How One YouTuber Made $23K a Year Filming Cows

Turning Daily Farm Scenes into a YouTube Hit

Late in 2020, an independent creator for the Farm Factory YouTube channel spotted a gap: farm life footage had high search demand but few solid videos. With permission from friends at a Dutch farm, they used a GoPro and phone to record tractors, barns, and cows over several days of an internship look.

Filming with Simple Gear

Armed with a GoPro and an iPhone, the creator captured over 100 GB of raw clips. Scenes included milking cows, driving machinery, and barn interiors. Footage was uncut, authentic, and shot from multiple angles to keep viewers curious.

Organizing and Editing Footage

Back home, the clips were sorted by theme: tractors, stalls, animals. Using an old Zenbook laptop, the creator stitched together short videos under five minutes, which improved retention. Each clip focused on one element, driving, feeding, milking, to maintain a clear narrative.

Uploading Strategy

From July 2021, a new video dropped every week. Titles were straightforward, descriptions included brief activity notes plus links to other clips. No fancy thumbnails, just honest scene previews. This consistent schedule built trust and regular watch patterns.

Boosting Watch Time

Instead of relying on metadata or tags, the channel used end screens and in-description links to guide viewers from one video to the next. That relinking tactic lifted total viewing hours and solidified ad earnings without chasing algorithm tricks.

Results in Year One

By mid-2022, the channel hit 215K subscribers and crossed 100 million views (Shorts accounted for an extra 30 million). Ad revenue totaled $23,651. The creator confirmed the screenshot, in Russian, of the earnings inside YouTube Studio.

This experiment shows you don’t need a big budget or fancy editing suite to find a niche. A bit of farm footage, consistent uploads, and clever linking can build a profitable channel in under a year.