You have to work for free for years, before seeing results…
Picture this: You've spent three years building a YouTube channel. You've hit 200,000 subscribers. You've racked up 100 million views. You're living the dream, right?
Wrong.
Varin L. was living a creator's nightmare: all the work, none of the reward. "I was making a bit just here and there. Nothing too much to the point where I could make a living off of it," he recalls. "I really thought to myself, what am I doing? I'm making all of these videos, getting millions of views, but I'm not earning a single cent."
The reason? Copyright strikes. In the music industry, if you get copyrighted, "it's pretty much like a dead end, you're not going to make a career out of it."
And Varin’s story isn’t an exception, many people we look up to now, didn’t have the financial results for the work and the audience they had, such as Lilly Singh.
When Lilly Singh almost walked away
Before becoming a late-night TV host and one of YouTube's highest-paid creators, Lilly Singh (formerly Superwoman) faced a similar crisis. In 2015, despite millions of subscribers, she was burning out and barely breaking even. The YouTube ad revenue wasn't matching the 16-hour days she was putting in.
She's openly talked about the period where she considered quitting entirely. The glamorous life everyone saw on screen didn't match the financial anxiety behind the scenes. It wasn't until she diversified her income streams; brand deals, tours, merchandise; that her lifestyle became sustainable.
The lesson? Views don't mean value if you don't own your content.
But there are solutions to this.
How Varin turned it around (and how you can too)
Varin's breakthrough came when Sony Music Entertainment noticed his talent and offered him something revolutionary: access to their entire music catalog with the ability to monetize it.
"They were like, 'Hey, we know you have talent. We know you can promote these artists. Why don't we give you our catalog of artists and you can make videos for us on your own channels and we'll let you monetize them?'"
His first video in the partnership? Hit #23 on YouTube's trending tab.
The real insight; Varin didn't wait for Sony to find him. He spent four years proving his value, for free, until he became too good to ignore.
Your practical takeaway:
Understand the business model: Before investing years into content creation, know how you'll make money on the long term. Ad revenue alone won't cut it for most niches.
Build leverage, not just an audience: Varin's 200K subscribers and proven promotional skills made him valuable to Sony. What skills are you building that companies will pay for?
If you're grinding hard but seeing no financial return, you're not failing, you're just not monetizing correctly yet. The question isn't "Should I give up?" It's "Who needs what I'm already good at?"
🎧 Watch the full conversation with Varin here:
👉 Inside Varin's Journey of Finding Success with Youtube Lyric Channels– Episode 3