36 | Ask the Expert - Amy Darley, Part 1: How She Created a Flexible, Full Time Income Through Her YouTube Channel
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Hey guys. And welcome back to the scale without social podcast. I'm so excited for today's interview with YouTuber Amy Darley and I'm continuing my little interview series on some. Alternative strategies to making money online. Outside of your traditional social media platforms. And so we're gonna tackle something that has.
Always intrigued me, which is YouTube. And I'm gonna ask Amy how she. Does her business, how she started her business. And how her business has grown in the last five or so years of building a massive following over on YouTube with her cleaning videos. So get excited for today's interview.
Heather: Okay guys. I am super excited for today's interview with the fabulous Amy Darley. Amy is a YouTuber that I actually met when she came with a friend to the Bible study that I host on Monday mornings. and I , was so excited and really my curiosity was peaked. When I learned that she has built a business from sharing her passion for cleaning on YouTube and ever since then, I've become a super fan, her YouTube channel, Amy Darley and subsequently of course her social media channels, which we'll talk about in a little bit too.
They are so inspiring for any of you guys who are wanting to kind of up your cleaning game for those who are busy moms, like both of us. and so I'm excited to both share her story today and also dive into a little bit deeper of how she actually runs her business, both how she monetizes the YouTube channel for those of you interested in a passive income that looks like that, but also how she balances sharing her life and her family on social media with building her business on the platform.
, Amy, thank you for being here today.
I'm so
Amy: excited.
I'm so excited. Yay. Well,
Heather: for those of the listeners who have not found your YouTube channel yet, and don't know your story, and I don't even know the whole story. I know we both live in the same town though. We're here on
Amy: zoom. yes.
Heather: Tell us about your background, like where you're from your life growing up and all the heck you got into cleaning.
Yeah, .
Amy: Okay. So I'm gonna try not to be like super long, because I feel like it's a long story. But I grew up here in Georgia. I grew up in middle, Georgia, met my husband in Valdosta. We went college together. I was a cheerleader. He was football player and we ended up back here in the Savannah area.
I graduated with a degree in early childhood education. I taught for nine and a half years and never, ever, ever in my wildest dreams did ever think I would want to stay at home. I always thought like teaching is my thing. I love it. I just couldn't imagine not doing it. But after having my first kid Kason, he's now 11 and in sixth grade, it's crazy.
But after having him, my heart was so to when I had to go back to work. And so from then on out, I was like, it was a big prayer of mine to be able to be a stay at home. At that time chance was working for a company that did not offer health insurance. So it was not an option. We would've lost my income plus had to pay out for this private health insurance.
So it just wasn't an option. So I just kept praying, praying, praying, and then eventually it was like, Five five years later, I guess. Cause I think grace or four years later, Gracie, June was we had our second child. And Gracie June was for CA was going into kindergarten or first grade. And. Chance my husband switched jobs.
It was the same career, but with a different company that now offered health insurance. I also, I'm telling you, this is like all over the place, but I started an Etsy shop doing t-shirts and was making all these tshirts. And then that kind of blew up and was really successful enough to where I was making.
Not quite as much as what I was making teaching, but almost as much. And then now we had the option. Health insurance through Chance's job. So I finally was like, this is it. So we're just gonna take a lead of faith and I'm going to stay at home.
Well, By this time, my kids are now school, age kids. And so I missed out on all the baby stuff, now as a teacher, of course, I had summers off with them. So that was wonderful. But then anything during the school year, I was missing out on like parties and getting to eat lunch with them or go in, in, and volunteering.
And so I really wanted to do all that stuff. And so I, I just took it. This is what I'm supposed to do. I know my kids are going to school now, but I'm able to spoil their teachers and go in the classroom and help out and being aid to their teachers now. So I did that. But shortly after I started staying at home we had just also built our house and moved into this new neighborhood.
And so I was decorating. I was in the process of, you know, trying to get our house together and everything and walking a lot of YouTube because. I was staying at home and so I would get ideas and I was like, you know what, I keep getting questions about how I did this or how I did that. So I was like, I'm gonna make a YouTube channel just so I can kind of share those with my friends that are asking all these questions about where I got things or, you know, I was just able to just send them a video real quick.
And of course, I didn't think anything about like a career. I knew that you could make money on YouTube, but. I just didn't think it would ever be like a career type money. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I just looked at it as a hobby, but as soon as I started making these videos, I came across some of the cleaning content that was on YouTube.
And I was like, oh, I love this. I can start sharing some of my tips within my videos too. And it's not just DIYs. It's not just decorating my house. I can also share the everyday stuff that I'm doing in my videos too. And then it just blew up from there. And so my main focus now has turned to cleaning.
Organizing and anything like mom life related. So all my videos are titled with the cleaning because that's the main focus. But within those videos, I try to throw in grocery hauls. People love to see what you're buying your family for groceries, recipes that you're doing decorating, like all the things.
So long story , Oh, my gosh, I love
Heather: it. That is what a crazy story in so many different pivots and shifts. And I can tell that like, you're just where you're meant to be and how cool that you've been able to monetize this. Your channel has absolutely exploded. You now have over 230,000 subscribers. It looks like you've done like almost 400 videos, which is crazy. So maybe like when did you start it again? What year was, was that, that you started the actual channel?
Amy: 2018, I think at the end of 2018, I'm trying to think.
Yeah, we moved into our house 2018, so it was like November, December area, but I didn't post my first cleaning video until the following January. And that's when my channel just kind of took off.
Heather: I love that. So when did you start your Etsy shop? And I love that you now you're like an entrepreneur times two, and clearly you're an entrepreneur at heart, right?
Because I think, you know, even though you love to be a teacher, now you actually get to teach others through the power of that and use a lot of your gifts and talents. But when did you start the Etsy shop and what made you kind of pivot? Is that, is that because this is more profitable and a better I guess time investment for you and your.
Amy: So I started myy shop about two years before I quit teaching. So I started it and I was just kind of doing some things here and there for friends. And then my last year teaching is when that kind of took off. and we were renting while we were building. And so I was able to take all of that money that we had from Etsy and I was just throwing everything into savings.
And so then when YouTube started, I didn't really like promote my Etsy shop through YouTube. I mean, I talked about it here and there. I think I made a couple of videos about how to start an et shop and things like that, because that was what was going on in my life at the. But as soon as YouTube got really busy and I realized how much time and how much work it took to put into YouTube.
And as soon as I kind of supplemented now, I kind of went from I'm supplementing my teacher income with my Etsy. Now I was constantly trying to keep up with Etsy orders and do YouTube at the same time. So then I was like, okay, well now I'm making what I made on Etsy. I'm gonna just. You know, cut this one out and focus more on YouTube because YouTube was more of a business that you could see grow. Every single month, the more my channel grew, the more my income grew. And so. It definitely took off and it way surpassed my Etsy shop. So it was a blessing, you know, and I never would've started YouTube. Had I not stayed at home and done the Etsy thing in the first place. So I feel like God just gave me like these little stepping stone to get to where I am now, you know?
Heather: Oh my gosh. That's so cool. I'm all about, you know different income streams, especially streams that are passive in a way that mm-hmm , you know,
as I'm sure with your Etsy, your results were tied to the actual products that you made, right? Like your, your income was dependent on how many of the items that you listed and posted and physically sold.
Whereas it sounds like YouTube. Is a much more scalable, like you can put in the same amount of work in creating and producing the videos, the content scheduling all that out, but then the more you serve and the more you teach, then the bigger you're following grows, which is directly related to the income.
So is that right?
Amy: Yeah. Now I do, I will say I couldn't just like I could stop YouTube today and I would, I would continue to make money, but eventually, like, it would kind of trickle out, you know, because it is one of those things that you kind of have to just, you have to keep going. You have to be consistent to keep growing, but then also for them to.
Pushing your videos out and people to keep finding you you've gotta have new content. I mean it would definitely make you money for a while. It'd be passive income for a while, but I think it would slowly start to trickle down and you wouldn't make as much. In the long run, but that makes sense.
Heather: So it's not,
it's not officially passive in terms of you all doing the work and you are being consistent in terms of posting content, but it's definitely a more scalable solution.
That's not so much tied to your trading time dollars necessarily because the exactly potential, even though you're obviously doing great with it now, like there's even potential for growth beyond what you're doing. Right. Right. That's so cool. So for somebody who like me, actually, I was sharing with you right before we got started.
It's always been secretly my dream to start a YouTube channel, which is hilarious. And it's still something that I go back and forth that I'm praying, you know, praying about. And I do share content specifically to YouTube that I feel like is a really good resource or a hub. Like you said, to share like this.
Interview itself, it will live on YouTube for you or me to be able to share your story and find it in a really tangible place. So it sounds like you got started in a similar way where you weren't necessarily trying to make it a channel or you weren't doing it in the way that I'm sure you've learned as most successful or the best practices for rebuilding a YouTube income, but it sounds like you started by just creating videos that.
Were specific to the questions that people were asking and teaching them and that it evolved along the way. So maybe explain a little bit more about that process from 2018, what your time and investment looked like at that point and then how it shifted over time.
Amy: So I will say when I started my YouTube channel I feel like I, I was posting like three videos a week.
It was bonkers, like I was taking and I was doing my Etsy shop. So. I don't know how I did it because now I'm down to only one video a week. And then sometimes I will actually skip a week. And especially if we have like a vacation or something like that, where we've got a really busy week and I just have, I just don't have the time to edit.
But starting out, I was doing three videos a week. They weren't necessarily all cleaning videos though. And so I think I figured out that the cleaning videos were the ones that took off and they were the ones. So I feel like with any channel, if you're starting a channel, you kind of have to find your niche.
So when I started, I was all over the place I was making. You know, just a basic recipe video by itself. You know, I was making a decorating video. I was doing a shopping hall video, so I was all over the place. And I feel like with YouTube and any other social media platform, you kind of have to have your niche.
So that way, that platform knows who to push your content to, because if you've got. Someone who's watching cleaning videos all the time on YouTube. YouTube knows. Well, Hey, this girl's always putting out cleaning videos. So let me share this video with them. I'm gonna, you know, because they want you to stay on.
They want you to keep watching. And so if you have a channel that's mainly cleaning and this person only watches cleaning videos, and they're gonna push your channel to them. And so from the beginning, I started with three. And I was learning to edit. I had never done any kind of like editing class. I learned everything was from YouTube.
I learned how to edit. I use, and I still use iMovie, which is the basic editing software that comes on your computer. I don't do, I mean, some other types of channels probably need like a way better software than I have. I have never had to switch from anything because I don't do a whole lot of like really crazy transitions or, you know, mine's pretty simple.
And so I've always stuck to iMovie. I still use it. I started out with my phone, so I had an iPhone. I don't even know what you have back in two 18. I had an iPhone, but I quickly realized like, Your storage matters. and so I was trying to do everything for my phone and I eventually now I didn't spend a dollar on my YouTube channel until I made money.
So that was a big thing too. I was like, I'm not gonna invest all this money into my, you know, I have to make money first. And so as soon as I got monetized, which back then. it took a lot longer for them to monetize you. You have to have, I don't even remember what it is. I think it's a thousand followers and 4,000 watch hours.
Well, I met all of that really quickly after starting the cleaning videos. I think it was within a month. I met that and that was crazy, but it took them a long time to review my channel. Now I think it's a whole lot quicker. People are getting monetized in a day, but then it took me like five months. So. I didn't make money off of anything that I was putting out.
I was putting out like three videos a week for about five months. And then finally the monetization clicked in or kicked in. And I think the first month I made like a hundred bucks so you were so excited, I'm sure you were probably like, oh yeah, I was pump. And so was like, oh, I'm making money off of all this work that I've put in, you know?
And so, but then each month it grew and grew. Once I made enough money to buy my first camera. I did all the research on what all these girls were using on YouTube to film their videos. I bought my camera. I wanna say it was like. 500 or $600 camera camera was like a little set. And I still use that camera because it is so good.
It's the Canon G7X Mark 2. So it's this little one that I can like carry around. Actually. No, I take that back. I bought a bigger camera first and it wasn't as good, but it was about the same price, about $600. And then I found the smaller camera. And I used that one, but so yeah, and then after that I started, I realized, okay, well I can do two videos a week and still make the same amount of money as my three videos.
So slowly I started scaling back and I also realized I was spending way too much time. Doing YouTube and doing all this other stuff when my kids were at home. Mm. So I wanted that time back and I wanted to, I mean, I was still, you know, I was, I was going and volunteering in the classroom every single week.
I had a weekly, Wednesday lunch date with my kids at school. We were able to eat lunch with them then. And so I was making that time, but I do still feel like a lot of times I was staying up super duper. After practices or whatever we had going on in the afternoons. And then sometimes I would even be on my phone, you know, while we're at home.
And I'm just, I had to scale it back because it was just so much, and I dropped down to one video a week and it didn't hurt me. So that's kind of where I've stuck for a long time is the one video. Oh, my gosh.
So I love that. And I love for those listeners that are followers of,
you know, the Lord . I feel like
Heather: he gives us that, that space and energy when we honor the priorities in our life, like our family time with our kids, because it is, it is such an important season having littles that are, our kids are similar ages and it's, it's so important.
And so I feel like when we honor that, and we're still using the gifts and talents that he's given us to. You know, serve other people through a platform like YouTube. I feel like he shows up in that and, and makes it multiply, which is really, really cool. Definitely.
So I would love to know too, how do you batch contents or do you typically record the, the content for say the next week in that week?
What does your schedule look like in terms of creating the. I
Amy: would love to batch content, but because of the editing process and because of my type of videos, if I had shorter videos, I would definitely batch content. I feel like if I, if anyone's looking at starting a YouTube channel and they're doing like the shorter to the point videos, batch, it would be so much easier.
But for me, my videos are typically 30 to 40 minutes long. and my content. So what I'm editing down. When I upload all of my footage into the computer, it tends to be about three hours of footage. Wow. So , it just takes forever and it takes up a lot of space. I have like the biggest memory cards that you can have.
I have upgraded my computer. So that way, you know, I. Fit all that stuff on there. So if I wanted to batch maybe two or three videos, I could probably put all that footage onto the computer without it getting like super duper slow. But for the most part, I usually film the week before and try to edit everything and then it goes up the next week.
So that's how I do mine, just because of the size of all of my files and you know, how long my videos are, but. If they were shorter, I would definitely batch. It would be so much easier.
Heather: That makes sense. Well, how do you decide what, like what amount of time, like, how did you land on that 30 to 40 minute? Video length
how did you, how
Amy: did you figure out how to do that? So that was another trial and error type thing that I've just I've realized over the years. I think it just depends on what kind of content you're putting out. I mean, obviously I think if people are looking for a recipe, they want to be quick and to the point, because they're ready to make that, you know, they don't need this really long video telling them how to make this recipe.
They want it to be quick. So that's why I like TikTok and Instagram recipes blow up on there because they're quick and easy. Super accessible. We can make our recipe right after. Right. But with cleaning videos, my audience, I feel like they are trying to get things done. And a lot of people throw the cleaning videos up on their TV or keep it on their phone and carry their phone around while they're cleaning with me.
So they're listening and. Or they're, you know, or they, a lot of times they also watch beforehand, but I do feel like most of the people that watch are either getting ready in the morning and watching while they're getting ready or they're cleaning along with me. And so I think that that was kind of the cleaning videos.
I mean, nobody can clean their house in 30 minutes. I mean, we can maybe clean our room in 30 minutes, but no, I didn't clean their entire house. So if they have a big, long to do list, then having the longer video kind of helps them because they don't have to go searching for another video or, you know, it might suggest another one of my videos next.
So they could just go click on the next one. But the longer you, the longer people stay on your channel. The longer, you can keep people there. Then the more YouTube is gonna push that video out. So, because my videos are longer, YouTube sees that, Hey, they're staying on her video longer. So they're gonna push it out more.
Versus when I do a 15 minute video, then they're not staying as long. And so now I've kind of put myself in this spot where I have to do these longer videos to keep the views at where they are. Because if I do a 15 minute video, they're like, oh, they, you know, they weren't on that long. Compared to my 30 minute videos.
And it also kind of, like I said, it depends if I do just say, I like, if I did a, an organization video and I did one specific room, then that could definitely be a shorter video because. it's kind of like the recipe thing. They wanna see the transformation. They wanna see the beginning to end how you did it.
Just know about the products that you used quick and easy, but with a cleaning video, when you're cleaning and you're going through your to-do list and everything, it's definitely a lot more beneficial for it to be long. If that makes sense.
Heather: It makes so much sense. Have you gotten into YouTube shorts
Amy: at all?
And yeah. Have you gotten into that? So I tried it. I haven't done very many videos. I did a couple and I, I mean, I didn't see the same. I think, I think it's one of those things you would have to keep doing over and over each week. And honestly, I could use like the videos that I put out on Instagram and TikTok.
I could use those videos for YouTube shorts, but I just, I haven't really, I don't know. I did a few and I didn't see the views that I was kind of hoping for. And I wasn't sure YouTube is one of those things. It's kind of scary. Because you don't wanna mess with the algorithm. You don't want people being like, or, you know, you don't want YouTube.
Mess your channel up because I've seen that happen with people where they were getting, you know, hundreds of thousands of views on every single video, they switched things up and started doing some other things. And now their videos have tanked and their channels have tanked. And I just don't want that to happen.
So I haven't done too, too much with the shorts. We'll see, we'll see how that goes.
Heather: I'm hearing a little bit about it. And of course, for anybody listening, that's like what's shorts it's of course YouTube's answer to trying to compete with TikTok their videos. And then of course, Instagram also trying to compete with the reels.
Okay guys, we're gonna press pause on the interview with Amy and continue it next week. Where we get into. More how Amy supplements her YouTube business with other social media platforms, but she does it in a way that doesn't sacrifice. Her time with her family
And we actually even talk about whether or not YouTube is a social media channel. So stay tuned for part two of Amy D's interview come in next week. But for this week, I hope you guys have an awesome week. And I hope that this was inspirational for you in case YouTube has been something that's on your radar, again, as an all alternative to.
Some of the other methods of social media promotion or in addition to your existing business model that you've got going on now. So. Thanks again for listening y'all have a great week.
