Brandon van der Kolk is a popular finance YouTuber with an estimated net worth of $1 million AUD. The young Aussie runs an investing YouTube channel called ‘New Money’. Originally, Brandon started out as “Aussie Wealth Creation” but later rebranded to appeal to a wider audience outside of Australia.
Van der Kolk 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 thousand 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 three years to make this type of money.
In January 2020, Brandon launched Profitful.online – selling courses on beginner investing and tax. Unfortunately, he shutdown Profitful in June 2023 due to ASIC’s new laws around providing financial advice online.
When he was running it, he sold four courses, two of them he created and the other two are in partnership with Scott Ellis. The courses retailed for between $99 to $199 AUD. Some of the information could have been found online but wouldn’t be organized and well laid out.
Through Profitful Brandon earned a cool $10,000 – $15,000 AUD per month! The business of selling courses is lucrative and the profit margins are healthy 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 with 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 the channel ‘New Money‘ and uploads videos covering Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Ray Dalio, Michael Burry and general market news. Now, the channel has 819,000 subs and is 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 exchange lighthearted banter.
Portfolio
Since Brandon has a big fanbase, subscribers are keen to know what shares he’s buying. Unfortunately he doesn’t publicly reveal his portfolio but does talk about his favorite investment strategies. About 30% of his wealth is invested – he holds 20% in ETFs and the remainder in individual companies.
