My friends, today I want to show you my actual income from my taxes from my business in 2021. This is my 2021 business income report, shared with you. First, I want to say thank you for everything you did to make this possible. If you want to look straight at the number, I've taken the last three zeros off of the income right here, so you can't call the IRS up, pretend to be me, and use the exact figure to verify it. I made $101,000 in profit in my business last year, where the primary activity was streaming video games.
I'm saying thank you. I'm hoping this inspires you. I'm sharing this in a spirit of transparency, because I think we get a much better, fairer, and more equal world when we talk about and share our money openly. That's why I've done it for years, and it's why I'm doing it now. So thank you for helping me make six figures in 2021 streaming video games full time. That is absolutely miraculous, and I'm so grateful for it. It was a dream of mine to be a full-time streamer, and in 2021 that's exactly what I was. I was a full-time streamer, and it paid very well.
I'll talk you through the expenses and I'll talk you through the income. I'm a full-time YouTuber now, after being demonetized on Facebook because their politics didn't agree with mine. I love being a YouTuber, and I'm now just creating videos on YouTube. So with that in mind, here's what I made.
Where the $154,000 came from
The actual income from everything combined was $156,000. There were some refunds, and again, I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it came out to $154,000 after the refunds were sent out. So the gross profit was $154,000 before any expenses. Then came the expenses.
Where did the gross revenue come from? The number one source was Facebook, which sent me more than $70,000 last year. Stars, supporters, ad revenue, all the bonuses, everything combined added up to over $70,000 in one single W-2 from Facebook. YouTube sent me about $4,000 or $5,000 from ad revenue, even though I put very little effort into my channel last year. All I did, basically, was be a Facebook partner, so I was focused totally on Facebook. Then I would just upload clips and streams to YouTube and occasionally put a YouTube video up there. I've decided to go all in on YouTube now, because this seems to be the one place I can create that is most stable. I've remained monetized consistently, with no issues, for 11 years on YouTube, and YouTube seems to be the best place to stream and upload videos for the long term.
The second biggest source of income was selling online courses. Back in 2014, I started teaching full time on Udemy, and I made hundreds of online courses over the next few years. Even though I was a YouTube creator, Udemy took my profile down. I had my courses for sale all over the place, like on Stack Commerce, Skillshare, and Skill Success, and I also have a website, Uthena. Collectively those sent me tens of thousands of dollars, probably around $30,000 or so from selling online courses in terms of gross revenue.
That also accounted for the single largest expense. The majority of my expenses that I paid out went to contract labor, and that was my single largest expense. It was paid out for selling online courses on Uthena, where I have a revenue-share agreement on the platform. So I pay out to other instructors on there and to my co-owner. That means some of the income up top was directly canceled out by the expenses over there, which is what led to the profit. The Facebook gaming, by contrast, had very low expenses.
I also did some coaching and consulting last year, and got a few thousand in affiliate commissions. As I said, I got maybe five grand in YouTube ads, plus some other little sources of income here and there. All of that added up to $154,000 in total.
The expenses that left me $101,000 in profit
Now let's talk about these expenses, because I've made around $100,000 or more in revenue online almost every year since 2015. The only times I've had a problem have been when I spent too much. That was one year, 2019, when I had some case of insanity and spent over $200,000, which was $100,000 more than I made. What's amazing about 2021 is that, yes, I made a little bit more than I did in 2020 and 2019, but the key thing is that I brought in $154,000 and spent $52,000. That left $101,000 in profit. I certainly could have spent less and made about the same amount of money, but I spent money in 2021 that set me up.
I've got a nice game collection now. What's really cool with what I do as a game streamer is that I put video games in the supplies category. When I buy video games, that's supplies. To put it in more concrete terms, if you make shirts like these and sell them, you'd put the raw materials and supplies you bought to make the shirt right there. For me, buying video games, those are the raw materials I use to make gaming streams and to play all these different games. So one of my largest expenses, not related to Uthena and selling online courses, which is a hands-off business for me today, was discretionary: I spent maybe $4,000 or $5,000 on video games last year. Almost all of that expense was buying video games and paying for them in the form of Xbox Game Pass. All my game expenses were about $6,000.
It's pretty cool, in my experience, that if you have a game-streaming business you can expense the games before paying tax, because I paid probably $25,000 or more, plus self-employment tax. I paid a lot of tax on this $101,000 in profit, so being able to take that off pre-tax is really nice. One of my largest expenses is actually buying video games.
Outside of the contract labor and the advertising, advertising also included expenses related to Uthena, like web hosting and Dropbox for hosting the files for the courses. So things like web hosting go in the advertising category. I don't think I ran any paid ads. I've made a commitment not to do any more paid ads. I have enough people following, enough people watching. I don't need to pay more people to see what I'm creating. I just need to do a great job for you, the person putting your time and energy into this right now. I don't need anybody else. If this is a great post, you'll share it with somebody else, and that's how I'll grow. So I spent $9,600 in advertising, which included thousands in web hosting.
I've done a lot of research over the years to find the best email marketing and website hosting, and that's how I earn some affiliate commissions too. I found what worked best for me first, with no interest in the affiliate commission, just figuring out what was the best thing for me to use. Once I found what was best and was happy with it, that's what I recommend, so you don't have to put a bunch of work into researching which one is best, because I already did that beforehand.
Then there are other expenses. What's great is that, since I have a business from home, I get to take a little bit of an expense for having a home office. I get to deduct things like my internet from home and my phone bill, because I need this stuff to run my business. If I had a physical office, I'd have a dedicated internet and phone, but since everything's from home, I get to deduct a portion and put a percentage in there for personal use. If I didn't have a business online, I'd hardly need any of this. But I do need all of it, and it's beautiful, amazing technology. I'm thankful for this studio right here. It's a labor of love, but if I didn't do all this work in here, I wouldn't need any of it either.
So you've also got taxes I pay for my business license, utilities for things like internet, and a renter's lease, where I rented something in there, maybe a computer part or something like that. Then there are other things, like office expense for accounting software, and all the miscellaneous items that get thrown into the "other" category.
Why I share this, and what's ahead
This is my overall income, and I've shared it because I love seeing how much money everybody makes and what people actually spent their money on. I think it makes the world a lot better place when we're transparent about our money and about what we're making.
The income this year is going to be significantly different. I've got maybe $30,000 or so from Facebook this year, maybe a little less than that. I'm still getting hundreds of dollars a month from Facebook even after being demonetized for four months, because there are supporters who still haven't canceled. If you were supporting me on Facebook, I'd love for you to come join the Jerry Banfield Family community with me now — join the Jerry Banfield Family. This is my final answer: we're staying on this channel.
I'm not sure what this year will bring. One of the downsides with what I do is that things can be very up and down. I'm not sure if I'm going to make $100,000 in profit this year, a million in profit, or if I'm going to barely squeak by and make like $20,000 or $30,000 in profit. I am grateful that my wife got a really good job. My wife now makes six figures herself working from home. She just got that job, and she has a side gig with it too. She started that in February, which was great timing, because that's when I got demonetized, so it worked out perfectly.
I also put in a lot of hours as a stay-at-home dad. I'm very proud that this only required about three or four hours a day of work. So I worked less than 30 hours a week. I realize that you, and the people watching alongside you, did this for me, and I am extremely grateful. What I want to see is this kind of openness all over this planet.
A Fairer World, and Why I Stay Transparent
What I really want is to see people who can do work they love and get quality compensation for it. I'm hoping everybody can have a return that looks like this, that we can all prosper. I made a video recently talking about how I don't know how we can live like this, or how I can live like this, because I see that it is also blatantly unfair. I can stream video games and work three hours a day and make more than most people in the world do, more than 90-some percent of people in the world who do a comparable amount of work, much of which is very valuable. At least equally valuable, if not more valuable, than what I do. And yet I get paid better for it, because I live in the USA and I can make more money, and they don't.
So I'd like to see a world where we are a lot more fair, and I've come to believe that being personally transparent is a pathway to supporting that. That is why I share these numbers so openly.
The Real Total for the Year
This is what I made and what I spent last year. I also made about $8,000 or so in crypto and capital gains last year, and that's not reported in the figures above. So the real total, since you stuck around to the end, is that I actually made about $109,000 including my business plus my crypto and capital gains income. To be honest, I'm not sure now whether that piece was $4,000 or $8,000, so the grand total lands somewhere between $105,000 and $109,000 for the year.
I'm extremely grateful. It feels like what I gave versus what I got, things seem to have gone in my favor. It didn't feel like I worked a day last year, and I got a really good wage for it.
Lifting Each Other Into Abundance
I'm grateful for your support in this transition of being a full-time YouTuber. Every single minute you watch matters, and every day I'm obsessed with how I can help you have it as good as I've got it. How do we help each other? How do we bring more people into abundance and out of poverty? How do we lift each other up on this planet and have amazing lives together? If you want to go deeper on the money side of building a life like this, I put everything I know into my my YouTube Coaching playlist, and I'd love for you to learn alongside me there.
I'd love to see your comments and your feedback, and I read all of them. I love you. You're awesome. Have a great day.