How Much Money Do Travel YouTubers Make?
Are you tired of hearing travel bloggers, travel vloggers, miscellaneous travel people tell you on travel blogs, travel vlogs, and travel stuff about how you can make travel content online to make money? Well, we are too because for the most part… it’s complete bullshit.
How we started YouTube
Way back in 2015 after saving money for two years, we quit our jobs to travel the year on an “around the world” honeymoon. Since then we have built three businesses that support our life of travel
First and foremost, although you may see us on YouTube, we do not consider ourselves “YouTubers” because YouTube is not the way that we support ourselves fulltime. Our goal is to be completely transparent with you on how we use YouTube to make money as well as market ourselves and our business. We also want to be open about how much money we get out of YouTube versus how much time and money we put into it.
Being a Travel YouTuber Does Not Mean We Can Travel Full-Time
We have been on YouTube for over 5 years now. Our first video went up in November of 2012 and we have put up about 200 videos since then which is roughly 1 video a week for roughly 4 years. YouTube came from the fact that I already loved making videos about our trips and experiences so once I decided to put them online it wasn’t too much of a transition.
Our YouTube Experience
Our YouTube channel fluctuates in popularity but we sit steadily in around the top 5% of channels across the board based on subscribers. There are tons of people making videos and starting channels every day that it really is hard to keep up with it all. Numbers can be super intimidating at first. I remember when we first hit 500 subscribers and thought that once we hit 35K we would be basically top of the charts and have full reign over the YouTube space. Now we’re sitting at around 52K subscribers and let me tell you, it’s just not like that.
We’re able to do the things we do because we make money on Amazon, not because of the money we make on YouTube. We started our Amazon business by investing in our products and using YouTube as a form of marketing for us and this worked out way better than waiting years hoping to get the subscribers to be able to make our sole income be off YouTube.
Our 2018 Annual Social Earnings
From YouTube ad revenue, we make $3,989 annually (in 2018). This mere amount for 5 years of work put into it! From Amazon affiliates, where we feel most YouTubers make the most of their money, we made $4,379 (again in 2018). For Fin’s eCourse on video editing, we made $984. For being a $20 course that is rarely promoted, we didn’t think this was too bad! With our partnership with World Nomad’s travel insurance, we made $1,455 (in 2018) from associate fees. From Epidemic Sound Affiliate where we get our music for videos, we made $1,260 in 2018. And to round it out for complete transparency, we also have an affiliation with REVO where we get a free pair of sunnies from them.
So in total, that’s just under $12,000USD in total gross social revenue for 2018.
While this is our revenue, we also had a few expenses that went into our video making.
Expenses
We decided it was time to invest in gear when we were filming out of binoculars in Yellow Stone National Park. Neither of us are really camera people but we saw this is a good time to invest in some equipment. Overall we spent roughly $5,000 on gear and tech to help with the quality of our videos. Outside of the camera, this $5,000 also includes a new laptop for quality video editing, the constant hard drives we had to purchase, a new telephoto lens for the camera, and a new drone that was easier to travel with and one that Tim hadn’t crashed in New Orleans.
Other Tech Expenses
The equipment is one portion of what goes into quality videos, but we also had to purchase the software to be able to do quality video editing as well. This includes an Adobe Suite subscriptions, Tube Buddy, Canva, Later, data backup, and various other platforms and software needed for editing. This all rounds out to about $1,200.
If you subtract our expenses from our revenue, we’re looking at only about $6,000 annually in 2018 as a total net profit. This goes to show why we use YouTube purely for fun and a bit of additional income, but for the work we put into YouTube, we do not get the profit out of it that would sustain our lifestyle. We’re at the point where it pays for itself but doesn’t pay for us.
Opportunities for More Social Income
More opportunities for people to make money is by being sponsored by cruise lines, hotels, and a lot of Amazon items. We get so many offers through our email for people wanting us to make a sponsored video for their business or product. People want us to push their products in our videos in exchange for money or free products.
Finding Sponsorships
You could do cold emailing and cold calling to find sponsorships that are in your niche as well as give you the same consolation as you would give them by filming a YouTube video or writing a blog. For example, we will sometimes make an offer to film in someone’s Airbnb and promote their place in exchange for a free stay there. This process is crazy time intensive though and can be difficult especially if you’re working through language barriers and time zones with the people you are trying to work with. It’s a lot of time investment for potentially just a free night’s stay.
If we put more effort to optimize our earnings and treated YouTube as our main source of income, I’m sure our numbers would be much different. As the rule of thumb is with most things, you get out of it what you put into it.
15-Year YouTube Business Plan?
We look at YouTube as a 15-year business plan broken up into 3 parts.
First 5 Years: Lose money and Grow
Middle 5 Years: Earn enough to sustain
Last 5 Years: Figure out how to quit?
The Pressures of YouTube
We feel a lot of pressure to have content out on our channel to be consistent to our subscribers. With our Amazon business, that sense of pressure and urgency isn’t there as much which fits much better into our travel lifestyle.
We hope that our transparency with our earnings helps and doesn’t dishearten you in any way. Again, this is all from the perspective of our personal lifestyle so not everyone is going to have the same experience! Overall we think that there are better business options out there that give you the most out of your time in our case that being Amazon.
Happy travels and Happy earnings!
How can we afford to travel fulltime?
Ok, so you don’t make much money from YouTube, cool. But THAT’S NOT HELPFUL… how are you able to have the lifestyle you have? We own and operate an Amazon FBA business Tripped Travel Gear. With our business we support a life of travel anywhere in the world!
This wasn’t always the case. We knew we wanted a location independent business. I first started by changing from an employee to a consultant to get us on the road. Then when our side-hustle Amazon business started taking off I was able to drop all of my clients. You can read about how we started and grew our business here.
Learn more about our Amazon Success story here or see for yourself if an Amazon FBA business is right for you in our free FBA 101 mini-course.
More “Make Money Traveling”
How much do travel youtubers make?
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Tim: 00:00 Are you sick and tired of hearing travel bloggers, travel vloggers, travel people telling you that you can make travel blogs, travel vlogs, travel stuff online and travel full time and make a reasonable income? We are too because for the most part it's complete bullshit.
Fin: 00:20 Way back in 2015 after saving money for two years, we quit our jobs to travel on our one year around the world honeymoon. Since then, we've built three businesses that support our life of travel. Welcome to our new series, how to make money and travel. Despite the fact that you know us from YouTube, we don't see ourselves as Youtubers because that is not the income that supports us doing this full time.
Tim: 00:44 And so for this first video we're going to tear apart this whole YouTube, Instagram thing. We're going to share our income from that, be completely transparent just to show you where we are at subscribership wise, how long we've been doing it, how much time we put in, what little return on investment of time and money it is.
Fin: 01:08 So we have been on YouTube for over five years now. First video went up in November of 2012, and I've put up around 200 videos at this point. So if you're thinking about like, oh, I'm starting a YouTube channel, I'm thinking about doing a video a week. That would be one video a week for four years. Right? For four years.
Tim: 01:32 But then again you could say, Alison, it only takes one great video.
Fin: 01:35 Yeah, there's so many things around that. There's people who become big within one year. There's people who have way more subscribers than we have that started a few months ago. I mean there's just so many other variables. That's not really what we're talking about is how to become successful on YouTube.
Tim: 01:51 But that's a great point as far as there's so many variables to it. It's a really bad business plan to...
Fin: 01:57 Don't tell me. I know.
Tim: 01:59 It's not a good thing to put your whole livelihood on.
Fin: 02:03 I love doing YouTube. YouTube came from the fact that I was always making these videos of all of our trips anyways, and I was putting them online. So I'm not hating on this space at all. I do this full time, and Tim does Amazon full time. And I absolutely love this whole journey. But just to represent, so right now we're at about 35,000 subscribers on YouTube. According to Social Blade, we're in the top 5% of all YouTube channels across any niche. I mean there's just so many people starting channels and then there's, I forget, there's only whatever percentage of people that get to a thousand subscribers. Then there's only whatever percent of people that get to 10,000 subscribers. And now in the top 5%. So while 35,000 subscribers isn't a ton when you're talking to brands or our 15 year old nephew, but...
Tim: 03:02 He's not impressed.
Fin: 03:04 Sitting here in the top 5% of all channels, if you didn't know that much about the industry, I don't know. I remember when we had 500 subscribers, and I was looking at channels that had 35,000 and I was like, oh my gosh, if we had 35,000 subscribers we could do whatever we wanted to do. We could call up whatever brands we wanted to call. And it's just not like that. It's just not like that. We're able to do all of the things that we do because we make money on Amazon and we pay for those things. That's why the whole point of this video is make money doing other things and not trying to spend five years getting a bunch of subscribers so you can get something free from a brand. Wouldn't it be better just to make a bunch of money and be able to buy it?
Tim: 03:54 So here's the real guts of the video. This is completely being transparent about our YouTube earnings and related earnings from 2018. And let's just do it real quick and talk about it. So from YouTube ad revenue, which is Google AdSense. That's how the check comes across to us. We made $3,898 in all of 2018. It's up on screen. Next one.
Fin: 04:20 Woo woo. Our best year ever. After five years of doing YouTube, in our fifth year, we pulled in just under $4,000 for the year.
Tim: 04:30 Good old Amazon associates where I feel like a bulk of the YouTubers out there make most of their money, we made $4,379. There's probably some optimizing we could do there. For Allison's you to me course, which we're counting as YouTube revenue because that's the one place we have a link that leads to that tutorial video...
Fin: 04:50 Yes. I have a two year old video down there I always link in the description box of how to edit a GoPro video into a travel video, and it's always down there. We don't really promote it or anything.
Tim: 05:03 That's really surprising, $984.
Fin: 05:07 $984. It's a $20 course, and I think I offer it to you guys down below 50% off. It's 10 bucks or something.
Tim: 05:15 Another associate we do with World Nomads Travel Insurance. And again we're lucky in this space because we only work with partners that we want to share their services as opposed to feel obligated or that we have to to earn income. World Nomads Travel Insurance, we made 1,455 US dollars last year from associate fees from them.
Fin: 05:36 So we have a blog post up on our website. Do you guys even know that we have a blog, a website?
Tim: 05:41 And then same thing with Epidemic. A lot of people sign up for the one month membership trial. That's free. We made a total of $1,260 off of that.
Fin: 05:52 Epidemic Sound is the music that we use in the videos.
Tim: 05:59 And then also to be completely transparent, we started working with Revo in the second half of 2018, and we get a free pair of sunglasses from them.
Fin: 06:09 So we pulled in just under $12,000 for 2018 for the entire year. So is that a salary? Is that enough for two people to live off of?
Tim: 06:21 No, Allison, that's just revenue. Okay. So that's how much we made. But there's expenses in making YouTube videos, like we said earlier. And one of our biggest ones this last year was buying gear. And we were filming in Yellowstone through binoculars. Neither of us are camera people, but we're like, it's time to buy a telephoto lens. This is ridiculous.
Fin: 06:42 We were putting the lens up to the binoculars to film a bear in the distance, which worked.
Tim: 06:48 People know we're not... Yeah, we're just not camera people. We're not good at that. We just want to be acceptable and not ever stuff look blurry or the audio sound bad. But at the end of the day, our lawful air mics are just hanging out, whatever. We're doing our best.
Fin: 07:04 And so at that baseline kind of entry level, and I don't want to discourage anybody from saying you have to spend a whole bunch of money on cameras because you can just do it with your iPhone or something. But since this is something that we are trying to grow, we put a lot of money into quality last year, and we spent... Well honestly, I'm going to kind of dumb down what we spent because I think we spent an absorbent amount, but let's call it we spent $5,000 on new gear last year. So we're taking that out of our profit of the $12,000.
Fin: 07:34 Of 5,000, my computer was chugging along and not able to edit the 4K, so I ended up with about like a $3,000 topical line Dell laptop. We constantly have to buy new hard drives to house all of these gigabytes of data. We have a new lens after we weren't using the binocular anymore. That was $800-1,000 just for the lens, not even the camera body. We used to have the Phantom three drone, which is massive, and we just can't travel with that big thing anymore. So now we have the Mavic.
Tim: 08:07 And it kind of crashed in New Orleans. I was able to repair it and stuff. She flew again. Chappy was out there. But just it's too big and the Mavic Air just makes sense especially for traveling.
Fin: 08:18 So throw in another thousand dollars. So it was probably more like seven or $8,000 of tech. But let's just call it five out of the 12,000, and that's just hardware. That's not even talking about the software. I edit on Adobe Premiere Pro, and I edit Instagram photos and light room. So here's another $500 a year on Adobe products. There's other optimizing tools that we use like Tube Buddy and other things a lot. So throw in another thousand dollars for just random software pieces into all of this. And now we're down at maybe about a profit of $6,000 on the year for two people for just hours, hours and hours of work, which is why we do this for fun. And we don't view this as an income source. Because essentially at this point we're at the point where it pays for itself, but it doesn't pay for us.
Tim: 09:10 Some other ways people on YouTube make money is working with hotels, cruises and you'll see a lot of Amazon products pushed. Again, not just through affiliates but through the actual manufacturer who wants a sponsored video, that sort of thing. The offers we get through email are just ridiculous, like broken English, push our product on your video, we'll pay you to do this or we'll give you a free product, which is the value of $5-20. I mean we just started now getting offers for watches where it's like this is a $200 watch. We want a 10 minute video. No, no, no. You totally don't get the value here, and we would never do something like that.
Fin: 09:49 We're like, what if we just randomly put out a video? So Tim just got this new watch. You guys would just be like, this is such bullshit.
Tim: 09:55 People who are hustling those free stays places, you're doing a bunch of cold emailing, sometimes cold calling. Or if you're staying at, I don't know-
Fin: 10:03 This is a huge important point. Just if you zoned out, this is a huge important point.
Tim: 10:08 If you're interested in doing this, filming at people's Airbnbs, that sort of thing, it's so crazy time intensive, and especially if you add different languages into it. If you're traveling and want to stay at a hotel in another country for free, it's just crazy time investment, cold calling to line up those deals. And the value there is so low. There is a tipping point where brands are coming after you. I don't know what that is.
Fin: 10:35 It's not where we're at yet. We don't know about that part. I'm sure that these numbers could be better if we put more effort into the optimizing, if we treated it like we needed the income to come out of it.
Tim: 10:48 Yeah, for sure.
Fin: 10:49 And if we needed to stay free because we couldn't support paying for the hotel. It just means that that's more time on the front end. Like Tim was saying, it's just cold calling. And have you ever had a cold calling sales thing?
Tim: 11:03 You were so scared of cold... I did cold calling for a year. After the first two weeks, it's not a big deal or anything. I know that's the scariest thing in the world for you. Anyways, it's not just the nervousness of cold calling or cold emailing. It's a bad time investment.
Fin: 11:23 And the last reason to consider when going into this profession would then be the longevity too. So how long is your business plan going for? How long will we do this? I don't know. Are we going to be 45 and making travel videos? I still feel the pressure, like I need to have a video on Sunday. I need to have a video on Sunday. Whereas Tim with Amazon just checks in once in a while.
Tim: 11:50 Oh, that's how it is.
Fin: 11:57 He's just like beep, beep, beep, beep. I have deadlines for you guys and if I don't hit them, you guys are sad. YouTube doesn't pay us any money. Amazon is great, which we're going to share two videos from now, the bridge in between. We're going to talk about my human resources consulting business that supported us while Tim was learning and starting Amazon, and we were in the RV last year. Granted still doing YouTube and all these things, but that was kind of the money that was supporting us on the road.
Tim: 12:28 I hope the transparency on the earnings helps a bunch. I hope it doesn't dishearten you.
Fin: 12:33 There are other business opportunities that you can pursue that are a better use of your time for dollars. We should wrap this up and start recording the next video for you guys. A better option, a better business option, is turning your full time salaried employee position into a freelance or consulting gig.
Tim: 12:56 All right, Allison, how do I become a consultant?