Hey all! I'm a software engineer and content creator, operating mostly on YouTube (but also Tiktok, X, blog, etc). Originally I did programming tutorials but over the last year have started moving more towards "edutainment" to stay ahead of AI. Things like interesting or weird hardware projects, fun websites, useful apps built from scratch, that sort of thing.
My revenue from YouTube is pretty paltry, less than $100 for the 45k subscribers that I have. But, I love doing this on the side and it would be great if I could make some reliable income from it.
So, what would you suggest? I've done courses in the past that perform well on release, but dwindle off pretty fast. Monthly subscription-based course sites also require much more commitment than I have right now.
What's left? I'm all ears!
How would you monetize my content outside of YouTube?
byu/aschmelyun inEntrepreneur
Posted by aschmelyun
2 Comments
You could rest on sponsorship and affiliates deals to earn more
Package each build into small paid add ons like annotated source, a clean repo, CAD files, and a BOM with affiliate links, then sell it for $9 to $29 on Gumroad. Pitch lightweight sponsor bundles to dev tools, hosting, or PCB vendors that include a midroll, a pinned comment, and a couple of posts on X and LinkedIn. Run a ticketed live teardown once a month and test a tiny weekly email with one tip and one link, sell classifieds in it over time, and add GitHub Sponsors or Buy Me A Coffee so casual fans can tip without a big commitment. To keep ideas flowing and repurpose faster, try Burst, an iOS app you can find by searching “AI Writing Coach – Burst” in the App Store; it helps you capture ideas and turn one into platform ready drafts while coaching the copy.