Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to Make your Passion a Job”.
Hey lnl, my wife and daughter are starting a YouTube channel non-tech at what point in their subscriber ramp. Should they start to work with Flo plane, zero subscribers, one thousand ten thousand more I’d say if it’s any earlier than like a hundred or a couple hundred thousand. It’S probably not going to be very effective. The thing is that you’ve got to build an audience before you can monetize an audience.
You actually cannot put the cart in front of the horse and you’re only going to be able to monetize some percentage of that audience. So you look at obviously it’s not Apples to Apples, because there are some subscribers LTT channel that subscribed 12 years ago and probably haven’t looked at the content in over a decade right. So it’s if I say: okay yeah, we have 15 million subscribers on YouTube and we’ve only converted 42 000 of them to float plane. You can’t look at that ratio and go. Oh well.
I’Ll probably have a similar level of success, but you also can’t ignore that right out of 15 million we’ve converted forty two thousand now that’s enough to really move the the needle for us these days, but at that ratio. If you had one and a half million, you might have four thousand. If you had half a million, you might have like twelve hundred subscribers on something like a patreon or something like a float plane uh. If you had a hundred thousand, you might have.
So, what’s the what’s the math here, let’s go down another fifth, so you’ll have like 230 people or whatever that works out to 230 people at five dollars a month. Okay, so maybe you’re getting about a thousand dollars a month. That’S twelve thousand dollars a year! If you were planning to live off of that, that’s gon na be fairly challenging unless you live in the middle of like.
But nowhere – and you know you are on a farm where you can grow your own food or something like I don’t know like yeah farming content, sure no problem, let’s go but the, but the math right like it’s in order for it to actually move the needle You’Ve got to have a significant subscriber base. People have gotten really offended when they’ll have like 100 subscribers and they’ll ask about external platform funding and I’m like yeah. I don’t think it’s a good idea right now and they won’t.
This won’t even be in like relation to float. Plane necessarily would be like, should I start a patreon, I’m like probably not, and they get pissed and I’m like? No, it’s not I’m not trying to belittle. You have. We’Ve talked about this on windshield before literally every single action you ever do has a that means you’re not doing some other form of action and like no, you shouldn’t just like drown under this thought process forever, but you should consider like. Is it worth my time to start and maintain this other thing when I am at this stage of my growth as a Channel or whatever? It is no work on just hard focusing on your main Channel. There are inflection points right once you get to a certain size, it might be like man.
This is like working pretty good or whatever, but like. I could use a bit more cash because if I had a bit more cash, I could bring on like another editor or something, and by doing that, I could use my time in other ways to do other stuff. It’S like okay.
Now is the time it makes sense like yeah you, you might hit those certain points where it becomes more or more worth it, depending on what size you’re at or or how hardcore your audience is, there’s channels that will perform extremely well on these types of platforms. Whatever they are um because they have Niche heavily invested audiences yep. So even though their channel is like in in quotes small, they have a really intense following that is going to follow them and is going to financially support them.
And then, but if you know that, then that’s great, so your inflection point might be at a different spot than potentially someone else. You will also see channels that are enormous and just cannot can convert no one yeah, because all their followers are not going to put money behind their following. No matter what happens or they’re located in regions where that kind of disposable income feasible is not going to work yeah and that’s fine, but then you should also understand that, like maybe it’s, it’s still not worth it for you. Even if you are a really large Channel, if your audience is not going to be able to have that funding power, which is fine, you just might want to do different things in order to to grow so yeah, since the thumbnail for today is about Shilling. Can we get some more merch options that are just big logos, names chilling? I know you aren’t a fan, but can you just make my? Can you just take my money anyway? Okay, so that’s uh wow! You know what that actually ties into something we were talking about earlier. The whole thing where I was saying that you have to reach a certain scale before like a patreon or a float plane type of monetization makes sense because you’ll only be able to convert a certain percentage.
Let’S take that and let’s apply it another step down so float. Plane has a very clear value. Add where occasionally we’ll upload videos early, particularly before weekends, we’ve got extra content like clearly, if you’re into the content, you might be into the extra content um, and it’s got from my experience. Just a much more positive, Pleasant Community Vibe, whether it’s on the live chat during the WAN show or even in the comments under the video.
So there’s this really clear like value ad and it’s not just tangentially related. It’S directly related to our main product, which is Tech, videos right. So then there’s your merch you’re only going to convert a certain percentage of people to your your physical products. Um. That’S also is kind of directly related to the main thing, because we like build computers.
Oh, we have a screwdriver, we carry laptops around okay, we’ve got a backpack, you know whatever stuff, that just has your logo on it that doesn’t necessarily serve a clear function and isn’t necessarily directly related to the service that someone was already enjoying from. You is going to be a much lower conversion rate, it’s like a conversion rate on a conversion rate, and so, if we were to make, I don’t know uh an LTT or a Wan logo wall ornament or something like that. First of all, I won’t release anything.
That’S crap because I hate that right, so it will have to be good, which means we have to invest significant development time in it. After we’ve done that we have to meet whatever bar. There is for a minimum order, quantity from whatever you know, manufacturer or manufacturer’s that we are Contracting to produce this product. So, let’s say a thousand units or five thousand units.
I have no way of knowing exactly what that would be until we’ve made it significantly deeply into the development process. At that point, I’ve got to ask myself: you know um. What price do I need to sell this at now? Knowing it’s going to be relatively low volume in order for me to make back what I spent on product development? Okay, because it’s going to be low volume. That price is going to have to be higher.
Okay, where’s the threshold where that high price goes from recouping cost to just like creating a perception of exploitation and and money grubbing-ness will people? Will people see that that Nuance there, where I kind of go, look this isn’t just money grubbing? I actually do need my team to be paid for the development time, so am I just hurting my own brand by selling branded stuff that we spent way too much time working on for a very Niche audience? Maybe sometimes I can be really sometimes I just overthink this stuff, though, like the uh, when we, when we did that uh short-term, relaunch of just the Classic Linus Tech tips, logo shirt, it’s sold like crazy, because people just wanted it. I guess this is actually like legitimately one of my favorite shirts. That’S it that’s LTX. So that’s an event.
Shirt, that’s totally different yeah, but I’ll do an event. One of the big reasons why I like it is just because it’s just a little logo in the corner. Okay, it feels kind of professional we have like. We have a flag, that’s going to be there for LTX, like just you know the LTX logo on a flag for 2023 here. So I’m more willing to do that. For like a commemorative, you know, item versus just all right, let’s go um, I don’t know.
Maybe maybe we’ll do maybe we’ll do more of it in the future. Maybe not. We have a really cool thing. Coming, though, tell me something if you could own a solid aluminum keycap, that is this big. What would you pay for it? Solid aluminum Chrome plated what it’s mirror finish. Does it work? No, of course not. You can’t plug the questions that what do you mean it’s this big? Do you know how much it freaking we have like a bump? No, you couldn’t yeah you. Could it it’s solid. Aluminum yeah it’d be a bad idea so much but there’s no mechanism in it um and it’s solid.
When I say solid, I don’t mean concave empty hollowed out I mean it is solid. It’S a brick. I have no idea at all.
I don’t know it doesn’t matter what you say, because the people out there that want it they’re gon na pay any amount of money. It doesn’t matter what you say: yeah there’s some meme about a Loch Ness monster. You give it 4.69 or something I don’t know.
I don’t remember, I have no idea, no, you give them about 350. yeah. There you go.
That’S it. You get a double face. Pump there.
You go three fitty yeah. There you go there, we go, we still didn’t there, we go, we got there anyway. I have no idea so we’re making this oh yeah wow, because we’re meme Lords apparently apparently sweet.
I don’t know dude. This isn’t the type of thing that I’ve bought. Just what, if you could have a giant, solid, aluminum keycap? What would you pay for it? I’M just curious, I don’t think I would buy this like you, wouldn’t! Okay, if you saw it in a gift shop for five bucks, you wouldn’t be like.
Okay, that’s pretty cool. Okay! I might buy that. Okay, so did you get? Oh my God? Oh my God.
I mean if it’s gon na be from Billet aluminum, and it’s about that big, like it’s gon na, be closer to 350 than 350. yeah. That’S like 700 US dollars in just Billet stock.
No! No! No! No! It’S not that much! It’S not that much! It’S it’s! It’S big, it’s it’s! It’S big! It’S substantial! You could there’s gon na be three sizes. How big is the big one? The big one is like this: the medium one’s like this and the small ones like this. Okay and the cheapest one um I don’t wan na. I don’t want to quote this wrong, but they’re gon na be they’re gon na be very expensive. Uh, not not 700, but they’re gon na be all of them are gon na be okay.
No, I just don’t want to say it because I’m gon na get it wrong, but the the expensive one’s going to be pretty expensive, um yeah, I don’t know this is just one of those things that I I don’t. I have no idea what I was thinking. Um, I don’t think you were yeah, I don’t know, but it’s awesome. I was probably talking to Nicholas plew for something. Oh, this would be cool. Yeah yeah, I don’t know yeah. Do it Linus, uh? Okay, let’s move on we’re uh, we’ll have to send one to glassy’s yeah, we’ll have to do like well, we’ll have to engrave like okay, we should probably uh Dan.
Can you can you send a note to me? You guys ever should send them a customer working with him. I want to at some point, but we haven’t yet it just hasn’t lined up I’m sorry yeah, because he reached out to me like a long time ago about doing that. Yeah, I know. Okay, I just I’m busy. I know how hard is it for you to get on my calendar yeah, fair enough, he’s willing to like fly out here. I know I know I know I know I know I just it’s. Tough, okay, yeah .