Full transcript of “5 Ways to $5k Months with YouTube (under 10,000 subscribers)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 Most YouTubers are broke, not because they're lazy, but because they're focused on the wrong game. I made my first $5,000 month on YouTube with under 10,000 subscribers. And it wasn't from AdSense. In this video, I'll show you the five fastest paths to $5,000 months, even if you're starting from zero. Plus, the exact path that I took, what I would do differently now, and how you can shortcut the process. And if you're new here, why should you listen to me? Well, my name's Alexis Saranoya, and in my first year on YouTube since restarting a dead channel, I grew to nearly 50,000 subscribers, I had 1.5 million views on my channel, and I made over $150,000, not by going viral, but by treating YouTube like a business. If you want a hobby, skip this video. But if you want
0:45 to turn your channel into a real income stream, stick around. The real problem is most creators chase monetization like it's the finish line. I know because I was one of them. I thought once I was monetized, I would be rolling in the dough. But I quickly realized that $500 a month is not going to support my family of five. So, it's definitely not the finish line. In fact, it's only just the beginning. If you're focused on AdSense, you would need millions of views just to make $5,000 a month. But if you flip the model and lead with value and trust, you can hit $5,000 a month with under a,000 subs. So, here's what no one tells you. There are numerous ways to get there to the 5,000 a month. And I will share five of
1:30 those ways here, and each one works, but the key is choosing one to focus on. That's where most people go wrong. So, before I walk you through the five fastest ways to make money on YouTube, we need to start with something deeper. mindset. You have to actually believe that this is possible. Making 5,000 a month on YouTube isn't some far-fetched dream. It's not just for the top 1% of creators. It's extremely achievable. And honestly, once you do it, you'll wonder why you didn't start sooner. But most of us sabotage ourselves before we even start. We think, "I'm not techsavvy enough. I don't have a big audience. I'm too late to the game. I'm too old. I'm too ugly. I'm too soft-spoken." Whatever your excuse is, it's not the truth. None
2:15 of that is true. What is true is if you treat YouTube like a business and focus on value, service, and consistency, you will grow fast. Here's the data. Channels with just a,000 subscribers, and a focused focused offer can generate $3,000 to $10,000 a month in coaching, affiliates, courses, sponsorships, etc. A study from Think Media found that most creators who commit to two to three video uploads per week, a single clear offer, can start earning within their first 90 days, which was the case with me. I've seen clients go from zero to monetized in under 10 weeks. So, if you're still sitting there, I hope I could do this. I hope this works. I will try to make it work. I want to flip that mindset. Don't hope or try. Decide.
3:02 Failure is not an option. You need to go allin and you will win. Now that we have your mindset in order, let's get to the five paths to 5K. Starting with the slowest one first, because it's the one that everyone thinks of first. Number one, AdSense and sponsorships. AdSense is YouTube's built-in monetization program where you can earn money when ads play on your videos based on the views, watchtime, and niche. Sponsorships are when brands pay you directly to promote their products or services in your content. So, here's the reality check with this one. This path is slow and inconsistent. Your earnings depend heavily on how many views you get and CPM, which is how much you earn per thousand views, and that can vary widely from niche to even seasonality. It often takes a 100,000
3:49 views per month just to earn $1,000. Sponsorships, on the other hand, can pay well, but they usually come later once you've built influence, which you are a little bit more established. It's just not the fastest way to hit $5,000 a month. To give you some form of reference, I was making anywhere between $500 to $1,200 a month with YouTube ads when I started and still I'm making around the same and I had sponsors coming into my inbox around 8,000 subscriber mark. So, it is possible as a small channel. The next path is number two, high ticket coaching or consulting with either hourly or long-term package deal or a combo of both. So, what is it? Coaching and consulting involve offering your time and expertise to help someone get a specific result to have to give them some sort of transformation from
4:36 get them from point A to point B. You can charge hourly or create a package deal. And I recommend this path as it is the chosen path for me. However, it's not necessarily for everyone. If you offer, say, a $5,000 coaching package, one client is enough. That meets your $5,000 goal. If you charge $250 an hour, 20 clients for the month is enough. That meets your $5,000 goal. You don't need a big audience, fancy tech, or a fancy funnel. Just a clear offer, a Calendarly link, and some way for people to pay you. And content that shows you know your stuff, that you are providing value with your content, so people want to work with you. Option number three is paid community, membership communities like school, like Patreon, etc. So, what is it? This is a subscription-based
5:22 model where people pay monthly to access your community, training, and support. Think private groups and calls, behind the scenes, contests, etc. And how does this scale? Well, if you charge $20 a month and build a community of 250 people, that's $5,000 a month in recurring revenue. You get to create a tribe, help more people, um, help more people at once, and build long-term income that grows month over month over month. It's great for creators who enjoy connection and want to lead like a movement. Okay, number four is digital products. So, think courses, templates, mini guides, ebooks, etc. So, what is this exactly? These are one-time products you create and sell online. So, buyers get immediate access to them and you don't need to be involved in a live manner or in a real time setup. Why is
6:08 this so powerful? You make it once and it sells on autopilot forever until you take it down. So, for example, a $50 product sold 100 times is $5,000. A $500 product sold 10 times is $5,000. This model is amazing if your audience trusts you and wants your system or process for transformation. It takes work upfront to create these things, but it creates time freedom later once you're selling them on autopilot while you sleep. A caveat with this path is I only recommend it if you have a huge or large following. You usually need to send a ton of low ticket products to make a solid income consistently. Someone like Amazon can sell a $5 item and make millions, whereas you would make hundreds with less audience. So, it's just something to consider. If you're fine with making
6:53 $50 a month, then low ticket item might be the way to go. But if you really want to scale it up to be a full-time income as a beginner YouTuber, it might not be the best path for you. But like I said with all of these, if you focus on one, you can grow it. The last one, path number five is affiliate marketing. Uh so what is it? Affiliate marketing means promoting someone else's products and earning a commission when someone buys through your link. So, you can do this with software, with tools, Amazon gear, even courses. But the thing that's nice about this is you don't need to create any products on your own. You just recommend them and make a commission based off of them when you re recommend them to people. So, if your audience trusts your recommendation, this can stack over time. I've had months where a single affiliate link earned me hundreds. It's a great supplement, but
7:40 usually not the core of a $5,000 strategy, unless again if you focus only on this. However, when I was growing my channel yet to sell of my own stuff, I was promoting Sean Kel's video ranking academy and making affiliate commission for all the sales that he got from me. So, that was a nice bonus. Every month, it was around, I don't know, a few hundred to $1,000 every month. So, my point is this. This is only five ways. There's a plethora of ways to grow on YouTube, but the main point I want to make, and I really want to drive this point home, is don't try to do all five at once, or don't try to do all 10 at once. Pick one that fits you, then go allin. And here's how I did it. The first two months I was on YouTube, I just uploaded video after video after video. I uploaded three videos a week,
8:26 and I focused on tutorials and adding value and story. I shared my story and I provided tons of value without asking for anything in return. By month three, I had a few thousand subscribers and those subscribers started inquiring about my coaching. They wanted me to offer coaching and I wasn't doing it yet. So, I said, "Of course, I'll offer coaching." I made a calendar link and started offering 1-hour coaching with my YouTube subscribers. I was only 3 months into my YouTube journey and people wanted me to teach them how to grow their YouTube channel. That is the power of being a few steps ahead of someone. People will pay you to know what you know when you're only a few steps ahead of them. It's just like me right now. I would not pay someone that makes a million dollars a month to help me go
9:13 from 10k months to 20k months, right? I would want someone that's doing maybe 30k to 50k months to help me get there. So that is it. It's more appealing to me to work with someone that's more grounded in my current situation than has succeeded so far beyond my situation that they don't even remember how to do that and they don't know how to do it in this day and age. Right? Maybe they did that 10 years ago. So it is very valuable more than you think and I want you to hear this. You are valuable to someone a few steps behind you even if you feel like you aren't that far ahead. I was a brand new YouTuber and I was helping brand brand new YouTubers. So you can do this. So, what I did was I offered I started at $60 an hour, but I quickly raised that to $75 an hour and I had about 18 paying clients my first month. So, I surpassed around $1,400 or
10:01 about $1,600. By month four, I reached out and got a mentor and right away he doubled my price from $75 an hour to 150. So, I went right away. I already increased my revenue rapidly by just increasing the cost of my hourly rate. Then on top of that, we added in a high ticket coaching program, long-term coaching program of six months. With this combo of both the one-hour one-off calls and the sixmonth high ticket program, I surpassed €8,000, around $95,000 that very next month. So, in month four on YouTube, I made $95,000. That was my first big month. My revenue has consistently stayed above $10,000
10:48 every single month since then. In fact, the highest month to date was June of this year. I collected $52,000 into my bank account, around $60,000. So, how did I grow this quickly? Three things. Number one, I stayed relentlessly focused. Number two, I invested in a mentor who knew more than I did. And number three, I did not chase 50 different strategies. I mastered one. Right now, my only goal is to grow my channel and scale my coaching business until I reach my first million-doll year. Then I will think about adding in other things. That's it. I want to master this one thing before I considering adding anything else. And that's where most people go wrong. For
11:35 example, I have nearly 6,000 members in my free school community. I have asked myself more than once, should I monetize this? Let's do the math. If I charge $20 a month and only 10% of those 6,000 people joined my membership community, the paid one, that's an extra $12,000 a month into my bank account. It sounds tempting, right? But every time I bring it up to my mentor, he shuts it down. And here's why. He always asks me, "Would you rather make $10,000 by working deeply with one person or make $12,000 by being responsible for 600?" The answer is always the same. One person at 10K. The answer might be different for you. I'm in midlife at the
12:22 busiest time of my life with three young children and growing a business. I would rather work with only a handful of people and give them the highest possible value than try to wrap my tired brain mom brain around 600 people in a paid community depending on me. Now you may be asking, "Well, what about your free community?" Here's the thing. Since it's a free community, anything I do in there is above and beyond because it's free. If it's paid, there's more expectations and demand for you, for your information, your value, and your time. This way, I can create a beautiful space for creators to come together and support each other. I can show up there every week for live calls. But beyond that, my main focus is helping individual clients. And this is the trap
13:09 of shiny object syndrome. Every path requires effort, and every path seems easier until you get on that path. They all require a similar effort. But if you do one that is aligned with what you desire and your personality, it becomes so much easier to commit to. I love working with individuals and really getting to know them and their goals. I am also an introvert, so being in group calls and coaching in groups day in and day out is a little more draining for me and something I'm not that interested in, although I enjoy it a lot as well, but in smaller doses. I also really enjoy writing online courses and have a lot of experience with that. So courses interest me as well. And I do have one that I offer. It brings in passive income, but I don't even market it. And
13:55 I still average about four sales per month. So that's about at $500 a pop, that's about 2,000 a month on autopilot. If I sold just 10 a month, that's an easy 5,000. And honestly, that's an area I could double down on right now. But I am not allowing any distractions right now until I reach my million-dollar goal. I can easily create a call to action in videos about my courses in my newsletter every once in a while, but again, it's not my main focus. Same with YouTube ads and affiliate links. I make around a,000 a month combined from those without optimizing it. If I focused on that, I could easily grow that. But that's the thing, you have to choose and focus. Want to work hard up front and earn passively later? Digital products might be your lane. Prefer direct transformation and love working with
14:40 people? Coaching or consulting could be your sweet spot. love going viral and maximizing your volume, then AdSense might be worth chasing. Crave connection and community, memberships might be the most fulfilling path for you. And that leads me to my next point. If I had to start from zero, here's what I would do. Pick one niche and one problem to solve. Upload two to three videos that teach and tell stories every single week. Add one call to action, calendarly, or link to an offer, and make it easily accessible. and double check that your links are working. Funnel everyone to that one offer. Refine your offer based on what people ask for or what you learn along the way with each launch you do or each product you create. Focus on 100
15:27 true fans and not 100,000 views. And focus on developing one thing really, really well and you will succeed. Most people stay broke on YouTube because they're making content just to get views, not to build trust. waiting for monetization before offering anything. They're switching strategies every month. They try building a course, community, sponsorship, and coaching all at once. Build in layers. You don't need more content. You need a clear path and a reason for your content to exist in the first place. I've shown you five ways to get to 5K a month. Now, it's your turn to pick one and build a system that works for you. If you need help picking your path or want a mentor to guide you, feel free to reach out and apply for my mentorship. It's listed in the description below or just binge watch my tutorials. Either way, you can
16:13 get there. Don't listen to them, the naysayers, those not in the read, those that aren't in the arena doing this. Listen to me. You can do this. It's easier than you think. It's way easier than I ever thought possible. Hard work, long hours for sure, but it's worth it. Everything in life worth having requires that hard work, long hours, and dedication. Thanks for watching and if I left anything out, feel free to ask me in the comments below. I'm 100% transparent about my journey and I'm happy to share it with you so that you can get to your goals even faster. Thanks you guys and see you in the next one. Bye for now.
