My YouTube Financials - The Future of LiveOverflow
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- Follow us on: / hextreeio
www.hextree.io/
Get my bad font (advertisement): shop.liveoverflow.com/
Financials 2019: • Business, Money, 300k ...
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:41 - Total Revenue 2022
03:37 - Total Expenses 2022
04:49 - Lost -$4000?
06:05 - Financials Summary
07:42 - Top Patreon Supporters
08:59 - I Don't Want To Be An Influencer
09:56 - Change LiveOverflow Videos?
12:08 - More Sponsored Videos?
14:50 - My Alternative To TH-cam!
17:28 - I Should Close The LiveOverflow Business
20:11 - My Problem With Selling Courses
24:08 - How To Sell Courses?
25:47 - My Last Attempt: hextree.io
20:59 - Hextree Roadmap
32:37 - Conclusion and Summary
=[ ❤️ Support ]=
→ per Video: / liveoverflow
→ per Month: / @liveoverflow
2nd Channel: / liveunderflow
=[ 🐕 Social ]=
→ Twitter: / liveoverflow
→ Streaming: twitch.tvLiveOverflow/
→ TikTok: / liveoverflow_
→ Instagram: / liveoverflow
→ Blog: liveoverflow.com/
→ Subreddit: / liveoverflow
→ Facebook: / liveoverflow - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
After I hit publish I realised I published the wrong version with an editing error in the intro. I then wanted to re-upload again, but the render failed. Now I used the TH-cam editor to cut the video, but that processing takes time. Oh well...
Long intro adds to the suspense 😅
Thats fine
There's a typo in the word "knowledge" at 1:04
come on dude what the fuck.
I don't know why maybe it's because I hacked Microsoft that hard that I got invited to their AI symposium and they consider me a white hat
@@jackssrt that wasn't the editing error though
it was the long intro
As long as you don't sell out to shady vpn services claiming you are safer for using them you are good in my eyes
Right! We all know it's the _Incognito_ tab which actually makes the difference.
@@Thiesi ?
@@lussor1they call it "humor"
This comment brought to you by * VPN 😅😅
@@TAPCybersec This comment brought to you by mullvad vpn
You're not selling out. You're investing in your own success, and making yourself available to others in a way that provides more value to them, and is more likely to have a significant positive influence on their life than merely consuming information would. Your coursework will allow others to learn by doing, and to create success and prosperity in their own lives. Good work. I hope this new path is satisfying and rewarding for you.
There is no such thing as selling out. No one is actually a sell out. Its just whats necessary to make money to live a life.
@@vectoralphaAI i think he's making already 6 figures in Germany
I know this isn’t much but my home currency sucks. U are one of the reasons why I delved a lot into software. Best of luck with your new venture. ❤
I hope someday you'll get paid with USD.
Very excited for the future of liveoverflow and hextree. Seeing behind the curtain is extremely interesting, thanks for sharing!
damn bro just dropped a hundo like it was nothing
@@miltontontonton SWE salary for you 😅
ratio
wow. thank you!
very generous of you man, thanks on behalf of everyone
appreciate the brutal transparency
I think you're over-paying a lot for accounting.
Wish you the best, you're a very talented engineer and a great communicator. You will succeed at whatever you chose to do!
That's the unfortunate reality of a service economy in an "advanced" country with high (and complex) taxes. Like, the limits for monthly and quarterly tax reporting are absolutely insane for small businesses and one of major pain points you need to get over as a small business (unless you want to remain being a tiny business).
I realise Germany is very bureaucratic, but there has to be a DIY/software option that would work for what is, fundamentally, a very simple tax situation. Frankly, you could register the company off-shore, and pay your taxes once, as a straightforward income tax, when you take a disbursement/pay yourself a salary. Paying taxes twice on the same money doesn't make sense, your accountant should be ashamed as for that money he ought to have given you advice on how to structure your business for tax purposes. Germany doesn't appear to have an equivalent to a US single-member LLC where you can just pay tax on your personal tax return though and requires ridiculous amounts of capital at registration. Guess we know why the DE economy is so heavily tilted towards larger businesses. Frankly, I don't understand why you've done it this way - surely you don't need a liability shield for a YT channel, so could've just been paid by YT as a person.
@@paulie-g _surely you don't need a liability shield for a YT channel, so could've just been paid by YT as a person_
Not sure if I understand correctly and what you mean by "as a person". He's probably required by law to register it as a business.
At least in Sweden, which is likely close to Germany on high and complex taxes, there is online accounting services that help doing accounting both fast and fairly cheap.
Yeah that accountant is taking the piss. 16k / year for collating some data from TH-cam and Patreon? There's 100% much cheaper options, and most of it can be done by yourself. Just use the tax accountants for tax advise and do the actual collation and submission yourself.
Man I totally understand, but this channel was my first introduction to "real hacking" and this situation is just kinda sad(not you selling courses, but just the financials) but I am also happy that you can do this, hope everything works out for you.
I'm not a supporter of your chanel, but a years long Viewer. I personally don't see any reason to be mad at any decision you made here, even if it would be a channel i've supported. You leave the free content up on TH-cam and even rerelease it with better sorting on your new platform for free, basically you provide more i could have ever hoped for! Can't wait for it to launch and you get the success you deserve for the work you put in.
This is the more honest guy I've seen on the whole internet! Always so transparent.
Do what's right for you. I appreciate the content you have already put out, and I'll continue to watch whether there are ads or sponsorships or not. Best wishes with hextree!
Intelligence, imposter syndrome, integrity, etc. I see it all here. You're brilliant and of course you're ready to make training others a bigger part of your life. I really, really hope hextree works. Please, remember to always mention it in every video, if you're serious about this.
Glad to hear that you are developing a business service! No supporter shall feel any damage from it, given all the effort you have put into all the amazing videos since you began the channel! Wishing you all the best!
As a business owner who has been operating in Germany for more than a decade, the only thing I can say is: "Fühl ich".
Anyone who starts a business in this country from scratch, with no seed investment or anything like that, you have to do it that way. Thank you @liveoverflow for sharing this in depth view of your business and your unfiltered mindset. It's refreshing. And filling the gap offering business level courses for hardware hacking (Offsec does not cover this field yet) sounds very nice! Keep it up!
I didn't even know of LiveOverflow before this, but this entire video has inspired me so much to find this clarity about my life. I can tell how much self awareness and thought has gone into this. When I try to fig out what I want, it always gets cut short by how overwhelming this all is. But Its clearly very important. Thanks.
I'm just a junior web developer but I really love all the liveoverflow content. I hope it won't be too expensive for someone not going the cyber security direction.
I wish you all the best for your new endeavors. It takes lots of guts to be this transparent with where you are taking things. You're a legend and a role model!
One of the major reasons for taking courses and stuff is getting certifications out of it. To us IT professionals they're worthless pieces of paper, but to your employer it's meaningful
Amazing to see you sharing all those thoughts in your mind and truly being yourself... you deserve so much more return from your work!
From a person who has the same feeling to your own skills and not even being in the security field, go ahead and succeed. I've followed your work since the beginning and I can say that your teaching is by far the best I've ever found on the internet.
And just by lending yourself to making this video now, it demonstrates the respect you have for the area and the love you have for what you do.
All the success in the world to you and Thomas.
I applaud you for doing this and in such a clear and concise way. This should become part of the education system to teach children and young adults about the economics surrounding YT, fortunately either my son 'got it' or just enjoys school but I'm guessing there are thousands of wannabe YT stars that have no idea about the reality of this enterprise.
Makes sense man, been a supporter for a long time - you gotta do you, appreciate the transparency. Keep killing it
Bro, your videos are so engaging, inspirational and teach not only tech stuff, but the way you should approach problems. I wish you tons of success, just please don't delete your old videos. I always come back to watch them because they are just so good.
Loving the transparancy regarding all of this. Can't wait for the courses, happy to support this way!
Best of luck with your business! I think it's the right move, you deserve to profit from your time and energy. Thank you for all the content you've already shared so freely!!
As a former patreon supporter and now youtube member, I wish you and stacksmashing all the best with hextree!
My support will continue because you are a really awesome guy who makes technically depth content presented in an understandable way - which is really unique in the cybersecurity world.
Thank you for staying above board. Kind of felt like an investor meeting :) I think this is a great idea honestly. Someone once taught me to not build your house on someone else's foundation. Building your own platform should certainly give you some advantages that you are not seeing today. Cannot wait for this launch :)
You have given so generously with your time and expertise in all the videos you've made over the years. It's not selling out to make your work more sustainable financially. I hope you are very successful in your new strategy!
This is awesome, I love how dedicated you are to staying true to your goals. Hextree sounds awesome and the way you have layed it out sounds so generous.
The work to reward ratio… I don’t know if I can do it but much respect to you. Your videos (I only watch some) are informative and accurate.
This is incredible! A very interesting and honest look behind the scenes. And I find myself in a very similar situation, except for the TH-cam part being something else.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you! Look forward to more non-minecraft content :D
Hi, I follow your channel since few years, and finally got started to actually learn the basics to get started in infosec since two weeks. I have no academic background, but I just like to learn things. I can tell you played a great part in actually making me want to try this out by making your videos so fun to watch. I feel with both the difficulties you have running your channel (and that's some solids arguments) and your talent and crave to make people learn new things Hextree is a really good idea. I trust you to make a really good environment that makes sense to both you and people that will learn on it.
One point though, when you talk about Udemy people that buy even bad courses, when you get started you have no idea what is good or not. Also some may never have the money to begin with courses and free videos mean the world to them. I dont say that to make you feel bad about backing a bit from youtube, It's to say thank you for all you allready done and remind you there is differents audiences here.
I am not a watcher of your channel, got here through the TH-cam algorithm, but I wish you all the best in your endeavor and I hope that you'll be able to finally live off your passion without having to "sell out". And I fully understand the annoyance of the huge administrative load when all you want to do is technical stuff, and I can empathize.
This is a very positive step - YT as a sole source of income is clearly problematic, so I think your decision is pragmatic. Kudos to you for the way you have comunicated this too.
Your design paradigm sounds well thought out and will fit nicely to boith your style, and the way that the majority of your subscribers like to learn.
Wishing you all the best for this new venture!
I'm glad to see your honesty and transparency about everything in this video, detailing your journey, workflow, finances, thought processes and decisions, even going as far to admitting some flaws in your previous views and biases.
In my opinion, you're 100% on the right track, it's not worth it to sacrifice your personality, integrity and calling as an educator to chase TH-cam profitability, to us (the users of this platform, viewers and creators alike) the algorithm is as good as random, and it is very frustating to see your hard work being ignored, blocked and demonetized for no good reason.
I believe in the potential of your course platform, and I might even become a member when it goes live. I don't have much interest in hacking myself (aside from YT videos), but I know a coworker of mine that would be very excited to have a platform dedicated to this topic. Good luck on your future endeavours, and I'll also be waiting for content in this channel!
Big respect for being honest and showing us what's going on behind the scenes!
I really like that you are asking yourself what you really _want_ to do, rather than just doing what financially makes sense for the channel.
Keep it up! 💜
Dude, your reasoning is sound, your content is gold, and hextree sounds awesome. Good luck! :D
I dont think you could have explained this better. What a comprehensive and detailed justification that anyone would make with no ambiguity. Bravo.
This sounds very exciting, nice to hear you're taking time to think things through as well!
Best of luck in your endeavors!
I’m a casual watcher of your videos. I normally like the way you make videos but most of the time I don’t have time to watch them, so I just bookmark them and eventually (maybe) watch them. I hope you success in your new endeavors!
this is awesome, i'm a computer science student in my last year of my bachelors, hopefully starting my masters next year, and have known about your channel for a while but just started getting into it now, i started watching your first ever videos yesterday to start with the basics and i'm actually getting into it and understanding, also really appreciate the information should be free mentality, this channel is cool af keep doing what ur doing
I don't often leave comments on TH-cam videos, but I had to make an exception for this one. You are truly inspiring, and I gained numerous insights from watching this single video. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, and I am confident that your project is going to be a big success!
Thanks for sharing this. Your videos mean a lot to me, especially in the early days of the channel, the things you explained where like literal magic for me, yet somehow you managed to make me understand some of it. Thank you so much.
Watching your videos over the past 5 years has been very educational and interesting. Do what you want to do with your life. I do hope you continue posting awesome videos
Have you looked into getting a bookkeeper as well as keeping your accountant?
Idea is bookkeeping is just managing the books / expenses on a monthly basis. It should be easier / cheaper to find someone to just do that. At the end of the year you would need an accountant, plus with any new types of revenue / expenses, you would need to ask your accountant how to track it, but it should cut down your accounting expenses while still not having to do it yourself.
Good luck, you make great content :)
Makes sense to me. I did the same thing a few months back, after years of planning to make my own courses... it just took me a long time to actually do it. Looking forward to it -- I'll sign up for sure.
Yeah, and you’re still uploading to YT (and thanks for that, btw!)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts so openly! I hope that hextree will take off!
I agree that it's important to focus on what you're good at and what you enjoy doing it you have the chance to.
I think you may be overpaying for "accounting services". I have experience and it feels like you could improve something there. I'm not in Germany but close by in Western Europe
It's amazing that you're now starting your own business, congratulations!!!
I like the way you look at the problem, picked a path to solve it that make sense with who you are and went for it. Its the right thing to do !. All the best and i look forward for cool content on that platform.
The content you make is so good that it inspired me to take up cyber security as a career , I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart and am super excited to see how the hextree grows !
Thanks for the update and honestly I had no idea how many videos you had made. I’m gonna have to go through your back catalog.
Huge props for sharing all these details and being so transparent! It was very interesting
Your community supports you with whatever you do! Keep up the good work,in whatever way you choose :)
Du bist 'n super Typ und ich hoffe, dass ich Deinen Content weiter irgendwie genießen kann. Viel Glück privat und beruflich & danke für alles!
100% respect your decision. Also really appreciate the honesty about the financial and psychological sides of running a TH-cam business!
You are such a kind, pure soul. People like you are so rare.
Excited for you, hopefully that works out.
you really deserve to be successful!!
Your yt videos helped me a lot . I couldn't imagine anybody better than you to launch a teaching platform.
All the very best!!!!
See you (hear you) on your platform.
I admire your clarity and how you approach your life and your passions
Wish you good luck, man. Have enjoyed your YT videos a lot.
I wish you the best and I hope this venture succeeds! I would consider having a couple free 'sample' sections that also includes experiencing a lab or two, so that the user knows what they can expect as a whole. That, or perhaps make labs for the TH-cam videos, if they are representative of the content on the site?
Good luck!
Really happy to see these developments. I'll definitely sign up for hextree when released publicly. The content on this channel has been so great in so many ways but my enthusiasm for watching dropped when the Minecraft series took over. This is also great because I have a minimum training hours requirement at my job and watching courses about computer security helps kill several birds with one stone. Excited!
This is exciting! Appreciate the video and wish you the best success! You rock!
Hey live, i‘m not a security guy, just a gamdedev hobbyist. Your channel has taught me a ton about programming, especially how to get good answers when I need them. Look forward to getting a new patron soon!
No matter what you are doing going forward.
The important thing is transparency and you surely gave a LOT of insight!
I wish you good luck for everything that lies before you :)
I am actually a bit hyped about this, sounds great!
Totally looking forward to see what's coming there.
I've been watching you since 2016 (or maybe even earlier?) & I've always felt like your knowledge carried along with it a sense of prestige, much different than many other hacking channels. Although it's sad to see that the channel isnt really working out, I hope you can feel proud of the amount of content you've already managed to provide for free over the years that I'm sure has inspired and helped many individuals. I'm very eager to see what hextree has to offer! I enjoyed the hardware challenges as much as the other ones on your youtube channel, so it's really exciting to know that hextree plans on covering different types of security.
You're the bomb keep up the hard work and I look forward to checking out the courses :)
You inspired me to get into programming, and teaching, and rlly helped me get thru periods of my life, I missed this when it came out, but I really do owe you a thanks for all you’ve done :3.
thank you! hope you are doing well now!
Thank you for the great explanatory video and the detailed background!
This way I can understand the decision well.
I also like the respect for other creators.
I confirm your talent to teach!
I watch your videos because I learn things that I don't have to deal with in my daily job, but that fall into my area of expertise (Software Engineer). The videos are so well done that I get an insight and basic understanding.
I wish you much success with Hextree. The plan sounds very reasonable.
I will deeply miss your videos with awesome and unique content, but I fully understand and support your decision.
With you bro. I've learned a lot from you. I dabbled in coding and hacking and when I wanted to learn more I discovered your content 6 years ago now. It was just perfect. Really wish you more success and financial security and fulfillment in life.
Please dont leave. I really think you are one of the best youtubers, among any type of content. You have deep detailed and very well exaplained content, as almost no one has. We really lov u! 😁
What a sincere video. I wrote the above before watching the video. I must change it to: You should to whatever you really want and make you feal happy. I really hope you find it, whatever it is ! : ) !!!!!!
Dear L0, this is frickin awesome. congrats. I truly hope this takes off.
If you don't mind a suggestion when you have 10x more things to do than time... Adding some kind of exam "certification" for each topic/level would be useful for people interested to show their skills to link in their linkedins (and it's like a free ad)
Keep up the good work! Looking forward to seeing what you do with hextree
Recognition of revenue and expense is connected & bound in the same time frame. You recognise revenue when you are sure that necessary work & associated cost has gone into a particular task for which money is "collectible" & not necessarily when "received" or invoiced. Similarly for expenses, you recognise it when you are "liable" to pay and not when you actually "pay" or receive an "invoice". This is how accounting for taxes is done. What you're (or your accountant) doing is cash-accounting which causes timing mismatches. However, cash-based accounting is convenient for small businesses but regular accounting gives a better/ more robust view of your business on an ongoing basis. Also, your Pwn Adventure series was fantastic !
Keep us posted of your success mate, you shared a lot of interesting points
Yeah! [Heck] John Hammond! That's my only takeaway from this video.
Good luck on hextree. You've consistently been my favorite hacking educator on TH-cam: using real-world examples, analyzing exploits in-depth, and doing tutorials that demonstrate exploit discovery from the ground up. The fact that your videos appealed to me when I just started and still do, now that I'm feeling like I've progressed beyond the content of others who I learned from early on as well, speaks volumes to your ability as a teacher. I look forward to seeing how a more structured approach to videos alters your style (I hope it's not too drastic of a change). I also look forward to seeing how a less structured approach alters your style on youtube.
This is exactly why I stopped producing content. LLC costs were astronomical and not worth it. I instead now just open source all my code and truly focus on my passion... 15+ years pro, Principal engineer (and now manager) at a popular software company that makes tool for devs... signed up for hextree, looking forward to the launch
Very good idea!!! Hope your plan works. Please announce when it's online. Keep up the good work!
I think this is an extremely well thought out video. Thank you for the clarity. I would say the majority of people understand you have to make money. I mostly just watch for fun but I hope your website takes off. The interface looks really nice.
I think you made the right decision. You have given the community so much through your videos, it's about time you get properly paid for your effort.
And I'm so glad you're not going the influencer/sponsorship route. This way, you're not limited by having to please your sponsors, use their products etc.
I love the concept of hextree. While I agree that jumping around and learning by yourself is the best way, some people might not have time for it. I'm currently studying software engineering and I've wanted to get back into the security world for a while, but I don't have the time to dig around a lot, set up and fix environments etc. So having a platform that holds your hand a bit more and has integrated labs would be perfect!
Again, I think you've made the right decision and i really hope hextree works out to be a success, you deserve it!!
I hope theres some sort of way to show off your progress, either in the form of a level system, or just that you can make your "hex tree" public. I think this would motivate folks like me who want something to add to their CV, which in turn will motivate me to take more of these courses :)
Either way, im glad yall are doing this, and ill definitively subscribe- thats the least i could do for all you have done for me 💜
Sounds like a nice idea! I never even thought about buying a course on Udemy or any other platform, but I might consider buying your courses! I've been watching you for many years, but never tried any of the stuff you showed. The knowledge still helped me to create better software. Keep up the good work
Your transparency regarding your business is awesome.
I wish you good luck! The plattform sounds really interesting.
Very exciting :) happy for you and good luck!
Awesome plan, go for it! I hope you succeed!
I'll be waiting for the beta announcement
Can't wait. I definitely want to see the ghidra hex path. Your pure honesty is refreshing. 1
I like your teaching style. I'll definitely sign up for the courses. I regret not understanding the struggle of a youtuber. Thanks for the video.
I see my patronage (on Patreon) as a thank you because you helped me learn some really cool stuff.
I'll keep supporting regardless of hextree as long as you keep the motivation of teaching people.
Wish you all the success and _moneys_ in the world
off-topic: just now realized that liveoverflow might've been among the folks from Cure53 I was talking with during the last pentest my company made ;D
I can understand how being a public persona, when you don't really want to be one, can be very exhausing. You should only do what makes you happy (and money). There will always be a market for your content. And if you want to charge for it, I will be more than happy to pay. The quality and level of detail and explaining you do is unmatched. Best of luck!
Very much excited for hextree! All the best!
you should change accountants
super excited for hextree. All the best! :)
Heck, I watch you for couple of years now I think, and I don't know your name. But anyway, I understand your decision and appreciate for your honesty, and over all I appreciate you for your professionalism in this field. I would love to see only such knowledgeable people on this platform - world would be great then. I will keep my eye on you and keep my fingers crossed for the success of your new project.
I will miss your videos on TH-cam, but I wish you the best of luck. Every man/woman must do what's best for him/her in life and I hope with all my heart that you will succeed, and I believe you will. Many content creators have expressed that TH-cam isn't a good partner lately, and I understand the frustration. TH-cam's algorithms has change a lot over the recent months, and not in a good way. The videos TH-cam suggests to me have become more and more irrelevant and I often have to fight against TH-cam's algorithms to watch the content that I want.
Anyway: Good luck man!
Your PwnAdventure3 series is one of the best series of videos I've encountered on TH-cam, so if HexTree offers anywhere near as good of content, I'm sold! Wishing you all the best in this effort!