- Kelsey Rodriguez is a 23-year-old painter and YouTuber who lives in Berkeley, California.
- Rodriguez started her YouTube channel in May 2020 to serve as an outlet for her artistic pursuits.
- The YouTuber is now on track to make $45,600 in 2022 from at least five revenue streams.
Kelsey Rodriguez, an aspiring impressionist painter, loves using oils.
"Oil is an incredibly versatile medium," said Rodriguez, who is inspired by artists like Richard Schmid and Erin Hanson. "It's so malleable. The pigment is unparalleled. It has this buttery quality to it that I really appreciate, and there's something just viscerally, intensely appealing about being able to push and pull paint around."
In May 2020, while Rodriguez was a junior in college, she started a YouTube channel that served as an outlet for her artistic pursuits. Her initial videos were a mix of vlogs ("Where I've been…") and painting tutorials ("Oil painting without toxic solvents").
"I was just really unhappy," said Rodriguez, in part because of the pandemic and being rejected twice for an internship. "With YouTube, I thought to myself, 'Hey, I could give this a shot.' I kept thinking to myself, 'There's no one doing this kind of business entrepreneurship content in the artist space. What if I chronicled my journey to become a full-time artist?'"
Rodriguez also created a website, which includes samples from her portfolio, as well as an online shop that sells seven items, including an $80 audit of the purchaser's YouTube channel (in which the creator offers a frame-by-frame critique of the buyer's videos), channel-wide strategy tips, and technical feedback on improving titles and thumbnails. Rodriguez also sells a $35 digital and printable workbook aimed at the artist YouTuber to help them create an art-focused YouTube channel, and a $7 creator content calendar template.
As Rodriguez published more YouTube videos, to the tune of twice a month, the viewers kept coming. One of her most-viewed videos, entitled "How to find your art style FAST in 3 easy steps (yeah, really)," drew over 650,000 views; another clip, "Watch this before social media RUINS your artistic growth" generated over 220,000 views. (Her YouTube channel has more than 107,000 subscribers in all.)
Now, the 23-year-old artist is on track to earn roughly $45,600 in 2022 — not too shabby for someone who earned just $7,595 two years prior. Insider verified Rodriguez's monthly earnings via documentation provided by the YouTube creator.
For the month of August, Rodriguez earned $9,346 in total:
- $4,542 through Google AdSense, or ads placed on Rodriguez's YouTube channel
- $2,898 through goods purchased from her online shop
- $1,500 from YouTube sponsorships. (Brands usually reach out to Rodriguez via email.)
- $381 from Patreon, where Rodriguez sells three membership levels: $5 a month for a monthly audio newsletter/podcast; $15 a month for the audio newsletter plus one to three exclusive videos; and $75 a month for all the previously mentioned perks, plus monthly group meetings with the creator
- $25 through affiliate marketing, where she gets a cut of sales she drives for brands
Thinking ahead to the future, Rodriguez plans to continue with her YouTube channel — "I love it so much" — but she also wants to expand her business by partnering with a distribution company to offer prints and originals of her work. The YouTube creator would also like to offer an online course and explore the possibility of a book.
"The great thing about YouTube and the creator economy writ large is that it opens a lot of doors," Rodriguez said.
Watch:
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