From sharing card tips to financial advice, YouTube has made this ex-magician $144,000 in a year
The magician began his career filming videos to teach people card tricks, but it wasn’t until he broke out on his own that he began to make six figures.
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Andrei Jikh promotes financial minimalism on his Youtube channel - however, his own finances are anything but after just over a year on the platform.
Mr Jikh has turned his personal financial advice channel into a $A145,000 (US$118,000) business with over 322 subscribers and 89 videos.
But Mr Jikh is far from your normal financial adviser, instead the YouTuber began his career as a card magician.
Mr Jikh told Business Insider that when he was 19 he helped to build a company that taught people how to do magic.
“When I was 19 years old, I was hired by a start-up which was basically teaching people how to do magic online,” Mr Jikh said.
His big break came in 2013 when he helped prepare the cast of hit film, Now You See Me 2 for their roles as magicians.
The film, which stars Daniel Radcliffe and Jesse Eisenberg, features a variety of card and magic tricks that Mr Jikh taught to the stars.
His film career then took off and he has since appeared in a variety of commercials and shows including National Geographics Brain Games and GoPro’s advert.
Performing is in Mr Jikh’s blood as he was born to a family of Russian circus performers before his father got a job with Cirque du Soleil and moved the family to the US.
It was then that Mr Jikh acquired an interest in personal finance as his parents acquired a crazy debt after the move.
The YouTuber wouldn’t make the move onto the platform though until late 2018 after saving up roughly $A288,018 ($US200,000) over the course of five years.
Mr Jikh quit his day job and started making the videos after reaching his saving goals and uploaded his first video in January 2019.
“I was saving half of my income, living below my means. That’s what I did for five years or so just so I could take a chance on YouTube,” said Mr Jikh.
Before beginning his channel Mr Jikh dropped $US10,000 to build a studio and buy equipment and claims on his channel that he spends 50 hours per week researching, shooting and editing his videos.
The first few months on the platform did not result in any money for Mr Jikh and he tells his followers that for the first six months he was on less than $US5.07 per hour given the amount of time he was putting in.
March was his first earning month where he made $US90.48 but since YouTube only pays out if it’s over $100 Mr Jikh did not receive the money for that month until April when he earnt $US1500.11.
From April the money kept going up and it was then that Mr Jikh found that certain topics paid more money than others.
“Some topics pay out $1 for every 100 views and other topics, like in the personal finance space pay out so much more,” he told his YouTube followers.
Mr Jikh told his followers that by learning the rules of YouTube he was able to severely increase his money earning potential which allowed him to net the six-figures over the year.
In fact November alone netted him $US30,000 which was well above the prior month which was only around $US12,000.
At his peak Mr Jikh earnt $A86,383 working for start-ups but now makes well over $A100,000 in adverts alone and has started making money through other platforms like Patreon, Amazon links and affiliate marketing.
Patreon earnt Mr Jikh $US14,104 for just promoting what stocks he bought, Amazon earnt him $US1,980 for simply including two links to Audible in each video description and finally affiliate marketing netted him $US54,500 in under four months.
Mr Jikh said he was hesitant to do more affiliate marketing and currently just stuck to two stock websites he believed in because they gave people free money.
“My whole thing is to start people with investing as early as possible and I’m grateful [my two affiliates] are giving away free money because I can think of no better way to get people investing than to give them free money,” Mr Jikh said.
Originally published as From sharing card tips to financial advice, YouTube has made this ex-magician $144,000 in a year