your audience. Can you talk about how important that was for you early on and even now ongoing, how important it is to find not just a niche or a space, but find even underneath that the target audience and how important that is?
- [07:09]
A
Oh, I mean, I think it's everything. It's still the advice that I give to other newer creators who ask me for any tips is like finding that audience because it can be really difficult. And my first few videos were very general personal finance. I think that's what I started the channel with was just like the difference between ETFs, mutual funds, index funds and then video on like five personal. Five, five personal finance mistakes in my 20s or something like that. But those are very broad topics and there's a million other videos out there about that stuff. And my fourth or fifth video was a video unboxing the AMEX platinum card and that got way more views than usual. It got a few thousand views and then it kind of continued getting views over time and I think eventually got into like the six figure view count on like my fourth video. Not immediately, but after a few years because it was just ranking in YouTube search and I saw that traffic coming from YouTube search and that was kind of like a hint that was something to go after. And the more I, you know, dove into what other people were recommending online from maybe not the exact same niche as mine, but ones that are like sim, like I think about like the tech niche or people that review products and you know, in a way like I do that kind of as well for credit cards and for saying the top seven credit cards, whatever top seven bank accounts was basically the, the hint was find that audience through YouTube search because people are already searching for these topics. If I can package my videos pretty well, if I can make them look pretty good, if I can get to the point, answer questions and have the video just overall flow pretty well better than the competition or you know, actually I kind of saw that there was more demand than supply at the time for this type of credit card and point my points miles content. So I just kind of really targeted that, that search audience, especially for the first year. But even to this Day. A lot of the videos I make will be, you know, I try to take a broad approach to reach people on the YouTube homepage, but people finding me through search continues to be a really. A really big thing. And so I just. I kind of leaned into that for a really long time. And I think that helped me find my initial audience. And then once I saw the audience kind of coming back and people commenting on the videos, that. That kind of engagement, me working my personal life into the videos just a little bit here and there, I kind of saw that, like I said, that engagement. And eventually, you know, that led me to try to, once I had that initial audience that I found through YouTube, search was trying to push out to a wider audience of new viewers as well. On the recommended pages. Yeah. So it's a very long process, and I think that's kind of what might discourage a lot of people from the start. But I was kind of playing the long game, I thought. So like I said, I said one year or 100 videos when I started the YouTube channel. So all I was trying to do is just get that content out there, be consistent, upload, you know, at least once per week. And it started to reach people slowly but surely through the search traffic.
- [09:53]
B
Now, one of the things that impressed me early on about your channel was your packaging. I feel like it's very clean. Your thumbnails are really good. I feel like you've done some research and due diligence. Can you walk us through your workflow? Not your full workflow just yet, but as far as the title and thumbnail, I'll highlight one of your recent videos you did about a month ago that's done really well for you, says getting an 800 credit score is simple. Just stop doing this. I love that title. It really evokes curiosity, which is what I teach to my clients that I work with. And we talk about this in our Mastermind group a lot. Can you talk about your philosophy on packaging and maybe how it's evolved over time?
- [10:33]
A
Yeah. And that video is really funny to call out specifically because it was terrible out of the gate. It was a 10 out of 10. It was just not picking up, like, not framed quite the way I wanted it to. I think in my head, I always imagined the packaging being one thing, but then if I don't see the. The results on YouTube after a few days, I kind of let it play out. I do play around quite a bit with the framing to see if there's something that encapsulates better what I'm Trying to get across and like you said, kind of like build that curiosity for people to click it. But then as soon as they click it, hopefully whatever I change the title to or whatever I try out at first as the title, I really need that to kind of tie in with the intro that I already filmed for the video. So that's the challenging thing is once you do put the content out there, you're locked into whatever you put as that kind of hook and the, the way the video is going to flow. So you can't, you know, you really can't click bait because if you under deliver once they click on the video, they're just going to go away. So you have to kind of like think about all those things. And I do try to think about that now as I build that intro, I kind of leave myself the room for going after multiple titles, you know, in the future, in case my initial title doesn't work out, I kind of leave myself that room where maybe something else I said in the intro is very intentionally setting up what a different title could be. And that was kind of one that eventually seemed to just work after ab testing a little bit, you know, and that, that's, that's kind of like, I feel like a little super advanced of just like, you know, you know, I don't do that with every single video, but I really felt like that video was one that was going after a very broad audience. So when it wasn't performing at first, I really felt like I, you know, had to kind of like tweak the title and the packaging just a little bit. But, but go into the other part of your question. Yeah, the overall packaging is a big focus of mine. Like, I spend way too much time honestly researching the title, thumbnail, intro, hook, all that stuff, the topic itself. And I get inspiration from that kind of from all over the place on YouTube a lot of the time. It doesn't even come from my own niche. Like the credit card space on YouTube or personal finance space. A lot of times I'll just, I'll. I'll scroll around on YouTube and like I said, I consume a lot of it. So if I come across a video where it, it makes me click, I try to really reflect on why it made me click. It could be about some random topic I don't even care about, but if it, if it piqued my interest a little bit, then that's kind of a signal that maybe there's something there I could adapt into the credit card personal finance space a little bit. So I do think about that a lot. And then I think about the thumbnail at first of, of. Of what kind of complimentary text I could put in that thumbnail where it keeps it very simple and to the point, but, you know, maybe builds on the title a little bit so they really all work hand in hand. And I try not to get too complicated with the thumbnails. I still do my own thumbnails in Canva. I've gone through different, you know, different versions of thumbnails on my channel. Some had a lot of things going on, a lot of colors. Now it really is just a simple white background, hopefully a kind of high, higher quality picture of myself. And then just, you know, maybe three words, max, black, bold letters, some highlighting here and there. And, you know, occasionally I'll play around with a few different types of thumbnails as well. If I come across something that I think is maybe a little bit trending but works well with the overall aesthetic of my channel. I'll try some new things. But yeah, it really is everything. Trying to get the overall packaging right before you upload and then being willing to kind of adapt as you go.
- [13:43]
B
I use a tool called Vidiq that allows me to track what people do as far as changes. And on that specific video that you and I are talking about on your channel, it has nine changes from when you uploaded that video. Everything from small thumbnail tweaks to a bunch of title tweaks until you landed on the one you're on now. And if you don't mind me sharing, I'm going to explain what the first title was back when you uploaded it the first day. Why your credit score drops even when you pay on time. And then it has evolved to now be getting an 800 credit score is simple because just stop doing this. Which just off the tongue immediately sounds like such a better title. I mean, if, you know, obviously it took us a few days to get there, right from the 18th of June to the 22nd, that's fine. But you're there and being able to tweak and doing AB testing and making these changes should let you guys know that are listening, that that's okay to do. It's okay to make those tweaks, to see which one is going to kind of move the needle. And obviously you landed on the correct one. You mentioned the research that you do. You kind of just, you consume YouTube like we all do and you take note of, oh, thumbnail really made me click, even if I'm not interested in that topic. What is research that you do? Do you look at other finance channels, other channels outside of the niche? What is your thought process there?
- [15:04]
A
Yeah, I mean, it really comes from anything. So honestly, even, like, article titles or, like, topics I come across on Reddit sometimes. It could be all over the place. It definitely, you know, usually comes from YouTube the most. And just looking through whatever pops up on my recommended page, there's. There's a great, and, I don't know, a great newsletter I always like to recommend to people. This is Creator Hooks, it's called. And it's just this. This Guy sends out five titles that have worked in. In whatever areas across YouTube and he kind of explains why they're outliers in the framework behind them. And sometimes I use that as like a jumping off point of like, okay, I had a similar video on credit scores a while back, and I don't know if I can remember off the top of my head, but I think it was something along the lines of, like, while you're probably in parentheses, probably killing your credit score. And that's really simple and straightforward to the point. And there's a complimentary thumbnail with that. But I think I got that topic from that, from the video that popped up in that newsletter that was for like. Like a gardening channel. It was like, why you're probably killing your fruit trees or something like that. So, like, I'll get inspiration from all over the place and just really try to, like, just spend a few minutes. If I see a few videos as I'm browsing around, just spend a few minutes a couple times a week just being like, okay, does that adapt? And I usually have like, a video idea folder somewhere in my Google Drive where I'll get really inspired in the moment. And I'm like, yeah, that works, that works. And I'll. I'll just have all these video ideas that I adapt, and I kind of leave a link to the inspiration video from that, and then I'll leave that be. And then next time I need to kind of, like, film or, you know, build out a content schedule, I'll kind of go back to that list and be like, okay, do any of these actually still work in my head? Or was I just kind of, like feeling very inspired and just shooting all over the place at that point? Or. But if I come across something that still sticks with me, then maybe that'll make it into my content schedule a little bit. So it's fun. I think that's the most fun part for me because it's just really trying to play with human psychology at scale. And again, in a way that's not clickbaity but gets people to click and then really like reaffirms their click and makes them feel like, yeah, this was worth watching. Because as soon as they get into the video, hopefully they see that I've got good quality video and good editing. And the hook again keeps them there a little bit. And so then I'll kind of watch, you know, the, the different like retention graphs and things like that. And I make it sound like I'm really like into the data and honestly I'm not that much. But it's just those couple little like very high level data points that, that seem to really do, do well for me is when I'm trying to like tweak the videos, is paying attention to that stuff and then just learning for the next time.
- [17:32]
B
It is one of my favorite things to do as well is to figure out like what button can I push to make this video perform. And I love doing it for clients. And I'll be honest, I found that I get better ideas from channels that are off what I call off niche. So if I'm working with a channel that's in the gardening space, like what you mentioned earlier, oftentimes we'll get some of our best ideas for that channel from some gaming creator or a creator that's very popping off at the time and seeing what's, you know, viewer satisfaction is what we know is performing well on YouTube. But what is what makes them stay, what makes them watch it, what makes them click? All of these things are interesting really puzzles that I love to solve. And as a creator it's, it's what we get to do. Now the back end of. Let's talk about systems now you mentioned Google Drive. What are your systems and the tools that you use? And then we'll, we'll get talking about AI here in, in the next minute or two because I only like to ask a question or two about artificial intelligence. But I do want to know as a creator, how are you using it? But, but as far as just the apps and the tools that you use to make the YouTube channel run, can you speak on those and kind of list those out for us and how you might use them?
- [18:38]
A
Yeah, the way it all runs is off of Google Drive, basically. So we have, and when I say we, it's me and then a video editor who works, I mean essentially works full time for me. He maybe has a few other clients, but I'm like his main one. And then there is kind of another guy who's like a jack of all trades. Runs my newsletter and writes a lot of stuff with like, on the newsletter for me. Does a few other things related to the YouTube channel as well. So it's. It's like the three of us, but through Google Drive we will. I guess kind of the way the workflow works is I'll script up the video after I've done all the research and stuff. You know, I'll script it word for word. I'll throw it into my teleprompter that I have that I'm actually looking at right now with my. My camera, and I'll go ahead and film the video, film all the A roll. I'll have kind of a folder of B roll stuff as well, with card images or things from like, my travels. And then I'll go ahead and upload the footage. And then we create, me and Nick, who's the jack of all trades on. On my team, we'll create what we call a technical script. And so we just take every single thing from the script. It's kind of broken up into paragraphs of, you know, maybe like four lines or so each. And each typical video maybe is like 60 different scenes, 60 different paragraphs. We break that up into a technical script and we just give directions for the video editing of graphics that we want to see. B roll that could be used in certain places, key points in the video to. To cut to each one of those things. My video editor is really. He deserves all the credit for this. He introduced that system as soon as he joined the team, probably almost like three years ago at this point. And he's super organized with everything. So he developed a guide of all these different abbreviations. And, you know, so if we're cutting to A roll, it's ar, B roll, br. And then if we're cutting to different, like, title screens, we have a different abbreviation for like a title screen with this card and this text. Or we have a word for, like, if we cut to this graphic where there's like three panels on the screen, like we have different abbreviations for all that. And so he kind of created this guide and showed what he can do with his video editing skills. And so it's. It's moved to a pretty good system now where I'll write the video, film it, pass off the A roll footage. And then Nick on my team will mostly handle the tech script at this point. I'll maybe tweak a few things if I have like a brand deal in there. Usually I'll kind of like control what, what goes into that, that ad read. And then we, you know, that's passed along to the video editor as well. And we all just work off of Google Drive. So the Google Drive folders are all nice and organized with that stuff. We got a folder for, you know, video assets if there's different images, different B roll clips. And then we have a video footage folder where he downloads the footage. And then once, once he's done editing that, we'll use Frame IO which a lot of people use. And I'll go ahead and you know, review that draft, add any comments for any changes. But usually it's pretty good at that point and then after a second draft it's ready to go and be uploaded. So that does play out over the course of typically like, you know, anywhere from maybe like five days, give or take a day or two, depending on the length of the video to kind of turn around a video like that. But it's great, it's a great system that works well for us, I'll admit. And you know, we can get into the AI stuff. We don't use AI as much as we probably could. Tried a couple things here and there and you know, we actually see use that more in some of the website development that we've, in some of the tools we've built out recently. But for the videos itself, it's pretty manual I think. I just like to have a really hands on view over everything that we do with the channel. There's a lot of reasons for that too. With the credit card content there's a lot of stuff that changes and I found using AI just tends to leave more mistakes in the video and stuff. From a compliance standpoint that just is a no go when it comes to talking about certain cards and you just don't want to say the wrong thing or misrepresent something and, and you know, mess up different affiliate relationships or brand deals. You got to make sure it's all kind of said the right way. So you know, it's like I said, it's a smooth system that works. We definitely have some bottlenecks here and there, but it's changed a lot over the years and so it's in a
- [22:24]
B
good place now for a video editor of that caliber. What are you paying per video or do you pay a lump sum per month?
- [22:33]
A
We pay a lump sum per month and the goal is to upload five videos per month for that lump sum. We typically don't get there because there's just so much else going on. I think there's just a lot that goes into running a different, you know, a YouTube channel at scale with the brand deals and running the newsletter and different other things. And so we typically get out about four videos per month. The cost breakdown, it ends up being, I mean, several hundred dollars per video. It's, it's somewhere in that $500, $400, $500 range. And I think it's very much worth it because I've, I've, I've dealt with video editors where there's a lot of miscommunication and there's not as much attention to detail. And, you know, I very much want my videos looking a specific way. And so I feel like it's, it's one of the best investments that I make. But when talking to other creators, I do get a lot of like, wide eyes when I say that compared to like, what some people will be willing to pay for a video. But I truly believe it's one of the best investments that I make. Every single, every single video, you generally
- [23:27]
B
are going to get what you pay for. And if you're paying editor 4 to 500 bucks, you're going to get 4 or 500 bucks quality when you publish the video. And just watching your videos, you can tell that the person doing your content knows what they're doing and it makes it worth their while. And in turn, they're going to give you something that is a very high quality product. So that's why I asked that question. In terms of the newsletter, this is something I get asked a ton. You know, being consistent with anything is important, so we don't have to talk about how important it is to be consistent not only on YouTube, but with the newsletter as well. Talk about the newsletter, what it's done for your business, why you started it, and how it kind of works in tandem with the YouTube channel.
- [24:11]
A
Yeah, the. You, the, the newsletter was really something I wanted to build to be something that was connected to my personal brand, but that could live under its, its own name as well, which is, you know, it started out actually as being called Bronze Wallet because I needed like a placeholder name and I just wanted to get started with it back in like fall of 2024. So it was Bronze Wallet at first, and I had actually built out just through a bunch of like, free lead magnets over like the two years prior to that. Pretty much. I think I collected like 30,000 emails from like budgeting templates and transfer partner guides and different tools. And so had somebody Else come on and kind of helps me to launch the newsletter who is very good at email marketing and just kind of helped me like get set up with mailchimp. At first we now use kit, but basically just like we launched this kind of reactivation of those emails because you know, people may have given me the email like 2 years ago prior to starting the newsletter just to say, hey, like you probably have, you probably downloaded something for me in the past. We're starting a newsletter so feel free to opt out here. We kind of warmed them up to the fact that this is going to be a weekly and then bi weekly thing. And so yeah, we really wanted to start the newsletter to have something that was just a little bit different than the YouTube channel but could still maintain those consistent touch points. That was one part of it from the business side of things. I mean it was a really good opportunity for different brand deals, different affiliate type of relationships with credit cards. Just being able to like say, hey, there's this offer out there on a certain credit card, limited time offer. Sending that email out to 30, you know, 36,000 people at this point. We actually cut the email list down in half from like 30,000 down to 15 and now we've built it back up to 36 or 37,000. But so, you know, it's just a great tool for being able to send that out to a lot of people really quickly and everybody is opening up their inbox and you know, so we got about like a 60, 65% open rate on those emails. So it's very good for that stuff. It's also been very good for using it as just like a little bit of leverage when you're working with brands to say, hey, you know, if you're trying to maybe get a little bit of a higher rate on a certain brand deal, you want to work with certain brand or just make it more worth their while. Essentially it's a nice value add for them to say they may come to me. A lot of our brand deals, almost all of them are from inbound and, and so when a brand comes to me and you know, says they want to do something a short term deal, long term deal, I like to mention the, the newsletter is like a complimentary add on as well to help push that rate up a little bit. We have some other just, you know, one off newsletter, exclusive brand deals that we've done and we have a set rate for that as well. But it's just nice to able to be able to kind of offer that as a package for the brands. And it's kind of a win, win all around because you just get a lot of overlap between the brands that I talk about on my YouTube channel. But the same brands show up in the newsletter and so just it's very good for the visibility and I think it's something I can really kind of sell when talking to those brands. But yeah, more, more so than anything, like the consistent touch points that I get to have with my audience and the engagement. You know, every now and then we'll throw in little things in the newsletter and ask them to reply back with a certain emoji or give their thoughts on something. And when we actually get a lot of replies back to the newsletter, I think that's what's really cool to me because, you know, you see these different names popping up that I don't recognize necessarily, but they recognize me because they've been watching my videos and reading the newsletters. And that's what's really cool to me is just seeing very real people on the other side of these email replies. It's a little bit different than getting the usernames popping up in the YouTube comment section. So I think the engagement's pretty cool as well. So highly recommend a newsletter for anybody that can do it. And I think as long as you have a certain topic you're talking about, there's a lot of ways to build out these free lead magnets. And I've been all about that. That's like, you know, value add for the audience as well. Just providing these tools that they can use for free. And then, hey, you know, sign up for the free email as well. It's just, it's really been free value, free, free value. And then eventually, you know, hopefully there's some sort of, you know, brand that I'm able to put in front of that audience that's able to pay me down the line. So it's, it's, it's cool, cool system.
- [27:59]
B
And that leads me to talk about monetization. Now you talk about you have brand deals and then you have ad revenue and then affiliate revenue. Can you talk about the different buckets in which you're making money? And then maybe on average an estimate of what you might can make in a month from your channel or even individualize it of like, here's what I might make from brand deals and what I might make from the partner program. Can you just talk about just the ways that you're making money?
- [28:22]
A
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you kind of listed Those off the three main ones there are the YouTube AdSense, the brand deals and then the affiliate income. And for my channel specifically, like the affiliate income is probably going to be a lot higher than some other channels. It really all depends. I know a lot of like short form creators very dependent on the brand deals and having to find the next one. Mine's, mine's nice because it is like, you know, like I said, I'm targeting a lot, targeting a lot of search traffic and finding people, an audience through, you know, through that over many years. And then there's usually affiliate links that are associated with a lot of the cards. Not every card I talk about, so I just kind of create my content. You know, I talk about whatever cards I want to talk about and really try to like talk about cards that I know perform well on YouTube as well. Or if I want to talk about a specific card that wouldn't perform well on YouTube in its own video, I'll usually find a good way to package that into a video that I can mention a bunch of, bunch of those cards. Not every card has affiliate links, unfortunately. But that's kind of out of my control is the way that I look at it. So if I'm able to include an affiliate link, I do. If I'm not, you know, that's, that's too bad. And unfortunately they do get a little bit of free marketing out of it when I talk about certain cards that are very good but don't actually like pay creators. But my hope is that by ultimately just being unbiased in that way that every credit card issuer will want to eventually have affiliate links and then can be in those videos. So the affiliate stuff is definitely a good portion of the income. And then the brand deals is something that's kind of increased every year. I'm doing about like two brand deals every month right now out of the four videos that I upload. And those are just usually with a lot of brands that kind of come back. And so I've worked with Rocket Money, I've worked with who else away Suitcase company, I've worked with ARO and different upside, different cashback products. And so that's, that's been nice as well. And so the brand deals probably runs almost about the same as AdSense. Now. It all depends. AdSense typically ends up being anywhere from like 12 to $15,000 per month at the moment. And then, you know, can spike up or spike up or go down or whatever depending on how frequently I'm uploading brand deals works out to be. It all depends on the Video, but you know, it's a several thousand dollars type of thing per video. It all depends on the brand, depends on actually a lot of times what video I'm going to put them into. I think I've kind of learned what video topics will perform in certain view ranges now after doing it for five years that I know, okay, like a what's in my wallet type of video that I make once per quarter that's usually going to average anywhere from roughly 50 to 60,000 views. Sometimes it'll go a little bit higher than that, but it's never going to be a hundred thousand view video. It's never going to be a 20,000 view video. So it's usually a little more predictable there. And I can price myself based off of that. And then the affiliate stuff, it varies a lot, honestly, month to month. Because what will happen is credit card issuers run different limited time offers and it's those periods where there are those limited time offers that people are most incentivized to go ahead and watch a video and then use whatever affiliate link or click through, you know, my newsletter as well when we send out those emails about limited time offers. So that one varies the most up and down. But I mean good months can be well into the five figures, bad months below five figures. So it really, really just depends. And I know it's pretty wide range, but yeah, they then come, I think like any, any YouTube channel, it can go up and down depending on how you, you structure things and what your major revenue sources are.
- [31:41]
B
And one of the things to clarify is when you're talking about how much you're making from the partner program, the finance space is known to be one of the, if not the highest paying space on YouTube when it comes to partner revenue. Those credit card companies and those banking companies have determined that the viewer on YouTube is very valuable. And so they are competing to pay the highest the premium. And so that's why the creator in turn is benefiting from that. You know, depending on how many views you may get a month. Like I tell people with my tutorial channel, you know, I try to get anywhere from 60 to 100,000 views every day. And then that kind of gets me to the threshold of ad revenue that I want as far as in order to pay the people I need to pay and make it worth my while. And so knowing what the ad spend and you know, these numbers are, do you have any idea and have you done the research and do you know that, Daniel, as far as, like, I'm sure you Already know what I'm saying to you at this point, but did you do research and know that this is one of the higher paying spots on YouTube?
- [32:41]
A
Yeah, I definitely knew that going into it. Just again from watching some of the finance creators that I watched on YouTube before I started the channel. I saw what some of the CPMs were of what advertisers were paying per thousand views. I understood the breakdown of, you know, what goes to the creator and what, you know, YouTube gets to keep. And so I knew all that stuff going into it. And so I've always, you know, as soon as I got, like I said, six months into doing YouTube, I was very curious to see what the CPMs were going to be and what my RPM revenue take home was going to be from that as well after the split. And it was pretty accurate. I mean like I will say like in my channel's history it's varied up and down. I've seen times where the ad rates have, have actually gone down and, but generally right now it's in the range of I'll say 45 to $50 CPM, but it has plenty of times where it dips into like the low 30s for CPM. And then again that's the total revenue and then the, the take home, the RPM ends up being a little bit below that as well. Yeah. But I definitely knew it, knew it ahead of time. And it's interesting like I'll go and you know, I'll go to my YouTube channel and occasionally if I need to like look at, actually it's funny like if I go to research certain videos, sometimes I'll go on like an incognito tab on YouTube so that I don't have like an algorithm that's influenced by my viewing behaviors and I just see what's popping up and YouTube's recommending me on incognito mode. And if I see my videos popping up there and I check it out, it is funny like, cause you do see the different advertisers on my video are sometimes the exact cards I'm talking about or exactly competing cards to the ones that I'm talking about in my videos. And so in a way they're, they're paying my channel through that versus sometimes there's cards that like I said, don't have affiliate links or affiliate links go away. There's a lot of different like ebbs and flows to that. And so it's funny like sometimes there will be cards that are advertising on my channel but they have no way of, of paying any affiliate revenue whatsoever. So it's, it's a weird system the way it works. But yeah, in general, I mean, the finance niche, I think I haven't had any experience, you know, making money outside of the finance niche. So I am like a little bit spoiled in that way that I've only ever known, like higher CPMs compared to what some other spaces on YouTube will pay and definitely feel fortunate for that.
- [34:47]
B
Certainly just research and kind of figure out what it might be for you. I know I've interviewed a lot of creators in the animation space or the art space and those, those creators are getting paid pennies on the dollar. Right. It's really just about the brand and their willingness to pay. It's all seasonal too. You know, around the Q3, it starts scaling up and then once the Holiday season's over, Q1 of the next year kind of dips a bit. So understanding, there's ebbs and flow to all of it. Daniel, you've been a wonderful guest. I encourage you to go check out Daniel's YouTube channel. It's Daniel Braun, B R A U n over on YouTube with his newsletter and YouTube channel over there. Daniel, hopefully we can do this again in a couple of years when you're about at a million subscribers and we'll talk about what you've learned since now.
- [35:28]
A
I would love that. Yeah, that's the goal one day. So give it a few more years and we'll see what happens.