You Don’t Need Views to Make Money on YouTube

Here’s how the typical YouTube advice loop works: build subscribers, grow views, hit monetization thresholds, collect AdSense checks. Repeat until you are big enough to matter.

Alexa Saarenoja operated within this loop for approximately 5 minutes before realizing it did not work. Within roughly two years on YouTube, she has generated less than $20,000 from AdSense. She has generated over $250,000 from services.

This disparity is not an outlier. This is the model.

Alexa did not originate from the creator world. For fifteen years she worked in architecture and design. She taught remote classes for a university while living in Finland. She lost her job. No local job market. No fluency in Finnish. Therefore, she completely committed herself to YouTube — not as a hobby, but as the only viable alternative she had available to her.

There was no plan B. There was no, “I am going to find myself a job here in Finland.” That was simply not an option for me.

— Alexa Saarenoja

Ten weeks after launching, she reached monetization levels. Prior to reaching those levels, people were already requesting that she provide coaching sessions in the comments section. She placed a Calendly link inside her description field. She was fully booked. When she added additional hours, she was once again fully booked. At that point she knew something real was happening — not when a video became viral, nor when the number of subscribers exceeded a certain threshold.

Her largest early error was operational, not strategic: she accepted twenty-two one-on-one coaching clients simultaneously during her first program launch. At that time, she was seven hours ahead of US Eastern Time and worked from 8 pm to midnight every single evening. It almost destroyed her. The lesson wasn’t “don’t offer services.” It was “don’t confuse demand with capacity.”

How Small Channels Generate Real Income: The Actual Business Framework

The structure of how Alexa creates income from her YouTube presence is simple and is directly contrary to how many creators conceptualize the YouTube business.

AdSense Is Not a Business Model for Small Channels

AdSense is not a business model for small channels. It’s gravy. If your YouTube channel is geared toward entertainment and you receive millions of views, then maybe the math works out. However, if you’re creating expertise-driven content — coaches, consultants, service providers — then AdSense income is background noise. The actual money comes from what your viewers trust you enough to purchase.

234 Subscribers, First Paying Client

A client who had 234 subscribers and several short videos when he secured his first paid client via YouTube did not secure that client by gaming the algorithm. He secured that client by showing up clearly to an extremely defined problem and by making it apparent he could resolve that issue.

Some of my videos with the lowest view counts have also produced the highest amounts of money for me, since they were so specifically focused on that particular individual — and that individual was like, you read my mind, can I hire you?

— Alexa Saarenoja

Most creators never make this turnaround: they optimize for reach when they should be optimizing for resonance. A video that receives 200 views from exactly the right people and converts one of those people into a client who pays $3,000 has greater value than a video that received 50,000 views and had zero business results.

What Alexa Really Does Based on the 5:1 Rule

So when someone asks Alexa how to create a business using YouTube, she tells them to use what she calls the 5:1 rule. What does that mean? According to Alexa, there are five key areas that need to be defined before creating a successful business via YouTube:

• One platform (i.e., YouTube)
• One year (consistency in output)
• One audience (people with similar interests/needs)
• One problem (the issue faced by the targeted audience)
• One solution (how you will help solve the identified problem)

That’s it. No pivoting, no diversifying — just focus.

She did this herself. One audience (growth on YouTube). One core problem (helping others grow on YouTube). One platform (YouTube). One year of consistent output. Business built. Now she is narrowing down even further, focusing on coaches and consultants wanting to transition from four-figure monthly income to five-figure monthly income utilizing YouTube as the lead generation vehicle.

In her experience, the people that have been grinding on YouTube for one year without anything to show for it typically fall under one of two categories: posting random content across various unrelated subjects, or talking about themselves vs. helping their audience. Both methods fail to build authority and build a business.

Why Authenticity Is Not Just Nice to Have — It’s a Content Distribution Methodology

Alexa has no qualms about stating a fact that many YouTube growth strategies dance around: being inauthentic on YouTube is a tax you pay for views, engagement, and long-term sustainability.

Alexa initially attempted to emulate the typical trend-chasing playbook — analyze what was working, copycat the success, and then optimize for the algorithm. This strategy left her with feelings of misery and poor results in terms of metrics. In short, Alexa would describe this type of environment as “YouTube gives me the ick.” Once she returned to showcasing herself naturally, her results improved. Conversely, every time she pursued optimizing for the algorithm, her results decreased.

Outside in the real world, you may be penalized for being yourself. However, on YouTube, if you’re yourself, you’ll receive rewards.

— Alexa Saarenoja

There’s a logical reason why Alexa feels this way. YouTube’s algorithm is designed to respond to engagement signals such as watch time, comments, shares, and repeat viewership. These types of signals are generated from having a true connection with your target audience. On the flip side, generic content that is produced via formulaic processes, AI script writing, and trend chasing generally produces at most superficial engagement levels. Meaningful connections result in a higher likelihood of producing long-term viewership and subsequently sales.

Alexa does not view herself as an algorithm-based creator. Her content decisions are based upon feedback from her clients, comments from her videos, and questions from potential customers. For example, she takes screenshots of comments that discuss specific challenges that her clients face and stores those comments in her photo gallery as possible video topic ideas. This is her method of conducting research for content.

The AI Trap That Alexa Continuously Sees Destroying Client Success

Alexa utilizes AI within her workflow; however, she uses these tools in a very limited capacity. Specifically, she records a voice memo on her phone detailing the video idea she wants to create, along with the primary points and the story she wants to convey. She then uses AI to develop an outline from that recorded conversation. She refines the wording back and forth until she develops a final script, which typically takes 6-8 hours.

Conversely, what she never does — and what she continuously observes causing destruction to her clients’ content — is simply give ChatGPT her entire idea and allow it to produce a completed script and post it online.

If I were to do that, it would feel completely shallow and un-soulful. Videos created this way rarely perform well. If you wish to provide value to humanity, you absolutely must include your experiences in your content creation.

— Alexa Saarenoja

The reasoning behind this position is not merely aesthetically driven. Rather, strategically speaking, AI-generated scripts create content that looks identical to virtually every other piece of content out there. And if the differentiator of your expertise and unique perspective is lost due to appearing as everyone else’s content, then you’ve created a potentially catastrophic problem. While AI can certainly assist with structuring your thought process, it cannot replace it.

What Makes a Creator Who Builds an Audience Different From One Who Builds a Community?

Creators that create audiences versus those that create communities are essentially creating two very different products from day one. The main difference between the two types of product creation is not in the frequency or production value of the posts.

Audience vs. Community

Alexa’s take: whether you ask what you can get from YouTube when you arrive, you create an audience. However, whether you ask what you can give back to YouTube when you arrive, you create a community. This distinction is important because it is the community, rather than the audience, that drives word of mouth, repeat customers, and genuine comment interactions where viewers discuss their own true problems — problems that inspire your next 10 video ideas.

She took her community from YouTube and placed it upon a school platform where she holds weekly calls. She recognizes who attends her calls regularly. Her attendees recognize each other. These types of environments generate accountability that no single course can provide — also why she is developing her app, the Obvious Choice, to gamify the ability to track the progress of her students and therefore keep them from stalling after six weeks.

The Small Channel Advantage

Regarding the small channel advantage: she emphasizes that smaller channels can develop communities quicker simply due to the fact that there is time to interact directly with each and every viewer through responding to each comment, acknowledging each individual, and providing each follower with a sense of having been “seen.” The moment a channel grows beyond its size of interaction, that level of familiarity disappears. In short, there are many places where being small is the advantageous position, but for building a community, it certainly is.

What Signals Really Indicate Your Channel Is Functioning

Forget views as your top indicator for success early on. Instead, Alexa uses the following indicators to determine if her channel is working:

• Comments containing real substance — including paragraphs, people sharing their personal story in reference to your content, and individuals explaining their current situation in relation to your content
• Requests for help or coaching being received through comments
• Consistently increasing upward trends in views regardless of speed — the direction is key, not the quantity

If these signals exist, then there exists a legitimate business case for the development of her channel. Conversely, if the only measures she is using to evaluate performance include raw view counts and/or subscriber numbers, then she is evaluating the wrong metrics and likely basing some poor decisions on them.

The Angle of Reinventing Oneself That Most Professionals Miss

Alexa speaks of YouTube as a reinvention platform — and she truly believes it in a way that is far from motivational poster speak. When Alexa lost her job as an architectural designer, she also lost the identity tied to it. Wife, mom, architect — these were all the categories she had established. When architect was eliminated, she did not know what else remained.

YouTube provided her a clean canvas where none of those titles mattered. She arrived at YouTube as herself — a person discussing subjects she could understand well, and speaking to others who required information she possessed. Practicing that same process in front of a camera consistently also changed how she presents herself outside of YouTube. More confident. Less reliant upon categorization assigned to her via circumstance.

She feels this aspect of what occurs in building a community on YouTube is overlooked — especially for professionals who have developed expertise within one lane and are either burnt out on said expertise or have been removed from it. The skills learned through practicing are transferable. Learning camera technique is learnable. The technology itself is figureoutable. The largest barrier to entry most people face is being seen — and her solution to that problem (borrowed from creator Rob the Maritimer) is direct: people already see you in real life; they’re just not accustomed to watching themselves.