How would you INVEST your FREE TIME to make more $$$?

[Ipv6Ready]

I started talking to people about funding youtube channels, me and my partners fund the start up, cameras, studio and editors... the talent comes on board for no wages but a split on revenue.

 

[SilverDJ]

This can work if your sharp and you know your stuff and most importantly know the market your in. I used to (still do occasionally) make a little money buying and selling camera gear. I focused on olympus gear, film and digital, because I knew the products fairly well. With a few bookmarks I could go through pretty much every olympus camera and lens offered for sale publicly in australia in about 25 min a day. The big money is in ads where someone hasn't advertised their stuff properly, which is where knowing your stuff comes in. I bought an E-3 and 12-60mm lens for $275 once. It was advertised as olympus DSLR with missing battery but I knew it by sight. Not being able to turn the camera on would have instantly put people off but I had my own and it worked properly. I kept that kit but if I had to buy another at the time it wanted to sell it it would have been worth $800. Sometime a bargain is well advertised and it's just about speed and sometimes it's about doing a little detective work to figure out what someone is actually selling from the out of focus phone pictures they posted.
After a while you become a bit of a conneseur of these sorts of ads. It's all in the little details.

I've been doing this for probably 15 years now, buy and selling stuff on ebay, mostly for fun, but the margins can be very large.
As you said, know your stuff and what it's worth, have automated email alert searches for bargains and grab them when they come up. Follow up with good quality ad with lots of detail and properly framed and exposed high resolution photos.
Don't buy nickel and dime stuff, it's not worth your time. I personally won't sell anything on ebay unless I'm making $50-$100 profit, it's just not worth the effort.

 

[SilverDJ]

I started talking to people about funding youtube channels, me and my partners fund the start up, cameras, studio and editors... the talent comes on board for no wages but a split on revenue.

If you treat a Youtube channel like a startup, hiring editors and "talent" etc, then you are doing it wrong. It's a ridiculously congested market at the mercy of a wildly changing algorithm. Most Youtube channels make hardly anything. $1-$2 CPM revenue. Most Youtube channels barely make enough each month to buy a pack of toilet rolls.

 

[Jason1]

take the trade advice, if you considering starting a business, you need way more free time than 10 hours a day lol, as after business hours your up till 1am doing paper work.
Plus in the age of social media customers expect you reply to their stupid questions 24/7.

Do a trade and make more money and have better job prospects than those uni kids.
Ive done both secondary education and a trade, the trade was by far the best of those two.
uni degrees aren't worth the paper they are written on these days

 

[Ipv6Ready]

If you treat a Youtube channel like a startup, hiring editors and "talent" etc, then you are doing it wrong. It's a ridiculously congested market at the mercy of a wildly changing algorithm. Most Youtube channels make hardly anything. $1-$2 CPM revenue. Most Youtube channels barely make enough each month to buy a pack of toilet rolls.

But that's the thing.... that's because most start with zero base. We are talking to many "instagram" and other people who already have a following that have a story to tell... but not have jumped to full time pro..... ie must have 100,000 followers

Talent are aware we are not providing content that they are the content but for many to take the next step is to pay professionals for camera work, editing and that's not cheap but we offer it for free for a multi year agreement revenue split and long term residuals.

As for our cameraman and editors, they are working as freelancers until we can offer full time jobs. We envisage we need 8 talents for full time cameraman and 12 to have full time editors to fully utilize the time and studio.

 

[SilverDJ]

But that's the thing.... that's because most start with zero base. We are talking to many "instagram" and other people who already have a following that have a story to tell... but not have jumped to full time pro..... ie must have 100,000 followers
Talent are aware we are not providing content that they are the content but for many to take the next step is to pay professionals for camera work, editing and that's not cheap but we offer it for free for a multi year agreement revenue split and long term residuals.
As for our cameraman and editors, they are working as freelancers until we can offer full time jobs. We envisage we need 8 talents for full time cameraman and 12 to have full time editors to fully utilize the time and studio.

You're a Production Company, gotcha.
You missed the MCN boom by a good 5 years
BTW even with 100,000 followers, even if every one subbed on Youtube (that doesn't happen, but let's just assume), and even if every one of those subs watched the video (again that doesn't happen, but let's again just assume), that's only a few hundred bucks total revenue per video. You might need more than 8 talents...

 

[Ipv6Ready]

You're a Production Company, gotcha.
You missed the MCN boom by a good 5 years
BTW even with 100,000 followers, even if every one subbed on Youtube (that doesn't happen, but let's just assume), and even if every one of those subs watched the video (again that doesn't happen, but let's again just assume), that's only a few hundred bucks total revenue per video. You might need more than 8 talents...

Its been happening for 7 years Im outlining how it got started -> some now have over few million subs and we get them 200,000 pretty smart in 6 months.

The hard part is the content and deciding what is worthwhile, ie we wouldn't invest in a pretty face/body

 

[Ipv6Ready]

PS when me and two other started this 7 years back, it cost us very little, each one had skills at prosumer level but worked full time jobs in other fields, but individually we were into editing, camera work and graphics etc.

Like anything "you" need to work out what you know well and study it and use that knowledge.

It literally cost us very little, as we were all diehard hobbyist in this field, one cameras, one editing and the other graphics, we met by other "instagramers" asking us about photos, editing etc. and we kept crossing path where, we were hired separately on same jobs and we were known for output where the cost surpassed the "quote" for the job... ie many were below cost lol.

We all had near professional gear and we kept on crossing path on separate jobs, than one day over beer we realised, all of us did this for fun not money. And thought why don't we offer a package deals, and we can meet up for more beer lol.

In the beginning we were spending more money than what we quoted on labour as a package......

The real accelerator into nice earner was when we offered a talent help who could not afford the service, we still produce her vids and keeps 65% 5 years on. In the beginning it was ZERO for her and 100% us... At that time she had 2565 yt followers 65,000 instagram, 15,00 or so twitter and 4,000 naver, as it grew, we formalized the contract and she now get 65% revenue and us 35%.

Started getting a small stable of talent and now only the graphics artist work on the project full time as MD. The output have surpassed my camera work etc.