(audience gasps)

You're living in a fantasy, buddy.

Yeah, no they're not.

It's actually more accessible today

than it's ever been.

Yeah, maybe if you're like me

and have your dad's hedge fund money.

Actually, no.

You really don't need that much money saved up.

Anyone can do it but you will need to work very hard.

You gotta be willing to sell your soul

to the highest bidder.

My name is Christian.

If you don't already know who I am,

I've been making travel videos for a few years now

and one of the incredible things about it

is that it allows me to be anywhere in the world

and to call it my job.

Yes, I get to call

traveling, meeting new people, and making great money

my job.

It's definitely a incredible situation

I never really saw myself falling into,

especially going back four years ago

where the story started

as a broke backpacker with just a GoPro.

I always saw travel and work

as two very polar opposite things.

You're either making money at work

or you're traveling and losing money.

But the incredible thing about this career

is that it takes that equation

and it completely disregards it.

By traveling, I make money,

and therefore, this travel lifestyle

becomes sustainable and profitable.

Today, I'll be sharing with you

10 things that will allow you to make money

as a travel influencer.

Whether you wanna do photography, videography.

I'll be sharing my own personal anecdotes,

experience, as well as sharing some stories

from friends who have also been able to call this their job.

Point number one and listen up closely because

this one is very important.

You can do it.

Anyone can be here siting in this chair right now,

calling themselves an Instagrammer,

a YouTuber, whatever it is that floats your boat,

that could be your career.

I want you to put yourself in my shoes,

where I was four years ago.

I had nothing more than a backpack on my back.

I had about $3,000 in my bank account,

I had a GoPro Hero4 Silver,

I had never in my life been to film school,

I had never in my life learned about YouTube,

never been taught that you could actually

make a penny on Instagram,

and I really didn't know what I was doing.

But, one thing I did discover on that trip

was that I loved to travel

and I loved to make videos.

Hello.

And welcome to my channel.

That is how my journey started.

Very humble beginnings,

no real direction, no real skill,

but what I did have, what I made up for

on every other front was a burning passion

for what I wanted to do.

I was ready to hustle until I was able

to make it happen

and that's exactly what I did.

Today, I now have over 10 revenue streams

that allow me to get paid even when I'm on the road.

This path was not given to me

and it was not given to anybody else

you follow and admire on social media.

This is a business for those who hustle,

those who work late into the night,

early into the mornings,

those who don't give up when they don't get paid,

those who don't quit when they don't get views.

This is for those who are ready to grind and hustle.

If you think that's you, then keep watching.

And if you don't think it's you,

please keep watching.

I really can't afford my retention rate to drop.

Now, let's get into point number two

and that is going to be the importance

of keeping your costs low.

Let's get ready to hustle and ball out on a budget.

As I mentioned before,

when I started my travels, I really didn't have

that much money saved up.

And every single day I was on the road,

I was basically eating into my savings.

I knew that if I was gonna make YouTube videos

and Instagram photos,

I was gonna need as much time as I could

to create good content.

So how could I stretch that limited money?

One of the main ways to do that

is to reduce your costs.

Reduce the overhead

of hotels, of food, of activities.

How do you do that?

When I first started,

one of the best ways I was able to keep my costs low

was door knocking.

I was going hostel to hostel to hostel,

sometimes 10 hostels in a row would flat out say,

"No, we're not willing to give you a free bed,"

but the 11th one would eventually say yes

and that would be the place where I would stay

for two to three nights.

Right there, I took care of one of my biggest expenses

as a nomad,

which is my accommodation.

If I knew I was gonna go to an island

I wanted to do an island tour

or I needed the ferry,

well then I would try to contact different companies

that would allow me to feature their service

in exchange for a free ticket.

Again, I was able to keep creating my content

while keeping my costs as low as possible

for every single video, for every single Instagram photo,

and that is how you need to keep yourself afloat

during the early stages.

You're gonna have to make sacrifices,

you're gonna have to say no to getting drinks with dinner,

eat street food, knock on hostel doors,

keep costs as low as possible.

I wanna share with you an account

who you should definitely go check out after this.

His name is Chris Lau.

I consider him my first ever Patreon success story.

Patreon is where I have my behind the scenes community

where there's filmmakers, there's travel influencers

who are trying to make this their living.

And it's where I share all my information.

I highly recommend you check it out after this.

Christ took all the information he learned

through my Patreon, as well as his background in sales

and he basically

has become

a free accommodation monster.

Everywhere he goes,

he's been able to leverage his 10,000 followers.

Now at like 22,000 followers on Instagram

to get himself free stuff all over the world.

From five start hotels to free meals,

he's been able to even treat me to a couple free meals

because he contacted those companies in advance.

Chris embodies hustling to keep costs low

and I have so much respect to him.

The next point is

diversify your income sources.

So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video,

I now have like over 10 income sources

that allow me to make a great living.

Maybe I didn't get as many views on YouTube that month,

or maybe I didn't have as many visits to my Shopify store.

It tends to even out because there's 10 of them

and so I'm not heavily relying on any of them.

It gives you a lot more financial security.

I'm gonna talk about what my revenue sources are

as well as some other revenue sources

that my friends are using.

I'm not gonna give them to you in the particular order

of importance, but let's start off with the first one

and that's right now the ad revenue that's being earned

by this video and basically every other monetized video

on my channel.

Right now, I've been averaging two point five

to three million views every single month

and that actually adds up into a pretty nice paycheck

every month.

Now another income source is my products that I sell

through my Shopify store.

I have a Philippines travel guide,

Thailand travel guide, Peru travel guide,

I have a guide on how I edit my travel videos

so if you're curious about any of those, again,

they're linked down below.

This is how I make my living.

Those four products, once they were made,

they become passive income.

So every single time I make a sale,

there's no real cost because e-products

don't have inventory.

You basically just have a protected asset

that you send off to somebody

when they bought the rights to it.

It's a fantastic way to make a living,

especially for those of you

that do develop your own communities

and have people that trust your authority

on a certain subject.

Another income source that's really not that relevant

to me these days is my merchandise.

I'm not selling that many t-shirts,

in fact, I never even push it in my videos.

For me, it's not the biggest but for some YouTubers,

it can actually be their primary income source.

Another one is my affiliate linking.

So basically, if you go to the bottom of

every YouTube video,

you'll find out exactly where I get my YouTube music.

Anytime somebody signs up for Epidemic Sounds,

then I actually get a small little bonus

from that signup.

For me, it's one of my favorite income sources

because I'm basically getting paid to promote the service

I love and use every single day.

If you're looking for YouTube music,

you don't want copyright claims,

you want your videos monetized, then check it out.

Another one that I've started using recently

is StoryBlocks and it's where I'm able

to get stock footage from drone footage, et cetera.

Anything that I need to fill in the gaps in my video

and I also have an affiliate signup through them.

Another one is Patreon and again,

my Patreon is my behind the scenes community

to all the business side, the travel side,

it's where I share in-depth information.

And one of my biggest advices to anyone

who's considering using Patreon as a means to make

a paycheck,

never treat it as a charity case.

Do not ask people to donate

just because they already get

your content for free on YouTube.

That's not a very compelling reason

and you might get backlash.

I know that from experience.

What I recommend is always coming up

with a value proposition.

What is somebody gonna get out of joining Patreon?

Why should somebody

pay that two dollars a month

to be part of that behind the scenes community?

You need to make sure there is a value that they receive

and if there is, then it can be a very great business model.

And for my friends at Sailing La Vegabonde,

that's actually one of the primary ways

they monetize their channel.

Another income source that I really don't do

that often is consulting.

One of the things I like to do the least

is trading one of my hours for money

because it's not scalable.

I like things that can be scaled.