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How This Entrepreneur Made $1,424,100 Through 5 Income Streams in 2020

This is a blog about how a 27-year Entrepreneur Made his Passive Income

By Luisa CernyPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
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Ali Abdaal is a 27-year old Youtuber who went from making $20 as a junior doctor to generating over $1,000,000 in 2020.

He did it through 5 main online income streams, and he recently uploaded a video where he goes over each one of them. The video is 50 minutes long, and I almost never watch anything over 20 minutes on Youtube. But in this specific video , Ali makes some very interesting points about what it takes to reach that level of financial independence as a content creator, in 2020 and beyond. So I thought I’d wrap up my best learnings, lessons, and reminders from his video in this article.

Disclaimer

Before we start, keep in mind that none of this is easy. This is the story of a guy who won the top exam results prize during his 3rd year at Cambridge University, while studying to become a Doctor. He also created his own company in his teens, published over 300 high-quality videos on YouTube, created a comprehensive productivity course… It goes without saying that you have to be very bright, organized, and committed to achieving anything remotely close to what Ali has done. Most importantly, you have to put in an insane amount of work.

In this article, we’ll go over a few lessons on how to get a shot at making it big in the content creation world. Making money with your content online has never been easier than right now. The pool of people potentially interested in your content has never been bigger. Content creation platforms have never had more money to split between all the creators. The time is right, but just to be clear: don’t expect to get any results from this if you’re not willing to work for free for years before starting to make any kind of money.

With that being said, let’s get into it. We’ll first cover the breakdown of Ali’s earnings, and then the lessons we can get from his journey.

Note : numbers in this article vary from Ali’s numbers back in December 2020 due to the change in the exchange rate (GBP/USD).

1. Youtube Adsense — $142,500

Adsense is the program run by Google through which content creators run ads and get paid from it. To be eligible for this program, you need to get 1000 subscribers, and 4000 hours of total watch time. It took Ali 6 months and 52 videos to get there, which means he posted on average 2 videos a week for 6 months, non-stop. That was next to his junior Doctor job at a hospital, with 2 hours of commuting every day.

Here is a breakdown of Ali’s earnings from the Adsense program, year by year.

2017

* 59 videos published

* 1600 subscribers

* $0 revenue

2018

* 88 videos published

* 147 videos published in total

* 120,000 subscribers

* $17,500 revenue

Ali points out that most content creators take a lot longer to reach the 100K subscriber milestone. His channel grew 3x faster than average:

Source: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

But you shouldn’t take that in consideration, because luck is random. What you control is the work output. More on this soon.

2019

* 62 videos published

* 209 videos published in total

* 450,000 subscribers

* $47,000 revenue

2020

* 98 videos published

* 307 videos published in total

* 1,300,000 subscribers

* $142,500 revenue

Ali posted on average 1,5 videos per week for 4 years straight, and then he made $142,500 in 2020. Talk about overnight success.

“Like every good thing in life, progress is slow, but things will start to compound.” — Ali Abdaal

2. Affiliates — $187,500

Once in a while, Ali shares one of his referral links to a specific product on Amazon or elsewhere. When people end up buying the product with his link, he gets a kickback from the sale. Why would people buy the stuff he recommends? In his own words:

“When I build a bank of people and goodwill, a recommendation from me seems more sincere than a random one from a random website.”

3. Brand deals — $192,600

Due to the nature of his contracts with the brands, Ali is not allowed to disclose exact numbers. He gives us a ballpark figure of nearly $200,000 made from brand deals in 2020. These are contracts with brands that pay him to promote their content, or sponsor his videos so that he can make more videos.

Brand deals don’t happen before a while when you’re a content creator, which is why he reminds us (yet again) that you need to put in the work in the long term if you want to see any sort of viable results from this.

4. Skillshare courses — $515,000

Ali publishes his courses on Skillshare (about productivity, stoicism, but also cooking) and gets a revenue from the platform based on his viewership, much like on Youtube.

Like brand deals, Skillshare revenue won’t be worth looking into before you grow your audience to a pretty large number, because you need a lot of volume to generate a steady income stream.

5. Part-Time Youtuber Academy — $386,500

This is a self hosted course/academy Ali put up for sale online, and it netted him over $350,000. In the video, he breaks that income stream into 2, with a paid newsletter related to the course. I bundled everything in one here.

By 金 运 on Unsplash

Want to make $1,424,100 too?

Then you’re going to have to work your butt off. In the introduction of his video, Ali has some great points about commitment, motivation and productivity in general. This is his success formula:

Success = Work + Luck + Unfair Advantage(s)

Let’s look at those 3 components separately.

1. Work

I always like to mention the 6-month rule when I talk about commitment and productivity. When I started blogging, I told myself I was going to consider it like a job with no salary for 6 months, non-stop, and see where it would take me. After 6 months, I would assess the situation and see if I wanted to keep going. Flash forward 2 years later, and I’m still at it.

Now, the 6-month rule applied to content creation on Youtube looks more like a 2-year rule, or even longer. That’s because the competition there is a lot fiercer than for written content. Not to say that blogging isn’t a competitive world, but Youtube is simply on another level. The platform has 2 billion monthly active users, and 500 hours of video content are uploaded there every minute.

So how to keep pushing through? By having fun at what you do, and stop considering it like a job. I started blogging because I liked it, money was secondary.

“Find something that looks like work to others, but feels like play to you.” — Naval Ravikant.

Ali Abdaal’s version of this quote:

“80% of the time, my stuff feels like play to me. If I wasn’t enjoying myself, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

2. Luck

In the case of Youtube, luck resides mainly in the ranking algorithm. Your video might go viral thanks to it, or you might get a bump in subscribers, or both. But you shouldn’t care at all about this. You should focus on making your own luck. As Gary Player (one of the greatest golf players of all time) once said:

“The harder you work, the luckier you get.” — Gary Player

Ali Abdaal gives a great example of this theory in his video. If you go out on the street everyday and commit to starting a conversation with one person, you might end up meeting a business partner, your wife, or a friend you’ll keep for life. People who don’t focus on creating their luck will call this dumb luck, because you just happened to cross paths with this person. But the truth is, you created your luck by waking up every day and getting to work on your relationships. If you hadn’t focused on talking to people, you wouldn’t have met anyone.

It’s the same with content. As long as you focus on making it, you increase your chances of making it big. As Gary Vaynerchuck says:

“It only takes one piece of content to change your life, you just don’t know which one it’s going to be.” — Gary Vaynerchuck

If you’re a DJ, all you need is one track. If you’re an author, you just need one book. If you’re a blogger, one article. If you’re a Youtuber, one video. The thing is, it will never happen if you stop before luck strikes.

So keep pumping out content, and don’t worry about the numbers until you start getting lucky.

3. Unfair advantage

When I was 10 years old, my parents bought a computer, and I’ve been interested in coding, digital design and making websites ever since. I’ve taught myself how to code, use Photoshop, animate stuff… Thanks to those skills, I created my website on my own, designed my own e-book, and created my own productivity tools, amongst other things.

All this time spent learning is my unfair advantage, and I’m putting it to good use by investing it in content creation. I wasn’t surprised when I learned in Ali’s video that he is the same. He also created a successful company when he was a teenager.

If your friend decides to start a Youtube channel about cooking and he’s been cooking delicious meals for 10 years, it’s going to be really hard for you to compete with him, at least in that specific niche. Cooking is your friend’s unfair advantage. You just have to figure out what yours is.

By Christin Hume on Unsplash

Do the work

Ali Abdaal kept creating content in one form or another from 11 years old until today (he is now 27). When a bunch of his videos went viral and catapulted him on the front page of Youtube recommendations, it was easy for anyone to assume he just got lucky overnight. But the truth is, he never stopped putting in the work, and he created his own luck.

Around halfway through the video, Ali has this great bit of knowledge:

“I can 100% guarantee that if you, right now, decide to publish useful videos once or twice a week and do it for 2 years, your life will completely change. 2 years from now, you’ll send me a thank you email. The thing is, most of you watching right now won’t do it. Most people who start don’t stick around for 2 years.”

I always say the exact same thing about blogging. Remember that everyday you keep going, 2 things happen:

* Thousands of people quit

* 99% of those starting today will quit soon too

You won’t necessarily experience success on the same scale as the guys you watch on Youtube, or the writers you read online. It could be more, it could be less. Ali has a friend with twice as fewer subscribers as he has, yet that friend makes $2.5 million years, over double the money he makes. There’s no rule here, only one common red thread: a hell of lot of work.

Whatever you’re working on in life: building your own company, your Youtube channel, your blog, your own website… Remember that it’s never about the destination, it’s always about the journey. Yes, luck is a thing, success takes more or less time depending on people, and some folks might be ahead of you even if you’ve been at it for longer. But none of that matters, because as long as you put in the work, you increase your chances of success overtime.

Wake up, show up, everyday, do the work. And remember to enjoy the journey.

It will change your life.

Thank you Vocal for this platform.

-Luisa Cerny

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About the Creator

Luisa Cerny

Hey there ,

It's me Luisa, Entrepreneur from California.

With my 10 yrs of experince in this field, I have come to platfrom with the purpose to share my experience.

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