Ali Abdul, 27, was a medical student when he launched his production channel on YouTube.
It now has 19 employees and made over $3.5 million in 2021.
However, advertising revenue on YouTube is his smallest source of income – he earns much more from his courses.
Ali Abdul never set out to become a full-time YouTuber, but after quitting his job as a doctor, he now makes $4.6 million from his YouTube production channel.
Abdel started his channel in 2017 while studying medicine at Cambridge University. After graduation, he continued to work at it: for two years every evening and on weekends along with his full-time job as an Assistant Physician in the UK’s National Health Service, with a salary of $50,000.
In August 2020, Abdul took a leave of absence, as many British doctors do after completing their two-year basic training. He has planned to retire from his YouTube channel and travel the world during this time. “Then the pandemic came and I became a full-time YouTuber,” he says.
While his travel plans were on hold, Adbaal devoted himself entirely to his YouTube channel, which at the time had nearly 900,000 subscribers – and now has 2.3 million. “After learning about entrepreneurship, I’ve found that as much as I’ve and still enjoy medicine, it’s not as fun as doing my own things,” he told Business Insider.
At the time he cared about his full-time YouTube presence, Abdul had three full-time employees. Despite his aversion to risk, which he attests to himself, hiring his first full-time employee – Head of Content – in 2019 was the best decision ever. “That was a turning point in our work,” he says. “The additional production that the company was able to achieve with one additional person has boosted growth and sales.”
Online courses are his biggest source of income
To date, Abdul’s channel has gained more than 150 million views. From day one, he intended to make money on his YouTube channel. When he started making videos while in college, he had a side job teaching people how to apply to medical school. “The YouTube channel initially served as the content marketing engine for this business,” he says.
His most famous video is “How I Got #1 at Cambridge University” (“How I got into my class at Cambridge”). In it explains the method of conservation. Gradually, he started delving into other content as well, such as general personal development, technical assessments, and entrepreneurship. Another successful one Video From April 2021. Abdul separates his passive income streams with which he earns $27,000 per week.
Abdalal’s biggest source of income is the online course, Part-time Youtuber Academy, which raised $2.4 million in 2021. Pricing for the course, which teaches you how to run a successful YouTube channel, starts at $1,495. Several times a year it holds courses with up to 400 participants.
As with many online content creators, revenue from AdSense, the YouTube advertising program, is one of the smallest sources of income: $360,000 so far this year. He’s also earned $800,000 from courses on the Skillshare learning platform, and money from brands, sponsors, and affiliate marketing links. Overall, Abdul expects his company’s sales to be around $4.6 million by the end of 2021.
“Creators tend to see YouTube as their only source of income,” Abdul said. “But once you start looking at it from a diversification perspective, you realize that there are actually a number of other sources of income.”
Abdel-Aal told Business Insider that he considers his YouTube channel to be his most important marketing tool. The free content he posts on the platform attract potential customers who might add themselves to his email list or buy one of his courses. “This is the time when you can really start monetizing those parts of the audience more effectively.”
His company is like “the inverted pyramid in which everything depends on the individual.”
Behind the scenes, Abdul runs the company like any other media company. His team has grown to 19 people, including writers and editors, and he recently rented a workspace in London for $1.7 million in fixed annual costs.
Unlike a media company, Abdul’s well-being is closely linked to it. If their Youtube content is not good, it will affect the rest of the company as well. “A traditional company is like a pyramid, one person at the top and people at the bottom,” he says. “In a creative company, on the other hand, it is an inverted pyramid in which everything depends on the individual.”
Abdul has mixed feelings about the company relying on him so much. When things don’t go well and he has to rearrange his own plans to make another video, he’s often not happy about it. But if all goes according to plan, the upside for him will also be evident: “It’s an incredible world we live in, where YouTube can generate income,” he says.
This text has been translated from English by Mascha Wolf. You can find the original here.
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