If you were depending on youtube I can see why you might be confused or unsure of what to do.
I went through similar bullshit financially. I was earning a little over 5 figs a month a couple years ago and now earnings have been cut in half. The only good news in my situation is most my earnings come from local marketing than a smaller share from youtube.
But with that said, I don't feel "balanced" when I don't have at least >>2-3<< scalable forms of income coming in.
Youtube .... I don't want to say it's not scalable anymore or "a waste of time". Cause I use to say that months ago and looking back that's just a defeatist mindset. While my earnings were dropping, YT was cracking down, (both on YT and with the help of Google by demoting 60% of YT videos from the SERPS) guys were still managing to pull in $300 / day. But overall I've seen a lot of youtube marketers wiped out. And I've seen many people stop focusing so much on youtube.
HOWEVER.
I don't want to get in this whole poor me pity party bullshit. It's a fact of life not just in marketing, that you need to learn how to adapt and evolve or you slowly die off. And you do this by fighting, punching, screaming, kicking through things till you're on the proverbial "other side".
I can write many stories like this... too many. Like my brother. Works at home for At&t. He's a top engineer and gets paid a lot. But every 3-6 months At&t is doing cuts and laying off people. Commonly they will target senior employees (like my brother) cause they get paid the most. Financially speaking, it makes a lot of sense to fire off those senior members and bring in some young bucks then pay them less. And everytime these cuts happen he gets seriously depressed. He's got a big home and family to support. But SOMEHOW he just fights through it. He never gives into the stress to the point of breakage. He always adapts and evolves making himself an INVALUABLE ASSET to the company. So there is no way they can fire him.
Same thing with my other brothers wife. She's an accountant in a high position. There are always younger accountants much hungrier to be in her position. But somehow anytime layoffs come around, she doesn't just adapt and evolve .... she winds up somehow getting promoted. Cause she's a fucking beast. This girl will work drive 1 hour to work, work 12-14 hour days, drive an hour home, sleep 4-5 hours and do this shit nonstop all week round.
It's unbelievable the work ethics some people have.
Now look at your situation.
Everything I'm about to say to you are things I've said to myself.
1) You need to stop bitching, stop whining, and get control over your mind.
2) Control is just a matter of perspective. The longer you sit around confused not knowing what to do the more and more you're gonna feel lost or like you have no control.
3) All those defeatists beliefs... which are really just excuses to justify your current position, cut them off the second they come into your mind. You don't need our help, you don't need a therapist, just cut them off at the neck IMMEDIATELY.
4) Start thinking as logically and pragmatically as possible. Rather than talk about all your life circumstances, or problems you can't control right now like where you live.... think of things you CAN control. If you need help, be more specific about your problems. For instance, WHY EXACTLY can't you get your earnings back on youtube? Is it retention views and banning? Ranking? When you leave those very important details out it's very difficult for people to really help you.
5) Adapt or die. I've seen quite a few YT + CB marketers move over to ranking .com's + CB. That's something I'm working on myself right now. I'm also exploring CPA a lot more. The point is, you need to recognize if a method is completely dead and IF IT IS, then you need to FIND and IMPLEMENT a new method immediately.
6) This is something thats helping me more than anything. Which is >>>SIMPLICITY. You need to acknowledge the condition of the human mind. Always searching, always seeking, always asking why, ALWAYS MAKING SHIT COMPLICATED. However, I think back to the first time I made money online and try to put myself back in that mentality. Thinking, "oh my god, that was so pathetically easy a monkey could do it". All I did was whip up some videos, blast them with retention views, GSA and those things were making me money in 2 months. Then the money just started pouring in after that. Maybe youtube was just wayyy too easy and that's the real problem. Any monkey really COULD do it.
But man there is something about discovering a new / working method that completely wipes out all your panic, worry, anxiety, it cluster bombs you right out of your dark depressing little hole.
It makes you feel like a god. It empowers you. It's like getting struck by a lighting bolt and your whole life changes in a matter of weeks.
Then the same shit happens when a method gets wiped out. It's the same type of effect but in the opposite direction.
Everything in life pulses or oscillates. Solar rays from the sun. North and south poles. Magnetic fields that are both always attracting and resisting. The way our hearts beat. Our social lives. Our relationships. Our business ventures. The universe as a whole was built on this back and forth motion.
However, when things resist, when they push you back, you need to stand on your 2 feet and march forward. Plow through everything.
You also mentioned how your "friend" is the only reason you're making the money you are right now. But one could easily argue that your friend is the reason you're in the shitty position you're in right now. Cause he seems to have spoonfed you to the point where when you were pushed out of the nest by a YT algo, or w/e ... you hit the ground, stumbled... and had no idea how to hunt for or find food.
If you really need help man, there are people on here who will help you.
Without all this Dr Phil / motivational / self help bullshit.
I just wanted to try and put things into perspective. I may feel myself that I'm "struggling" to get back to where I was before. But I still KNOW INNATELY that marketing is VERY EASY.
GOOD OFFER + TRAFFIC = MONEY.
For me, I've never had problems with the offer side of things. If I'm getting traffic, almost regardless of the niche I can and WILL convert that traffic. So I find traffic to be a bit harder. That's why I'm investing in a PBN for my local sites and also trying to find good niches in Clickbank to rank .coms for (rather than YT videos). There are guys out there who can pick up an expired domain, smack 30-50 articles on it, a bunch of clickbank offers, have that shit ranking and banking in a matter of weeks (like manov in the IM journey section). Then there are dudes who can do that for CPA and Amazon.
And that's 1 skill I've identified that I need to learn. I don't need to learn anything more about writing or video production or photoshop or website design or selling ... I need to thoroughly master SEO and other ways of driving traffic.
So ask yourself... "what is the 1 thing I really need to learn more than anything"? The 1 thing that's holding you back? Your sticking point?
Identify it right now then work on conquering it.
You can make this as hard as you want but that's all you really need to do man.
-BB
