[Journey] Road to 5k a month (using whatever means necessary)

[Yakimo1]

Hello Everybody, long-term lurker first time poster.

I have a full-time, fairly easy (20-30 hours a week, work from home) job and I have some free time to try to make some side money.
I want to make enough to eventually quit my job.
Currently I'm living in Tokyo Japan (I've lived here for over 14 years), and I finished my MBA a few years ago.


So I've tried a couple of different methods of making money.

The first was (Amazon FBA).
I made money with this for the first 6 months selling a specialized leverless controller made for fighting games, imported from China. This was a very niche product, and I made a lot of money until competition came in. The profits were something like (I'm going to post in USD$ to make things simple):
1st month: 3000$ profit
2nd month: 4000$ profit
3rd month: 5000$ profit
4th month: 7000$ profit
5th month 1500$ profit (competition came in hard)
6th month 1000$ profit

Then about 2 months ago my Amazon account got randomly blacklisted and I had to submit a bunch of documents to them. It took them about 6 weeks for them to unfreeze my account, and I needed to resend all of my stock back to Amazon.
This really fucked me over since it tanked the product ranking on all of my products, and it would cost a lot of money to relaunch all of the products.
This month I turned off all of my advertising on Amazon and I made about 500$ profit. I currently have roughly 13,000$ in Amazon inventory just slowly selling.

While Amazon FBA seems like it would be passive income... it's actually a decent amount of hands-on work. I found I needed to adjust the advertising budgets/bids daily to maintain a decent profit. I also had the bad habit of checking for sales every 30 minutes or so. To be honest I got quite sick of it, but it's probably the easiest to make money/scale for me. However, finding a good product to scale is very hard, even in Japan.


I'm considering opening a selling account on Yahoo or Rakuten (both similar to Amazon within Japan, but even larger). However I need to have a registered company to do so. I'm in the process of making one now. This might be a good way for me to sell the same stock over 3 market places instead of 1.


The second is (Youtube)

I have some limited video editing skills, but I made about 22 videos, including mostly youtube shorts and a couple of short videos of different types to test the waters. I currently have about 200 subscribers and my most watched short is about 210k views, with my second watched being at about 25k. I made some "how to" short videos, with the one having the most views at about 700.

I'm considering making youtube videos for the Japanese audience about how to make money on Amazon FBA. This niche is super oversaturated in English, but it's still very profitable in Japan, there's almost no one talking about it.
I can aim for making money on affiliate links to the software. The software I'm using is about 80$ a month, and affiliates get 25% of whomever signs up. If I make a good video I could send paid traffic to the video, and basically scale pretty high if I get a decent conversion rate.

The "side business" niche on Japanese youtube is also huge. Basically I could just take popular videos on how to make money (kindle KDP, print-on-demand or whatever), remake it scene for scene in Japanese and it would probably do OK.

The problem is I'm hesitant to show my face in my videos since my current employer might not be so happy if they found out. I'm not sure though. Japanese companies can be weird about this kind of stuff.



I'll try to update this thread as often as I can

 

[Verenasteven]

Hey Mate, Appreciate That, Good Luck On Your Journey.

 

[Yakimo1]

So I tried messing around with Youtube while working today, it's quite addicting.

So my youtube has a mix of different things I'm trying. But I've made about 10 "how-to" videos. I've also translated a few of those into Japanese and see how they went.

I was getting mixed results (after a month many of them had 10-90 views, one had about 900)
So I tried a combination of SMM and micro-workers to see if I could rank some videos. Although it's my first day it was fairly successful.
I realized:
1: Microworkers bring the CTR too high. Over about 40% the video gets shadowbanned immediately
2: Some botted views (500-2000) definitely helped the ranking for some keywords.

I botted for 500 views for two how-to videos I made in Japanese and they got instantly ranked number 1 for the top keywords, although there was very little competition.
I botted a competitive how-to keyword with 2000 views and 150 search+click through, and ranked about 6 for some top keywords. Although it's not bad, I think you want to rank 1-3 on how-to videos or there isn't really a point.

The CTR for my how-to videos is about 2-5% per video, but I think the social proof of more views might bring that up.
Let me keep testing and report back

 

[Yakimo1]

Some updates:
I made a bunch of how-to videos on my Youtube.
I'm up to about 1300 views a day, with about 50 videos.
I'm getting better at ranking videos, they now get ranked for non-competitive keywords, and my CTR is about 10-30% on most of my videos.

My next goal is 2000 views a day, 100 videos, and to get monetized soon.
I'm also getting faster at making videos, I can make about 10 in a day if I'm not working.

 

[blogmen]

Ahh, the challenge of finding a new income source after the old one died is oddly satisfying.

I heard tiktok is big in Japan too, I'd upload all my yt shorts there as well.

Are you after the adsense revenue mainly or do you plan to sell a course too?

Good luck!

 

[Yakimo1]

Ahh, the challenge of finding a new income source after the old one died is oddly satisfying.

I heard tiktok is big in Japan too, I'd upload all my yt shorts there as well.

Are you after the adsense revenue mainly or do you plan to sell a course too?

Good luck!

Thanks for replying!

Yeah Tiktok is huge, but I'm not jumping on that wagon. I'm not any kind of social media (including X, reddit, FB, insta, etc) and I don't want to start tbh.
I made a tutorial using proxies a week ago which already has about 4k views. I put my affiliate link for the proxies into that video and 13 people already signed up (I expected zero), so now I'm thinking about just making tutorials based around software so I can put the affiliate link in. For example "how to remove a watermark from a video" -> use a software then put an affiliate link to that software into the description

 

[Medofettar]

So I tried messing around with Youtube while working today, it's quite addicting.

So my youtube has a mix of different things I'm trying. But I've made about 10 "how-to" videos. I've also translated a few of those into Japanese and see how they went.

I was getting mixed results (after a month many of them had 10-90 views, one had about 900)
So I tried a combination of SMM and micro-workers to see if I could rank some videos. Although it's my first day it was fairly successful.
I realized:
1: Microworkers bring the CTR too high. Over about 40% the video gets shadowbanned immediately
2: Some botted views (500-2000) definitely helped the ranking for some keywords.

I botted for 500 views for two how-to videos I made in Japanese and they got instantly ranked number 1 for the top keywords, although there was very little competition.
I botted a competitive how-to keyword with 2000 views and 150 search+click through, and ranked about 6 for some top keywords. Although it's not bad, I think you want to rank 1-3 on how-to videos or there isn't really a point.

The CTR for my how-to videos is about 2-5% per video, but I think the social proof of more views might bring that up.
Let me keep testing and report back

What tools/websites do you use for botted views? and do you send them to specific videos? shorts or standard videos? Good luck mate! following the journey

 

[Yakimo1]

What tools/websites do you use for botted views? and do you send them to specific videos? shorts or standard videos? Good luck mate! following the journey

Sup!
I'm not sure if I can put links? (is it against the rules?)
But I use a site called rapidworkers to increase CTR (costs about .03$ a click + watch + like).
This works well.
I use a SMM panel I found on here. TBH so far SMM panels do absolutely nothing for the growth of the channel. I bought 50 likes for one video and youtube auto-shadow banned that video. Buying views does nothing and just kills retention, so I stopped doing it

I also made my own youtube bot farm using dolphin anty + proxies (private residential dedicated, expensive)
and this works wonders ofc.
This increases CTR + retention, and will rank me on any medium volume keywords

 

[Dr Google ads]

Hey man thanks for sharing good luck

 

[Yakimo1]

Hey man thanks for sharing good luck

thanks.

Btw if anyone is interested, this is the video where I bought 50 likes from an SMM panel and it absolutely shadowbanned it. I bought the likes half-way through the 2nd day.
The retention for this video was about 60% too.

I reshot the intro and reuploaded it, and it's doing well.
When I uploaded it my CTR was 30% + Retention was 40% (2 min video), but I realized no one was interacting/liking the video so it was not getting recommended so much. I think if your CTR is high + retention is fairly high, but no interaction, then Youtube thinks its clickbait.

I then had 40 microworkers search for it + like the video + like another comment. After that the video is skyrocketing in the algo.
Let's hope it continues.

 

[Yakimo1]

OK update:

Things were going well, but then I got a copyright strike to my channel. It was completely my fault, I was lazy and I just took some Indian guy's tutorial video, made some changes and talked over it. Not gonna do that again.


So I started uploading my videos to a different channel (my wife's channel connected to her phone number, if that matters). Interestingly enough the videos I uploaded are getting way, WAY more reach than the ones on my striked channel. I'm guessing about 10x the amount of reach/views.
I have no clue why, but it's great so far.
I'm not going to do any blackhat/SMM related things to this channel. I think maybe I got soft blacklisted because of that.
I just hope this continues.

I also made about 4$ on affiliate links so far.
It's not much, but I'm happy with the proof-of-concept.


I'll keep posting.

 

[Nekola]

best of luck man ur plan of action look's nice

 

[Yakimo1]

OK, things on my secondary channel are heading in the right direction. I'm only getting about 400 views a day, so my immediate goal is 1000.
I signed up to maxbounty and put some affiliate links in my videos. In only 3 days I got a bunch of people clicking, but no conversions?
I thought that surveys would have a low barrier of entry compared to other things, I don't understand why you would click and not do the survey.

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I doing this wrong?

 

[ralavamo]

Very interesting journey, good luck to you! Following

 

[Yakimo1]

OK, as an update, I'm still going with my second youtube channel.
I started using an A.I tool to make videos from articles. It's actually surprisingly good. You just paste a link to an article and it adds music/voiceover, etc. It's not as good as making it yourself ofc, but it's much faster.
I'm uploading both A.I videos, and non-AI videos. I post A.I videos of content I wouldn't be able to make otherwise... guides on Roblox for example, since I don't play the game. However, if I can make it without A.I, I will.
I've also started using a Vtuber overlay on all of my videos. On my A.I videos I use a female voice and a big breasted anime girl. I've found this increased CTR (I think because the video auto-plays, they see the big breasted girl and click) and retention.

I've streamlined my process, so I can make about 8-10 videos a day if I'm working from home. More if it's a day off.
Currently I'm at 115 videos and getting about 1200 views a day on average.

My next goal is 200 videos and 2000 views a day.
My goal for every week is 50 videos.
I will keep you guys updated.

 

[kabiraftab]

Interesting. Following this.

My goal for every week is 50 videos.

Isn't 50 videos per day or 7-8 videos per day too much? I would advise have 6-7 different channels, post one in each.

 

[Yakimo1]

Interesting. Following this.


Isn't 50 videos per day or 7-8 videos per day too much? I would advise have 6-7 different channels, post one in each.

is it?

So far it's been OK.
If I post a lot of videos in a short period of time, the reach of my videos seem to spread out across all of them... but I'm fine with that due to the nature of how-to videos.
If my videos get recommended to a lot of people the CTR goes to shit (because people will not click on a how-to fix XXXX bug in XXXX game, obv), so I would prefer that they don't get pushed out too much.
It doesnt seem to affect the visibility of the videos

 

[kabiraftab]

is it?

So far it's been OK.
If I post a lot of videos in a short period of time, the reach of my videos seem to spread out across all of them... but I'm fine with that due to the nature of how-to videos.
If my videos get recommended to a lot of people the CTR goes to shit (because people will not click on a how-to fix XXXX bug in XXXX game, obv), so I would prefer that they don't get pushed out too much.
It doesnt seem to affect the visibility of the videos

One video per channel, and you'll have 7-8 channels. Schedule videos on them so you don't have to worry about uploading everytime.

If one gets copyright strike or shadow banned, you will have others to continue working out for you. That's the main idea! Not putting all eggs in one basket.

Besides CTR, other metrics also matter. The more visibility you get, the more you are going to earn.

 

[Yakimo1]

One video per channel, and you'll have 7-8 channels. Schedule videos on them so you don't have to worry about uploading everytime.

If one gets copyright strike or shadow banned, you will have others to continue working out for you. That's the main idea! Not putting all eggs in one basket.

Besides CTR, other metrics also matter. The more visibility you get, the more you are going to earn.

yeah but I want to get to monetization as early as possible.
Right now I have two channels, I'll just focus on these for now

 

[Yakimo1]

Just a quick update. I went from about 1200 views a day to roughly 6k views a day. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I had one video get about 10k views on the first day, and that seemed to boost every other video on my channel.

I'm at 142 videos. I've been too busy with personal life/work/freelance work to make many videos unfortunately.
I'm at 1400 watchhours, so 2600 more to go to monetization.

Some things I noticed:
I think youtube's algorithm can understand whether a comment is positive or negative.
I've had videos get many negative comments (the AI voice is trash, etc), but with good CTR and watch-time, the video will die before it gets 1k views. However my newer videos have many positive comments (thanks it works!), and these videos seem to explode.
I started posting comments from proxies from my other accounts (5-10 per video) and that seems to give the videos a huge boost in visibility.