Earning Money on YouTube: Days 146 and 147

Returning from being a tour guide, I spent the last two days catching up on a bunch of work that had been pushed aside while I was having fun traveling to all the national parks. While there isn’t anything too exciting to report on the two days since I basically sat in front of the computer and wrote a lot (this lacks excitement for the blog, but does help the minimum wage challenge), I did earn some money from a video I had on YouTube.

This was quite unexpected, but is shows why it can be worthwhile to upload videos onto YouTube that are a bit different since they can pay off in unexpected ways. I certainly should spend a bit more time with videos than I do, as I have basically only dabbled with them in the past. My most successful video was one that a friend suggested I make on the easiest way to fold a t-shirt (something I learned while in Japan) that has managed to garner over 150,000 views:

As comparison, the second most successful video I have uploaded was one I took at glass beach which has 27,000 views:

From there, most videos have under 1000 views with many only a couple of dozen. While I have earned a few dollars here and there from ads on these videos (mainly from the t-shirt video), I wouldn’t consider YouTube to be a source of income for me. I’m now happy that I uploaded some of those more obscure videos since one of them earned me $250 today.

A couple of years ago I went on a rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It was a great trip, but on one of the last rapids (Lava Flows), we had an accident where one of our group sustained a possible neck injury. It was serious enough that the guides called the national park service and a rescue helicopter flew in and airlifted the injured party out of the canyon.

I put up a couple of videos of the rescue on YouTube all of which have less than 1000 views and aren’t really all that exciting.

I never expected to make any money off of them, but I was contacted by the Discovery Channel through email about them wanting to use the video for an upcoming special. Apparently, Nik Wallenda is going to attempt to tightrope across the Grand Canyon later this month, and Discovery is going to do a live show on it. As part of the show, they also wanted footage of accidents that have happened in the Grand Canyon to show that there are dangers there. In their search for this footage, they came across my video. After emailing back and forth a bit, they agreed to pay me $250 for the use of the video in the program.

I won’t be able to add this income to my minimum wage challenge (my sister didn’t even let me entertain the idea), but I think it shows that there are a lot of unexpected ways you might be able to earn some extra money, even when it doesn’t appear that much will come of it. This money could be especially valuable to someone who is living on a severely restricted budget. While $250 isn’t a huge amount of money, but my guess is that most people would be happy if they unexpectedly earned it. It also has me thinking that I should devote a little more time to putting up videos I’ve taken because you never know when one might be worth something.

Despite not being able to add this to my challenge money, the last two days were still financially good for me. Both were no-spend days which I spent visiting with my mom. As I stated above, most of the time I was at the library in front of my computer trying to catch up on work. Starting tomorrow I have another house sitting gig for six days which should keep my minimum wage challenge expenses down as well.

Yesterday’s & Today’s Spending

Food: $0.00
Car: $0.00
Lodging: $0.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $0.00
Misc: $0.00

Total: $0.00

Total Spending

Food: $313.93
Car: $597.00
Lodging: $176.31
Travel: $408.26
Health: $2042.65
Misc: $79.56

Total: $3617.91

Jeffrey Strain

Jeffrey strain is a freelance author, his work has appeared at The Street.com and seekingalpha.com. In addition to having authored thousands of articles, Jeffrey is a former resident of Japan, former owner of Savingadvice.com and a professional digital nomad.