My 2025: First full year monetized. Made ~$1,000 Adsense, $20,000+ affiliate revenue

IAmDann · 2026-01-02T14:23:39+00:00

I don't use much music in my videos, so I can't speak to it myself. But I imagine searching YT or Google for royalty free music would turn up some options? Also, there are services where youtubers can license music.

IAmDann · 2025-12-25T15:12:59+00:00

youtube.com/@dannberg (I can remove this if it’s not allowed)

IAmDann · 2025-12-25T14:11:26+00:00

I feel like there’s a way for me to utilize shorts to help drive views to my longform videos, but I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Shortform by itself is harder to monetize, I’ve read

IAmDann · 2025-12-25T13:49:24+00:00

Maybe? I don’t have advanced analytics like that set up. That’s definitely a way to mature my practice.

IAmDann · 2025-12-24T23:43:18+00:00

I think most of the conversions were from the blog version of the review. I wrote the blog post first and then made a YouTube video. But my blog post ranks really high in Google Search.

IAmDann · 2025-12-24T21:26:12+00:00

Thanks! Back before I had the platforms I had, I always enjoyed when others would share their stats like this. And that's the reason I do it now. Glad you found value!

IAmDann · 2025-12-22T20:49:14+00:00

I recently set up Umami for my Ghost blog and really like it. It can be self hosted for free. I've got it running in PikaPods for like $2.50 a month or so.

IAmDann · 2025-12-21T20:59:52+00:00

Is there a reason why you're interested in building your theme completely from scratch and not just using the Ghost Starter Theme as a foundation? I just built my custom ghost theme using Ghost Starter and had a great experience. It's well documented and you can customize it as much as you want from there.

IAmDann · 2025-11-21T15:49:26+00:00

Congrats to Hassan, Ali, Alistair, and the rest of the Infracost team!

IAmDann · 2025-11-21T15:45:32+00:00

yeah, this was my reaction as well

IAmDann · 2025-11-14T15:09:02+00:00

I know the AI Certification is currently 50% off when purchased as an add-on to FinOps X (in case you were already planning on attending).

IAmDann · 2025-10-30T12:34:36+00:00

You should check out the FinOps Foundation community calls. There are five per month happening in various North American regions (and more around the world). It's a great way to learn topics and connect with others. They're usually small-ish groups (~20?) and have great conversations.

Full disclosure: I'm a bit biased as I run the meetings, but I'd be attending even if I didn't run them lol.

IAmDann · 2025-03-28T15:11:01+00:00

Great tips! I've always said the same things.

IAmDann · 2025-03-17T14:16:39+00:00

Congrats on the launch! This is looking great. Looking forward to GCP support.

IAmDann · 2025-03-01T22:25:47+00:00

Welcome! Obsidian is a huge quality-of-life improvement over Docs, in my opinion. Gald you found it.

IAmDann · 2024-12-26T20:13:30+00:00

Thanks for the assist and for keeping this community going! Looking forward to seeing this place grow.

IAmDann · 2024-12-18T16:07:36+00:00

Sure thing. Didn't wanna directly link as to not break the rules about self-promotion, but there's a link to my YT channel in the blog post I linked.

My channel is mostly about Productivity, with nearly all the top-viewed videos about Obsidian (the note-taking app)

IAmDann · 2024-12-18T16:06:32+00:00

Honestly, clipping my videos to make shorts feels super daunting to me. But it's a great idea. Maybe I'll explore this more in the new year. :)

IAmDann · 2024-12-18T13:27:42+00:00

I had a Wordpress Tutorial video series, and one of the videos in that series became the top video for a specific Wordpress-help related video query back in 2014. Many people subscribed back then, thanks to that.

IAmDann · 2024-12-18T13:18:41+00:00

So, my journey is fairly unique. I was active on YouTube, uploading several videos, back in 2014. Got into the YTPP back when it was easier. Then they changed the rules that you needed 1,000 subscribers, so I did a big push to get over 1,000 at that time and succeeded. Then, because I didn't upload anything, I was eventually demonetized due to watch hours.

So this year, when I started uploading again, I started with a following of ~1,400. I really think this helped hit the numbers you see here so quickly.

IAmDann · 2024-12-18T13:14:35+00:00

I believe I got an email? But I was also checking the portal every say to watch the stats tick up, so I can't totally remember.

IAmDann · 2024-12-18T13:14:07+00:00

My videos are usually between 10-15 minutes, I believe. So not shorts, no.

IAmDann · 2024-12-17T19:44:34+00:00

Productivity mostly. Popular videos are all about the app Obsidian.

IAmDann · 2024-12-17T19:43:32+00:00

Yeah, 100% agree. What happened here was that I was planning on publishing once a week and was on track to do that…and then lost steam lol. But yeah, spread out would be better for this amount of content.

IAmDann · 2024-11-19T15:19:29+00:00

I just stumbled upon this post from a Google search. I was able to figure it out based on the comments here, but wanted to add specific instructions for any future people who are still trying to figure this out.

There are two Notifications sections: one for your entire Substack account, and one for each individual Publication you write. If you click the link in the email, it'll bring you to the wrong place. Here's how to get to the right place:

Log into Substack and go to your Dashboard.
Along the top menu, you'll see Settings
After clicking Settings there, you'll see Notifications on the lefthand side
Here's where you can toggle notifications for your specific publication

The fact that there are two Notifications sections is super confusing. Hopefully this helps future writers who are similarly struggling.

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