Ever wonder what it's really like trying to monetize on YouTube? In this candid chat, I'm sharing the less glamorous side of the creator journey. From the mental drain of constantly refreshing analytics to the unexpected time sink of creating Shorts, I'm laying it all out. I'll also be opening up about my personal doubts and asking the tough questions: "Do I really have what it takes?" Join me for an unfiltered look at the challenges of building a YouTube business.

I have been in business since 2015.

I started posting on YouTube as a way to answer questions that a lot of clients were asking me and as a value add to my one on one sessions.​In a time between then and now I have had a number of accidental successful videos YouTube. The first one was How to Create a free landing page on MailChimp. The second was How to Put Faces in Circles in Canva. My current high performer is How to share your Canva design to your Facebook Business Page.

The audience for those videos is 70% male males in Australia over 50.

In my business my favourite niche has been female coaches and healers over 40 and I didn’t really know how to serve my YouTube audience other than the value they were already getting from the videos created. Most of those viral video views came from a Google search and my videos just happened to exactly answer their query.

Fast forward to 2023. I took a job with University of Wollongong for 18 months and in that time I wasn’t creating content for my business. Even still a number of my videos had thousands of views while I did nothing. To me that looks like a business opportunity.

Now it’s 2025 and re-entering my business. I’m open to new things and new ideas.​I was still just looking at my YouTube audience and trying to figure out how to make the most of it.

I’ve watched a lot of YouTube channel optimisation videos and advice . I’ve done a mini course with Ali Abdaal and considered doing his large program. My concern is that sometimes I struggle to create content when it's very strategic. My best content seems to come when I'm in pure service. I love one take videos and editing has not felt good in the past.

I’ve been working with ChatGPT to analyse my existing successful videos to see what ideas can be generated through that exchange.​ChatGPT talks about freebies and funnels and small ticket courses and templates that could lead to larger courses and coaching. Nothing i don’t already know but I’m approaching it with a new curiosity and willingness. I can't help thinking that those YouTube views could lead to something and at the least, I could try to get monetised again.

I thought it might be valuable to other people to see the kinds of tools I’m using and processes I'm engaged in as I am reinvigorate my YouTube channel with a goal of becoming monetised and developing a business model for that M 50+ audience.

It’s now 16 June 2025 and my current situation with monetisation eligibility is: I have enough subscribers and I have enough uploads. I currently have 139 valid watch hours - my goal is 4000 watch hours in 365 days. ChatGPT thinks I can do it in six months. Let’s see what happens.

Don't even get me started on gender bias and double standards! Here's a tiny feminist rant that makes up part of my final work in my post grad studies. Hit me up if you would be interested to read my story. I'll pop it up on the website soon :)

I think it’s time to start a new story in our culture about the way we deal with grief. So often I hear this statement: ‘ we are just so bad at grief and death and grieving.’

We can keep this old way of thinking in place or we can challenge this and I hope this episode can meet you wherever you are at with your grief process.

I started something from scratch and I have been through all the spirals of learning lately!

Today I want to share my lessons and insights with love and compassion if you relate to any of them :)

More from me https://natashaberta.com/

Why I’m Never Busy

“How are you?”

“I’m so busy”

This is the most common line I hear in conversation especially with business people and mums. It’s definitely a thing I used to say a lot and now I try not to say it at all. 

If I feel like I am about to say “I’m busy” I take a moment to reconsider and to take responsibility. Instead I say: “I’m fully engaged with my life” or “I have a lot on” or something like that. 

If you like to say you’re busy please go ahead. I don’t judge you. I just know that when I was saying “I’m busy” it was a number of things. It was a badge of martyrdom. It was an abdication of my responsibility. It was a cop out and it was an excuse. 

It felt good to say I was busy. It was me, as a mother, putting myself last. I was making excuses for why I couldn’t put my self care and wellbeing first in my life and the problem with that is: no-one else in the world is going to put me first. They might be playing the same mothering game as me and failing to put themselves first, but they certainly aren’t going to put me first. I needed to do that. 

For me, the ability to change my relationship with busy-ness took a number of years and some tough challenges. My health declined and I simply couldn’t be busy. Plus, being busy was making me sick. I was anemic with HMB and I needed to learn a new way of being. Stress and overwork were making my condition worse and after a bout in hospital I finally committed to a new direction. 

I had to learn to see the mindsets and beliefs that were keeping me stuck. I had to remind myself again and again that I am the boss and I get to make the rules. I had to release a lot of my employee mindset hangovers and step into a new paradigm aside from capitalism’s demands to do, do, do for more, more, more. I had to decide what I personally want from my life and business and redefine my goals. 

I had to ask a lot of questions. Do I really want a 6 or 7 figure business? What do I want my days to look like? What are my priorities? What are my interests and who decides how much I should do? Should I let my imagination decide what other people think I should do or should I honour my body, intuition and health indicators. 

I realised that I couldn’t blame my partner, his family, my family or society. I had to get good at saying no and taking the time to discern where my energy was best spent. In reality that looks like a lot of mistakes, a lot of over-doing it migraines and a lot of days in bed. It has taken dozens of reiterations of my calendar and it’s something I’m still working on every week and every day. 

Ultimately I see that I need to continue to take responsibility. It’s my responsibility to take care of my wellbeing. I and only I am responsible for the hours I work and how I work. It’s entirely up to me to structure my days and commitments so that I can have the life I want. 

It’s super satisfying and it’s also very uncomfortable but when I think about being an employee I’m just not sure how I would go. I feel like I’ve learned a lot of lessons and I’m in a completely different field to a lot of people, particularly people who don’t have a business. 

I’ve had to learn to emotionally regulate myself when I’m in stressful situations instead of disassociating. I’m still learning that one. I am still learning how much time I need in nature and how much I need quiet. From my perspective it’s all a big experiment and I’m still playing the game. 

We all have a choice. We all chose to be where we currently are whether we realise or not. I choose how I relate to my life circumstances and I find that very satisfying. I practice being satisfied. Satisfied with what I have. I take time to notice all that I have. I feel very lucky and grateful. And I’m never busy.

Are you creative? 

I pose this question to you for reflection.

I have my own opinion about it. 

If you are alive you are creative. 

If you are in business you are creative.

The old paradigm of our society tells us that creative people make art and then that art gets sold or hung in a gallery. It tells us that only some people have the “right stuff" to be an artist and that if our creative output doesn’t look like what we see in a gallery, that we aren’t creative and we should be an accountant or something. 

That is all a big fat lie. 

Every cup of tea, every meal, every doodle while we’re on the phone and especially your business is a creative act. 

Creativity is to create something. To create something is to bring something into the world that wasn’t there before. 

So yes: you are creative. The small ways like meals and tea and the large ways, like a business or your art.

The resources I mentioned:

Australian Bush Flower Essence: Turkey Bush

Aesha Kennedy - Creativi-Tea

The Artists's Way - Julia Cameron

Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert

More from me: https://connectedmarketing.com.au/

It's bedtime story time with Aunty Yo.

I just finished some intensive business and life planning. This was inspired after bingeing on Cal Newport's podcast for 3 days including a 7 hour car ride.

It feels great to do my planning and then I got to thinking about how Cal Newport has really helped me in my life.

And then I started thinking about all the mentors and teachers I've had lately and how they have supported and inspired me lately.

So here's a rambly podcast about how I got my life from overwhelmed and semi-psychotic to basically a Zen master haha.

People I mention:

Melanie White

Danielle Gardner

George Kao

Cal Newport

More from me: https://connectedmarketing.com.au/