As many couples do, my wife and I alternate whose family we visit on major holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. While some may cringe at spending time with their spouse’s family, I most often enjoy their company. For Thanksgiving 2013, in particular, it was our turn to visit my wife’s family. This was a Thanksgiving that started a string of events that changed my life.
Upon arrival, I found my mother-in-law cooking and my father-in-law in the living room. Time at my in-law’s house is often spent in great conversations. This time, my father-in-law was watching YouTube. Having a screen on was atypical, but the videos he was watching were intriguing. As I sat down and started to watch with him, I learned he had been watching videos on metal detecting for over an hour, and I was now hooked!
Watching videos of discovery intrigued me. Each content creator hypothesized over what had been found, how old it may be, and its intended uses. They sounded very educated on antiquities and it quickly reminded me of a childhood memory of a man I knew who taught the Fishing merit badge for the Boy Scouts of America. This man had found, through scuba diving in lakes, many rods and reels and a few sunken flat bottom boats. Because of the merit badge counselor’s treasure trove, I had fallen in love with the idea of discovering treasure, but at the time I had no way of doing it, financially. Watching the videos with my father-in-law reawakened this desire, only this time, I was financially able to do something about it.
Leaving dinner that night, I talked to my wife in the car on the way home and told her I wanted to buy a metal detector. She told me I could, but only if I saved up over several paychecks to ensure I really did want to have one. I promised I would do research on good starter metal detectors and save up $50 per paycheck until I had enough to buy one. After two months of watching dozens of metal detecting videos, I found a Garrett Ace 250, the most recommended ‘newbie’ metal detector, for just over $200. I told my wife I still wanted a metal detector and she agreed it would be an early birthday present. I haggled the price down to $175, including shipping, which made my wife a little happier about the purchase.
I was terribly excited to get my detector and spent many nights dreaming of what I’d find as I waited for it to reach my doorstep. The day it arrived, I was too busy to use it, so it had to spend its first night in a dark, isolated closet, alone and unused. The next day, I took it to a schoolhouse, which was built in 1832, where a few days previously I had been given permission to scour the grounds for treasure. Wracked with anticipation that I would surely find something amazing, I filmed my first outing with my brand new toy. I was ecstatic!
While I did find a wheat penny, an old file, and a few other pieces of trash, my ravenous appetite was far from satisfied. I found time, day after day, to go to any public park I could find, to peck out its hidden stash of rings and jewels, like a chicken hunting for grubs. When I found mostly coins and trash, I talked myself into believing it would only be a matter of time before I found something great. I determined I was too new to really understand my machine. Besides, the manual said I needed 100 hours of use to truly get a feel for it.
I decided to take it with me to a family reunion in Colorado to show my family my “cool toy.” Sadly, they were mostly unimpressed, but I wouldn’t give up. We went to Grand Lake to go swimming for one of our activities. I knew the coil was waterproof, but the “brain” of the detector was not, so I carefully entered the water with it while the children played about me. No more than 10 minutes into waving it around in the water, I found a sterling silver ring with a garnet stone. It was beautiful and it was treasure! Now my family was interested!
One day, a few months later, I determined I should “give back” to the metal detecting community. I decided I would make a YouTube video to combine all the tips and tricks I had learned from videos I had seen, as well as the ones I had learned using the dectector. I took my children to a park and one of my daughters filmed me. I posted the video and thought, “That was fun.” A couple weeks later, I was surprised to see that my video had earned me $0.01! I was shocked! From then on, I checked every day to see if I had earned more. My wife scoffed and belittled me, “You get so excited over making so little!” It didn’t matter to me what she said; I was making money! I didn’t know it was even possible to earn money on YouTube.
Since then, I have created eight more channels and have posted over 300 videos. I now make over $200 per month even if I don’t post a new video. I also now have goals that focus on YouTube earnings. I didn’t do anything spectacular. In fact, I just did what thousands of people have done before me. I merely posted videos of me having fun. Many people, I have learned, earn over $100,000 per year from their channels. I am still at the beginning of my “YouTube career,” but I have seen people make money from even the most mundane videos. If I can make money from YouTube showing videos of me metal detecting, anyone can make money on YouTube. My challenge for you is to find something you are passionate about or a subject you are an expert in and make a video. Make many videos. You’ll be surprised how quickly you will be earning a second stream of income. Good luck. Just don’t forget to subscribe! :)
Find some of my channels at http://www.WatchBobOnYouTube.com
Photo by Ash _ Ismail on Unsplash
