EP 446: $200k In Branded Placement Deals, How To Monetize Your Creative Brain with Ben Uyeda

Ben Uyeda – a respected architect and creative genius. Listen to hear how Ben makes money off YouTube, earns serious subscriber numbers, and acquires some pretty sweet assets. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Accidental Billionaires What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Steller Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— About 6 and a half If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Just to be nice and patient with people”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Nathan introduces Ben to the show 02:21 – What Ben does on Youtube and how he is monetizing it 02:28 – Ben wanted to give affordable design to the masses 02:43 – Started to make videos of how to make affordable modern furniture 03:00 – Product immigration into the video content itself is how you make money 03:20 – Producing a video product is more difficult 03:45 – First branded deals 03:55 – Homemade-modern.com 04:15 – DIY concrete design deal 04:30 – Home Depot is Ben’s biggest client 04:40 – Created a series of content packages 04:50 – Step by step video instructions and social media posts 05:10 – Creating a bunch of products at once 05:18 – It is often rare for big brands to have a real YouTube presence 05:38 – Ben started in this field in 2013 05:45 – First year revenue 05:50 – First 6 months get Ben 10-15,000 subscribers in Youtube 06:00 – Brands that gave Ben donations 06:10 – Ben made a deal of 10 videos per brand after getting 20,000 subscribers 06:38 – “You can’t get paid cash until you have 100,000 subscribers” 06:48 – Making a whole package of content 07:00 – Ben’s deal on brands versus traditional commercial 07:40 – Total 2015 revenue 07:50 – Adsense money 08:15 – Ben buys his own equipment 08:44 – Long format video is what Youtubers doesn’t usually do 09:00 – Long format video is an over 20-minute video 09:09 – Youtube to TV 09:45 – Offering brands full-length videos 10:05 – Person to contact if one needs a full length videos 10:10 – Brands have agencies that they work with 10:20 – Do reverse engineering to find a person 10:30 – Message on Instagram 11:20 – Show the brands that you can do it 11:33 – Put their tools in the video and get positive response 11:45 – Projected revenue this year 11:55 – 68 clients 12:05 – How to scale a business? 12:20 – Scaling would be finding the right people 13:07 – Find 2 to 3 brands that are compatible 13:16 – You can get promotional ad even if the brands didn’t pay you 13:43 – Collecting and acquiring assets 14:26 – Ben’s content is instructional 14:55 – Connect with Ben through Instagram 17:44 - The Famous Five   3 Key Points: If you know you can do it, just do it – approval isn’t always necessary. There’s a right recipe for everything. Be creative – it can get you somewhere.   Resources Mentioned: Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal  for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal  developers. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Leadpages  – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. @benjaminuyeda – Ben’s  Instagram account Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives