A couple of weeks ago, I went on a holiday to Canada. I mostly stayed in Toronto, ate away at some exclusive of Toronto’s exclusive restaurants including the 360 The Restaurant at the CN Tower, and met some amazing people.
I had loads of fun!
I was happy!
But not just because I was in Canada. One of my favorite destinations in the world.
Because I was finally having a taste of my freepreneur dream life, where the money would be pouring in, even while I slept (or vacationed like on this occasion)!
What's Covered in This Article
My path to freepreneurship
In 2018 when I lost my 8 to 5 job, I started working on my journey to freepreneurship. My chosen path was to try my hand at making money online by leveraging the internet.
I started off with a YouTube channel – EvaMtalii finance, before branching out to other income streams such as Etsy, iTalki, etc.
By the end of 2021, I had about 5 YouTube channels, including Travel with EvaMtalii, which is the subject of today’s post. And also a TikTok account.
In the weeks leading to my vacation in November, I spent time batch creating content and scheduling them so I don’t have to worry about them while I’m on holiday.
Around that time too, I posted 3 or so videos to the EvaMtalii TikTok account to revive it as I wasn’t going to use my laptop but still wanted to be sure I could create content.
A New Passive Income Stream
Although the strategy recommended by most creators to make it on YouTube is consistency in posting, I had made up my mind not to create any long-form content during my vacation unless it was something that came up during my travels.
Like this video here that I literally shot at the airport in Frankfurt:
So my strategy was to create content for the EvaMtalii TikTok account ad see how far I could get.
And during my vacation in Canada, the strategy was working amazingly! And continues to do so!
One morning, I woke up to hundreds of notifications from TikTok.
On further scrutiny, I quickly realized that one of my videos had gone viral while I was sleeping.
@evamtalii Mkisii ni mkisii 🤦♀️ #kenyansincanada #kenyansinqatar #kenyansingulf #evamtalii #foryou
In the coming hours, the video continued getting lots more views, comments, and likes. And as is expected, with the virality of that video, came a lot of bullying in the comments section. This further triggered the algorithms and the video kept going viral.
As at the writing of this post, the video has more than 500,000 views.
Later that evening while taking a shower, I had an aha moment on how best to take advantage of this new wave.
An idea came to mind. To link the EvaMtalii TikTok account with the Travel with EvaMtalii YouTube channel.
And on the home page, I put this video that I know would have a highly successful click through rate. Especially with the bullies 😊
By morning, this video was breaking the internet. Literally.
And garnering some crazy views. Which as you know by now, translates into shmoney.
In total, in November 2022, I had more than 600,000 views on this video alone. From the views on this video, I made $1,613 during the time in Canada, which really made the holiday more fun — in only two weeks of the video being live!
These are my statistics showing the revenue for the month of November while I was on vacation. Evidently they were pretty awesome days if you ask me:
Isn’t YouTube over-saturated?
As you can see, I earned $1,613 in one month from one YouTube video while vacationing in Canada. And the best part was that I didn’t have to bring my laptop!
So while I was enjoying Canada, indulging in finger-licking food and meeting amazing people — my YouTube channel kept 600,000+ viewers engaged, all by itself.
It was an amazing way to make money in my sleep, just like I had always imagine it would be!
And for me, it was a bit of a surprise how it all happened.
While recording this 25 second TikTok video about my friend’s Ford Mustang, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would go viral and garner 500k+ views.
I’ve heard people talking about how YouTube was getting too saturated. And, true, there are more than 38 million active YouTube channels on the platform. That’s a lot.
However, YouTube also has 2.2 billion monthly active users, based all over the world. Approximately 122 million of them are daily active users.
In other words — even though there are many channels — there are way more active users!
And, based on my experience, the potential is huge! If you play your cards well.
You too can make passive income right now!
And I am so excited to share the potential of both YouTube and TikTok!
Many people will tell you that YouTube is currently saturated and that it is difficult to make it as a newbie.
My experience above proves the opposite.
You too can start a YouTube channel right now – and succeed right away. It is possible. Even today in 2023.
The first thing that you must do is to start a TikTok account and if possible make sure it matches your YouTube channel name.
Next is to share link your YouTube channel on to your TikTok account by adding your YouTube channel link to your TikTok bio.
Edit your TikTok profile to link your YouTube channel on to your TikTok account.
You then create short videos on TikTok.
Once you start building an audience on TikTok, your TikTok followers will certainly turn to your bio to learn more about you.
Through your link they will be able to visit your YouTube channel without having to search for you on YouTube, and watch similar content. Thus, helping you gain more views on YouTube.
While it currently takes a lot longer to grow on YouTube, it will definitely take you a shorter time to grow on TikTok since TikTokers spend longer times on TikTok than they spend on YouTube.
Hence, one strategy that you can use to gain more YouTube views and subscribers is to promote your channel on TikTok.
The most important lessons I learned
And if you want to try, these are some of the most important things I learned:
- In order to maximize on the traffic that TikTok sends your way, you need to direct viewers to a video that is likely to appeal to a wider audience. My video for instance, shares the story of one of my subscribers who was deported from the US.
- Have presence in all social media channels and secure your brand name on all of them. In the event any one of your content goes viral on any of the platforms, you can leverage it for other channels.
- Create create create consistently. You never know which of your content will go viral.
- Take advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) and create content as strategically as possible. Remember that YouTube is really a search engine, so every one of your videos has a chance to be discovered by a viewer or subscriber.
Want to learn more?
Check out my videos on the EvaMtalii YouTube channel!
