My 2022 Year In Review - YouTube Growth and Revenue

As the year is coming to an end, I want to take a moment and reflect on the past year and the goals I wanted to achieve with my YouTube channel, and in the end set new ones for 2023.

(If you're interested in last year, here is the 2021 review.)

TLDR: It was a fantastic year for the channel, my career, and the side income through YouTube, but I want to change a few things next year.

Before we go into the different sections, let's quickly recap the goals I had set in January and if I achieved them:

• ✅ 100k subscribers
• ❌Create 1 paid course
• ❌✅ Create 1 other side project that generates income

My channel reached 100K subs in March. This is probably the biggest milestone for most YouTubers since you then get the silver play button and can get your channel verified. And yes, I am indeed very proud of that!

But again, I just didn't find the time to work on a paid course. Moreover, earning money with the channel is still not my top priority. It is a very nice side effect, though.

The side project I created is not exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to code a new SaaS tool like other Indie Hackers that is not related to my YouTube business at all.

Instead, I created a job board for Python developers. So it is connected to my brand, and it's not a SaaS. But on the plus side, it is not related to video creation and it brings in some extra money.

This year I created 21 videos and 24 shorts (vs. 40 videos and 6 shorts in 2021).

In January my channel had 81k subscribers, now we are at 215K subs:

• 133K new subscribers (vs. 63K new ones in 2021)
• 11.5M views (+260% vs. 2021)
• 393K hours of watch time (+77% vs. 2021)

So I created fewer regular videos but more YouTube shorts. I tried to avoid them for a long time because it's hard to teach programming in only 60 seconds and I'm not the biggest fan of past-paced content myself.

However, I found out that many of my viewers enjoy YouTube shorts and I could come up with a format of short Python tips (like this one about the round function) which I think can still be useful.

Revenue is up almost 3x since last year. Here are the numbers since starting the channel:

• 2019: $0 USD
• 2020: $2K USD
• 2021: $20K USD
• 2022: $56K USD

30% is from YouTube ads revenue, and the major part is from paid sponsorships, even though I did not accept sponsors for multiple months.

In February I started a new job as a Developer Advocate at AssemblyAI.

Saying that this is because of YouTube is oversimplified, but they found me because of my channel and the tutorials I created, which showcase my knowledge in programming and AI. So without the channel, I would not have gotten this job.

Lesson learned: YouTube can be a new form of a CV for Software Developers and Dev Advocates (and probably also for many more professions).

In November I finally changed my channel name from "Python Engineer" to "Patrick Loeber".

My channel can now be found at https://www.youtube.com/@patloeber.

Also, I changed my Twitter handle to @patloeber.

Here’s why:

• I was never fully happy with "Python Engineer" as the brand name since it's a very general term
• I didn’t like being called the Python Engineer since all of you are probably also good Python Engineers
• Maybe in the future I want to cover other programming languages as well

@python_engineer now has its separate Twitter account, and I still continue the site python-engineer.com where I regularly post Tutorials.

My plan is to still grow the Python Engineer brand, but put myself a bit more in the background. In fact, the site traffic is currently at an all-time high.

I could meet many wonderful people in real life for the first time.

This was either at a conference, a team offsite, or even just through Twitter connections.

I am very grateful for those moments😊!

Here is just a small selection:

Related tweets:

• We Are Developers Conference
• Five Guys in Berlin
• Merve in Berlin
• Mısra in New York

I do not want to chase any numbers in 2023. To be honest, even though my channel growth was amazing this year, I am currently no longer 100% happy with the content.

When I started the channel I created complete courses about Machine Learning, Advanced Python, PyTorch, and TensorFlow, but in the last two years I only created standalone videos. Many of those videos were aimed at generating as many views with as little effort as possible.

I want to change that.

So in 2023, I want to go back to the roots and create complete courses to help more people learn about Python and Machine Learning, and also courses that aim to help people land a job in tech.

So these are my YouTube/business goals for next year:

• Create a Data Structures & Algorithms course
• Create a FastAPI course
• Create one Machine Learning related course
• Post 30 articles on python-engineer.com and grow traffic
• Create 1 other side project that generates income
• Ambitious bonus goal: Create a Python beginner to advanced course

I am aware that this takes more effort and may impair the growth next year. But that's ok.

All in all, it was a great year for my career and YouTube business, and I am excited to see what's coming next year!

Happy New Year! See you in January🥳

— Patrick