184. The Playbook to Make $150,000/month with Content Creation

0:00Three years ago, Corbin White was remodeling his kitchen on weekends and working a full-time job in digital marketing. Like most people, he had a dream to be a millionaire by 30. But the clock was ticking and the math wasn't mathing. One day, while installing cabinets, he had a thought, what if I just film this? So he did. He set up his phone, recorded a quick tutorial, and uploaded it to TikTok and YouTube. That single decision, it changed everything. This is Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the Upfoot podcast, where we uncover the secret to building and running successful businesses. Fast forward to today, Corbin runs multiple YouTube channels, earns over$150 ,000 a month,$150 ,000, that is right, and helps thousands of people learn how to turn content into cash.

0:41In today's episode, we're going to dive into the exact steps he took to get there, from making money with no experience to running profitable ads to choosing the right affiliate products and building the online business that actually works. Corbin, you got an amazing backroom. Thank you so, so much for being here. So, so excited to have you on. Yeah, super excited to be on here, Ryan. I appreciate that intro. Yeah, it's going to be good. and to really lay the foundation of who you are, let's rewind to your late 20s. What was the moment you realized you had to make a serious shift if you're gonna hit that millionaire goal by 30?

1:08Yeah, as you mentioned in the intro, it's always been a goal of mine for as long as I can remember to be a millionaire as soon as possible, but 30 seemed realistic. And it was actually the day before my birthday, basically. I remember it was like 11 o 'clock at night and I was about to turn 27. My birthday's on the 27th, September 27th. And so if you're familiar with the golden birthday, right? It's like the year where it's just going to be your year. And I remember being at the top of my stairs. It was late at night. My wife was already asleep. And I had a job that I loved, actually. But it wasn't paying enough to get me to where I wanted to be to become a millionaire in the next three years.

1:41And so I was scoring through TikTok like a lot of people do at like 11 o 'clock at night. And I started seeing people that are doing home improvement projects and posting things and getting a lot of traction. and I knew in that moment that like if I didn't take action this year when I was 27 on my 27th golden birthday that nothing would really happen so that night actually if you look my very first post ever was on September 28th so I went through and I had actually done some projects before that I'd like filmed and kind of like had videos and kind of stitched together and I threw that up on TikTok and it was looking back it was a horrible video I think most creators will tell you that their first video is is nothing great but at the time I had zero followers on TikTok and I did it on TikTok because I thought nobody was on TikTok, nobody that I knew.

2:22And it got like 4 ,000 views, which was to me was, oh my gosh, like from zero followers, like zero going from there. So that was the very first step into creating content, which was a big step for me because I never wanted to show my face. I never planned on doing this. If you asked me a couple years ago, it definitely would not have been my answer on what I would be doing full time. Well, stay tuned because we're going to talk about those next steps and what advice you would give to beginners to take those steps. So I want to ask, what exactly were you creating? What was that first TikTok hockey threw up there they got 4 000 views yeah the first tiktok so we just bought a house and it was like it was all white everywhere there was a bunch of like like it was just not a personality and so the first thing that i took on was just like an accent wall where i did like a board and batten kind of thing and when i did it i wasn't planning on creating content i just wanted a before and after picture and i took a couple pictures throughout the process so that tiktok was literally just an accent wall and it was basically like a slideshow of what i was doing and it's really it's nothing great so that was the very first project was an accent wall actually It's your golden birthday.

3:19You're 27. You're like, okay, like this is the year I'm going to start doing it. I mean, a lot of people want to start making money online, but feel overwhelmed. What were the first like one to two steps you actually took when you like committed then? Yeah. So at the time, TikTok had like a program that allowed you to like earn from the like, I can't remember what it was, but it was like pennies at the time. And so the first goal was to get to there because then it was like, oh man, now I'm actually making money from that. And then I remember after I had my first kind of video go viral accidentally, a company reached out that was doing power washers and they sent me a power washer to make a video about and i actually learned a lot from that experience because it was the first company that ever reached out that i was so excited that i just said yes and i got the power washer and it was not a great power washer so like i learned very quickly like that navigating brand deals and being very particular about those but that was actually technically like the first kind of money that i made to answer your question i guess i want to ask you early days here and then we're going to talk about like going viral in content creation here.

4:17A lot of people like they always have a goal. Like I'm going to post for 30 days straight. Like that's my goal. I've been there before too. So like I speak for some people here. How did you like stay committed to actually like posting every day? What was your strategy? Like I would love to talk about that because everyone has that goal in mind. Let me post for 30 days straight, but they just get burnt out 15 days in. Like, how did you stay committed? Staying consistent is definitely a huge part of it. To be honest with you after i had that first 4 000 video it was not a problem for me to create content in that first year i borderline got addicted to it like that dopamine hit from like seeing content like views come in and then the comments come in like i hate to admit it but i like i got addicted to that dopamine and it became an obsession where it wasn't like a commitment of me saying okay i need to post 30 days it was like i cannot wait to get the next video out which with home improvement it becomes difficult because you got to create a project and then you have to you know film the whole thing and it can take a little bit time and that's why i ended up creating the second channel talking about digital marketing stuff but yeah for me i don't ever recall in the short like in the beginning creating some sort of like yeah i gotta post every time but i think at the time i was probably posting like one or two times a week and i was trying to really make multiple pieces of content when i would do a home improvement project like i would try to make one youtube video a couple of short video formats and then a couple of pictures so i could put on like pinterest and other things like that.

5:37I was really trying to utilize the content as much as possible with the home improvement project. Those first videos were like the home improvement products. I mean, why did you choose that niche in particular? And how did you know people care about that niche? I think it was because just where my mind was at at the time, because we just bought the house. You know, TikTok, it's so good at showing you your feed. So that was what I was seeing in my feed. And I saw people that were like me doing it. And people that... I started watching people a couple of weeks before that all of a sudden had 10 ,000 followers and things.

6:06I'm like, Like, well, if they can do it, why can't I? So I think it was just because at that time, that's what I was wanting to learn more about was how to make my house look nicer. And so I think that's probably where it mainly came from. Because if people don't know, and if you watch the channel, like I'm not a handy person. Like I learned as I was going. And so it definitely wasn't something like a skillset that I had. Yeah, that's what I think is like so interesting about DIY because my dad's like phenomenal at DIY. Me, oh my gosh. Like I could never like imagine doing DIY projects. I'm just like so bad at it.

6:34What advice would you give to people? like when deciding to do their niche? If they're like, okay, I want to do content creation. This is what I've been thinking about. Like, how do you decide on what you should create and stay consistent with? That's actually a great question. I think the first thing you should look at is what are you good at? Ask yourself what you're good at and what could you help somebody become? The way I look at it is a lot of people think they need to be a 10 skill level in order to teach something on YouTube. But a lot of times it's the people who are at a three skill level that are speaking to people who are at a one skill level that like really resonate with people.

7:04And I think that's what happened with my home improvement is that I was never at a 10 skill level and I still am not. But I was at like maybe a two skill level and I was creating content for people who are at a one skill level and bringing them to a two. And so anything that you think where you're just beginning the process or you are already do have like experience, then I would recommend that or things that you're just passionate about, which I know is super cliche, but like that's really what's going to be the best thing to kind of do. And then if not, go and research different topics and become an expert in that and then start just explaining your journey on it as well.

7:31I mean, why were you successful? I mean, you're at a two. Some people like, I mean, I know your target audience was like a one, but like some people that are like a five would be like, oh, I'm not going to watch this video. Was it just like you were really engaging on camera? Did you have like amazing videos? I want to talk about a little bit about that as well. Yeah, I guess this is where we can go to like my first big break, if you will, or where I really started to get followers. And the first video that popped off, it was probably like 10 or 12 videos in. I posted a video of me putting shiplap on my kitchen island, you know, shiplap.

8:01And on my kitchen island, there was an outlet. And hindsight, when you put shiplap over an outlet, you want to bring the outlet out and then make it flush with the shiplap. Me being a brand new DIYer and not wanting to touch an outlet, just kind of put it over there. And looking back, it does look horrible. And it clearly shows that in the video. And so in that video, I posted it on a Sunday morning. I remember I posted it. And then like two hours later, I looked at it. And by the afternoon, it had over a million views. I was super excited. And then I started reading the comments though. And all of the comments were just about how bad the outlet was.

8:37Like you had all these professional contractors and like everybody coming in. So it went viral for all the wrong reasons. And I remember watching that and it just kept going like 1 million, 1.5. And the reason why it was because people were taking time to comment about how bad the outlet was. And so they were watching it multiple times. So the algorithm was just pushing it out. Right. So that was the first video that went viral. And to be honest with you, that almost broke me. Like I did not have thick skin back then. And I like to think, like, I hate to even admit this, but at the time, like, I was borderline, like, oh, like, this sucks.

9:05The first video, it went viral for all the wrong reasons. So if you look at the video between them, like, there was a time where I was like, what am I going to do? Like, how do I even post another video after this? So what I decided to do is just like, actually take the criticism and be like, you know what, you guys are right. Like, thanks for, and I kind of spun it into a light of like, hey, thanks everybody in the TikTok community for telling me how horrible this outlet is. And then the next video after that, I posted a video of me fixing it, making it better. and then that video blew up and the follower count from that was crazy like after that video my followers went like over a hundred thousand and i think before them it was like it was less than like four thousand so to answer your question i think being authentic and not being afraid to tell people like hey i made a mistake or i'm doing these things i think that really helps grow the channel so good and i relate to that so much there is a youtube video on the upload channel that just came out that i hosted and oh my gosh i got flamed in it just because like a lot of times during the interview, I was saying like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

9:58Like, yeah. Like just saying like, yeah, during it, I got flamed in it. Like, and it's just like, I liked it the guy had tough skin, but like watching it's like, oh man, like this is like kind of embarrassing. But that's the nice thing about social media is like you do get like instant feedback. It could be good or it could be bad. But like you said, like you need to have thick skin when you do it. And there's opportunity to actually make it better and improve the following count as you did. I think it's a rite of passage for anybody creating content online to have that moment. It's just inevitable.

10:22It's going to happen. So if you are going to be creating content, just be prepared for that moment. Most people spend months, sometimes years, just thinking about starting a business. But what if you could do it in just 10 days? That's exactly what the 10-day business launch plan is designed for. It's a step-by-step roadmap that takes you from idea to real operational business in just 10 days. Click the link in the description below and get ready with your business. And people care about followers, of course, but people care about monetization. You now have three YouTube channels. Let's talk about monetizing.

10:52What are you making each month from all three of these different platforms? What income streams are strongest right now? Yeah, so that's a great question. So it does fluctuate pretty heavily. Q4 is usually really strong because of like holiday seasons and shopping, things like that. It does average around over six figures. At least it has last year. I'm hoping it will continue into this year. Majority of the revenue that I bring in is from affiliate marketing. If people aren't familiar with affiliate marketing, pretty much every company has an affiliate marketing program. It's essentially when you bring in a sale, the company will give you a percent of that sale coming in.

11:25And Amazon's a really popular one. For example, if I send somebody, they buy something on Amazon, they'll give me anywhere from one to 4 % of that product. So majority of that revenue, the breakdown is affiliate marketing. I'd probably say anywhere from like 70 to 80%, depending on the month. The affiliate marketing is probably the most volatile. Like it will shoot up or it will drop down. Like I've had months where I've done over 300 ,000 in affiliate marketing and then months where it drops down to like 50K. It really is pretty volatile. I'd hate to give you like an exact number on that. So that's probably the biggest income stream.

11:52I do also have an agency on the back end for the YouTube marketing channel for Zoka Marketing. That one pretty consistently does around 30 to 40k. That's like kind of like a different business model there. And then the other income stream is from YouTube AdSense. So YouTube AdSense, for those who don't know, it's when YouTube pays you on your channel, the ads that are running out, you get 55 % of the revenue of that, that fluctuates a little bit as well. And it's usually higher in Q4 as well, because more advertisers are running ads. That's usually around like 7k a month between the channels. The marketing channel doesn't get a ton of views, but the revenue from those are higher because it's a marketing and small business audience.

12:29And then the last income source is through like sponsorship. So people actually paying to be in the channel. And I don't take on a ton of those. I'm pretty picky on who I do decide with those, but that can vary. And I can't give you exact numbers on a lot of those, but that's usually in the five figure range, depending on when I take a deal. I probably take a deal maybe once a quarter at this point. I would rather build a long-term relationship with the company and do their affiliate program because then it's usually a win-win and have more upside that way as opposed to like a one-time sponsorship fee so that's kind of a breakdown of the revenue from the channels well let's hit on the affiliate marketing piece because as you said you've done one month where you've done upwards of 350 000 a month let me say a month there so it can be volatile and stuff but there's a right way to do this how should like a beginner choose affiliate products that align with their niche and how do they land those deals yeah so the great thing about affiliate i think this is one of the misconceptions with affiliate marketing is they think that it needs to be almost like a sponsorship where the company is reaching out to them and they're like signing some sort of deal.

13:24A lot of affiliate programs, if you just go to your favorite brand's website and you type in like Nike affiliate program, they usually just have an affiliate program that you can sign up for and you can get a link that day. Now, some of the companies, they will want to see that you have some sort of following online. So I don't want to say that none of the companies, but if I was just getting started, the most famous one to get started with affiliate marketing is Amazon because Amazon accepts everybody. And the great thing about Amazon is you get your link basically that day. And then you have I think I don't remember what their timeline is.

13:51But you have like 180 days to get your first sale to stay inside of the program. And even if you don't get your first sale in the first 180 days, and they remove you from the program, you can just reapply. And everybody knows Amazon, everybody loves Amazon, like it's a really secure one to send people to. And if somebody clicks on your Amazon link, and they purchase anything on Amazon, and I think it's a 24 hour period, then you get the commission for that. So if I send somebody to purchase a TV, but then they also buy, you know, also like a couch or whatever, then you also get the commissions from that.

14:19So that's one of the good things about Amazon. It does have the lowest commission if you talk to a lot of people in the industry. So that's like the downside, but it's the most beginner friendly. So that's where I would start would be the Amazon affiliate program. Yeah, that is great. And thank you for uncovering that misconception right there for us as well. But how do you choose like what product you should, you know, like market for another company? Do you just like kind of line with like the target ons? You're saying, well, I use these slippers, you're going to like these slippers, Like how do you choose that?

14:41Let me give you an example channel by channel and I'll try to make it as quick as possible. So for the home improvement channel, it's kind of easy. The way that I do the affiliate marketing program is when somebody's watching a video on how to do like this wall behind me that I have this accent wall, they want to know exactly how you did it and they want to know all the tools that you use to accomplish that. So in the home improvement niche, a great way to do affiliate marketing is I will just talk about, here's the tool that I use. Like I use this Brad Neller. You can get it on Amazon or Home Depot and that Brad Neller is like 250 bucks.

15:09So if people are gonna go through and buy that, then they use it. So for the home improvement, it's as simple as like, here's the tools that I use. Here's the supplies that I use. I'll leave a link to them all down below. That way it's a nice list for you and I shopping list for you. And then I get the benefit as well as if you use that and it's no extra cost to you, right? It's just the same one. So that's how I do it for the home improvement channel. For the product reviews channel, it's a little bit different. I do a lot of research on which products might be trending or which products there are opportunities to do videos on.

15:32For example, showerheads. Showerheads are one of those things that a lot of people do research on, but not a lot of people talk about them. And so I'll do research on which products are have a little bit higher price point that would require somebody to do research on that product. Like a$5 product wouldn't be as good of a thing to do a product review on because people just buy those on the spot. But that's how I do it for the review channel. And then for the marketing channel, it's just the softwares that I currently use. And I already like and I already enjoy and I already know what it is. So it comes down to a little bit of research and then also just choosing products that you know and love.

16:03That is so good. I want to hit on that piece about finding the right products there? Because that showerhead piece, I think is like a gem on how you like broke that down. Let's talk about that even further. Like how are you identifying like the really good products to go after with like search volume, products people aren't talking about, price points. Talk to us about that. I really want to hit on that. Yeah, so as time has gone on, I'm on all channels, but YouTube has become my favorite for a lot of different reasons. One, the searchability to the like evergreen factor of it. And then just I love the platform and I like long form content.

16:30For me, it's a little bit easier. So when I say searchability and things like that, I'm mainly talking about YouTube and especially for the showerhead video. What I did is I just started looking on Amazon on their best sellers list, went through all the categories that they have. And then I started filtering it by products that are over$50 or so. And then I focused on ones that required installation so that I could have a play on how to install this thing. For example, another one that blew up was Bidets. Bidets is another big one that blew up for me, giving away all the gems here so people can go and find these affiliate products.

17:02So that's how I found products like those. basically it kind of had a couple different things one it was something that people would look up at a video on how to install it two it was either 50 or more and then three it was one that people would probably want a comparison video of like hey here's this showerhead compared to this showerhead here's this bidet compared to this bidet here's this christmas tree compared to this christmas tree that was another one that did really well so that's kind of how i go through the analysis on that and then i will look at youtube to see if anybody's creative videos on those and what the quality of those videos are and then how i can make a better one essentially Yeah, Corbin, I want to say, I think you just like totally gave out the playbook right there.

17:37So I hope all the listeners right now had like a notebook for that as well. So this is seriously like a thought process that goes into it. You're talking about like doing research and then also going like YouTube videos. What else is the quality on there? Of course, then it's about making the video that gets people to actually click the affiliate link. What are your best tips for doing that then? I'll start by saying I'm still learning the best. So I will give you whatever I have, but I'm still learning this journey like many other people. But I find that, especially if you're going into product review videos, there are a lot of channels out there that don't actually have the products and they'll make like kind of stock footage videos of the product.

18:11And of course, as a consumer, which video would you rather watch? The one that the guy that actually has the products in hand or the one of like that maybe they have it. And so I found that for my thumbnail specifically, the ones that do the best is me. Like I have my showerhead video, I'm holding all the showerheads and you see that it's me, a real person that is about to review all these different things. And you can tell that there's gonna be value in that video because I'm holding so many showers. Same with the bidets and the Christmas trees and things like that. So for that strategy specifically, actually showing the products in the thumbnails, like the quantity that you have is, I think, really beneficial.

18:40Red arrows also do really well for me. And then like I've tried like putting star reviews and things like that. But there's lots of things that you can try with thumbnails and definitely a lot of great people out there that teach that as well. There's so many good resources out there. And honestly, a lot that I do with marketing is like to become a great marketer, just look what other people are doing and copy it and make it better with your own personal flyer. And so that's my tip on there. I want to talk about technical questions for beginners as well here because a lot of people, they just get stuck on tech.

19:04They want to do content creation, but they get stuck on tech. I know you just released a YouTube video about this actually, but is there an easy, low-cost way to set up a website like yours without really an experience for people to get started with content creation and affiliate marketing? Especially with AI nowadays, you could choose your website builder. Some of the most common ones are Squarespace, Wix. They now have even these little AI tools basically that will spin up a website in literally like 10 minutes. You can go through and have those in there. And then inside of the website, you could go and place your affiliate links.

19:33And the great thing about YouTube as well, you can't do this right away. I think your channel has to be, they've changed some of the rules, but you can literally just, you don't even need a website. You could put your affiliate links in the YouTube description as well. So yeah, there's lots of different places that you could put that. As far as spinning up a website, I would encourage people to check out Squarespace or Wix or any of those website builders. They now have super easy AI tools that can build you a website. And going really right off of that question, what tools or software did you invest in early on that you think were like absolutely worth the cost?

19:58Definitely some sort of video editing software. You're going to have to buy one. I started off with Premiere Pro, but that was because other solutions weren't available to begin with. There's a little bit of learning curve with that. Now a lot of people use CapCut. I use CapCut pretty often as well. It's free and then they do an upgraded version if you wanted to get that. But CapCut's really good to invest in. And I'm trying to think of other softwares that's really helped out. That was probably the main one. OBS is another free software that I think a lot of people don't know about. But if you're recording your screen on your computer, That's one that's actually free, which is nice that you can use.

20:30And those are probably the main softwares, honestly, that I use to get started with content creation. Nothing too crazy. Oh, I do use Notion to organize my topics. That's like how to keep track of everything and all the research and stuff like that. But that's pretty cheap as well. And I think they even have a free plan. All in all, I mean, for someone to get started, I mean, what are we talking? 250 bucks right there, maybe at most? Yeah, a computer is helpful. And then I didn't have a nice camera when I first started. I just used my phone. So if you have a phone that can record, then that. and then a tripod.

20:58My barrier to entry to creating content, I kid you not, was a$15 tripod. I told myself I couldn't create content because I don't have a tripod. And then once I bought the tripod, everything changed. So yeah,$15 tripod on Amazon is the other thing I needed. Talking about everything that changed in mindset, let's really dive into that mindset scaling and strategy portion of this. What mindset shift helped you go from making like okay money at your digital marketing role to that nine to five to earning 2x more just on weekends from YouTube? A lot of different big mindset shifts. One is that there's just lots of money out there in the world and it's up for grabs, especially in today's world where the internet is a real thing.

21:33The thing that I really like to look at as far as mindset is every time I create a video, I look at it like digital real estate or like duplicating Corbin. Because every time I create another piece of content, it gives me the opportunity to make money while I'm sleeping. And it scales, right? Especially on YouTube. That's what I like about YouTube is every time I create a new piece of content, it allows me to scale that nest egg, if you will. And then just believing that I could actually at first make a million by 30. The crazy thing is I hit the million by 30, but then after I hit the million, I did a million the next year.

22:07So it's just that mindset of like hitting that first goal and then like, okay, now I can do six figures a month. And then now the next is like, can I do seven figures a month and kind of tell those things. So I know it's a long-winded answer, but that's kind of where I'm at right now. Hey, 100 % know where you're coming at from that. Like, I feel like a lot of times with our mindset and I want people that are starting their own business to like be mindful of this is like, a lot of times you put like a cap on like what we can do. And once you do break that, it's like a whole new realization. It's like, oh, I could have done that all along.