Brandon van der Kolk is a popular finance YouTuber with an estimated net worth of $800,000 AUD. He currently runs an investing YouTube channel called ‘New Money’. Originally, he was known as “Aussie Wealth Creation” but rebranded to appeal to a wider audience outside Australia.
The young Aussie has built up a huge following online and has multiple revenue streams that generate him about $30,000 per month. Not too shabby!
How he Makes Money
Ad revenue on YouTube is his biggest earner as personal finance has a high CPM and is very advertiser friendly. His earnings per thousands views would be substantially higher than a true crime or prank channel with less commercial appeal. Typically, he makes $10,000 per month from YouTube AdSense. Despite the impressive earnings, his success didn’t happen overnight and it took about three years to start making this type of money.
In January 2020, Brandon launched Profitful.online – he sells courses around beginner investing and tax. Currently he has four courses – two of them he created and the other two are in partnership with Scott Ellis. The courses retail for between $49 to $199 AUD which are reasonable prices. A lot of information could probably be found online for free but wouldn’t be organized and well laid. Through Profitful Brandon earns a cool $10,000 – $15,000 AUD per month! The business of selling courses is massive and the profit margins are huge due to low overhead costs.
Affiliate marketing is his third largest income source. In the past he has promoted the likes of Stake, Sharesight and Finder to viewers. To be fair, he isn’t too promotional with sponsorships and is selective on who he advertises unlike others in the investing niche.
Background
Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, Brandon was a qualified physiotherapist and realised that physio’s don’t make much money. Because of this he was always looking for a side hustle to earn extra dough. In 2017, he released an eBook on Amazon called ‘The Beginner Physiotherapist’, which doesn’t appear to have sold many copies.
In 2016/2017, he started on YouTube and the content initially targeted Australians. Early videos around sports betting, stock trading and personal finance allowed him to attract a loyal audience. In 2020, he renamed to ‘New Money‘ and uploads videos covering Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Ray Dalio, Michael Burry and general market news. Now he’s at 400,000 subs and absolutely smashing it.
Brandon also has a podcast with Hamish Hodder known as the “Young Investors Podcast“. Both are young, knowledgeable guys that discuss investing news and have lighthearted banter.
Portfolio
Since Brandon has a big following, subscribers are keen to know what shares he’s buying. Unfortunately he doesn’t publicly reveal his portfolio but he does talk about his favourite investment strategies. About 30% of his wealth is invested – he holds 20% in ETFs and the remainder in individual companies.
