Video summary

I Built 7 Income Streams in 6 Months (And You Can Too)

Main summary

Key takeaways

Business

Business model: building “income streams” around a core craft

  • The creator left a Citibank project manager role to pursue wedding photography/videography.
  • In the first half of 2023, they built additional income streams to diversify and reduce reliance on the primary business.
  • Stated goal: build 7 income streams in ~6 months (most created from scratch during that period), aiming for about $40k/month.

Income streams (what they are, effort, and results)

1) Website templates (Etsy; drag-and-drop build)

Offer

  • Wedding photographer website templates
  • Learned a website builder platform and built multiple sites

Timeline / effort

  • Couple of hours to learn the platform
  • ~2 weeks to create 4 websites
  • Previously made designs were not being refreshed often: no new website for 2+ months

Performance / KPIs (examples)

  • Selling rate: ~2–3 websites/month
  • May: >$400
  • Last 30 days: $1k+ (“broke into four figures”)
  • Average: ~$300–$400/month

Difficulty

  • Easy to start
  • Medium to maintain, since Etsy visibility typically requires periodic new listings to stay relevant to the algorithm

2) Marketing templates (Canva digital products)

Offer

  • Canva templates such as:
    • Instagram story packs
    • Pricing guides
    • Business cards

Performance / KPIs

  • 3 pricing guides
  • 10 Instagram stories
  • 5 business cards
  • Revenue: ~$100/month

Difficulty

  • Easy to make (a couple of hours once Canva is understood)
  • Easy to maintain long-term

3) YouTube + AdSense

Approach

  • Entrepreneurship/skills content (e.g., editing, website creation, AI use)

Timeline

  • Channel monetized ~3 months before the reported results
  • Started the channel ~6 months earlier

Revenue / KPIs (checks)

  • $350, $427, and ~~$650 for August (reported as two paychecks plus a latest estimate)

Difficulty

  • Medium–hard to start
  • Hard to maintain because consistent uploading is required (cites Casey Neistat: success often means frequent uploads)

4) Sponsorships (from YouTube)

Mechanism

  • Sponsorship offers began after reaching ~10,000 subscribers

Performance / KPI

  • ~4–5 sponsorship offers/week
  • Many were described as “shady” (AI/crypto), so the creator only promotes tools they actually use

Difficulty

  • Similar to AdSense: depends on steady channel growth via ongoing posting

5) Affiliate marketing (links in descriptions)

Mechanism

  • Small commissions per click/subscription/purchase
  • No extra cost to viewers

Impact

  • “Not a big boost”—more like incidental revenue (described as buying “cups of coffee”)

Difficulty

  • Easy to set up, but dependent on building and retaining an audience

6) Other Etsy stores (including print-on-demand pivot)

Context

  • Etsy is crowded, and many sellers use Midjourney/ChatGPT-style digital assets

Action taken

  • Tried Midjourney wall art (small income)
  • Converted toward print-on-demand using Printify

Partnership / product capabilities

  • Printify supports 850+ wide-label product types (e.g., t-shirts, wall art, mugs)
  • Avoids inventory and shipping logistics
  • Scalable model: prints shipped globally (selling to many countries)

Difficulty

  • Not quantified for revenue here
  • Positioned as more scalable than purely digital assets

7) Stock photos & videos (wedding B2B content marketplaces)

Offer

  • Wedding-related drone videos, detail shots, clips
  • Assets can also be used in other portfolios

Performance

  • Described as a small fraction of earnings
  • Commission-based

Difficulty

  • Easy to start/maintain
  • Can be shot with an iPhone if the content is compelling

Core business (primary stream): wedding photography + videography (with wife)

Operations / capacity

  • ~20–25 weddings/year
  • Revenue varies by season:
    • Good months: $10–15k
    • Slow season: $2–3k/month
  • Coverage includes Europe and Dubai, implying travel and ongoing production costs

Complexity / difficulty

  • Medium to learn
  • Hard to maintain due to “around the clock” responsibilities:
    • shooting
    • contracts
    • client management
    • accounting
    • editing
    • end-to-end workload

Role in strategy

  • Core revenue stream
  • Also described as the “unfair advantage” engine enabling other products/services

Business rationale & execution playbook (explicit lessons learned)

The creator doesn’t use formal frameworks like SWOT or OKRs, but repeatedly follows a consistent strategy pattern: build an “unfair advantage” around the core craft.

Key principles

  • Everything can be learned (within reason)
    • Example: learn wedding photography through YouTube + practice; learn web design by building
  • Learn by doing, not watching
    • Caution against over-investing in research before execution
    • Claimed that hyper-analyzing wasted ~6 months
  • Build on an “unfair advantage”
    • Wedding photography/videography expertise enables:
      • branding → website templates & marketing templates
      • camera knowledge → content creation (YouTube + stock assets)
  • Passion projects are still work
    • Even favored tasks can be painful parts
    • Example: liking shooting but not editing; liking websites but not mobile-optimization hassle

Resilience / risk management approach

  • Income streams are framed as insurance for the primary business:
    • e.g., lockdown cancellations, health issues, and other disruptions
  • Approach emphasizes incremental scaling over months and years
    • More like a phased expansion strategy than one-time creation

Key presenters/sources

  • Casey Neistat: cited for content-consistency advice regarding YouTube uploads
  • Ali Abdall: referenced for the “unfair advantage” concept
  • Video creator (unnamed in subtitles): the speaker describing the journey (left Citibank; wedding photographer/videographer with wife)

Original video