Amanda Rach Lee lets 2,000,000 people read her doodle journal
The best part of my job as Chief Eater at The Hungry is sharing people who take unconventional approaches to creative business. Some stories are small with reasonable success, and then there’s Amanda Rach Lee
You may not be familiar with Lee, but she’s a household name to anyone that enjoys bullet journaling, and over the last decade, Lee has built a cottage industry around doodling in notebooks for fun and productivity.
Lee started her journey on YouTube in 2013 at the age of fourteen and was sharing the type of videos you might expect of a teen girl navigating life. She was always drawing and doodling in notebooks, and in 2017, Lee published a video about Bullet Journaling that would change her life in profound ways.
That first video brought her from relative obscurity to over 100,000 subscribers quickly, and as the popularity of that one video grew, she knew there was something special about the niche.
Lee now has over two-million subscribers on YouTube all around art, journaling, and creative business, and though her vitality may have settled down a bit in recent years, she’s still bringing in millions of views to her channel ever year.
The Strategy
Lee’s strategy is currently a multi-tier approach which include YouTube monetization and sponsorship, online training, and merchandise.
YouTube
At nearly 1.8 million views per month, Lee is generating some decent cash just from ads shared during her videos. If we estimate that she’s makes an average of $5 for every 1,000 views, that’s approximately $9,000 per month.
Also, many of her videos featuring sponsors. These numbers are usually more difficult to gauge because every channel is different even if they are being sponsored by the same companies. That said, most sponsors will pay significantly more than YouTube ads. Even if we assume the anmount is similar, and Lee is getting sponsored with every video, she could be making upwards of $20k per month between sponsored and YouTube ads.
My guess is that she earns much more than that, perhaps 3-5x or more because these videos have a near-forever shelf life and are a great branding opportunity for the sponsors.
From SocialBlade.com
Skillshare
Lee currently has three courses running in Skillshare, on of which she was paid by Skillshare to make and the course have approximately 55,000 student between them, which is a good amount.
Because Skillshare pays out based on how much time someone spends watching a course, it’s difficult to say how much she earns from the site, but I would guess 4-figures per month, possibly more. And since these courses are evergreen content based on an analog system, they will continue to bring revenue for years.
Merch
A lot of YouTubers make merch, and Lee is no different, but instead of making t-shirts and mugs like most, she created her own product line that makes sense to her brand.
With enough notebooks, utensil cases, bags, stickers, and tape to keep any self-respecting Bullet Journal fan or scrapbooker happy, Lee sells a ton of product. She releases her Doodle Planner each year around October and they immediately sell out. I don’t know how many planners she makes, but she sells out every year
At $53 a pop, even with modest numbers of 10,000 units (probably way more), she’s pulling in a minimum of $500k per year. And knowing how voracious journalers, scrapbookers, and vision boarders can be, nobody walks away with just one thing in their cart.
Twitch
I was hesitant to mention this one because I’m not sure I understand this one, but I’m including it because of the potential.
Lee has scheduled live streams every Saturday on Twitch, but it’s unclear if she’s still doing them regularly. She has a significant following of over 76,000, which is significant , but may not pay off as well as that same amount would on YouTube.
The way Twitch works is a streamer can get paid two ways depending on their status. The first is by paid subscribers, and the second is ad revenue. The latter isn’t nearly as impressive as with YouTube.
A lot of streamers count on paid memberships as their main revenue source, but Lee doesn’t have very many. 17 to be exact, earning her about $45 a month.
Perhaps Lee stopped streaming and this is residual fall off, because someone who streams regularly with 76k followers should theoretically have significantly more paid subs on average.
Twitch streaming can be a chore in itself and difficult to manage if you’re already working heavily on another platform. Perhaps she could move her live events to YouTube and concentrate her efforts.
“Art was my passion and my hobby growing up…and in the eight years I’ve shared this with my audience, my relationship with drawing is a little different than when I first started out. It is something now that people are watching over my shoulder to see what I’m drawing and there’s a lot of pressure that comes with that. I still love drawing, but my relationship with [drawing] is a little different.”
Things to Consider
Amanda didn’t ask this random dude for advice, but if she had asked what the random old guy peering in the window might change about her setup, these are the things I would start with.
Skip Twitch and start live streaming on YouTube instead. The money is better and she already has a much larger fanbase on that platform. There’s a precedent.
Be better about email marketing. I’ve only been on her email list a few days now but I haven’t received any notification or welcome letter giving me a sense of what is to come.
If she’s not using email to inform and promote the business to her audience, she needs to get on that right away in order to keep that business thriving.
Rebrand the merch brand to be something that’s not attached to her name. If she decides to sell the business in the future, she won’t want to give up her identity to some holding company. And if she keeps her name on it, she’ll likely never sell, which could lead to a shut down later. With a rebrand, she has the potential to sell in the future and maintain her identity.
My guess is that making Bullet Journal videos is good for now, but Lee is young and her interests might change in the coming years. In order to set herself up for success in the future, I think it’s important to diversify her products by adding things that she may want to explore in the future.
That said, Lee has done a great job of building a cottage industry around some of her favorite things and I hope the future brings her more of that in the years to come.
Notable Moments
Making merch that actually sells - Colin & Samir Show
Building a global brand from doodling - Creative Boom Podcast
