How Graham Stephan Makes Money

Revenue Engines Behind a Multimillion-Dollar Empire

Nov 12, 2023

Hello, creator,

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In today’s issue we explore Graham Stephan businesses - one of the biggest YouTubers in finance/real estate niche.

Decoding Graham Stephan’s Portfolio: From YouTube to Newsletters

First, I want to review all of his products and offerings across three factors:

Product stack: what’s inside the product/offering
Price: the price of the product and/or how much Graham makes out of it
Audience: who the product is designed for.

The guy is busy. Let’s get started.

Main YouTube Channel: Graham Stephan

Product Stack: free videos twice a week.
Price: $0.
Audience: finance/real estate audience.
Monetised by AdSense and sponsorships (1-2 slots per video).
Size: 4.36M subscribers (as of June 2023)

The Iced Coffee Hour YouTube Channel

Product Stack: free videos once a week.
Price: $0.
Audience: business audience.
Monetised by AdSense and sponsorships.
Size: 554K subscribers (as of June 2023)

The Graham Stephan Show YouTube Channel

Product Stack: occasional videos / no set schedule.
Price: $0 / free.
Audience: wide audience interested in entertainment.
Monetised by AdSense and sponsorships (1-2 slots per video).
Size: 1.13M subscribers (as of June 2023)

Affiliate Links

Product Stack: links to financial products (e.g. stocks), camera and recording equipment, and other products in apparel, nutrition and other niches.
Price: approximately $15 - $1600 (rough estimate of Graham’s earning per sale: $5 - $500)
Audience: affiliate links to financial products target finance/real estate audience, affiliate links to camera and recording equipment target YouTubers and other links target broad audience.

Merchandise: Bankroll Coffee brand

Product Stack: coffee, tea and coffee/tea-related accessories.
Price: $5 - $50.
Audience: Graham Stephan fans.

Online course: The YouTube Creator Academy

Product Stack: videos only.
Price: $397 (discounted price promoted in Youtube descriptions: $297).
Audience: Youtube creators.

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Online course: The Real Estate Agent Academy

Product Stack: videos only.
Price: $497.
Audience: real estate agents.

Graham’s Newsletter: Free plan

Product Stack: two weekly posts.
Price: $0 / free.
Audience: finance/real estate audience.
Size: 39,000 subscribers (as of June 2023)

Graham’s Newsletter: Premium plan

Product Stack: two weekly posts + occasional premium posts, AMAs, exclusive course & tools.
Price: $20/mo or $200/year.
Audience: finance/real estate audience.

Graham’s Newsletter: Founding Member plan

Product Stack: two weekly posts + occasional premium posts, AMAs, exclusive course & tools + group Zoom calls once a month.
Price: $1200/year.
Audience: finance/real estate audience.

Iced Coffee Hour Club: Official Member

Product Stack: ad-free content, name shown at end of video, early access to videos and 10% off merch
Price: $4.99/month or $53.89/year.
Audience: business audience.

Iced Coffee Hour Club: Pro Member

Product Stack: ad-free content, name shown at end of video, early access to videos, 15% off merch, exclusive episode with Jack and Graham every second Wednesday each month, guest Q/A.
Price: $9.99/month or $107.89/year.
Audience: business audience.

Iced Coffee Hour Club: VIP Member

Product Stack: ad-free content, name shown at end of video, early access to videos, 20% off merch, exclusive episode with Jack and Graham every second Wednesday each month, guest Q/A, 2x private events per year.
Price: $500/month or $5400/year.
Audience: business audience.

Iced Coffee Hour: Personalised Video with Graham and Jack

Product Stack: a custom video.
Price: $150.
Audience: Iced Coffee Hour fans.

How Graham Stephan Creates Value

A quick overview of his product suite shows us that Graham works across the following target audiences:

Real estate agents
Real estate/finance audience
Graham Stephan’s fans
Business audience
Iced Coffee Hour fans
An audience interested in entertainment
YouTube creators.

I won’t be doing a deep dive into all audiences - I think the most interesting customer personas from the business perspective are the real estate/finance audience, business audience and YouTube creators. I believe Graham Stephan has the most developed value ladders for these three audiences, so we will dig into them.

Value ladders show us how Graham builds relationships with different target audiences and increases customer lifetime value for each of these audiences.

If you’re not familiar with this concept, this is a framework that allows you to increase revenue per customer over time and eventually grow the revenue of your creator business.

If we try to build a value ladder of offerings for the finance/real estate audience, here’s how it will look like:

A quick note on the Real Estate Agent Academy — ideally, I would move it to a separate value ladder as real estate agents is only a fraction of his wider finance/real estate audience who watches his main YouTube channel and/or reads his newsletter.

Here’s how the value ladder for the business audience looks like:

The third target audience that I’d like to review is YouTube creators. Graham Stephan doesn’t have a wide product suite for them but I think it could account for a decent chunk of his revenue in comparison with other offerings for the remaining audiences (fans and an audience interested in entertainment).

That’s it for today.

If you have any questions or want to see a deep dive on another creator — feel free to share in comments:

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