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Jamie Penney’s entrepreneurial adventure began when he was in university.
He dabbled in niche sites and a travel vlog on YouTube successfully until the recent Google updates, but he really found his groove when he focused his efforts on a hobby he had to earn extra money: flipping furniture.
In 2019, he launched his YouTube channel, Furniture Flippa.
Unsurprisingly, the journey has been filled with ups and downs and a lot of learning along the way.
And over the years Jamie has been working to diversify his income, earning from YouTube ads, affiliates, sponsorships, and selling the furniture he flips, among other avenues.
He recently launched a membership community for furniture flippers, and he’s expanding his reach on Facebook, Instagram and beyond.
He’s earning over $4k per month from this business, not to mention other income he has coming in from his other niche sites.
In this interview, Jamie shares all the details of his journey as well as many ideas for diversifying away from Google and building a successful YouTube channel.
Keep reading to find out:
- How he got into niche sites
- How his first YouTube channel did
- How he got started with his furniture flipping YouTube channel
- How he gained traction on YouTube
- How his income has evolved and where it comes from
- His marketing strategy
- His thoughts on SEO
- His content creation process
- His favorite tools and resources
- His main challenge
- His greatest accomplishment
- His biggest mistake
- His advice for other entrepreneurs
Meet Jamie Penney
My name is Jamie. I’m from Newfoundland, but I currently live in Vancouver, BC. I lived in Newfoundland until I finished high school.
After high school, I moved to Nova Scotia for a year to play competitive hockey, but then returned to Newfoundland to complete my schooling at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN).
Growing up in Newfoundland, I played a lot of sports, focusing on hockey primarily, but I also enjoyed spending time outdoors fishing, dirt biking, mountain biking, hiking, skiing, etc. I was a zipline guide for 5 years, too!
After finishing post-secondary school (BBA), I moved to Halifax, NS, and worked as a realtor in new home construction for two years. I also dabbled in real estate videography at this time.
While living in Halifax, I began regularly flipping furniture to make a few extra bucks, which is when I started my website, Furniture Flippa.
After 2 to 3 years of living in Halifax, my girlfriend and I moved to Vancouver, BC, where my girlfriend attended a year-long fashion program. We have now been in Vancouver for 3 years!
Why He Created His Website
When I was in university, still living at home, I heard about online businesses including YouTube channels and niche websites.
I created a few niche sites and started making travel YouTube videos; I was learning the basics of these online businesses.
I began seeing minor success with niche sites, earning a couple hundred bucks while still a student. I was more interested in my websites than school!
My travel YouTube videos were not gaining any traction, but I learned a ton about video editing. My channel, Jamie & Tay, taught me how to use Adobe Premiere Pro.
Although I gave up on it before any success, I think it really helped me in the long run with Furniture Flippa and getting into real estate videography.
After learning about making money online, I also found some people on YouTube flipping and painting furniture to make money. It was not as popular in 2018 as it is now, that’s for sure!
I gave it a try in my parents’ basement.
I bought a table for cheap on Facebook, painted the base and stained the top, and then sold it for a $200 profit. Having the cash in my hand from that project made me realize that you can make a decent side income by flipping furniture.
I soon moved to Halifax, where I had a house with a garage. It was perfect for someone like me who loves projects, so I started buying pieces of furniture from thrift stores and online, and I was fixing and painting them to sell for profit.
I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started, but with each project I learned more and more.
Without thinking about it much, I took a video of my projects, how I did them, and posted them on YouTube.
I created the first Furniture Flippa YouTube video on August 6th, 2019. My second and third videos started getting some views, like 10-30 a day, which was interesting to me.
Looking back, these videos were terrible, but they still got some views and still do to this day!
I continued finding furniture projects to do as this hobby made a bit of income on its own. I was truly more interested in figuring out how I could build a YouTube channel because I thought that would be pretty cool!
In March 2020, Covid took the world by storm, and in Halifax, Canada we were on a strict lockdown. I had just begun as a realtor, so this really made things challenging trying to start a career in real estate.
I started making more furniture videos. I joined an online discord chat that a large furniture YouTuber called That Shabby Guy had mentioned in one of his older videos. I started sharing my projects and was learning more and more about the hobby.
I shared a nightstand video in the discord group chat, That Shabby Guy shared it to his YouTube channel, and it then received over 5000 views in the next few days.
Here are the stats for that video:
This helped me get a couple hundred subscribers and increased my watch time, which helped me hit monetization numbers for YouTube at the time.
November 9th, 2020 was my first day of YouTube ads monetization.
Being monetized motivated me to make more videos and to continue flipping furniture.
YouTube is funny, because my next 2 videos after the one That Shabby Guy shared are my 2 most watched videos on my channel to this day.
One currently has over 415,000 views, and the other has over 685,000 views.
I posted these videos on September 11th and the 22nd, 2020. Initially, they didn’t take off, but in late October 2020 the initial video began getting a lot of views, around 1000-2000 per day, and then it hit its highest ever at just under 11,000 views in a day.
This helped me get an additional 1000 subscribers. Then, in January of 2021, the next video took off in the YouTube algorithm, getting 2-3k views per day, but this video maintained its place in the algorithm for many months getting 500-1500 views a day.
To this day these 2 videos have earned me around $9,000 and still make about $40-50 per month together.
Pretty cool considering they were made almost 4 years ago.
I continued making videos, about 2 to 4 per month, and I also created a website along with the Furniture Flippa YouTube channel following the typical niche website system.
This worked for a bit, but the Google algorithms just destroyed them in recent years.
However, on September 16th, 2021 my girlfriend and I decided to move across Canada to Vancouver, BC. We sold our house with a garage and began renting a 2-bedroom apartment.
At this point, I was going to continue doing smaller projects, but I just didn’t have the space for it in my apartment. I only made 3 videos in 2022 and I began focusing on my other online income sources that began growing faster.
I was working on some niche sites and a couple began growing nicely, reaching $10-20k per month. I started growing a team, hiring good writers and VAs to help me grow these sites.
But then these sites were hit multiple times by the Google updates in 2022, then destroyed once again in 2023, and again in 2024!
Jaime’s Comeback
I decided it was time to get back to making Furniture Flippa videos.
At the end of 2023, I made a few small videos from my apartment but they did not do well. I think taking some time off can make it more difficult to get things rolling again.
At the beginning of 2024, I decided I would go full-time on Furniture Flippa and get things going. My only issue was I had no place to do these projects.
I began hunting for a garage to rent at an affordable rate. After 4 viewings, I found one that was affordable and large in size, a double garage, and I rented it!
My first garage video was an MCM coffee table restoration. I could tell painted furniture restored back to its original wood look was a popular trend for videos, so I gave it a go.
This video started off decently, then was picked up by the algorithm for a bit, getting up to 140k views.
I continued making videos, and my newer videos are between 10k to 170k views and climbing. Since gathering more YouTube views I have had a number of sponsorship opportunities and I have been lining them up since.
Here is what my YouTube analytics look like this year, you can see I started renting the garage in January, and things started rolling again after that first restoration video:
When I post a video I get a decent boost in views, which correlates with watch time, subscribers, and a revenue boost. It is steady, and I haven’t been as consistent as I should be with video output.
I am also in the process of growing other social media platforms, but still need to learn more about them.
On Instagram, I hit 3000 followers with 1 video reel getting 130k views, and I’m curious to learn more about how Instagram is monetized. I also post on TikTok with minor success at the moment.
I still work on a few niche sites just to add to my income, but these are not running on organic traffic anymore, mostly social traffic.
How Much He’s Earning
When it comes to making money through Furniture Flippa, I have categorized it into YouTube ads, affiliates, sponsorships, Facebook video ads, and selling the actual furniture I flip.
YouTube ads
In 30 days I make around $750 – $1200 with only a couple videos.
After getting back into making videos, YouTube ads are now becoming a second thought. YouTube ads do not make you extremely rich unless you can get millions of views per month.
I am doing everything I can to increase my views and hope to increase this number gradually.
Affiliate income
For affiliate income with Furniture Flippa I just use Amazon. I add links on all my videos of products I use and people can click. I also add affiliate links in my blog posts.
Furniture Flippa does not earn a lot on Amazon Affiliates; however, I think there is a play on Instagram that you can make this work if you can grow your following.
I will be testing these in the future. Last year, without making any new videos, my Amazon Affiliate income was $904.20. For the last 30 days, it was only $35.81—not so good.
Having my Google traffic disappear has caused my affiliate income to go down on Furniture Flippa to basically nothing.
My content on YouTube is more focused on entertaining instead of teaching and answering questions, so I feel this reduces affiliate income.
If you focus on answering questions and showing “how to” content, you can likely increase affiliate conversions there. Right now, I’m focusing on increasing views to increase sponsorship opportunities.
My other websites made $1744.73 on Amazon in the last 30 days, and I hit the Creator Rewards numbers to receive a bonus of $1800, 2 months in a row now. I also earned $245.86 from the Amazon Influencer Program.
Sponsorships
I have been signing a number of sponsorship deals lately, and at the moment this is what is capturing my interest. I have had sponsorship deals in the past and I usually would take lower numbers and accept that.
With increasing viewership, I have increased my sponsorship earnings per video. I have signed various deals over the last few months, anywhere ranging from $1000-2500 per video, and sometimes I accept the product plus money
With views increasing, the sponsorship rates also increases.
Membership community
I started a community. It’s currently free but will be a paid community in the future. I have over 150 members. I also gather emails from each member.
The community will become a monthly subscription program. It will include courses, bonus content, and a discussion platform for people to learn from each other about furniture refinishing.
This is a major focus for me right now.
Facebook page
I had a Facebook page that had 30k followers.
When active it was making $500-1000+ per month from video ads. I would share some income with other furniture flippers because I shared their videos, too.
However, the account associated with the page was hacked, they changed the email on the account and it disabled the account that was running the page.
The recovery process is basically impossible as Meta support is a joke. This page was called “The Furniture Squad” and is still accessible for people to see, I just cant update it.
I had plans to share blog posts and attempt other monetization strategies, but sadly the hacking happened.
The ad account on the page was reactivated recently, and I still earn $100 or so per month, but I can’t access it.
Recently I started another Facebook page and have been paying for ads to get it rolling again.
I have noticed people have been having huge earnings with the Facebook Bonus Program, so I would like to see if I can make that work.
Furniture flipping income
Flipping furniture can be a great way to make some side income as well.
For example, you can find free or cheap furniture on Facebook Marketplace or thrift stores. You can refinish, paint, or just clean the furniture and list it for sale yourself.
For each flip, I expect to earn $100-600+ profit, it all depends on the project.
I will do 2 to 4 flips a month, typically focusing on one per week. The size of the project influences the time it takes to complete.
Other income
In the near future, I plan to create some online products and courses sharing how you can earn money flipping furniture, answering specific questions, etc.
I plan to get into Instagram monetization strategies as well.
If I were to start a video project today and post it the following week, here is the income potential of that piece 1 month after publishing:
YouTube Ads: $150 – $600
Sponsorship: If any… $600 – $1800
The furniture selling itself: $100 – 500
If I make a sponsored video today, that video is likely to make on the low end $850, and on the high end $2700.
Not bad, and if I can make 2-4 videos a month, it can become a nice income.
Note that I haven’t even added in possible affiliate plays, Instagram possibilities, and other potential income I could make from this content.
Here is Furniture Flippa’s YouTube channel income for June:
Ads: $981
Sponsorships: $3450
Free products: $250 + $300 = $550
Furniture Sales: $1000 CAD (2 sales)
Additional June online income from niche sites:
Mediavine ads: $4725.96
Amazon Associates, Influencer, and bonuses: $3810.17
In terms of traffic, my YouTube channel has just over 100k views in the last 30 days.
The Furniture Flippa blog used to get some traffic:
September 2021 = 23,030 pageviews
Last 30 days – 4000 page views
Google actually hit this website with the well-known Spam manual action recently, which is comical as the content was just articles sharing my furniture flips and answering common refinishing questions.
I submitted a reconsideration request and it was approved a month later, but my traffic is still dead on Google, around 0-10 clicks a day.
Jaime’s Marketing Strategy
I’m just growing with organic growth marketing, but when I have my own products I will likely change some marketing strategies.
At the moment, I post on YouTube and gain views naturally from the algorithm without paying for views or subscribers.
His Thoughts on SEO
SEO used to be important for me until Google updates changed the blogging game. Right now I rely more on YouTube’s algorithm to grow my audience with each new piece of content.
First, I just focus on creating good content, which is very important, obviously.
Then I focus on creating an intriguing title and thumbnail. If you can get clicks to your video and a good watch time, your video is likely to be shown to more people. That’s YouTube algo in a nutshell.
For a video to do well, it needs a good title and a captivating thumbnail. If people don’t click, they don’t watch.
Next, the video itself needs to exceed the viewers’ expectations so they watch longer, subscribe, and watch more.
Then YouTube is more likely to show your content to more people.
Keyword Research
My old keyword research process used to involve Ahrefs and Keywords Everywhere, but I canceled those subscriptions.
Now I create content I feel my audience is looking for and would enjoy (and sometimes just something I enjoy!).
His Content Creation Process
My videos can take up to 10 days to make; it depends how long the furniture project takes.
Lately, I have been taking on challenging projects, but these typically go over well for my audience, and it is helping me grow. I have 63 total videos.
I start by finding a piece of furniture that I think can be restored, refinished, or painted. Then I do a before video, the refurbishing content video, then the after. The process is simple, it just takes time.
Then I have to edit it all together after.
I do all of the recording and editing myself. I use Adobe Premiere Pro. I recommend finding an editing software that works for you.
His Email List
I started an email list a few months ago and am growing the subscriber list. I plan to add links in my videos for people to sign up and I will mention it in the videos. I am a rookie when it comes to email lists.
I recently started a community, and I get people’s emails when they sign up. Today I started a giveaway and have been gaining a lot of emails, and will be using this strategy to grow an email list and my community.
Jaime’s Favorite Resources
I have been listening to Niche Pursuits for years now, and I have also listened to the Doug Show. These were great for niche websites.
However, my go-to YouTube podcast is YouTube Creators Hub by Dusty Porter. It’s a great interview-style podcast of YouTubers sharing how they earn and grow their YT channels. There are hundreds of interviews you can check out.
The tools I use the most are:
- Canva – I use Canva daily for thumbnails, images for social media, etc.
- ChatGPT – I use ChatGPT to help me with numerous things. I ask it questions, idea generation, and more.
- Adobe Premiere Pro – I use Adobe editing software to help create high-quality videos. It’s not required, but I feel I can create a good-quality video for my audience.
His Biggest Challenge
It can be challenging to keep yourself motivated when you work hard to create online content that ends up not meeting expectations.
I just need to remember to move on and focus on the next project; it can end up being a winner!
Also, working alone can be challenging. I stay active in online group chats, etc., but real-life interaction is obviously much different.
I hope to meet people who create similar videos in real life at events someday!
His Greatest Accomplishment
My main accomplishment is just starting the journey and reaching an income level where I do not have to work for someone else.
This was always my goal from a young age, and I’m glad I started when I was in university. I was fully working for myself at age 23.
What He Wishes He Knew When He Started
I wish I had known not to rely on Google traffic for online businesses.
Google updates have caused most content site owners to lose 90% of their traffic and earnings overnight, so you should not rely on this anymore. Build something real and reliable.
His Biggest Mistake
My biggest mistake for Furniture Flippa was giving up for a year and not creating new content. This was a missed opportunity to build a larger audience and build on my real brand.
This is Furniture Flippa’s YouTube life:
His Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
My advice for someone wanting to create a YouTube channel today is that it is 100% possible. It’s not too saturated like some may feel.
Also, YouTube is growing fast and more people are using it each year.
Just start. With each video you create, you learn something new.
Learning how to make a video from start to finish helps you understand the process. Even if your first channel doesn’t work out (like my travel channel), you may find something that ends up being successful!
I believe that if you have a passion for a niche or hobby and you make some videos doing it or talking about it, the right audience will eventually find you.