I'm bored, so I made $100k as a teenager I guess

Summary

Highlights

• The creator embarked on a mission to earn $100k by the age of 20 using YouTube automation. 🎯
• They faced challenges such as ad sustainability issues and copyright strikes that impacted their progress. 🚧
• Exploring different video niches and strategies helped them eventually gain traction and momentum. 🌟
• Collaborating with others for editing and managing content can significantly boost productivity and creativity. 🤝
• Despite the hurdles, they managed to hit significant milestones like a video reaching 1 million views. 🏆

Key Takeaways

• Honesty is crucial when declaring video content for monetization on YouTube. Being upfront about controversial content can prevent ad sustainability issues. 🤔
• Learning from setbacks, like losing momentum due to a copyright strike, is key to success. Reflect, adapt, and move forward. 🚀
• Engaging a team for tasks like video editing and scriptwriting can help scale operations and improve productivity. 🎬
• Exploring various niches can lead to discovering what works best for channel growth and personal preferences. 🔍
• Adapting and evolving channel strategies over time can lead to increased success in the long run. 📈

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Goals The chapter titled 'Introduction and Goals' begins with the narrator setting the scene of their current life circumstances compared to their desired future situation. They express the ambition to be financially successful and independent, specifically aiming to have money and own a house. The narrator is currently 'broke' and ready to document the journey from their current position to achieving their goals.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Early Earnings and YouTube Automation The chapter focuses on early earnings from digital platforms like TikTok and YouTube. The narrator, having turned 20, discusses their income from a TikTok theme page, YouTube channel, and a private community, totaling around $2,852. They introduce a new venture into YouTube automation, describing it as creating faceless videos on diverse topics.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Viral Video and Ad Sustainability Issues The chapter discusses the sustainability issues surrounding viral videos and advertisements, highlighting the YouTube channel SunnyV2 as a primary example. The goal for many content creators is to monetize their channels to the point where they can outsource tasks like video editing and scriptwriting to others, allowing them to focus on management. The narrator shares a personal experience of managing every aspect of their YouTube video production in the true crime niche during a summer break.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Handling Setbacks and Continuing Efforts The chapter discusses the importance of maintaining momentum and not relaxing when experiencing initial success. It starts with a video going viral that monetized the speaker's YouTube channel, leading to increased momentum. Instead of relaxing, the speaker decided to immediately begin working on the next project, aiming to improve it in quality and length and generate more revenue. The subsequent two weeks were dedicated purely to scriptwriting, editing, and voiceover work, highlighting a commitment to sustained effort and continuous improvement.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Channel Strikes and New Challenges The chapter discusses the narrator's experience with publishing a new video on their channel. Despite being of the same format and topic—true crime—the new video garnered rapid attention, amassing 40,000 views in just 2-3 days, which left the narrator feeling euphoric. The chapter conveys the excitement and challenges of maintaining momentum on multiple successful videos.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Exploring New Opportunities The chapter titled 'Exploring New Opportunities' discusses the challenges faced with ad sustainability on YouTube. It explains how YouTube decides which advertisements can be shown in front of a video, often influenced by whether the content is marked as controversial or not. There's an emphasis on the necessity for creators to accurately mark if their video contains controversial, dangerous, or adult topics to avoid limitations on the types of ads that can be displayed.
• 05:30 - 06:30: Lessons Learned and Reflections The chapter discusses the speaker's realization about the importance of honesty when it comes to sharing information, particularly related to criminal activities. The speaker reflects on the unintended consequences of an ad sustainability initiative, noting an immediate loss of engagement and a significant drop in revenue per thousand views (RPM). They express their frustration about how these changes affected the performance of their new video, which despite being long and having multiple ads, did not generate the expected revenue.
• 06:30 - 07:30: New Ventures and Realizations In this chapter titled "New Ventures and Realizations," the narrator discusses a challenging experience with their Revenue Per Mille (RPM), which dropped significantly from an acceptable $6 or $7 to a much lower $2.50. Despite appealing this sudden decrease, their appeal was denied, leading to a loss of two weeks' worth of work. The narrator reflects on the need to 'click the boxes next time,' contemplating this as a learning experience as they note the gradual decline of their channel.
• 07:30 - 08:30: Success Despite Challenges In the chapter titled 'Success Despite Challenges,' the narrator shares their experience of working on a video project. They describe the challenges they face, such as the potential nightmare of the project not succeeding. To mitigate this, they immediately begin working on the next video with a focus on editing and scripting. Despite it being late in the day at 7:00 PM, they remain dedicated to completing the task with basic editing and writing scripts to ensure the project's success. The chapter emphasizes persistence and dedication even when facing difficult tasks.
• 08:30 - 09:30: Closing Thoughts and Future Plans In the concluding chapter, the narrator discusses their apprehension about uploading a new, potentially controversial video. The video is an hour long and raises concerns about receiving age restrictions or limited ads, which the narrator is keen to avoid due to past experiences. They express a cautious optimism about the upload despite these concerns, indicating a strategic approach towards managing the channel's content and its reception by the audience and platform regulations.

I'm bored, so I made $100k as a teenager I guess Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this is the situation I want to be in you know have money have a house and be Bal apparently and this is the situation I'm in right now you know broke how I'm going to go from this to this here's my journey I have two rules rule one I need to earn my money in a legal way so the YouTube payment was and Rule two I need to get to 100K as a teenager I'm 17 right now about to turn 18 which means I've got a good like 2 years until I
• 00:30 - 01:00 turned 20 which wouldn't end in team this is actually the third part of the series and so far I've made around $2,852 3 which mostly consists of a Tik Tok theme page I used to run my YouTube earnings off of this channel right here and a bit from a private Community I run but the last episode actually ended with me starting a brand new Venture YouTube automation it's essentially the art of posting fais YouTube videos about any type topic imaginable probably one of
• 01:00 - 01:30 the biggest examples out there is sunny V2 and the goal is to eventually earn so much money from that YouTube channel that you can just Outsource the work editing some random 15-year-old kid who used to do amvs can do it script writing some kid who used to do fan fix can do that part until you only have to make sure that the operation runs smoothly and that is exactly what I did for 6 weeks during the summer break but I did everything on my own and that is how one of my videos and their true crime niche
• 01:30 - 02:00 kind of went viral it got me monetized so I was having all of this crazy momentum on the YouTube channel because of one single video and that meant one thing I needed to go all in cuz the worst thing you can do when you have motion is to just chill and I'm not a chill guy instead I started working on the next video immediately I was going to make it better longer and hopefully make more money so the next 2 weeks was nothing but scriptwriting editing and voiceover I know not the fanciest way to
• 02:00 - 02:30 live yet until I clicked publish again same video format just slightly different topic still a true crime though and the insane thing is the video picked up almost immediately like I'm talking 40,000 views in the first like 2 or 3 days it was insane I was right here you know like Cloud9 at least I think that's a cloud I had two videos now that had insane momentum until still I didn't the video
• 02:30 - 03:00 got hit with ad sustainability problems which is basically YouTube telling you that they can display every single type of AD in front of your videos and that usually happens when you show some type of like controversial thing and you don't mark it properly cuz every time you upload a video that is monetized you get asked whether or not your video is controversial or shows any dangerous Acts or talks about adult topics and you have to click the box if it fits
• 03:00 - 03:30 I didn't know you actually had to be honest about that stuff I never posted about like criminals and stuff so that ad sustainability thing came with two consequences my new video that had like insane motion flatl almost immediately within like the hour all the motion was gone but even worse the RPM dropped like crazy so the money I actually get per th000 views since the video was quite long and I literally placed ads every
• 03:30 - 04:00 single minute I had like A6 or $7 RPM which is not great but decent my RPM dropped to like $2.50 which is not so good so I did the only thing I was able to do which was to appeal the decision and just a couple of days later it got denied just straight up so I took the L and moved on 2 weeks of work basically out the window what can you do probably just click the boxes next time so that just meant round two the channel was slowly but trly dying
• 04:00 - 04:30 out which would be the biggest nightmare but this next video could save that right so I worked on the next video immediately video three since monetization I edited basic editing for the first 1 and 1/2 minutes check and wrote scripts we're ready to work yeah we just have to write the script for the next video ended voiceovers it's 700 p.m. FR it's not about it great every single day again
• 04:30 - 05:00 until video number three was finished too and ready for upload so I'm about to upload you know what I'm saying uh video is about an hour long and for this one I'm about to upload a very controversial topic and I'm not sure if it get hit with like AG restriction or like limited ads which I'm kind of scared of I'm not going to lie I'm not really trying to get at limited again but the channels
• 05:00 - 05:30 new anyways I don't have a lot to lose the biggest enemy now was the ad sustainability thing since I was still talking about criminals and some of the cases get pretty Saucy but before I actually tell you whether or not I got hit with that yellow thing again the month was over no B trips just the trenches but throughout all of these problems we still got our first paycheck off of that YouTube channel that will help me towards those $100,000
• 05:30 - 06:00 and I got paid $1,339 which consists of $11,000 off of that YouTube channel and 300 and something off of this YouTube channel the school Community also paid me $816 71 and minus the expenses which are basically software for editing and but coming back to the important stuff video number three the video that will hopefully bring me to New highs this time I clicked every box imaginable
• 06:00 - 06:30 controversial topics yeah violence of course shocking content yes sir at this point I was genuinely like paranoid I did not want to get hit with ad sustainability the thought of two more weeks of my life just being wasted not the greatest not the greatest especially since like a month ago I was having so much motion so I left the video on uh private for the night and it's still monetized so I'm a upload it properly
• 06:30 - 07:00 now and if it gets restricted I'm a kill and it actually seemed fine the first couple of hours video got decent views and no ass sustainability problems whatsoever until YouTube struck again [ __ ] yep that's me controversial issues my boy damn YouTube was on my dick so I messaged some of the guys I know who are like YouTube experts essentially and they explained something so obvious yet lifechanging when you
• 07:00 - 07:30 upload a video you have three options you can either upload it as private unlisted or public and only if you choose unlisted YouTube can actually look over your video and determine whether or not your video fits the ad sustainability thing and I uploaded it as private first thinking that after a couple of hours if it's still green it will probably stay green when it's public that was my fault you live you learn you love so I was told to private the video with the ad sustainability
• 07:30 - 08:00 problems that 2,000 people at this point already watched and then I just re-uploaded the video this time has unlisted first [ __ ] Bro the RPM is insane $9 that's the highest RPM I've ever had on any channel bro but I need to lock in I've only made $30 so far off of this video we're at 7,000 views we either need to lock the in and get this video to new High change title change thumbnail whatever takes or I need to
• 08:00 - 08:30 work on the next video bro that's right RPM of8 basically $9 for some of you guys that will probably sound weak since I've seen like $20 RPMs which is crazy honestly but it was insane for me and there's basically one major reason why my RPM suddenly spiked it was the beginning of Q4 the time of year where companies apparently spend all of their money to advertise since you know like Friday Christmas was coming around and I
• 08:30 - 09:00 was ready to conquer Q4 so far I've done every aspect of this YouTube channel on my own thumbnails editing script writing but I knew that if I wanted to consistently scale and actually upload more than like every two to 4 weeks I needed a te I mean that's the whole premise behind YouTube automation right you want to actually automate it at one point and you can only do that by hiring people and spending money and what better time to hire people when you actually get more money in in return so
• 09:00 - 09:30 I actually partnered up with a longtime member of my private Community since he actually wanted to go through the whole hiring process kind of like for the experience and we started Scouting For editors while I still worked on the next video what he essentially did was going on upward which is like a freelance website and he created a listing with all of the requirements we need an editor for a true crie YouTube Channel videos are going to be 30 minutes to an hour spending budget is like 300 $200 $400 and we attached a sample audio so
• 09:30 - 10:00 they could actually you know show their skills and we could evaluate them it's just a good way to filter out the bad people low key all of them were trash I don't want to be mean but just most of them seemed like beginners a couple of days passed and we did nothing but reject people left and right and I kind of felt lost again how are we going to find decent talent that doesn't want like $50,000 billion doll for a video so I did what I do best I bothered the guy
• 10:00 - 10:30 who I know went through this whole hiring process like a billion times already s o p standard operating procedure a genius yet really really simple thing that basically any business implements at one point so listen up if you're trying to take this seriously an sop is a stepbystep manual that you give to somebody so they can actually conceed to work to a quality that you find satisfying me and my friend basically
• 10:30 - 11:00 just threw the editors into cold water and expect them to deliver the quality that I envisioned which was pretty unreasonable at least at the price point we set it at so we had pretty much two choices now number one pumping a ton of money to actually find good talent somebody who actually understands what a good video looks like or create an so so detailed that even a monkey could edit our videos guess what we did get
• 11:00 - 11:30 it cuz it's an apple hello uh welcome to this video introduction to the editing position whose m is this you put them on the TV I went through literally every single my new detail of my own edit 45 minutes of breaking down my stuff and with this Holy Grail in our hand we weren't actually looking for a great editor anymore but literally just somebody who's willing to put in the work and learn with basic editing skills
• 11:30 - 12:00 of course we had everything planned now give them a sample to edit filter out the best one out of those get them on a Discord call to see if they're actually able to communicate and are willing to put in the work then if they pass that stage give them the SOP and do a paid sample and after all this is done we could actually pick out the one life's not going good I might have to work at McDonald's remember the initial video that got add sustainability if that's a word
• 12:00 - 12:30 apparently it was back to haunt me again while I was editing the video and looking for talent to scale the whole operation and also actually School the video was actually slowly getting views but the thumbnail I used was I'm going to be honest kind of Click ba and the owner of the picture didn't really like that so he snitched to YouTube so video got copyright stried um because of the thumbnail yeah that's unfortunate the
• 12:30 - 13:00 video was taken down and I got a strike that basically means it was over I desperately messaged the owner and offered him money to remove the strike I even offered to take down the video manually and he could still keep the money I was on my knees begging this channel was like my baby but I was left on red which is fair I guess I did misuse this image I also had the ability to appeal the claim but that apparently opens up like a whole legal process which I don't really want to get into
• 13:00 - 13:30 for a YouTube video so I was forced to take another L and actually attend YouTube school what the hell is YouTube copyright school and second which is probably like the worst thing ever Youtube cuts off your organic traffic meaning the current video I've been working on for like 2 weeks could potentially just not get pushed to my audience it could literally get like two views and if that were the case I'd be absolutely cooked the video with the
• 13:30 - 14:00 high RPM already wasn't really performing that well so that could actually mean that my channel was done at least for the next while but the only way to find out is to find out so I finished that video uploaded it as unlisted I do actually learn from my mistakes just upload it just upload it we'll see how it goes hopefully I'm not shut up it or anything and my biggest fear actually came true the video performed terribly out of the gate I'm not talking Terri in terms of the
• 14:00 - 14:30 viewers didn't really like the video and clicked off early I'm talking 600 people saw it the first day to give you some context the video with the high RPM that one got 4,000 views the first 24 hours it was practically impossible for this video to organically get 600 views in the first day the only good thing I still had going for me was that the videos that already existed on the channel didn't get nuked to so I actually reached some pretty cool milestone the first ever video that
• 14:30 - 15:00 really blew up got to 1 million views for example one of the videos hit a million views my guy which is like the highest viewed video I've ever produced in my life and I actually hit 10,000 subscribers so I have three YouTube channels now with over 10,000 Subs but the most scary question was still in the air what is going to be my next step Outsourcing the work on that channel would be stupid now since no matter how good the video would be it just wouldn't
• 15:00 - 15:30 get pushed that one guy really had it out for me the account was officially cooked at least for the next 3 months which is how long it takes for the strike to go away it was game over I was devastated I'm going to be honest I literally did nothing for 2 days after the strike hit I just laid in bed Dexter is pretty good though and waiting for three whole months would just be a waste of time what am I supposed to do focus on school all day go outside so I just took the most logical step create a new
• 15:30 - 16:00 Gmail and create a new YouTube account if that channel isn't going to work I was going to put all of my knowledge into a new project but before I talk about that Journey since it already happened let's break down our monthly throughout this journey of Hell fck life's not going good I still got some decent views mostly from that one video that hit a million so the YouTube payment was 3K 2.2k off of the faces YouTube channel and $ 800 off of this
• 16:00 - 16:30 YouTube channel and my private community on school paid me another $49 minus expenses leaves me with but at this point I'm pretty much left with nothing channel is Fright at least for the next 3 months and I got no motion so it was time to start a new channel from scratch which is definitely the most annoying process me personally I was kind of sick of the whole high quality need NES with the heavy editing
• 16:30 - 17:00 like the true Prime Niche I actually went into so I went into the incognito mode and started clicking on a ton of faces YouTube videos and at one point I went down the AI rabbit hole and I found the most bizarre niches imaginable I won't reveal any of them since a lot of people get mad when you reveal their secret sauce but I'll show you one of the thumbnails and titles yeah that stuff is nuts AI niches can get you fast grow ton of money but
• 17:00 - 17:30 YouTube can terminate them like this and after looking through niches and talking to the guy I wanted to do the whole Outsourcing thing with we found one that looked pretty interesting it wasn't one of them weird niches but it looked like it had potential it was low quality but targeted to older like rich people which means the RPM could be pretty good so we started cooking he made some fake ass AI thumbnails and I edited the most boring video ever this was not fun to make combination with an AI voice yes I
• 17:30 - 18:00 bought the 11 La subscription again if you know you know and within just a couple of days we published our first video on the channel 3 days went by and we actually got views not a lot though what did you expect we ended up coming to the conclusion that the niche was so low quality and we didn't really add anything cool to the mix so it resulted into the video not really doing well so the next video was still the same low quality Niche but we made it longer and added some spice to it you could say
• 18:00 - 18:30 that video got even less views that wasn't the only problem though surprisingly I started hating the editing process since we focused on like low quality High quantity the edits were so simple no fancy effects or anything which is good I guess but we left no room for creativity so the whole thing was just so boring so we decided to take a different approach again take the ideas and editing from baseball and
• 18:30 - 19:00 basketball and apply it to our Niche that way I was actually able to utilize my best skill which is editing so far a mix of Both Worlds and so the next video took over 2 weeks again but it was actually decent this time a lot more creativity a lot more effects in general which isn't necessarily better but I could actually use my skills you know what I'm saying I posted it just like a week ago and it performed 10 times better than the first video which is unfortunately still like 700 views but
• 19:00 - 19:30 it helped me to find something out about myself a personal development Journey you could say I'm not cut out for lowquality boring YouTube automation channels at least editing them is not my thing I might be able to run these channels if I have like a whole team operating and you know I can just push the work to them but for this journey so far we need a better Niche hello so listen something so crazy is happening right now it's blowing my mind actively right so what I originally wanted to say
• 19:30 - 20:00 was that I found a pretty good Niche for the second uh YouTube automation Channel since the other one was like that right I found one pretty good good potential and actually only two channels have been you know posting videos about it but bro the past two days have been so crazy I I I had to include it but before I can actually tell you let's do the monthly recap one last time the original YouTube automation Channel still did decent views which means I got $1,486 58 and 50 bucks actually off of
• 20:00 - 20:30 Tik Tok that I just forgot to withdraw hello it's me again um from post school also paid me which I forgot to include somehow yeah it was uh $535.50 discounted Adobe yearly subscription for like 100 and a new keyboard actually cuz this one very old
• 20:30 - 21:00 very damaged which leaves me with all right now let's talk about what is actually happening right now so the video that originally got add sustainability and also got taken down right I re-uploaded that video again on that channel that was de cuz I watched the podcast about a guy who also had like copyright problems and he got like traction before the uh strike was actually lifted and he actually got like organic traffic again so I was like I had nothing to lose anyways on my channel and the RPM is so high I I'm just going to try to reupload that video again to see what happens right I literally just replaced the thumbnail
• 21:00 - 21:30 and removed the part that actually got it add sustainability in the first place and then reuploaded it and bro the video has 100,000 views right now and it's been 4 days after upload 103,000 views look at this I've already made more money on that video than that same video originally if you get what I mean and $330 is only 40,000 views that are currently monetized RPM decent very decent I'll take that we're so back 2025
• 21:30 - 22:00 takeover we're going to do the thing that we originally actually intended to do Outsource that one channel and hopefully turn it into like an actual profitable business but with all this business stuff going on I hope you enjoyed this year and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year