Rich has been a middle school english teacher for 16 years and started a youtube channel a year ago called Teacher Entrepreneurs making videos about personal finance, investing, retirements savings, and more.
Making use of YouTube to grow his business
His youtube channel took off! Rich now has over 20 thousand subscribers and was able to monetize his channel. He makes a video a week and also has a podcast, facebook group, and website where he posts content as well.
Rich’s skills from being a teacher carried over really well to making youtube videos. Each video he taught one lesson in around 10 minutes and encouraged his audience to try it at the end.
Rich’s middle school students found his youtube channel and Tik Tok and came in with many questions. They are interested in learning about money and the things they don’t learn in school, so Rich hopes to start a club where he can talk more about these topics with his students.
Starting a podcast
Rich talks about starting his podcast several years back and the successes and failures that he learned from it. Eventually he quit doing the podcast, but more recently restarted with more success.
For people looking to start their own podcast and wanting to be able to monetize it, Rich’s advice is to research affiliate marketing. Rich also gives tips on how to do affiliate marketing and still remains client oriented.
Be proactive with your finances and work-life balance
Sean and Rich discuss the narrative that teachers have to do everything for free and it has to be a charitable job. One of Rich’s biggest messages is that teachers need to be proactive about their finances and educating themselves about it. It can be hard to manage and navigate, and that is why Rich is creating lessons to make it easier.
In the past year, Rich was able to make $15,000 by making 8-12 minute youtube videos. Rich talks about how he prioritizes mental health and does his best to create that work-life balance. Next on the horizon for Rich is developing his blog to be able to produce written lessons in addition to his video lessons.
You can find Rich at his website www.RichSmithEDU.com, on Instagram and TikTok @teacherentrepreneurs, or join his facebook group called teaching millionaires!
Sean McCormick 0:01 Hey everybody, we made it to Episode 10 double digits. Woohoo. Thank you so much for listening for engaging for giving us your feedback is deeply appreciated. So a few stats so you can join on the journey with us. We're at 457 downloads at this point. And our next milestone is 500. We've published 10 episodes, and our next milestone is going to be 25. If you're listening out there, you can do two things to help us continue to grow. One send your feedback to info at earnmoretutoring.com or let us know on the Instagram at earn more tutoring. We listen we want to bring on the guests and make the episodes as valuable as possible to you so you can grow your business so you can grow your tutoring practice and do what you love which is earning more tutoring. Second, if you can make a donation please do any donation is appreciated, and it helps with all the costs associated with making an awesome podcast. So please donate at the Venmo handle which is at earn more tutoring, or go on the website or in more tutoring.com and click on our Patreon and make a donation. We love you. We appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening. And onto this next episode. Today on the Earn More Tutoring podcast, Rich Smith and I talk about how he built a YouTube channel that within one year had almost 20,000 followers, how he monetized that channel to make 1000s of dollars a month and how he manages teaching having a family and being a teacher entrepreneur. Rich Smith 1:30 My first year I still have to do the record the video, but I was able to earn right around $18,000 by making 52 videos. The videos ranged between like eight minutes and 12 minutes. One video got you know, hundreds of 1000s of views. Or there's a couple of videos that only got a couple 100 views. So there's you're gonna have peaks and valleys. Sean McCormick 1:57 Do you want to start a side hustle, tutoring or take your tutoring business full time? Or do you want to start something with your teaching skills where you can earn more money than you are in the right place? Today's guest is Rich Smith. Welcome Rich. Rich Smith 2:10 Sean, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. Sean McCormick 2:13 Of course. So just to get started, I'd love for you to break down what you're doing. So I know you've got the YouTube channel, you're a teacher, you've got the Facebook, tell us about your different ventures and what you've got going on. Rich Smith 2:25 Yeah, so my full time day job is a middle school English teacher. And I've been doing that for about 16 years. And I love it, you know, never gonna stop being a teacher, you know? And for those of you who, you know, feel like you know, what's been going on with teachers, it's like, oh, well, yeah, I know what a teacher does. I went to school, I tell you what, this past year 2020 has changed everything. So we've been, we've been learning how to do interviews like this with parents, with students teach online while concurrently teaching in the classroom. So I gotta tell you, the the job of a teacher has changed in terms of format this past year. And then when I go home, and in my free time, you know, my unique free time, after you know, putting the putting the kids to bed, I started a YouTube channel about about a year ago, actually almost to the day. And it was based around personal finance and any tips or tricks or lessons I've learned along the way. And I called it teacher entrepreneurs, I was just going to teach the business side of money, personal finance, retirement savings, investing credit card rewards, whatever came to mind. And it's funny because if you think back to a year ago, a year ago was when everything shut down. So now everyone's stuck at home, some people are losing their jobs. And here I was making videos about how to help people with their money. So the YouTube channel took off, I started making at least a video a week. And fast forward to current day have a successful YouTube channel. You know, I have a podcast where we talk about the same sorts of things. And in addition, I also have a website where there's a ton of resources people can get and find there. So Sean McCormick 4:10 that's awesome. Yeah, it sounds like you stay busy. And I really believe like teachers can do anything I think, you know, when I hear your story, and I think about what you just shared. One of my my friends was telling me how he started this this baseball company where he would take kids from the local community to the Dominican Republic, and they play against the kids in the Dominican Republic. And he told me all my skills, planning the trip, getting kids, you know, passports and, you know, having a photographer there and all those things, which I was just amazed by he said, I learned that all from teaching, you know, how to lesson plan, how to plan out, you know, curriculum, how to plan out events, and that was right when I was entering teaching and I thought man, I I hope I can...
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