A Realistic Look at the Costs Associated With Starting a Dev Channel
When it comes to making money on the side as a developer, often times the go-to suggestions are the following:
- Freelance and build websites for people
- Blog
- Start a Youtube channel
- Create E-Books and/or Courses to sell
What isn’t discussed however is the time and money that it takes to actually make some of these side-hustles a reality. In this article, I mainly want to address Blogging and starting a Youtube channel on the side.
In June of this year, I decided that I was going to start growing a dev channel in my free time to help teach people how to build apps in Flutter. Although it wasn’t my primary goal, the financial aspect of starting a channel was intriguing to me. I knew going in that it would be a very long time before it would be what I would consider “profitable”. I’m not just talking about the numbers, but also valuing my time into the equation and evaluating when time spent devoted towards the channel would actually be of financial value to me. Although I’ve made some money so far, the financial side of this project has mainly consisted of a lot of expenditures as I invested in myself and my channel.
Expenditures
To date, I have spent $541.25 on my Youtube channel. Many of the following items were not necessary, but as I wanted to really invest in myself and this project to make the most out of it and produce quality content, these are the items that I purchased. Please note that if I attach any links to Amazon, then they are affiliate links.
- Purple Panda Mic ($39.99) — This was one of the best investments I made when starting a channel. You need to have decent audio in order for people to stick around and watch your content. The Purple Panda lapel mic is easy to use, cheap and provides pretty decent quality audio considering the cost. This is what I would consider a necessary purchase.
- Hardware upgrades ($162.65): Razer BlackWidow Elite, Logitech G203 — I purchased a new keyboard and mouse one I created the channel. This wasn’t necessary, but I wanted to make sure I had more reliable hardware than the wireless Logitech mouse and keyboard that I’d purchased previously. My previous hardware had been replaced 3 times already due to wear and tear and so I wanted to invest in something more permanent and durable.
- Cable Protectors ($3.79) — This was one of my better investments in my channel that I made. I wanted to ensure the life of my mouse and adapters by purchasing cable protectors to reduce wear and tear. I’ve had to replace a MacBook charger chord before and just one replacement cord can cost the same as 50 cord protectors. It’s worth it.
- Webcam ($38.42) — Once I reached 200 subscribers I decided that I wanted to improve my videos and added a webcam to show my face as I coded on camera. The important thing is to ensure that your camera can record at least 1080p and is compatible with your computer.
- Twitter Ad Campaigns ($4) — I really love exploring new technologies and ideas and decided to experiment over a period of 2 weeks with a few very small ad campaigns on Twitter. I got a lot of interactions through these campaigns but was more-so just curious as to how well they worked.
- Desk Ring Light ($39.39) — I purchased this item at about the same time as my webcam. Living in North Carolina, we have a lot of dark days where it’s raining. As lighting is unreliable, I bought a ring light to make sure that the video quality was consistent throughout all of my videos.
- Flutter Complete Reference ($54.50) —This book was another investment in the channel. I want to be sure that I’m always learning and taking advantage of as many resources as I have available and so I purchased a hard copy of a new Flutter Reference book that came out a few weeks back. I’ve been very pleased with that investment.
- Blue Yeti Mic ($129.99) — After 3 months of videos, my Purple Panda mic broke. I took advantage of a recent drop in price and purchased a Blue Yeti Mic to replace it, dramatically improving my video audio.
- Cooling Pad ($40.78) — Once I made the switch to using Streamlabs OBS on my Mac for my videos, I noticed that the fan would kick on all of the time and disrupt the audio on my videos often. I purchased a reliable cooling fan to help reduce heating as well as noise.
- Mic Stand ($27.74) — To go along with my new Blue Yeti Mic I purchased a new mic stand to support it and make more room on my desk for working.
As you can see above, most, if not all of these items aren’t necessary to create a dev channel. However, I saw each and every one of these items as an investment and well worth the money as they allow me to produce better quality content each and every week.
Earnings
To monetize your Youtube channel you need to have 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watched time. When you start your channel, there is a very good chance that this will not be a viable option for some time until you can grow to be a large enough channel, and even then, you can expect small earnings until you grow to have 10k+ subscribers. However, this can be very discouraging if monetization is one of your main goals!
A helpful tip for staying motivated while you grow your channel is to blog as well! There are plenty of awesome resources available such as Medium, Hashnode, and more to monetize your blog posts. These were the earnings I had in my first 3 months of blog posts, keep in mind I posted weekly the first two months and not at all the last month.
- July: $11.28
- August: $49.70
- September: $26.79
Even after having stopped posting articles, I still was able to continue making small amounts of money due to posts from the previous months. Although it’s not much, $87.77 helps with some of the big investments that I’ve made into the channel to date. Unless something breaks, I also don’t intend on making any other purchases anytime soon for my setup, so that the profit gap should decrease more and more each month.
Given my current channel trajectory, I should also be able to start monetizing my Youtube channel by the end of this year, so hopefully, I can post a follow-up on what a realistic expectation in regards to small channel monetization looks like.
The Value of Time
Creating a channel often times will take up roughly 10 hours of your time each week, probably even more. It’s a very time-consuming endeavor starting a dev channel or blog. One thing you need to think about is the value of your time. When you are working you may consider your time to be worth $35 / hour, but maybe in your free-time, you would only charge someone $25 / hour to do freelance work. It’s important that you consider the value of your time when you create a channel. Is the time you are putting in really worth it if monetization is your main goal? Do you feel that it’s a solid investment creating equity in your project with your time?
For me, I really love teaching people and thought that creating a channel would be really fun. This is part of the reason why I was a little more reckless and less picky regarding expenditures and really trying to get a lot of money out of blog posts. To me, the forfeiture of time spent on my channel is well worth it. Also being a full-time developer, I didn’t see this as a main income stream which relieves a lot of pressure from me when creating content. You should consider for yourself if it’s worth your time to pursue a project given the time you will need to put in.
Conclusion
Creating a dev channel can be costly, both in time and money. But, if you have the drive to be consistent and continue for the long-term, you can turn it into a nice side-hustle and grow a healthy channel. If you are considering making it a main source of income, however, the chances of this happening realistically aren’t very high. Although it’s definitely manageable, the time that you will need to put in is pretty large to turn a profit, and if you feel you can make more by free-lancing, that might be a better alternative.
That being said, if you have the free-time or the desire to create an awesome channel, do it! It really just comes down to how you value your time in my opinion. For me, it was a no-brainer! I love doing it and I have the free time for the next 18 months to do it.
I hope that some of the information here was helpful. I wanted to be sure to be transparent and paint a realistic picture of what your first few months of creating a dev channel will probably look like as you start out. I feel that my channel growth has been slightly above average, but definitely not as fast as some other channels I’ve seen, so I hope this is a good, honest look at what you can expect.
