My Holiday Money-Makers

Ever wonder how creative ideas evolve into something that pays dividends years later? Here's the story behind my most successful holiday videos: 50 Ways to Open a Gift (9M views) and 50 Ways to Wrap a Gift (2.9M views).

I made them in 2018, and even after 6 years, they still make a few thousand dollars every holiday season as they spike in viewership throughout December. They're very evergreen in the sense that a lot of views return to them every Christmas.

(Admittedly, I find it really difficult to watch myself in these videos, so this is a big share for me 😂)

Creatively, this format was born out of my experience working on animated feature films. Nearly every shot in a movie is first acted out and recorded by the animator to present to the director. It's a super efficient way of communicating the intended performance.

I couldn't share any of these clips publicly while working on movies, but I'd show my wife and she'd get a kick out of me acting like a cartoon character. That evolved into me walking in 100 different ways - showcasing the power of movement - which later inspired the idea of performing simple actions in 50 different ways.

This series did so well on YouTube that it kept me financially afloat through 2018 when I first made the leap to full-time social media.

👉 My reflection from the success of these videos is that your uniqueness is your superpower. Sure, I could say it's as easy as studying animation in college, then specializing in stop-motion, then moving across the country to work on movies, then intersecting the experience of privately acting with making YouTube videos - but that's the path only I've taken.

So what's your superpower? What can you pull from your unique path in life to bring to the creative table? I'm often asked by new digital creators 'what to make'. I truly believe that's a question each artist can only answer themselves.