- Gabby Wallace is a former teacher who now runs a YouTube channel and several rental properties.
- She makes money from online ads, sponsorships, and courses, as well as bookings on Airbnb.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gabby Wallace, a 38-year-old former teacher turned YouTuber and Airbnb host based in Kansas City, Missouri. Insider has verified her past and current monthly income streams with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I've always enjoyed teaching and pursued that path in college. After graduating with my master's degree in 2010, I got an opportunity to teach English in Japan. The salary offer wasn't much, but I craved an adventure, so I excitedly accepted.
I enjoyed teaching English, and being in Japan helped me comprehend the need. I wanted to teach in a way that could reach a wider audience, so I started a YouTube channel called Go Natural English and uploaded my first video in April 2011.
Today, Go Natural English has 2.25 million subscribers and averages $15,000 a month in revenue from Google AdSense, sponsorships, and course sales.
I also own 12 properties. Within those, I make $20,000 a month in revenue from my 26 long-term rental units that I funded with my online income and a home-equity line of credit, or HELOC. I also average $25,000 a month in revenue from my 11 Airbnb units. Units can be rooms, apartments, or a full house. I rent out rooms for one of my properties because there's more demand for them in the Kansas City market. The other properties are for renters to have a home or apartment to themselves.
My average monthly revenue is $60,000 a month. I stopped teaching full time in 2014, and now I'm the only employee of my rental and online businesses — I work with contractors on a part-time basis. I work 10 to 15 hours a week and only spend time doing what I enjoy, which is educating on YouTube and managing my properties.
My YouTube channel grew slowly at first
It took a year after starting my channel to reach 1,000 subscribers. By year two, I got a feel for YouTube and my style. I learned that my videos about grammar points didn't perform as well as videos about how to speak confidently, and my videos about hard skills didn't perform as well as soft skills.
With this knowledge, I was able to grow the channel to 10,000 subscribers by the end of 2012. Despite that growth, I was only making around $1 a month from YouTube AdSense.
In 2013, I moved back to the US to teach at Boston University and ran my YouTube channel as a side hustle. After starting to post consistently twice a month, it grew to 100,000 subscribers by end of year.
Around this time, a friend suggested I start an online course to diversify my revenue. I created and launched a course called "ESL Troubleshooting" on Udemy in February 2013, which I advertised on YouTube and my social-media channels. I made it myself after researching courses, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos from entrepreneurs such as Pat Flynn and Natalie Sisson who had done the same thing.
I loved Boston, but I wasn't making enough to live on my own, so I moved back to Japan in 2014. I landed a full-time job teaching English at Toyo University in Tokyo with health insurance, a pension, and housing subsidies.
While looking for ways to make more money in Tokyo, one idea that came to mind was to sublet one of the rooms in my apartment on Airbnb
I'd heard about Airbnb through the website CouchSurfing and from other travelers. I listed my spare room in December 2014, but I quickly faced a major problem: The contract I'd signed to teach English stated we weren't allowed to make money from outside jobs. Because there were other foreign teachers living in the same building as me, word spread easily, and I was eventually let go. I had 30 days to leave the country because I no longer had a sponsored visa.
Instead of returning to the US, I booked a one-way ticket to Vietnam. I stayed in Vietnam for three months to keep my expenses low, traveled around Asia and Europe for nine months, and continued to build my YouTube channel and online course. In 2016, I moved back to the US and signed a lease on a two-bedroom apartment in New York City.
In New York, I picked up where I'd left off with Airbnb and rented out the second bedroom of my apartment. After two weeks, the landlord found out and didn't like it. We decided it would be best if I found someone to take over my lease, and we parted ways. I then moved to Kansas City, where some of my family lived.
I was tired of the rules I had when I rented, so I bought a house in May 2016
The house cost $50,000, and I paid the $10,000 down payment with savings from my business income.
I again had two bedrooms and listed one on Airbnb. But this time, it was my own damn house and I could do what I pleased with it. This made me an extra $1,000 in revenue a month. Shortly after, I decided I wanted to be a real-estate investor and realized Kansas City was a great place to do that.
With the success of my first listing, I took out a HELOC and bought a second property in Kansas City for $70,000. I'd heard about HELOCs while listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos as part of my real-estate investing research. The HELOC allowed me to leverage the equity I already had on my first home and not have to tap into my savings. I bought the second home to use as a long-term rental property.
By 2017, I had language-learning and online-tutoring companies buying sponsorships on my YouTube channel, and some language-learning apps paying for ads. Half of these companies reached out to me, and I sought out half of the other deals. My largest contract was a yearlong, $40,000 sponsorship deal. From 2017 to 2020, I averaged $250,000 a year in revenue from my online businesses and two rental properties.
I don't pay to market the properties — people have found them organically. As someone who's traveled a lot, I've tried to set up my properties in the way that would attract renters like me. I invested in fast WiFi and properties with lots of space, and I focus on longer-term stays for two weeks or longer, or ideally 30 days or more. What's helped is listing places and testing what the market is willing to pay and how they like to book, like booking ahead or last minute, or preferring a room to an entire home.
In early 2020, I purchased two more properties using HELOCs, income from my online businesses, and savings, and I've grown my portfolio to 12 since then.
I learned to manage my long-term rentals and Airbnbs remotely as I've traveled between Kansas City, Mexico, and Brazil as a digital nomad
I love Brazil and Mexico and they both have a low cost of living.
I created repeatable processes and several checklists for my cleaners, used automated messages when guests book on Airbnb's app, and kept all payments to local assistants, such as my cleaners and handy people who fix anything wrong with the properties, online using various payment apps such as Cash App, Venmo, and Zelle.
I oversee all communication and admin for my rental properties, such as how my local assistants welcome guests. The Airbnbs have keyless entries that can be controlled through WiFi, so I can run my Airbnb business with just my phone.
I've sold three of the properties I bought in the past two years and made $200,000 in profit from those sales. Two of the properties were never listed on Airbnb — I purchased them solely to flip. The third property was on Airbnb, but I sold it because the market was great and it was a good time to sell. I was able to use some of the profit to buy my mom a house to live in. That was a big accomplishment for me — I cry when I think about it.
I always wanted freedom of time and location. I'm grateful for what Airbnb, YouTube, and my online business have provided.