Why I gave up pursuing YouTube Full Time
Giving up the dream... or dodging a bullet?
In 2011, I was working a corporate job I didn’t like, wasting away in my cubicle dreaming of better things.
Just a year prior in 2010, I was a full time freelance video editor in the film industry editing wedding and corporate videos from 2008-2010 in the previous US recession. While it was great being my own boss and working on my own schedule, I was always dependent on other people’s work to make a living.
The thought of making a living or any type of money on YouTube was a pipe dream back in the day. When freelance video opportunities dried up in 2010, I was forced to go back on the wage train, working for someone else after being my own boss for 2 years. I gotta admit it was a big blow to my ego as I had pride being my own boss and working whenever I wanted, not having to obey “The Man”. I was “The Man”, man.
However, pride can only get you so far until you can’t pay your rent and get an eviction notice at the fancy overpriced apartment you’re staying at.
Way to stick it to “The Man” when I had to go back working for him.
I did a video about my time in the film industry and do plan on doing a more detailed blog in the future.
Wanting to make a better life for myself, I stumbled upon this video from Con Bravo 2011 with AngryJoe, Spoony, and Doug Walker talking about how to start a webshow and make a living doing it. I watched every minute of this video in complete awe, realizing that it could be possible to make a living making YouTube videos.
Since I already had video editing experience and also experience running my own business and being my own boss, the thought of making a living with my own video content sounded like a dream come true. I didn’t have to edit someone else’s poorly shot wedding and corporate videos anymore and would have the freedom to film myself being a jackass on camera and get paid for it!
My “Gears of Duck Hunt” video. Originally shot and released in 2011.
Daydreaming about Full Time YouTube made my workdays at the corporate dungeon much more bearable thinking about better things. I would have delusions of grandeur appearing on the Ellen Show as my old coworkers are watching in awe stuck being corporate sheep. I also dreamt about having a million subscribers and me not being a corporate sheep in the cog anymore. I already had relative success in the Dragon Ball Z Web and Anime Music Video communities where I got millions of website hits and won Anime Music Video awards at conventions which inflated my ego. Surely, I could just easily recreate those successes in any venture I wish!
Oh boy, did YouTube serve me a massive piece of humble pie.
My initial YouTube channel name was going to be “Ryan Ball Z” which was going to be me with Dragon Ball Z like powers fighting super villains. However, my longtime friend Josie, who went by “Kendamu” on the Kanzenshuu forums messaged me saying they were going to be moving from Indiana to Southern California where I live. Josie had already made a show called “Wild Project Battle Geek Plus” in 2010 which was a parody of Japanese sounding titles and wanted me to help reboot the show to just plain “Battle Geek Plus”. Battle Geek Plus sounded a million times more catchy and was way cooler than “Ryan Ball Z”, so at least we had a much better show and channel name. I registered the battlegeekplus.com domain in May 2011 along with the initial YouTube channel and Josie moved here to Southern California in the Summer of 2011.
I had won about $1500 in prize money from the Anime Expo 2011 Anime Music Video contest which helped me purchase my first DSLR camera, the Canon T2i (which served us until 2016 and was replaced with a Nikon DSLR). We shot several videos over the summer of 2011 and launched Battle Geek Plus on the now defunct blip.tv, our old channel on YouTube, and our website on October 1, 2011. Our focus was a video game channel that produced reviews, skits, let’s plays and more.
Initial subscribers and traffic was super slow at first as it was only our personal friends and family watching our videos and a few random subscribers. I distinctly remember our subscribers being stuck at 39 for the longest time before we hit that magical number of 40.
Some people may not know or remember this, but before the 1000 subscriber and 4000 hour watch requirement for YouTube partnership, nobody knew the exact criteria for becoming a YouTube partner. However, if your videos got a decent amount of traffic, you could monetize some videos, but not all of them like the YouTube partnership offered.
Our first “viral” hit was our Batman Arkham City Addiction video we made in November 2011 when Batman Arkham City was released. I was away from my computer at the time, but Josie called me one day telling me the Batman Arkham City Addiction video got over 10k+ views overnight on our old channel (this current video has only 3k views) which led to people discovering us and helping us get our first 200+ subscribers. I got an email from YouTube saying I could have certain videos eligible for monetization, but not a full partnership yet. I submitted as many videos as I could to get monetized and surprisingly, most of them were able to get monetized, but not all of them.
I recall trying to submit several of my “Kung Kwon Todd” videos for monetization, only to get rejected for most of them. By the end of November 2011, we had started making a dollar per day off YouTube which gave me hope I was eventually gonna get off the wage slave train in the distant future. Or so I thought…
Demonetization and Moving Channels
In the spring of 2012, I checked our adsense and noticed we had our first $100+ day which was highly unusual for our channel as we were getting $1-$2 at most per day. I was overly excited thinking Full Time YouTube was eventually going to become a reality for us. Until….
A day later, I had gotten the dreadful email from YouTube that the old Battle Geek Plus channel was no longer eligible for monetization. Apparently, there was an exploit in 2012 where people used bots and programs to massively click on YouTube ads on people’s channels, increasing the ad revenue with invalid clicks. This exploit hit popular channels like Markiplier and many others. Along with us, unfortunately.
I had to break the bad news to my crew and was devastated that my dreams of escaping the office and making a living being Kung Kwon Todd and many of my other wacky characters was no longer feasible. However, we all agreed to keep the channel going to amass more subscribers so we could move to another channel that could get monetized.
We kept posting videos on the old channel until August 2012 where we gathered over 2000+ subs and then moved on over to our current channel. Even though it says our channel was started in August of 2012, I still consider October 2011 our actual start date. Sadly, only 500+ of our subs migrated over to the new channel at first. Since we were a new channel and I had no adsense account, we still had to post videos without getting monetized for a while.
YouTube Partnership and Maker Studios
Around the spring or summer of 2013, we had about 1200+ subscribers and YouTube made the announcement that all channels were now eligible to become partners. I immediately signed up without an adsense account, but the channel couldn’t be properly monetized unless I had a working adsense account or sign up with a Multi Channel Network (MCN).
I was looking around for MCNs and eventually signed up for the ill fated Maker Studios who eventually was going to be bought out and dissolved by Disney in 2015. Maker offered a 50/50 split and since I didn’t have an adsense account at the time, I accepted it which my crew didn’t agree with me on.
YouTube pays you about 55% of the ad revenue you receive and keeps 45%, so imagine only earning about 50% of that 55%. Our channel wasn’t even earning a dollar a day anymore in 2013 due to migrating to a new channel and losing a ton of our old subscribers.
Channel Awesome and Screenwave Media
In the summer of 2014, we had just been accepted onto Channel Awesome, home of the Nostalgia Critic and we were going to be featured on their supposedly high traffic website. Channel Awesome started posting our videos in November 2014 which got mixed reactions from their fanbase, but it did increase our viewership from 60 views a day to about 200+. A very far cry from the heavy hitters on the Channel Awesome website like AngryJoe, Linkara, and Doug Walker getting five to six figure viewcounts a day.
It was nice getting a boost in viewership and subscribers, but with the advent of adblockers and ads not being played much on embedded videos, we didn’t really see much of the income. Being on Channel Awesome in 2014 increased our monthly pay to at least $5+ a month, but far from our 2011 glory days of a dollar per day and we were pulling in far more views than in 2011.
In 2015, our contract with Maker Studios was set to expire after a mandatory 2 years and I immediately opted out. Maker tried to bargain with us to increase our split to 60/40 or 70/30 which was still an absolute joke. Luckily we got out of that contract, but we only made around $24+ during our 2 years there which we never got paid for as now the threshold for YouTube partner payments was $100+.
We had a meeting with Screenwave Media who was the MCN of the Angry Video Game Nerd and many of my fellow Channel Awesome producers. They offered us not only a generous 80/20 split, but access to game codes from companies, invites to gaming related events, and many more. Thanks to Screenwave, I was able to get on the guest lists for both The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest every year. They also helped get me onto the influencer mailing lists of SNK, Sega, Activision, EA, Toys For Bob, and a few other companies.
Unfortunately, blip.tv was going to be shut down in the summer of 2015 after getting acquired by Maker and Disney. The threshold for getting paid was $25 and we only made about $24+ just like our time with Maker, so we never got paid out by blip.tv
Next Viral Hits
In the spring of 2015, Josie and I went to the Dragon Ball Z Resurrection F Hollywood Premiere and recorded video of it, getting over 100k+ views overnight as it was a hot topic at the time.
Due to copyright, most of the video is now muted, but luckily it’s still up.
We made over $100+ from that video and used it to buy a Rode Interview mic we used at E3 for interviews. Our time on Channel Awesome in 2015 was increasing our monthly income to around $10+ per month which I used to reimburse myself for the battlegeekplus.com hosting fees and other expenses. We still were in the red, but at least we were getting paid consistently and I was also using my day job income to keep us afloat.
In 2017, we did a Nintendo vs. Sega crossover with the Nostalgia Critic that got over 100k+ views which was another viral hit.
Luckily we released the video after the 2017 adpocalypse and made over $200+. The influx of new views and subscribers increased our monthly income to $20-$30 per month. I had finally decided to get an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to keep up with the constant updates from Adobe to make videos and images easier to edit. 2017-2018 was the absolute peak of our channel viewership wise, but we still weren’t making a profit due to the webhosting and Adobe Creative Cloud expenses. I was still using extra money from my day job to keep us afloat.
Change the Channel and Decline
In the spring of 2018, several of my fellow Channel Awesome Producers posted a long list of allegations against Channel Awesome which made me leave the site entirely. While we got a small boost in income posting our goodbye video and the influx of views and subscribers from the controversy, it didn’t last long as Channel Awesome was our main source of views and income for the past 4 years. We were making around $20-$30+ a month on average during our peak in 2017-Early 2018, but that all plummeted to under $10 a month later after people were moving on from the controversy.
After E3 2018, my old crew left the Battle Geek Plus channel to move on with their lives and pursue other things. I still kept doing videos on the channel out of obligation, but I also starting pursuing other ventures like writing books and making T-shirts.
Profitable at Last
In the fall of 2018, I released my first book “A Winner Is You!” (no longer on amazon and downloadable for free on my website.) I started also releasing T-Shirts on Amazon which got me my first $900 a month early in 2019 and finally made my Battle Geek Plus efforts profitable after 8 years.
I also decided to put several episodes of Battle Geek Plus shows on Amazon Prime which started earning me $200+ a month. For a while, I was almost considering Amazon Prime the “YouTube Killer”.
I was surprised after leaving Channel Awesome, my endeavors were starting to become far more profitable.
However, after a few months, the book and shirt income rapidly declined to $300+ a month, but I was still running Battle Geek Plus at a profit. I was still releasing videos on a bi-weekly basis which made the channel earn $10 a month again, but it was apparent actual merchandise seemed to be the way to go rather than videos.
Also in 2019, I released my Dragon Ball Video Games book “Play the Dragon” and thanks to my friend Geekdom101 promoting the book, I earned my first $3000+ in a month, even surpassing my day job income for a little bit. I didn’t exactly quit my day job right away as this only happened once and it was a wise decision to see how it would pan out as time went on (spoiler: It didn’t).
It seemed like the dream of being a Full Time YouTuber was quickly changing to becoming more of a Full Time Author and T-Shirt creator. I was almost considering quitting YouTube to focus more on books and T-Shirts and just using YouTube to advertise them.
All good things don’t last forever
At the start of 2020, my book and t-shirt income went way down to $200 and sometimes $100 a month. Amazon started removing my T-Shirts that weren’t purchased in the last 60 days and it was too hard to keep up with it, so I decided to abandon Amazon T-Shirts all together.
As the pandemic hit, my book and shirt income along with my Amazon Prime show income was lowering down to $100 or less a month. It looked like my book, shirt, and Amazon Prime income endeavors were extremely short lived, reminding me of how fickle my income was back in my video editing freelance days. Luckily I still had my day job to keep me afloat, along with the opportunity to work from home which made it easier to focus on my side hustles.
I was almost about to quit YouTube in 2019 when my other side hustles were bringing in bank. But, after the decline in income, I had to think of way to still continue earning money from the channel. A certain game called “Dragon Quest X” which is currently the only Dragon Quest game to not be localized in English made me focus on my YouTube channel again as the other side hustles were slowly falling apart.
My first Dragon Quest X video
In October 2020, I released my series of Dragon Quest X videos which completely revitalized my channel and brought it more income and subscribers. I made about $20+ in the first month of this video’s release and my YouTube income increased from $10 a month since the Change the Channel incident in 2018 to $30+ a month in 2020. I decided to focus on Dragon Quest videos for most of 2021 to see if my dream of being a Full Time YouTuber was still feasible after a decade.
Quitting the Full Time YouTube Dream and more Decline
I was hyper focused on making Dragon Quest YouTube content in 2021 to keep up the momentum of my channel as I was riding a massive high from my Dragon Quest X videos in 2020.
However, I realized I was quickly burning out fast and getting sick of constantly making Dragon Quest content. I was at the point where I was getting tired of looking at Akira Toriyama’s art all the time. I tried to vary things up when I did some sponsored videos for my friends at SNK to promote some of their games, but those videos didn’t even get the views any of my Dragon Quest videos did.
I began to realize I was getting really sick of doing Dragon Quest videos and game reviews in general as I was massively burning out from YouTube on the eve of my channel becoming a decade old. I was so incredibly sick of the grind that I was contemplating if it was going to be worth it anymore. If I hated making videos as a side hustle, I’m sure I was going to hate it more doing it full time which sounded absolutely preposterous to my 2011 self.
I still remember being at my old job in 2011, daydreaming about being a Full Time YouTuber, but the person I was back then had drastically changed over the past decade. Now, I was questioning if I still wanted “The Full Time YouTube Dream”.
The final nail in the coffin for me was during the Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary video as me and many of my friends were hoping that they would finally announce the English localization of Dragon Quest X. Even though I was burned out and tired from making videos, especially Dragon Quest ones, my ultimate goal with my Dragon Quest X videos was to get enough interest in the game to finally get it officially localized.
But then, we saw the dreaded text: “There are no plans for a worldwide release.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on screen and it felt like all of my work had been for naught. That moment was when I was extremely fed up with Square-Enix not localizing Dragon Quest X and the other boneheaded decisions they’ve made over the years. I didn’t express it online or to any of my friends at the moment, but I finally realized:
I was just sick of all of it.
I was sick of the constant YouTube grind, sick of getting in front of a camera acting like an over-exaggerated version of myself, sick of the stupid influencer culture and clout chasing, the fluctuating trends, the bullshit YouTube algorithm, and the lack of consistent views and income.
More bad news would hit me as Amazon Prime removed my all of my videos in the fall of 2021 as they didn’t want influencer made video game content on Prime Video anymore and wanted it all on twitch. I ended up losing an additional $100+ a month no longer being on Prime Video. Focusing on Dragon Quest videos made me not focus on books, also making me lose another $100-$200 a month as my current book sales had declined to $20-$30 a month at most. 2021 was back to no longer making a profit with the channel after 2 years.
Back in 2019, Amazon Prime started removing some of my videos for apparent “Brand Misuse”, but I was still able to keep up some videos. I made this video back in 2019 when Amazon removed some of my videos from Prime.
Near the end of 2021, my MCN, Screenwave Media decided to let me and many of their more low performing partners be released from their network. This meant I finally had to get a new adsense account with my new secondary bank account I set up when I was earning money from Amazon for my T-Shirts, Books, and Prime video revenue. Luckily, I was now able to keep all of my YouTube ad revenue and not have to split it 80/20. Sadly, this meant no more special event invites or game codes, but I was still kept on many of the influencer lists anyways.
I got another kick in the face in 2023 when Shueisha, the parent company of the Dragon Ball manga, forced Amazon to remove my Dragon Ball books for copyright infringement. This also led to my amazon author account being deleted and removing the rest of my books from the site. I tried to appeal many times only to get rejected as Amazon does not re-instate author accounts unless you lawyer up which means I’ll never get it back.
After losing interest in YouTube videos after a decade and losing my side hustles, I made the pivot to Game Development in 2021 and haven’t looked back since.
The Ugly Truth
It’s pretty well known unless you’re a large channel like Markiplier, Mr. Beast, Pewdiepie, etc, Adsense pays absolute pennies. Many creators need to do merchandise, patreon, sponsorships, donations, etc. to survive the hellish YouTube landscape. It’s a shame Nord VPN and Raid Shadow Legends never contacted me. Their loss. :)
The closest I got to making a living wage was in 2019 with my merchandise efforts, but the fluctuation of merchandise revenue is far less stable than ad revenue. Unless you have multiple killer products and release them on a consistent basis, merchandise isn’t sustainable. Even after getting more than $3000+ in a month in 2019, I still kept my day job as I got far less for merchandise the month afterwards and less and less as time went on. It also didn’t help that Amazon kept removing my T-Shirts and closed my book and prime video accounts.
There are no set rules on how to make money or be successful on YouTube as the algorithm and trends are constantly changing every single day. What’s popular now will probably not even be popular in a week or 2. Remember Gangam Style in 2012? Spider-Man vs. Elsa? Kids eating Detergent? All of those trends came and went with the wind.
I remember reading on reddit about a full time Minecraft player in Europe who was getting super sick of Minecraft and wanted to play other games. As soon as he started playing other games, his ad revenue plummeted and he went homeless.
I know a person who used to do YouTube full time and absolutely hated it. Luckily he started building another business on the side with his YouTube earnings which let him stop focusing on YouTube full time and now he just uploads whenever he wants.
One person I know described YouTube as as “Inconsistent Paycheck” and had to live in fear every month if they were going to pay for rent or not. This person eventually got a real job for more stability.
I can talk about many many other examples, but YouTube was a platform that used to reward creativity. As soon as money got involved, they began to reward quantity over quality, forcing creators to cash in on trends and cater to what’s popular at the moment.
YouTube has literally become Hollywood 2.0.
When I worked in the film industry, it was like so many people trying to fit inside a crammed mouse hole trying to get their foot in the door. The same thing’s been happening at YouTube ever since it began.
Gone are the days of silly YouTube Poop Zelda CDi videos and people angrily reviewing games as silly characters. The gaming space in particular is ruled by drama and grifter videos constantly complaining about DEI, wokeness, and female breast sizes. Video essays have far taken over the old skit and angry game reviewers from the early 2010’s. I like video essays, but I don’t really ever see myself making one.
I used to do news with my old crew during our now defunct Waxing Pixels podcast, but I was never really a news guy. I always enjoyed doing funny skits and reviews which went the way of the dodo. Unless you’re the Angry Video Game Nerd or Angry Joe, standard game reviewing has been replaced with “talking head” videos with very little to no personality. YouTube started becoming more content based and no longer personality based meaning that people now just want to get a basic game review without the skits and extra fluff and move on with their day.
The problem with doing full time YouTube is you can’t really turn your brain off from it. YouTube is a constant hamster wheel to produce content to get the ad revenue, subscriptions, donations, sponsorships, etc. It’s hard to take breaks as YouTube doesn’t run in “Seasons” like traditional TV shows. The algorithm rewards consistent content favoring “quantity” with some hopes of “quality” added in. YouTube is a constant grind where you have to keep constantly pumping out content to satisfy the trends and algorithm. YouTube severely punishes your channel if you don’t upload consistently and get a decent viewership for the algorithm to recommend your videos to other people.
It’s not too different from my freelance video editor days where I always felt like I *had* to work. I remember in 2009 having 5 figures in my bank account, but feeling guilty and sick to my stomach if I took a break and wasn’t working on client videos to pay my rent. I would play Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV at night, feeling guilty I wasn’t sending out resumes on craigslist, media match, monster, or any other of the job posting sites looking for clients.
Somebody once said if you’re a full time YouTuber and need to choose between your passion project or the video that will make money, you have to choose the money making video 99.9% of the time to keep yourself afloat. If you’re doing YouTube for fun and one of your videos doesn’t perform, you’ll feel sad for a bit and quickly move onto the next idea. However, if you’re a full time YouTuber and a video does bad, you really feel the hit to your livelihood and can end up one step closer to living on the streets.
Depending on the type of videos you make, YouTube can either be the easiest job in the world or the most time consuming. If I just did non-edited talking head videos where I improvise everything with very little to no editing, I could pump out videos faster. However, I always tried to do more theatrical productions like the Angry Video Game Nerd and Classic Game Room which would take up a decent amount of time. I used to be good at doing weekly content, but the type of long form content I was making wasn’t going to be sustainable for long as I was burning out from it. Let’s not forget the administration side of things like choosing video topics, scheduling, managing the finances, merchandise, sponsorships, and a whole ton of *non video* stuff that every YouTuber needs to deal with. YouTube isn’t a 9-5 job, it’s a 24/7 job.
Why my Channel Failed
Alot of people are quick to throw the blame on the YouTube algorithm and the trends, but in all honesty, there’s no one to blame but myself for my channel failing.
The algorithm is a problem, but not the problem.
I would say the biggest problem is the passage of time as trends and interests change, just like any other endeavor and is not just limited to YouTube. You see it on TV and Hollywood all the time. People will talk about the Fantastic Four now, but probably not in a year or two.
Nothing is ever constant, but the only thing you can always count on is change.
The biggest problem with myself is I like to do different things all the time. I don’t like being stuck doing the same thing over and over which is a massive detriment to the YouTube crowd and culture. One week, I’ll do a Kung Kwon Todd video, the next week, I’ll do a Let’s Play, and the week after that, a random skit. There was no consistency to what I was doing which confused my viewers.
I also never liked following trends and what’s the hot thing in the moment which was also a recipe for disaster if you want to get any type of traction on YouTube. When Fortnite was the newest and hottest game, I was making videos about Kung Fu on the NES.
YouTube rewards creators for doing the same thing over and over again. Sadly, I am not one of those creators.
It makes total sense. If you’re a gaming channel and you release one video about cooking, nobody is going to watch that cooking video.
After our Batman Arkham City Addiction video became a hit in 2011, we didn’t capitalize on it more and make another 100 Batman Arkham City videos. We did do a follow up video for Batman Arkham Knight in 2015, but it didn’t even get anywhere close to the views we got on Batman Arkham City Addiction.
I could have capitalized more on Dragon Quest videos in 2021 and forced myself to work past the burnout, but after the terrible Dragon Quest 35th Anniversary livestream, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Especially when the parent company doesn’t care about the product. I also could have doubled down more on books, T-shirts, and Amazon Prime video, but those also proved to be unstable and fluctuating. Focusing on Dragon Quest videos made me halt production on merchandise for a very long time.
It pains me to see that most kids want to become YouTube influencers more than being doctors or lawyers or even just getting a job in general. The prospect of money has made people give into the “YouTube Dream” thinking they’ll become rockstars like Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Mr. Beast, and so on. While that’s not a bad thing, several influencers have resorted to harmful things like nuisance streaming, grifting, and prank channels which feed off negativity for clicks and clout.
If I didn’t pivot to game development, I could have easily jumped on news or drama grifting at the cost of my integrity and soul. There are a million other channels that already do news far better than I ever could. If I had to resort to drama grifting, I might as well just quit right on the spot as it’s the lowest bottom of the barrel content aside from nuisance streaming.
I would have had to change my channel to “Battle Grift Plus: Press Start to Woke!”
I was still trying to make 2008 content in the late 2010’s-2020’s. I didn’t move onto video essays or any of the more current trends of gaming videos. I still wanted to play silly characters and review decade old games rather than doing long form video essays. When everyone was talking about Five Nights at Freddy’s, I was talking about Duck Hunt on the NES.
Maybe my content was just mediocre, but you be the judge.
I failed because I kept trying to make different types of content that didn’t relate to audiences. I also didn’t capitalize on the stuff that was successful and on the constantly changing trends to please the algorithm.
And that’s ok.
I decided to give the YouTube influencer culture the middle finger, walk into my beat up car, and drove away to the beach.
“You should have done this!” “You could have done this!”
Over the years, people have told me “You should have done this!” or “You could have done this!” with my content. I’ve also had a YouTube “Guru” back around 2013-2014 tell me during a consultation: “Focus on what’s current and hot, nobody knows or cares about Kung Kwon Todd content”.
My response:
Needless to say, I didn’t go forward with that certain “guru”.
I realize that I enjoy making content the most when I’m doing it for fun and not for the money. Back when I was a freelance video editor, I enjoyed making anime music videos far more than doing a corporate factory walkthrough video with bad audio and VHS or flip phone quality wedding videos (also with bad audio) that paid me money. Making any type of money back during the Dragon Ball Z Web days was a fantasy and I did it more as a creative outlet and not a way to earn money.
My reasons for getting into YouTube were mostly monetary as I wanted to get out of my corporate dungeon. Maybe if I pursued YouTube for fun, the channel would have been more successful and the money would have come later. I admit I did have some genuine fun expressing myself on camera and playing silly characters, but the world moved onto different type of content while I still stayed in 2008 skit land.
The most important thing is I stuck to what I knew best and maintained my integrity rather than selling out and following the trends. I’d rather quit and walk away than ever complain about DEI, wokeness, and all of the other crap that grifters spout about on a daily basis just to get views, subscribers, and ad revenue.
Many people suggested that I do streaming on twitch or YouTube and I actually have, but I’ll save that for another blog entry.
Postmortem Income
Ever since I started my YouTube journey in 2011, I made around (rough estimates):
Old YouTube channel: Around $200+ (November 2011 - Spring 2012)
Current YouTube Channel: $1700+ (August 2012 - August 2025)
I wasn’t properly monetized on YouTube until 2013 and couldn’t keep the $24+ under Maker Studios or blip.tv. So, let’s count when I was properly monetized with Screenwave Media in the Spring of 2015 up to August of 2025 which is a little over a decade.
Amazon T-Shirts, Books, and Prime Video: $6000-$7000+ (Fall 2018 - Fall 2023)
I no longer have access to my amazon data due to losing my seller accounts, but that’s a rough estimate of what I probably made.
Twitch: $50
After 14 years at the time of this article, I’ve only made around $9000 from YouTube, Amazon, and Twitch combined. Definitely nowhere close to a living wage.
Light at the end of the tunnel and the future
Within the first 6 months of releasing my first commercial game “Popcorn Rocket”, I had made over $11k across all platforms and consoles. That’s nearly 10x of my first decade of YouTube ad revenue and surpassed all of my old merchandise efforts combined. I don’t earn much from the game nowadays, but it still covers some basic expenses and a nice cheap indie game purchase here and there. I do plan on writing a more detailed blog on the experience of making Popcorn Rocket and game development in general.
While YouTube isn’t my main focus anymore, I still make a consistent $12-$15+ a month with the occasional game devlog and mostly with short videos where I voice act comic book panels, do silly action figure skits, and other silly shorts in general. Even with less effort, I’m still making as much as my old Channel Awesome income years after leaving them. I just got paid by YouTube recently and will be investing the money into my next game project.
Also, my decade old backlog still produces a little pocket change here and there with me not having to ever make content at that level anymore. I do plan on talking about short videos and tiktok in a future blog entry.
At the time of this blog entry, I still haven’t cracked 10k subscribers after 14 years of YouTube and my current channel’s been up for 13 of those years. If you combine the 2k+ subscribers from my old channel and my current 9k+, that equates to over 10k but I can’t really consider that official until my current channel hits 10k. Nowadays, I hear it’s harder than ever to get the 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time for the YouTube partner requirements.
I heard it’s even tougher to get even 100 subscribers in these trying times. I still remember in 2011 when we were stuck at 39 subscribers, hoping to get to that magical 40. Also in 2013, being stuck in the 900’s before hitting the magic 1000. Now the channel is stuck at 9300+ subs and it’s still a long way to go until 10k. I’m pretty sure I’ll hit the 10k mark eventually, but there’s no real rush.
While game development is my main focus, I haven’t given up writing yet as I’m in the process of writing another book. After the debacle with Shueisha, I no longer want to write about IP that I don’t own. I’ve been working on and off on a 2nd memoir similar to my Vegeta Insane 20th Anniversary book which is a more expanded version covering my life outside of Dragon Ball Z and focusing on some of my early game dev efforts and getting into gaming at a young age. I have no idea when it will be done and also have no idea if I can launch it on Amazon, but maybe I’ll find a way. I also plan to write some books about my own IP and game development in the future as well.
I also run another business venture that requires far less work and is totally passive, giving me consistent money every month that I’ve been using to re-invest into the venture and my game dev projects. I’m extremely confident I can retire with it in the future if I keep it up and will do a future blog entry about it.
I still sell T-Shirts on the Battle Geek Plus website through redbubble as they won’t remove my shirts like Amazon did. I don’t get as much money from redbubble, but it’s nice pocket change here and there.
I still remember in my early YouTube years, having that fire in my belly with the determination to prove myself to the world and make a living off of it. I wanted to be on the YouTube gaming Mt. Rushmore next to the Angry Video Game Nerd, Angry Joe, Classic Game Room, Irate Gamer, and more.
Even though things didn’t work out as I planned, I’m still grateful it happened. It taught me so much about presenting myself on video, acting as myself and silly characters on camera, working with companies, creating a brand, and learning the harsh business side of things.
I don’t really crave the spotlight being in front of the camera anymore as I always felt my talents were better behind the camera. I’d rather be popular among 10 dedicated fans rather than a thousand who will most likely rip me apart if I don’t give them the content they want.
Whenever I see an influencer on social media complain about their view counts, I remember when I felt that way and now I just wish them the best of luck navigating the ever changing YouTube landscape.
I wanted to do YouTube to escape my 9-5, but the real 9-5 I needed to escape was YouTube.
Nowadays, I work a good day job that only requires me to go into the office 2 days a week (although I really miss working from home 5 days a week during the pandemic). The workload isn’t massive and also gives a good balance between my personal and work life, helping me pursue my other side hustles.
Back in 2022, I made this retrospective video about the first 11 years of my channel and delve heavily into the time I started YouTube and my trials and tribulations. I’ll probably also do a more detailed blog post talking about my YouTube journey in the future.
However, don’t let this post discourage you from the YouTube dream. If you got a goal, go for it. Learn from all the mistakes I made and try to keep up with the trends and the algorithm. My goal with this post was not only to show my experiences and the mistakes I made, but to help others out.
As for me, I don’t ever plan to go back into the influencer space. I’m enjoying my time more being off camera, making video games and dumb shorts.
I still respect my friends and others who were able to make YouTube their full time income, but in the end, it just wasn’t meant for me and that’s fine.
And no, please don’t suggest how I can “fix” my channel. I’m over it and all suggestions will just go into the nether.
I took my channel and nuked it from orbit.
As a grumpy and jaded 40+ year old dude who’s been through the YouTube grind and has moved onto other things, I just go where the wind takes me now and I live on my own island far away from the influencer culture with no more f*cks left to give.
Wherever that wind takes me, I’ll let you all know.
