How Much YouTube Paid Me in My First Month Monetised | Funding My Vanlife Dream

In the first month of being monetized on YouTube I earned... Can YouTube actually fund my return to full-time van life? June was my first month being monetized on my budget food channel and I'm gonna today kind of break down numbers and talk about what's going on, how much I earned, my highest earning day, lowest earning day, videos that were making me the most money, what surprised me and what I'm building behind the scenes because YouTube ads are just like a small part, like AdSense is just a small part of what I am trying to build. If you've been around for a little bit you'll know that this isn't just about like trying to earn some money off YouTube, it's about creating the freedom to spend time living the life that I love. So if you're new here a little bit of a backstory. I spent two years, almost two years living full-time in this van whilst my house was being renovated. It was a house that I... It's a kind of long... It's not a long story but yeah I inherited a quarter of it from when my parents died and I bought my other sisters out and things and so yeah there's the house and I renovated it. And whilst that was happening I lived in my van and I absolutely loved it. But then financial things hit as they do with us all and the house was done enough that I could move back in and I was previously a foster carer and I needed to return to fostering. It made the most financial sense to do so and suddenly I just wasn't in my van. I was tied to being in the house looking after children all the time, 24-7 all the time. And part of the part of me that absolutely loves fostering, I realised that it's just not a life that I want. I would love to build more of an income online so that I am location independent. I can be in my van when I want to be in my van. That's not to say I would never foster, maybe I'll do respite fostering or some different things but I want to build that so I've got the options and the choices. And that's why I started my budget food channel. To be honest I just started first of all just sharing two good-to-go hauls. I love a bargain, I've always loved a bargain whether it's food or anything. And we would get two good-to-go hauls and they didn't get much traction. I think I started the channel January of 2026 and I didn't put much effort into it really. I just would show what I'd got from these two good-to-go hauls. And then I actually started to think maybe, hang on, this could be something. And then I started being a bit more thoughtful about my content. And to me doing YouTube and things like that it's not about getting rich. It's about just having choice of time of what I do with it. So how did the first month go? So like I said I started the channel in January 2026 and I was just doing two good-to-go hauls. And then at Easter I did a video on 4p veg that you get. If you're not from the UK you get 4p veg at Easter and Christmas. And I did a video about that and like what I did with it. Like I went and bought loads of stuff because I can't resist a bargain. And that video started to take off a little bit. I thought hang on maybe there's something here. And then since that video I started to regularly upload more budget food challenges and things like that over on that channel. I got monetized on the 28th of May. So I end a little bit in May. But we're just going to focus on June as like being the full whole month. So I'm just going to go into my analytics here. So June was my first complete month. So what I did was I got 166,603 views, 3,900 watch hours, 971 new subscribers. And revenue was 187.59p. I know that's not a massive amount 190 odd quid. But that's not what excites me about this. Like a month before I didn't like this channel, the food channel earned nothing. Now it's making money whilst I'm continuing to grow it. And it might actually be able to become something that can support my van life dream. I think one thing I found really interesting was how much the earnings vary day to day. So like my lowest earning day was £1.71. My highest earning day was £14.85. So obviously like if I've just uploaded a long form video, that's going to be a higher earning day. And then it sort of settles down for the next couple of days. Like it's a huge difference. Like some days YouTube pushes your videos more. Some days it doesn't. It's not a regular monthly wage. Obviously we know that it goes up, it goes down. And so that's when I started to think like I can't rely on just AdSense alone. Like the ads that are shown on my videos on that channel. Shorts for me changed everything. So most of my views actually came from shorts. Around 137,000 views came from shorts. And long form videos were 28,000. I randomly did like a supermarket comparison of like what does £10 get you in Asda? What does £10 get you in Lidl? And they really just took off. People loved those videos. The Asda one is still going. It's still going now and I'm recording this mid-July. It's still receiving regular, regular daily views. But in the month of June it received like 57,000 views. Another one got 22,000. Another 13,000. And those were like the simple videos that people just seem to connect with. Although shorts brought in most of the audience. Like a lot of my subscribers have come from shorts. They don't make money. Shorts just don't make money. Like 20 odd quid came from shorts. And nearly £167 came from the long form videos. Which for me is why I'm going to continue to do both. Shorts are bringing in the people. And long form builds like relationships and it generates the most money. It has been a lot of work. And if you've been on this channel for any amount of time you'll know that I've talked about my struggles with just like how much it's taken out of me and trying to do this. But to me it's absolutely 100% worth it. I am working very, very long hours. You know behind every video there's the planning of it. Shopping for things. Filming. Editing. Thumbnails. Like there's just so much to do. And then applying to the comments and things. It's a lot. And most evenings, most early mornings I'm waking up early and I'm doing a bit of work before the foster children wake up. And then throughout the day I'm doing bits and bobs. And then evenings rather than sitting watching telly or playing the video game that I love. I am doing editing and working on the food channel. It's a lot. It really is. One thing that has become more and more aware to me over this journey of the past couple of months with this is that I don't want to rely entirely upon YouTube. Like algorithms change. YouTube can just decide oh I'll push this video or I won't. Or you know whatever. I don't understand their algorithms but they'll do what they'll do. So alongside making the videos I've started writing my first kind of budget food ebook. I know it's such like a thing that people do is write an ebook but that's what I'm doing. I'm creating like simple printable meal planners, money saving guides, recipe things. Things that people can you know have and keep and hopefully will provide value to their life. And I'm hoping that that will become another stream of income in the future. A really important thing that I have started to do is build an email list. I've created these kind of like five PDF things. And if you sign up to it each week you'll get sent a little bit of a guide thing that I hope is helpful to people to be honest. Like I've heard all the time anything I ever watch or read about is build your email list. You know like YouTube is YouTube, Facebook belongs to Facebook and that email list is mine. That's something I own and they're the people that are engaged enough that are interested enough to sign up. And so hopefully I can stay in touch with those people because they've given me their email address and I can communicate with them. I've also recently just started sharing all of my YouTube videos and shorts over on Facebook. I've created a Facebook page for the channel and it's actually one of the kind of the biggest surprises for me. I've never understood like I've done YouTube for many many years just sort of as a hobby. That's something that I've enjoyed but Facebook isn't something I've ever really delved into. And so I just was putting the videos up there and then I got like this notification to say that I needed to get 300,000 views in the next 30 days and I could be monetized which I did within a week which I was so surprised about. I am still waiting for Facebook to do all the like checks and things and I'm actually monetized. They say it's going to be, they'll get back to me by the end of August which seems ridiculous. That's like eight weeks or something since I actually hit the target of what they wanted but we'll just see what happens with that. So I'm not earning anything from Facebook at the moment but hopefully that is going to be another stream of income over the coming months and potentially hopefully years. It's like just another little piece of the puzzle I guess. I guess there's this channel as well. So this channel did used to be monetized. I used to do a lot of traveling and it was monetized but I just got lazy with it. I stopped traveling, I was fostering, I was doing things and so I didn't upload anymore and so it got demonetized because I didn't keep up with like the watch hours and things that you need. It would be nice to get this channel monetized again if I'm honest. I need 4,000 public watch hours in like a rolling 365 days but I don't want it to be the focus of this channel. This channel for me anyway is more just like personal chatting and I don't want to feel the responsibility I guess of having to upload because I need the money from it I guess. Like I've done it before, I've had like a gaming channel where I felt like it started to become, it started to feel just overwhelming and I don't want this channel to be about that whatsoever. Like if it got monetized again, absolutely wonderful. That would be fantastic but I'm not that bothered. It would be lovely but this channel is more just like me and it's not, I'm not sharing like searchable things like the budget food channel. People are searching for what does £10 get you at Asda or whatever or budget meals and so they're searchable things whereas this channel is just me kind of showing my journey trying to attend the van life and you know there's, who cares about me? Do you know what I mean? Like the first thing I learned about YouTube was nobody cares about you. I know that once you start watching people like I do it myself, you start to sort of like care about the people that you're watching but initially like no one cares. No one cares about my journey back to van life. So it's just not so much of a searchable thing that people are going to find but if it got monetized, I'm not going to complain. Obviously that would be wonderful. So I think for me the big plan right now it's not particularly YouTube. It's not earning money from YouTube with the budget food channel. It's the budget food channel YouTube. It's the budget food Facebook page. It's sort of this channel but I don't want to focus on that too much. Ebooks, my email list, possibly sponsorships in the future, I don't know. And none of these things kind of work on their own. It's about building multiple things, multiple income streams that can sustain the house plus van life. And I also do include in that that I'm not saying I'm never wanting to foster again or I'm not going to find other ways of doing money like in the real world rather than just online. I will and I'm quite happy to do those other things. It's about all of the puzzle pieces getting together. Like I've talked about potentially like renting rooms out in the house and things like that. As long as I can pay my mortgage and live what I classify as kind of an okay kind of life if I'm out of the van, that's all that I need. I don't need too rich. I don't need a lot of money whatsoever. It's just happiness and freedom is what I'm searching for really. The money that I earned off YouTube for June, is it anywhere near replacing? Obviously not. It's 190 pound. It's nowhere near close to replacing what I'm earning and fostering and what I need to pay my mortgage. But a few months ago that channel didn't exist. And now in my first month monetized, it got what 166,000 views. It got nearly a thousand subscribers in one month which I was just so blown away about when it sort of started to take off crazy. Got my first 187 pounds of income. Facebook is close to monetization. The ebook, I've been working so hard on this ebook. It's nearly finished, very nearly finished. My email list is growing. This channel is sort of slowly building. It's watch hours back up again. But when I look at everything individually, like it just doesn't, it doesn't look like much. But when I send back and take a bigger, you know, a far away picture of it all, it's like actually it's all these little pockets of bits of money that maybe that's 500 pound. Maybe that's 500 pound. Maybe that's 200 pound. Maybe that's, it all comes together to create a thing where I can do van life more permanently, more full time or as much as I want to without having to be in the house, without having to foster. One day, I hope these videos aren't just about me talking about returning to van life. Like I know I got on like one day trips and things and I just have absolute best time when I do that. But one day I hope that these videos will become just like fully me van life on the road because that means all of this work and all this plan has actually worked. Maybe it takes six months. Maybe it takes two years. I just, I don't know. I've said it before, we all are like that when we're trying to build something, when we want something, we want it. We want it yesterday. I'd love it just in the next month to happen. Of course I would, but that's not realistic. So I'm going to keep going. Keep going with the budget food channel. Keep researching and finding out the best ways to get this to be a full time income that isn't just about YouTube adsense. And we'll see how we go. I think I may do a monthly. How have I done this month? I have a feeling July is going to be not quite so good because I've had a few setbacks if you watch my previous video. Also on that note, actually, can I just say my previous video, I was quite upset and like I still am. I'm still going through all the struggles. I cry too much. I don't know why I cry so much. I just do. But could I just say like a massive thank you to everyone who commented and reached out to me after that video. I have no idea, honestly, how much it really touches me that, you know, we've never met and I'm just someone making a video online and you take the time to, when you say I'm, even when you say I'm happy or when you say I'm sad about things and you take the time to reach out and offer advice or things and it honestly touches me like the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. It's yeah, brilliant. I love it. But yeah, we're going to keep going. Keep going with the budget food channel. See where that goes. This is all the messy bit in the middle of, I'm not at full time van life. I'm working towards it and I think it's just an interesting journey. I said it before. I think it's an interesting journey to watch. I feel like I will be quite interested to see how somebody actually gets there rather than just the end thing of it. So yeah, that's what I'm documenting. Thank you so much for supporting me on this channel. The messages, the comments and things mean the world to me. Thanks for being on this journey with me and I will see you in the next one.