How I make a living from publishing my own content

This is an article I have been thinking about writing for a while.

How I make money can often come up in comments on my YouTube channel particularly where I’m discussing products or invite a guest who owns or works for a particular brand or business.

The suspicion is I’m being paid to interview certain guests or feature certain products.

My goal right from starting my channel was to be fully transparent. I did call it The Honest Channel after all!

So I can hand on heart say I’ve never been paid by anyone to be interviewed on my channel and I have never been paid to review a product.

That leaves me with three routes to earning which are: advertising revenue from ads shown on YouTube around my content, affiliate links in articles and descriptions, and declared sponsor messages on podcast episodes.

I’ll expand on all three which, combined, mean I can make a living publishing content on my own platforms (YouTube, this website, Apple Podcasts and Spotify) and on my own terms. Something that for my final 10 years working in journalism I was absolutely desperate to do.

YouTube Advertising Revenue

So let’s firstly take a look at why YouTube advertising revenue alone is not yet enough to fully pay my way. And I don’t yet pay my poor husband who spends most weekends editing my videos!

I guess the first point here should be that having my channel hacked and taken down for 8 days last year did teach me you can’t afford to have your eggs in one basket as a content creator – so I need to have more than one revenue stream.

That said, you need to get a LOT of views to make an average monthly salary on YouTube. Revenue per 1k views can vary depending on the season, state of the economy etc, but you’re talking around £7/8 or roughly $9/10 per 1000 views on a channel like mine.

That’s fine for popular videos, but I also like to shine a light on lesser-followed topics – my latest video on pelvic organ prolapse being a prime example – relating to health and wellbeing. I have many videos like that where my earnings for the entire 30/40 minute episode can be as low as £40/$50.

An average number of views across my videos at the time of publishing is probably around 15,000 so that’s approx £120/$150 per video. Between my husband and I it takes days of work to produce each one so we want to see that average grow and ad revenue become more reliable.

Affiliate Links

Then there’s affiliate or commissionable links. Each time I mention a product on the channel I will usually try to source a trackable link for it that I can share with my audience which means I will get a percentage of the sale for the referral from my channel or website.

This has become a really important revenue stream that allows me to do what I do full-time. Until the end of 2023 I had essentially worked two jobs – one in journalism, the other building my own platforms.

Now I focus on my own content and it is affiliate revenue that made it possible. I do see push-back from some viewers (usually not regulars) about including affiliate links.

But I believe that as long as they are clearly flagged as being affiliate then these commissionable links are a totally fair way to make income in a digital world where creators like me are publishing content free of charge.

Critics will say something like, ‘How can I believe you when you have an affiliate deal with this brand?’.

But the beauty of third party platforms like ShopMyShelf, which I use, is that you can type pretty much any branded product into their search bar and it will spit a commissionable link out at you in a second.

There’s no need to contact the brand directly. You can also use ShopMy to request discount codes from brands too in the touch of a button. In other words no ‘affiliate deals’.

You are free to recommend products you genuinely value with no editorial interference. And I often include products for which I don’t have an affiliate link too because commission shouldn’t cloud your judgment.

Sponsored Segments

I resisted including sponsor slots on my episodes even after launching a podcast. Ultimately I wasn’t sure how viewers would respond or whether it would affect engagement.

Last year I tried a couple featuring the ZIIP Halo device (which I had already been using for two years so that seemed like a no-brainer) and I’ve also done a couple with a fitness platform because I felt there were synergies with my message of it never being too late to get stronger.

These sponsor slots are typically around 60 seconds in which I’ll first state that it is a sponsored segment and I then share info about the brand or product, before returning to the topic of my episode. On YouTube episodes there is also an ‘Includes Paid Promotion’ message at the start of the video.

I have actually not had one negative comment from viewers about introducing sponsored slots. I think we are so used to hearing and seeing them these days.

Still, I have paused doing them on the channel and podcast for a while simply because I find haggling over rates etc with potential sponsors a bit stressful and I wanted to have time to take stock.

Channel Membership

So these are my main sources of income. I also do a little voiceover work from home and contribute to some radio programmes from time to time.

YouTube have introduced Channel Memberships where viewers pay a small monthly subscription to access special perks and additional content like member-only posts. I recently activated memberships on The Honest Channel which includes loyalty badges, priority responses (because member comments are flagged to creators so they can’t be missed) and member-only posts and videos.

Where from here?

So from here the plan is as always to keep going, keep growing, to be honest, open and transparent and to publish content that informs, encourages and inspires my audience.

I don’t have ad slots on this website yet – that’s an option but right now I’m enjoying the fact I can drop little ads of my own in my content.. like this!

Speaking of my newsletter. I now have 2.5k subscribers to my monthly update rounding up all my latest content – plus there is usually a great giveaway which all newsletter subs are automatically entered into!

The newsletter is not monetized – I approach brands and ask if they would be willing to put up a prize and thankfully a lot do, but no money changes hands around that. It’s as straightforward as they supply the prize and I include info on their products in the newsletter when announcing the giveaway and I promote that month’s giveaway on my YouTube community page and Instagram.

An option in future might be to have an advertiser slot on the newsletter but I don’t have the time or the technical know-how to sort that out right now 😁

I would also love to share my experience through public speaking and events – and potentially even to explore something like a documentary series around what it means to age well.

Sleeping soundly

So there it is. I wanted just to get this down in writing so that next time someone comes along accusing me of taking money to review a product or only sharing a product for the affiliate money, I can just drop this article in response.

My goal is not to be holier than thou about it. There are lots of content creators who also strive to be fully transparent and above board.

The late Wayne Dyer said you can’t control your reputation when it’s in the hands of others, but you can control the reputation you have with yourself.

That’s ultimately what lets you sleep soundly at night.