{"id":11361,"date":"2017-12-25T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-12-25T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theprofessionalhobo.com\/?p=11361"},"modified":"2024-06-18T07:36:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T11:36:19","slug":"financial-case-study-kara-nate-youtube-professionals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theprofessionalhobo.com\/financial-case-study-kara-nate-youtube-professionals\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial Case Study: Kara and Nate, YouTube Professionals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kara and Nate Buchanan are husband and wife, and full-time travel YouTubers on a mission to visit 100 countries by 2019. They’re currently in country #66. You can follow their daily adventures on their YouTube channel<\/a>, or if you want to learn about their finances and other travel tips you can check out their website Kara and Nate<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been nurturing my own YouTube channel<\/a><\/i> for years, but Kara and Nate have it down to a science. Check out how they use it to earn a full-time travel living! <\/i><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Financial<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Want to learn how to travel (long-term or full-time) in a financially sustainable way yourself? Sign up for my FREE 2-week email course<\/a> here to learn everything you need to know! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was originally published in 2017. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content.\u00a0<\/em>

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2024 UPDATE: Kara & Nate have since expanded their careers to include two amazingly successful businesses: <\/strong>

FARE DROP<\/a> – A deal notification service that helps you save up to 80% off the cost of flights, with alerts for amazing deals delivered right to your inbox. <\/strong>

DAILY DROP<\/a> – A (highly entertaining) daily newsletter to help keep you educated and up to date in the world of points and miles. <\/strong>

The income information from this portion of their business is not included in this case study, which predates these new ventures.

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How long have you been living\/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started traveling full-time in January of 2016. We\u2019ve now been to 66 countries on six different continents. I think the easiest way to tell you where we\u2019ve been is to show you.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"kara<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n


Please describe what you do for income.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last two years have been a massive experiment to develop enough sources of income to keep us on the road full-time. We\u2019ve tried a lot of things over the last two years, and now we have five income streams that generate semi-consistent money on a monthly basis. All of these income streams centre around our YouTube channel. YouTube is our main driver of traffic, and we do our best to push that traffic to our other online resources such as our website, Patreon, and travel hacking course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. YouTube Ad Revenue <\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the revenue that YouTube pays us each month for ads shown on our channel. Each time an ad is shown on one of our videos, we split the revenue 55\/45 with YouTube. Unfortunately, YouTube shows ads on less than 1\/3 of our video views (I think this is pretty common across the board). For example, in Q3 of 2017 our channel received 1.7 million views, but only 500,000 of those views were monetized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Patreon<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with Patreon, it\u2019s a platform that allows creators to get paid for their creations. In our case, we get paid every time we upload a video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Midway through 2016, we debated on whether or not we should start a Patreon page. On one hand, we felt like we were asking for a hand out to continue our travels. But on the other hand, we were working eight hours per day to produce high-quality videos that people really enjoyed watching. In the end launching our Patreon page was a great decision. We now have over 90 patrons paying us for our creations each month, and Patreon has become one of our largest revenue streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Online Course<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Kara and I left to travel full-time, we saved up almost two million miles and points! We’ve used these miles and points to save over $25,000 on travel expenses. Earlier this year, I created my first online course called 30 Days to Becoming a Travel Hacker. In this course, I teach students the exact strategies I\u2019ve used to earn and redeem millions of frequent flyer miles. Since officially launching the course in June of this year, it\u2019s become one of our top two revenue streams!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Affiliate Income<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of our affiliate income comes from Amazon. We have several pages on our website where we recommend travel and video gear that we use. People seem to be most curious about the gear we use to film our videos because most of the traffic we drive to Amazon is sent from our travel vlogging gear page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Licensing Content<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We aren’t proactive about seeking out sponsored videos or video licensing deals. However, sometimes they fall into our lap. Every once in a while someone will find one of our videos on YouTube and contact us wanting to use it in a TV show or commercial. When it does happen, this is easy income for us because all we have to do is sign some paperwork and send over a video file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, this doesn\u2019t happen consistently, but when it does we are paid as much as $500 for giving someone permission to use our videos in their project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2024 UPDATE: Kara & Nate have since expanded their business to include two amazingly successful businesses:
FARE DROP<\/a> – A deal notification service that helps you save up to 80% off the cost of flights, with alerts for amazing deals delivered right to your inbox.
DAILY DROP<\/a> – A (highly entertaining) daily newsletter to help keep you educated and up to date in the world of points and miles. <\/strong>

The income information from this portion of their business is not included in this case study, which predates these new ventures.

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How many hours per week do you work on average?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It depends on what you consider \u201cwork.\u201d I\u2019ll give you an average schedule and you can decide for yourself how much work is involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wake up around 8 a.m. and work on our computers (editing videos, writing, etc.) until lunch. At lunchtime, we pick up our camera and head out to start filming a video. A typical video for us includes lunch, afternoon adventures, and dinner. After dinner, we usually head back to our Airbnb to work on our computers for several more hours. We usually go to sleep around midnight, then we wake up the next day and do it all again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I would say we usually work on our computers around eight hours per day. Then we\u2019re out filming for six to eight hours, but filming is usually the fun part because we\u2019re either eating something delicious or doing something fun that will make for good video content!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, our schedule is very unpredictable. An \u201caverage day\u201d doesn\u2019t happen very often. Some days we’re up with the sun filming early in the morning and some days we don\u2019t start till late in the afternoon. However, we usually end up working on our computers 6-8 hours per day and filming 6-8 hours per day either way.

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How much money do you make?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each quarter we publish an income and expense report on our website detailing down to the dollar how much money we\u2019ve earned and spent in the last quarter. We published our Q3 Income and Expense Report<\/a> on our website, and in Q3 of 2017 we made $10,439.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Q3 income came from the five income sources mentioned above and the breakdown was as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n