There is a useful market for it. There is only so much you can do, so if you specialize someone can take your same tricks to a different speciality.

There is a lot of scams in there though. Telling the difference is not easy.

Unfortunately this kind of thinking is also why I’ve never created a YouTube channel or blog to teach people software dev stuff from my years of experience.

I keep thinking I’ll come across as a failed developer who now has to teach for ad money because he can’t do anything else anymore.

1. If you try to make money on youtube with ads... good luck with that. Thats not the business model of most devs who teach on youtube.

2. Before your youtube channel becomes popular to get noticed in a good or bad way, it will probably take a long time. Teaching code, being good at coding and being popular on youtube are 3 skills that dont necessarily overlap.

3. If you do get noticed, the (financial) benefits of it far surpass any developer job. And usually it actually help you to get dev jobs anyway.

If YouTube devs aren’t using ads as a business model what is the financial benefit? Selling courses? Consulting? Books?

Some do it purely for the love and others for (directly or indirectly) promoting their paid courses.

> I keep thinking I’ll come across

Why? Youtube is a vast wasteland of videos, if people think that then your videos simply won't get many views, if people do find you insightful you will.

Unless you're specifically worried about the lack of low views maybe upload some random videos of you wandering around maybe even talking about random things first (because there's a trillion videos on youtube of people doing this already) so you get used to it.

Meanwhile they have become the rockstars of the dev world. Get on twitter and hashtag away.

How much does a “rockstar” dev make anyway?

A lot if they play their cards right as consultant.

Still not seeing dollar amounts.

I think most will struggle compared to a 6 figure salaried developer consistently bringing in paychecks.

Adam Wathan is a great example because he has shared details along the way.

His last php course I think he made 300k+. His latest css framework by my calculations netted him over a million.

His in previous refactoring to collections I think he made between 100-150k.

He recently down turn off all ads on his radioshow because he doesn't need the money.

Taylor Otwell has made millions from laravel ecosystem saas type sites.

Jeffrey Way doesn't disclose figured but based on user count and monthly revenue he must be pulling in at least 500k.

It's out there if you want it. Start a radio show, get opinionated, sell others on your vision. Then offer products to support your new vision.

I used to think like this.

Until I realized it was incredibly cynical, selfish and self-centered.

Not everybody has the same motivations, and this is not a zero sum game.

I love coding.

And I love even more teaching other how to code and help them get to where I am.

Coding is not sales or trading and I didn't intend for this aphorism to apply to programming.

If you know a stock is going to appreciate in value and you tell everyone about it, they are going to buy it and cause the stock price to rise. If you didn't buy any and they did you will miss out on the appreciation. Alternatively, if you buy enough of the stock and don't tell anyone that will also cause the price to rise in value and other people will miss out on the appreciation.

Teaching someone else how to be a better programmer does not diminish your market value as an engineer in any meaningful way. It most likely increases it. Disclosing your winning trading strategy will make it so you can't profit off it because your trading costs will rise to such a level that the trade is unprofitable.