From Useless Robots to 2.9M Subscribers: Simone Giertz
Her robots were built to fail. When sponsors walked, fans paid her directly, and a Kickstarter raised $593K. Simone Giertz now has 2.86M subscribers.
Updates, featured creators, athletes, and more from the Yaff team.
Her robots were built to fail. When sponsors walked, fans paid her directly, and a Kickstarter raised $593K. Simone Giertz now has 2.86M subscribers.
He taught English in Bangkok to pay the bills, then a Thai food ebook let him go full time. Today Mark Wiens has 12M YouTube subscribers.
He ran a car detailing business for nearly 18 years, then started filming at 40 with a GoPro. Today Peter Santenello has 4.31M YouTube subscribers.
A Leeds Castle porter moved to rural Japan to teach English in 2012 and started filming. Today Abroad in Japan has 3.29M YouTube subscribers.
An Oxford graduate quit a London media job in 2017 to vlog from Pakistan. Today she hosts a Nat Geo show and has 1.93M YouTube subscribers.
A preschool teacher and a printing-company owner left Nashville for one year of travel. Ten years and 100+ countries later: 4.55M subscribers.
Sonny Side flunked out of three colleges, moved to Asia with about $2,000 and built Best Ever Food Review Show to 12.2M subscribers. How he got there.
Christian LeBlanc quit an accounting job, flew one-way to Thailand with a GoPro and built Lost LeBlanc to 2.29M subscribers. How he did it and got paid.
Yes Theory began as 30 challenges in 30 days in Montreal with 1,500 subscribers. How Seek Discomfort grew to 10M subscribers and a fan-funded brand.
Drew Binsky taught English in Seoul, quit in 2015 to travel full time and visited all 197 countries. How a gifted camera became a 7.5M-subscriber channel.
Riley saved for 8 years on oil rigs to buy a yacht he couldn't sail. Elayna picked up his unused camera. Viewer support turned it into a 2M-subscriber channel.
John Plant mowed lawns and built huts in the bush as a hobby. His silent Primitive Technology videos grew to 11M subscribers, backed by fans on Patreon.
Mark Rober spent nine years as a NASA engineer, posted a Halloween costume video in 2011, and built an 84.3M-subscriber channel and a subscription business.
Colin Furze left school at 16 to be a plumber, filmed his backyard inventions for fun, and built a 13.3 million-subscriber YouTube channel. Here's how.
Travel-creator affiliate programs already on the Yaff blog: Wise, Mindtrip, Saily, SafetyWing, Epidemic Sound and SwellPro.
Jack Whitaker posts a Florida-to-Panama voyage as a members-only photo journal on Yaff: two free chapters, US$2.99 Basic Access, and a US$24.99 thank-you tier.
Luke Bosworth fills the gap between YouTube uploads with behind-the-scenes clips, extra interviews, trip photo dumps and reflections on Yaff. 99 items since July 2025 — 65 photo dumps, 29 videos, 5 posts — across three USD memberships.
Sailing Uno turned a 44ft Mediterranean and Atlantic crossing into a US$5 ebook on Yaff, with free passage logs and members-only free-diving videos and photo dumps. Here's how sailing and travel creators can do the same.
Sponsorships are tough when starting out. Most affiliate networks gatekeep, ignoring creators with under 100K followers. Saily does things differently. Their program is open to everyone and features a double-sided reward system: you make money, and your audience saves money. Everyone wins.
Hundreds of years ago, artists had patrons who funded their work because they believed in it. Fast forward to today, and that model is making a comeback — only now, it’s digital.