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In surveys that have been conducted in recent years, becoming a YouTuber has consistently been ranked as one of the top career aspirations among youth.
For the more senior among us, including myself, this may appear to be a bewildering career choice. After all, many of us started watching YouTube for short leisure video content. In fact, YouTube itself only started seriously monetising itself after Google acquired it in 2007. According to the 2022 figures, YouTube generated about US$29.2 billion in revenue.
Much of YouTube’s advertising revenue is based on a revenue-sharing model that it shares with its partner creators who create and upload video content on its platform. This means that many popular YouTube content creators are able to earn a good income from the viewers of their content alone.
In Singapore, one such individual who is currently making a living creating personal finance content on YouTube is Christopher Chong, founder of the popular and fast-growing finance YouTube channel HoneyMoneySG. Since starting his YouTube channel in 2021 to share personal finance knowledge, Chris has gained more than 26,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel – Chris@HoneyMoney SG. He also has close to 10,000 members in his Telegram group – Honey Money SG Community, and over 1,700 subscribers in his TikTok channel.
With the goal of achieving financial independence by the age of 35 (he is currently 32), creating and posting finance videos on YouTube and other social media channels has definitely grown to be more than just a hobby today. As Chris and other full-time YouTubers would attest, becoming a full-time video content creator is not only a viable career option today but could also be a lucrative one as well.
In this latest instalment of the #MyFirstHustle series done in collaboration with IG, I spoke to Chris about the circumstances that led him to leave his full-time corporate job to focus on becoming a full-time YouTuber. I asked him about the various ways he is able to generate income from his videos and what his long-term goals are for himself and HoneyMoneySG.
Timothy Ho (Timothy): You started the HoneyMoneySG YouTube channel in 2021. We noticed a few other finance YouTubers and TikTokers (Kelvin Learns Investing, The Weeblings) also started around the same period, between 2020 & 2021. What were some of the events that were happening during that period that led you to start creating finance YouTube videos?
Christopher Chong (Chris): I think it was a mix of reasons. One of the more impressionable ones was when I was watching “Kelvin Learns Investing” videos in my living room during the WFH era about some finance mindsets, and I thought to myself, Why not give it a try since I also have an interest in personal finance? At the same time, I was also switching to a new role within the company in 2021, which allowed me more free time after work to learn some new skills as a part-time YouTuber. So I went on to watch some tutorial videos on “How to start a YouTube channel” to pick up some skills around December 2020 and posted my first video in January 2021.
Timothy: When did you start getting interested in personal finance?
Chris: I was always interested in personal finance, reading up blogs since 2013 from OG Finance bloggers like DollarsAndSense, A Singaporean Stock Investor, SgBudgetBabe, Investment Moats, and Seedly. So it was quite interesting when I met some of them at the same event together. I also have a finance background in terms of education, work experience, and professional qualification as a Chartered Accountant, so it was natural for me to be interested in numbers and money.
Timothy: Getting started is always difficult. What are some of the challenges that you experienced when you were producing your first few videos?
Chris: The most difficult part about starting out is that you put in hours of work and see no results. This is what puts off many people who start creating content online. The hours behind doing research, scripting, recording, editing, and post-production work are underestimated by many. And since no one is watching your videos, you are not able to get feedback on how to improve your content. It took me close to 3 months before I found some niches that gained traction.
Timothy: What are some of the popular videos that have performed well on HoneyMoneySG?
Chris: Current popular videos include high-interest savings accounts or financial products offering fair returns. People are always interested in where the best place to park their money is, but many are probably too busy to read the complicated terms and conditions.
That’s where we, as content creators, come in to share about the deals, summarise the T&Cs, and let the audience decide for themselves whether it is a worthy asset to invest in. One strategy to identify content that may work well is to browse through forums or discussion platforms on the hottest topics or news related to finance and give your own take on it. That will add a branding factor to a generic piece of content.
Timothy: Since the pandemic, we have seen a lot more people getting drawn towards trading, presumably because they want to generate profits from the financial markets. Do you think the interest to trade will continue to stay?
Chris: I don’t think it’s only specific to trading, but rather, that the interest to make quick money will continue to stay. We have seen such trends in lottery, crypto, NFTs, and hype stocks in the past. I think the most important thing is that people need to know what they are doing and of course, whether they enjoy trading or other forms of investing.
Timothy: A lot of people (myself included) are always curious about how it’s like monetising content on YouTube. I know some of the numbers could be sensitive, but could you give us a rough indication of how easy/difficult it is to generate revenue on YouTube, and what are the different revenue opportunities that you can tap into?
Chris: YouTube, unlike other social media platforms, is a long-term game. At the start, you are probably not even earning anything for months to come. The monetisation requirements before you could start earning ad revenue from YouTube are: 1000 subscribers, 4000 watch hours (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72851?hl)
For a finance channel, expect around SGD$8-10 per 1000 views since it is a better-paying niche compared to entertainment content channels, which roughly pay SGD$1-3 per 1000 views.
Sponsored content only comes in when your channel is more established as a voice of authority. And it is not a bed of roses because you now have to deal with corporations, meeting their specific requirements (e.g. marketing strategy & compliance, as they are now considered your clients).
Affiliate marketing is something you could start with as a small channel where you get paid a small commission when you refer new sign-ups for clients’ products. But like I mentioned, if you have no reach or have not provided any value, no one will use your link to sign up for products anyway. So back to the fundamentals: make good videos that your subscribers/new viewers want to watch. Create the value first, and think about profits later.
I think once you have mastered these 3 key areas, you can start to explore new areas of monetisation e.g., merchandise or live events.
Timothy: You were still working full-time when you started HoneyMoneySG. At what point in time did you make the decision to quit your full-time job to become a full-time finance YouTuber?
Chris: When the YouTube income was close to 80-90% of my full-time employment income, it was when the switch happened. This also means I lost more than 50% of my combined income when I quit my job in January 2023.
Timothy: Many people may aspire to be full-time YouTubers, but it’s probably a lot harder than it looks. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about being a YouTuber that you want to debunk for those who may aspire to be full-time YouTubers?
Chris: It’s never too late to be a YouTuber. I’ve heard from so many naysayers even before I started out, and today I’m still seeing such comments online. A YouTuber has a real job, which includes skills in video production, sales & marketing, data analysis, social media community management, finance & accounting, logistics, and business operations.
It’s like running your own SME business, but worse since you will likely have no capital at the start to hire additional help during the initial phase, so you will need to learn how to do everything yourself.
But the good news is, once you have the budget to outsource some of the work, you can scale much faster since you understand the business inside and out. Don’t listen to your friends who shoot you down for becoming a YouTuber. Just try it out and post at least 100 quality videos. Even if you fail in the end, at least you will learn some valuable skills outside of your day job.
Timothy: What are the long-term plans that you hope to achieve for yourself?
Chris: I’m still at the wealth accumulation stage, so I’m still working rather long hours to build this business full-time. Once my finances are more stable, I hope to work less and maybe Coast/Barista F.I.R.E. and upload videos whenever I want to, not because I need to.
Timothy: What does the word “hustle” mean to you?
Chris: To me, hustle is just a process and not the end goal by itself. If you’re just hustling aimlessly, you will work forever until retirement. Know what you’re hustling for and why you want to hustle. For myself, I hustled hard with a full-time corporate job and as a part-time YouTuber from 2021-2022, but I took a step back from 2023 onwards and work more flexible hours now. Life is short, so I don’t want to keep working till I am old.
Hustling For Financial Independence
From my conversation with Chris, it’s apparent that he is someone who is hustling for a specific goal. For Chris, achieving financial independence, preferably by 35, is a goal that he has set for himself.
To be clear, gaining financial independence doesn’t mean that Chris no longer intends to work. Instead, financial independence means he has the option of working as and when he wants to without having to commit himself to a full-time job. While creating content on YouTube is one way of generating income, other ways of generating income include trading.
While it’s sometimes easy to think of trading as a quick and easy way to generate income, the reality is that, similar to being a YouTuber, being a successful investor or trader would require knowledge, skills, and experience.
For example, to be able to trade well, an individual not only needs to be familiar with the macroeconomic factors that may affect the financial markets but also needs to understand technical analysis so that they can enter and exit their trades with more precision.
If you are keen to learn more about trading, the IG Academy is a good place to get started on our learning journey. Offered by IG (Singapore’s No. 1 CFD/FX broker (by total number of client relationships. Investment Trends 2022 Singapore Leverage Trading Report), the IG Academy offers free online trading courses to learn the basics of trading, regular live sessions that are hosted by their in-house market strategists to keep yourself abreast of the latest happenings in the financial market, and an IG Community where we can exchange ideas with likeminded traders around the world.
To gain free access to these materials, we just need an IG account.
But it’s not enough to just understand the theory of how the financial markets work. Similar to learning new skills, like learning to swim, we need to have hands-on practice to learn how to trade. Using an IG demo account, we can practise our trading strategies with up to $200,000 of virtual funds, and get familiarised with the platform first, before we move on to open a live IG account.
However, we must remember that similar to generating income on YouTube, learning how to trade well is also a journey that will take time. At the start, we are likely to make mistakes from our early trades, see mediocre results, or even make losses if the market moves against our position, and be overwhelmed by the amount of things we need to learn. However, the key here is to constantly strive to improve oneself so that we can find success as traders in the long-term.
The post Meet Chris @ HoneyMoneySG, The YouTuber Who Is Creating Personal Finance Videos For A Living appeared first on DollarsAndSense.sg.
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