1M Subscribers or $1,000,000: Why We Chose Amazon FBA Over YouTube

Would you rather have 1 million subscribers or a $1 million business? Most people would probably say the million dollars. But then they go build the subscribers. My husband Tim and I have spent more than a decade building both. We built a travel YouTube channel that grew to more than 250,000 subscribers, and we still create those videos today because we genuinely love it. At the same time, we built a product-based business that has generated more than $32 million in revenue since 2017. And what we've learned from living inside both business models is that the relationship between audience, attention, and income isn't nearly as straightforward as it looks from the outside. We originally thought our growing YouTube audience would drive a meaningful amount of sales for our product business. It didn't (but I'll get into how it did). The two businesses were succeeding largely on their own. In this episode of 2740, I break down the numbers behind both businesses, including how quickly our Amazon FBA business went from its earliest days to a $1M+ annual revenue business, while our YouTube channel continued growing in subscribers and views without generating anywhere close to the same financial results. We'll talk about: → Why we started making travel videos in the first place → How Amazon FBA entered the picture in 2016 → The actual early numbers behind both businesses → How our product business reached $1M+ in revenue in roughly 2.5 years → What 250,000+ YouTube subscribers actually generated financially → Whether our YouTube audience really drove sales for our products → Why attention and revenue aren't the same thing → The difference between renting your income and building an asset → How to choose a business model that actually fits your skills and the way you want to work → Why you should look at what success looks like at the top of a business model before committing to the beginning Because the business that looks the most successful from the outside isn't always the business that's creating the most wealth. And sometimes the most important question isn't "Can I make money doing this?" It's "Is this the business model I actually want to build?" I'm Fin, and this is 2740, a podcast about the math, mindset, and business models behind building a business of your own. CHAPTERS 00:00 1 Million Subscribers vs. $1 Million Dollars 01:26 Why We Chose a Product Business Over Influencer Marketing 03:05 Our Two Online Businesses: YouTube vs. Amazon FBA 05:00 How We Got Started With Amazon FBA 07:29 How Amazon FBA Works: Private Label & Fulfillment 08:40 YouTube vs. Amazon FBA: Two Completely Different Business Models 09:40 Our First Year: YouTube vs. Amazon FBA 10:44 How Our Amazon Business Grew to $735K 11:49 How We Built a $1.25M Business in 2.5 Years 12:33 Did Our YouTube Audience Actually Drive Amazon Sales? 15:00 What 250K YouTube Subscribers Actually Made Us 17:27 $32M in Amazon Revenue vs. YouTube Revenue 18:23 Why Followers and Views Don't Equal Financial Success 19:07 Amazon vs. Social Media: Where People Actually Buy 20:02 How to Choose a Business Model That Fits Your Skills 21:16 Renting vs. Owning Your Income: Why Influencers Can't Exit 23:18 Amazon FBA vs. Retail Arbitrage 25:38 Why Amazon FBA Is a Huge Opportunity for Women 26:51 Etsy vs. Amazon FBA: The Fulfillment Problem 29:03 The Headaches of Every Business Model The Exit, my weekly letter: https://www.fba-edu.com/newsletters/t... FBA EDU: https://www.fba-edu.com ABOUT I'm Fin. Half of ‪@timandfin‬ travel channel, co-founder of Tripped Travel Gear, and the person behind FBA EDU. #AmazonFBA #Milliondollarbusiness #AmazonFBA2027