- Judd Albring is a YouTuber and runs a newsletter. He makes $20,000 a month from his online business.
- He spends up to 10 hours a week creating and posting content with the help of freelancers.
- His content uses affiliate links, so he gets a commission for products bought through his referrals.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Judd Albring, a 50-year-old YouTuber in Chicago. Insider has verified his income with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
At the beginning of my career, I held several jobs in sales but could never keep a job for long because of my drinking. At 35, I got sober, but finding work was still hard because I had to explain time gaps in my work history, so I started to drive for Uber and clean windows on weekends to make ends meet.
In 2017, I started to research how to make money online and teach myself digital marketing because I wanted to make extra money from home while taking care of my boys. My wife is a teacher, so I became a stay-at-home dad because it made more sense financially than paying a full-time sitter. From my research, I decided to start a YouTube channel.
Now, between my ad revenue and my earnings as an affiliate marketer, I’m making more than $20,000 a month, and I work only eight to 10 hours a week.
I posted my first YouTube video in 2017, but I wasn’t sure how to monetize it
On my channel, I share tips for working a remote job, work-from-home opportunities, and affiliate-marketing advice to teach people how to make money online from anywhere. My goal in the beginning was to make just an extra $1,000 a month, but in my first year, I made only $0.13 from a book I recommended to someone.
The second year, my channel started making a few dollars a day from Google AdSense as my subscriber count grew. My channel finally took off in September 2021 after one of my videos went viral because everyone was at home in pandemic lockdowns and many were looking for ways to make money remotely. People mainly found me from search, but some found me on Facebook. That video hit 5.2 million views, and I now have 304,000 subscribers on YouTube.
I started making several hundred dollars a day from the YouTube Partner Program and more from the products recommended in my videos.
On YouTube, I became an affiliate, or someone who promotes a product in exchange for a commission of the sale, …….
