Yahoo Finance This Influencer Is Making $100K in Just a Month: Here’s How
Joshua Mayo has turned his eponymous YouTube channel into a multimillion-dollar business. The 31-year-old influencer, who focuses on personal finance content, with a heavy focus on side hustles, making money and business, told GOBankingRates that he pulls in around $100K a month — at least — solely through his YouTube channel, which has 809K subscribers as of June 25, 2024.
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A portion of Mayo’s income comes from partnering with brands.
“I work with a lot of brands on a regular basis,” Mayo said. “I’ve worked with/am working with Audible, Epson, Epidemic Sound, Rocket Money, Aura, Printify, InVideo, Webull, Moomoo, Wealthfront and dozens of other brands. Many of these brands we work with on a long-term basis.”
On average, Mayo produces one video per week. When he produces more, he usually makes more, so that $100K a month is just a baseline.
How did Mayo turn a YouTube channel into an ultra-lucrative business? What should aspiring social media content creators know in order to turn their passion into serious money?
Mayo shared five key tips.
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Be Okay With Monetizing Your Content
“When my channel first started growing back in late 2021/early 2022, the only way I was monetizing my content was with YouTube ads,” Mayo said. “And this is great, especially in the personal finance niche where RPM/CPM tends to be disproportionately higher than any other niche. However, I was missing out on a ton of extra income by not allowing myself to monetize my content in other ways.”
Mayo pointed to a recent report by Epidemic Sound, a brand he’s currently collaborating with.
“[The report] shows that diversifying one’s income stream is an important aspect of creator success, where ad-revenue share programs, brand sponsorships and affiliate marketing have been identified as some of the most popular options,” Mayo said.
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Don’t Shy Away From Brand Sponsorships
Mayo said he was once “terrified” to put a brand sponsorship on his video content.
“I thought my audience would scrutinize me and stop watching my videos,” Mayo said. “But after doing my first ever brand deal with Wealthfront, I quickly realized that most people don’t care if a YouTuber they’re watching is being paid for the content they’re making. Nowadays, 95% of the videos I post have a brand sponsorship, and it hasn’t affected anything.”
Instruct Your Viewers To Click on Links
The digital world runs on clicks. Don’t hesitate to directly ask/instruct your viewers to click on links you provide.
“This is such a big one, and it sort of plays into point No. 2 of being afraid to do sponsorships,” Mayo said. “But what I quickly learned on YouTube is that, unless you verbally tell your viewers to click on the link in your description or pinned comment, they won’t click on the link.
“If you are selling a course or a product or doing a brand deal, and there is a link to that thing in your description, you can’t be afraid to say, ‘Hey, by the way, make sure you click the link in the description of this video for [insert the thing here].’ Your viewers can’t read your mind.”
Put Affiliate Links in All Descriptions
Mayo highlighted the crucial importance of putting affiliate links in all the descriptions of your videos.
“Last year, I earned over $500K from affiliates alone,” Mayo said. “And a lot of this affiliate income came from people clicking on all of the links that I have scattered across the descriptions of all of my videos.”
For example, create an Amazon affiliate account and post your Amazon affiliate links to all of your camera gear in your video descriptions. Ask, “What kind of software or services do you use to help you make your videos?” Then, sign up for those services’ affiliate links and add them to your video descriptions.
If you’re wearing a makeup brand, wearing a certain designer or donning a fancy watch, add each respective affiliate link in your video descriptions.
“I learned very early on that by not adding affiliate links, I was missing out on a lot of extra money,” Mayo said. “Viewers are looking for these things, so help them find [them].”
Don’t Undervalue Yourself; Set High Rates
Sure, there are some technical things you need to know to make upwards of a million dollars a year as an influencer on YouTube — and you also need compelling, useful and original content — but perhaps the most important lesson to learn from Mayo is to not undervalue yourself.
“When Wealthfront first reached out to me in early 2022 for my first ever brand deal, they asked me what my rate per integration was — an integration is a 60 second ad read on YouTube,” Mayo said. “I honestly had no clue, as I had never done one.
“I started doing some research, and found this video that told you how to calculate your brand deal rate based on your channel’s average views. So, I ran the numbers, and based on my channel’s views at the time, my sponsorship rate would have been around $1.5K for an integration.”
This amount struck Mayo as low.
“Don’t get me wrong, $1.5K was still a ton of money, but my gut was just telling me that I was worth more than that,” Mayo said. “And so, I didn’t double the rate or triple it. I nearly 7x the rate and came up with $10K for an integration as my rate. This was an absolute outrageous number for me at the time, but I thought to myself, what’s the worst that could happen? The brand says no, we can only afford X amount, and then I agree to it? Or, they accept the offer.”
To Mayo’s surprise, the brand agreed to his fee.
“We did two video integrations at $5K a piece — so technically not $10K, but I still earned $10K total for 120 seconds’ worth of video,” Mayo said. “The moral of that story is this, don’t ever undervalue your worth and your content’s worth. Sometimes you have to be gutsy. You’ll never know what’s possible if you don’t try.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: This Influencer Is Making $100K in Just a Month: Here’s How
