The question we get asked the most...
We often get asked “How can you do all this work on the farm, and live the life you do, without a job and any way to make money?” Well – the really simple answer is – this YouTube gig IS our full time job, it’s how we make an income to live off and to do our project.
We have worked hard to get where we are today. Filming and editing our videos is a full-time job, and alongside raising our two little boys and doing all the renovations on the farm, life is pretty full!
But just how do YouTubers (like us) actually make a living?
Google ad revenue
When we created our channel, our hope was to get enough subscribers to be able to partner with YouTube – you need at least 1000 subscribers to join the programme and your channel must have accumulated over 4000 hours of watch time within a 12-month period.
Once we had achieved that milestone (hooray!) – YouTube then enables adverts on our videos, and allows us to share in the earnings from them. The advertisers pay YouTube based on how many clicks or ‘Impressions’ that advert gets, an ‘Impression’ is YouTube language for how many people have viewed it (without clicking on it) – we get about 40% of any income from the advertising and YouTube get the rest…it’s a really easy way for us to get some much-needed money and costs us and people viewing our episodes absolutely nothing – and explains why every single view we get is so important and so valued.
Something you may not know, is that we do not choose the ads, nor do the companies partner with us – these are all down to the Google algorithm and are largely selected based on YOUR online activity, rather than ours. So, for example, if you see an advert for a car company at the beginning of one of our episodes, we haven’t gone to these people ourselves, nor have they reached out to us – it’s likely being shown to you because something you’ve done online has told Google that you’re looking for a new car, so you get “served” those ads. These behind the scenes algorithms are incredibly smart.
Subscribers are vital to our channel, and we are so grateful to everyone who clicks on that all important SUBSCRIBE button. It’s completely free and easy to do, and it tells the YouTube bosses that we’re doing a good job so our videos are shown to more people, the ads get seen by more people, and we can make a little more money – so a huge thank you to you for your support if you are a subscriber of our channel.
Brand sponsorships
This was something we were wary of at the beginning, but to carry on growing we knew it would be a good idea to investigate how it all worked, and we decided very early on to only work with brands that fit our values, bring value to our lives, and that we think would resonate and be of value to YOU.
We have been lucky enough to have been approached by some incredible companies and are proud partners of the brands we have worked with. The brands pay us for highlighting their product and if needed, send us something for us to share with you, and we always make it very clear that an episode has been sponsored, and often have a special offer to pass onto our viewers for them to try it too. This is by far and away our biggest earner on YouTube, brand sponsorships are our bread and butter if you will, and we make a far better living from them than we do from the YouTube ad revenue.
One of the simplest and best ways you can support our channel is by engaging with our brand sponsorships. If you’ve been pondering starting AG1 by Athletic Greens for example, then by clicking OUR link rather than going direct to the website (or using Kara and Nates link), means that AG1 will want to work with us again, and means we can carry on with projects on the farm and with creating content each week!
Merchandise
We work with a company called teemill for our amazing merchandise. When we created our merch choosing a sustainable and eco friendly option was our absolute priority. We supply our merch through teemill, who are a print on demand company, which means they only print the item when it has been ordered, so we don’t have to have a warehouse full of clothes that we are desperately trying to sell, or any waste. The clothes are made using 100% organic cotton, in factories using renewable energy, are fairtrade and look after the people making them, and everything is shipped in plastic free packaging.
By buying some of our merch you can directly help us carry on with our journey and share our message of Being Brave, Thinking Big and Exploring!! We are so grateful to everyone who has bought any of our merch – it means the world to us – and we would love to see you wearing it if you have! Please post a photo on your social media and tag us in it – we’re @thenewbys
Patreons
For anyone who doesn’t know – Patreon is an online membership platform where content creators (us) can share extra “exclusive” content. We have different payment tiers – so that hopefully there is an affordable option for anyone wishing to follow our journey more closely.
By having subscribers to our Patreon, we can earn an extra small monthly income, and we’ve created our Patreon space to be able to get to know our followers better, to share more with them about our journey as it all unfolds. We share content on there which we do not share on any of our other platforms and we host online get togethers – Patreons also receive all of our episodes before they go live on our YouTube. We hope to do some fantastic giveaways and ‘in person’ get togethers with our loyal Patreons in the future too!
So, there it is… an insight into how we are able, with the help of YOU – our wonderful community -, to live our dream and create content for you each week. Let us know if you’ve got any questions – we’re always so happy to hear from you!
