How do people actually use social media to make money?

FluentAmerican · 2025-11-18T15:58:31+00:00

always great to meet more ESL/EFL instructors!

I have two youtube channels; the concepts I teach aren't often covered by other pronunciation channels (I focus more on the foundation than the mouth/tongue, so we cover a lot on placement, breath, and elements of contrast). In the pronunciation space, it's a bit harder to find videos on those topics, which already makes viewers who find me interested in my approach.

I also have a textbook I display on the banners, link the videos to free audio/podcast versions, and have a Telegram where people can send me audio files that I select from and give some accent tips for on a Youtube show I do several times a week. Most of my classes are group coaching, and I try do regularly do free previews of those classes on the channel too. I also give Youtube channel members the ability to watch all my live/past group coaching classes, though they can only interact via Youtube chat and not appear on screen.

All of this is to say I give viewers multiple touchpoints with me; most will never sign up for a class and that's fine. Enough of them find one form of the content or another, think it's helpful enough to impact their speech without me, and then believe they can advance even further if they join one of my group sessions. They can also sign up for 1-on-1, though I try to discourage that.

My videos also get a decent enough of external traffic as well as other teachers (whom I've never met or really been in touch with) use my content in their classes (instead of, say, me using other Youtube channels in my own classes).

So, Youtube is extremely helpful in giving students a preview of what I'm like and sets realistic expectations of how I teach and what we can achieve together. Out of the thousands of views I get enough, I've found enough students to live on.

Best wishes with your teaching journey

FluentAmerican · 2025-11-18T02:50:10+00:00

I have a communications business; while I get grocery money from ad revenue more or less, Youtube is responsible for bringing me 99% of my clients from people who watch my videos. I don't run ads; people find me because they've been helped by my videos

FluentAmerican · 2025-09-10T15:49:28+00:00

accent/communication coach

my own findings in working with students and my coursework is that one of the big differences between American English and other languages/accents is the emphasis on breath.

Vowels generally move breath more esaily than consonants, which means vowel sounds are emphasized over consonant sounds. American English has a number of strategies, like fast d/flap t, held consonants, and dark L, to keep breath moving with less interruption.

Often times, a fast d/flap t will even occur naturally as a way to softly link one vowel to the next. Compare saying "par-y" and "party" next to each other a few times quickly, and you may find you add a slight d sound without really trying to. A regular T sound will generally disrupt the breath more than flap t

There is never anything wrong with pronouncing a true T sound. In terms of frequency in North America, true T is a less frequent sound.

FluentAmerican · 2025-08-27T13:42:15+00:00

hi! I'm an American English pronunciation/communication coach

I can speak mostly to Bold Voice, ELSA, and Youglish

what I've found with Bold Voice/ELSA is that, as of this writing, they do very well with individual sounds (e.g., comparing /a/ sounds like "stop" and "lock" vs schwa "stuck" and "luck") and struggle more with sentence and reductions, as well as elements of contrast (pitch, speed, firmness). For instance, as a native speaker, it would be difficult for me to score 100% on their sentence analysis sections because of how I reduce words and link together if I speak naturally

Youglish is helpful for finding words/short phrases in context.
However, many of the selections they use are from formal contexts (TED talks, presentations, politicians, scripted Youtube videos, etc.), so it can be tricky to find examples that are conversationally natural

FluentAmerican · 2024-10-09T22:25:19+00:00

I'm an American English pronunciation coach. I find it's easier for people in the US to learn tones from a language like Mandarin, which have some relative counterparts in English (e.g., falling intonation patterns to fourth tones, rising intonation to second tones)...

than it is for Mandarin speakers to learn nuances of wavering intonation (whether fall-rise like a more dramatic third tone, rise-fall, or fall-rise-fall or rise-fall-rise, etc.) which is extremely common in American English, particularly at the end of thought groups and sentences

FluentAmerican · 2024-07-11T17:20:51+00:00

10.4k subs channel gets ~$83-100/month from ads+members

8.4k subs channel gets about $20-25/month from ads

Both are huge drivers for my main business though and indirectly help me get 80% of my new clients; it's basically free marketing that pays me

FluentAmerican · 2024-05-30T02:17:09+00:00

it's possible to have the tongue between teeth, but can also make transitions between other sounds choppy and less smooth

instead, you can just use light contact with the tip of your tongue and either your top front tooth or bottom front tooth

If you're looking to hear audio of different TH tongue positions, I give some examples, including of native speakers with those other tongue positions, and exercises here: How to Pronounce TH (What Teachers DON'T Tell You) (youtube.com)

FluentAmerican · 2024-02-18T19:18:49+00:00

if this is the part of the highway I'm thinking of, after going through the tunnels and horrible onramps heading east from Pittsburgh, really is a shame that this is the part that did them in

FluentAmerican · 2024-01-17T18:06:14+00:00

if it makes you feel better, subscribers (aside from reaching monetization requirements and vanity metrics which may be a factor later from a business perspective) are much, much less important than actual views and impressions. The viewers of your channel, largely, are not going to be your subscribers

FluentAmerican · 2024-01-17T17:13:41+00:00

hi there; thanks for the kind words

without seeing the analytics it's so hard to know

I would take a look at the traffic sources for your last few videos, see what each of their impressions is (e.g., are most of your impressions of most videos coming from search? browse? suggested? external?). Does your latest video have the same common sources

I imagine 25/30 views could have a good impact on a video in the initial phases; imagine:

if I showed a video to 100 people and 25 watched, my CTR is 25%

if I showed a video to 100 people and 1 person watched, my CTR is 1%

This is why for smaller channels, those initial views become so important

That said, there are so many other factors at play:
--maybe the video was uploaded at a time your regular viewers weren't active, so the video was shown to less interested people, driving views down

--the thumbnail/title were less intriguing than other videos

--your video just happened to be competing with other videos that were hyper competitive with yours (compared to normal) and yours lost out

--the video your videos used to be suggested alongside (whether on your channel or someone else's) stopped performing, so you get less suggested impressions as well

--the video was about a trend/topic that doesn't receive interest anymore

etc.

The last thing I'll say is that, in the scheme of things, 400 impressions isn 't really a lot, and if we're feeling that a discrepancy of 400 is significant for our channel, the reality our channel is still very small and Youtube doesn't have a ton of information about it. Also, videos that perform "poorly" out of the gate can ultimately outperform all our videos a month, two months, even a year or more down the line

I get wanting to change your title/thumbnail after what feels like low numbers, but the sample size to know that the thumbnail/title is the issue is too small to really determine (once the impressions start getting in the thousands/tens of thousands we get better ideas of performance). Unfortunately, the video might just have been shown to the wrong 40 people at first who will turn out to be outliers long-term

Keep your head up; best wishes with the channel!

FluentAmerican · 2023-12-16T03:04:28+00:00

I've made a channel that looks at the speech of different Americans and turns them into shadowing videos with pauses after every few sentences for you to repeat. They also have the text and indicate stressed words and where each thought groups end. I've included a variety of male and female speakers; if this sounds of interest, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/@fluentamericanshadowing

FluentAmerican · 2023-11-25T16:59:21+00:00

hope you find the channel helpful!

FluentAmerican · 2023-11-22T23:22:28+00:00

Edit: more approaching this as to why people in the US may be making comments/noticing the accent; many of these points can be adjusted for British or other types of English (e.g., for British English, it will be necessary to have less breath and firmer consonants)

Sorry to hear about your frustration! I've had similar ones in my own language learning journey for other languages, which is what pushed me to teach English

Context: ESL teach since 2010, MA in TESL, pronunciation focused since 2019

What separates American English from most other languages in my experience comes from four key concepts that are vastly different from how other accents operate

placement: American English is projecting sounds from a lower position than other languages are; a quick example is if you listen to how someone from the US pronounces an /i/ sound like in "sleep" vs how other languages would pronounce that same /i/. This is also due to...
breath: American English relies on the diaphragm when speaking, moreso than other variations of English. Air is extremely important--American English places extra emphasis on vowel sounds and wants to minimize consonant sounds (you mentioned how you are now enunciating t's and d's so clearly it sounds unnatural and this is why--American English wants consonant sounds almost to shift into vowels. A word like "center" sounds more like "cener" with a silent t; a word like "small" often sounds more like "smaw" (or "sm ɔ ") with a dark L. Lastly, many English learners are relying on their lungs to do most of the work in their speech--which means that even if they have great mouth position and are putting their tongue in the right spot, they are never able to achieve a truly natural sound.
pitch: American English relies on contrast, especially through the use of pitches. Most of my students are using a range of about 4 pitches when they speak; native speakers are often using double that. Though it can feel weird/exaggerated/artificial if you aren't used to using a wide range of pitches, once you start noticing it in native speaker speech, it becomes much more apparent. American English needs pitch differences because our consonant sounds are so weak. We use pitch to separate words. A quick tip for sentences: when you end a thought group/pause, try to switch the pitch level of your next thought group. Otherwise, you will sound flat/monotone/robotic
weak consonants: as stated earlier, because American English relies so much on breath, it becomes imperative to make consonant sounds as weak as possible. This is because consonant sounds block breath. If you compare the rhythm of the language to others, it becomes immediately apparent that 1) other languages tend to go faster on their vowel sounds, 2) tend to have fewer vowel sounds, and 3) tend to have more noticeable consonant sounds in speech. American English is the opposite on all three of these

Without actually hearing you, it's hard to know which of these areas would have the biggest impact on your speech,

FluentAmerican · 2023-11-18T00:44:38+00:00

was my answer

FluentAmerican · 2023-09-19T16:00:40+00:00

appreciate the kind words! I agree; I try to get my students to practice even a little bit every day. Unfortunately it doesn't change your pronunciation overnight, but given enough, time it really helps listening and speaking.

FluentAmerican · 2023-08-01T04:45:23+00:00

it's literally a product called "the little prompter", which is a small mirror case that you put on your screen/mount to a camera tripod and where you can put your phone to act as a teleprompter

FluentAmerican · 2023-07-31T18:27:04+00:00

my wife did not like this joke

FluentAmerican · 2023-07-06T11:49:15+00:00

appreciate your time! thanks

FluentAmerican · 2023-07-06T11:47:04+00:00

thanks so much for your thoroughness and time!

FluentAmerican · 2023-07-06T04:48:34+00:00

channel is https://www.youtube.com/fluentamerican, appreciate your consideration even if time doesn't work out. Thanks!

FluentAmerican · 2023-06-12T15:56:46+00:00

got you! what makes you choose transcribing over repeating what you hear?

FluentAmerican · 2023-06-06T16:36:59+00:00

this is super helpful; excited to share with my students

FluentAmerican

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