How This Kiwi Teacher Built a Global Following & Income Online

Andrew Rooney started making drum videos as a personal library for his students. Now he's got 177,000 subscribers and makes more from YouTube than he ever did gigging. Andrew breaks down the accidental journey: from "Coffee with Rooney" Facebook lives during COVID to viral drum reaction videos that hit 3.5 million views. We cover why he gave up thousands of gigs to focus on content creation, the loneliness of building something while others have normal jobs, and how sponsors found him instead of the other way around. The video that changed everything was filmed on a Samsung S5 with terrible audio while he had a cold, sometimes imperfect action beats perfect planning. We cover the income streams most people don't know exist (AdSense, Patreon, sponsorships), why Americans are more generous with support than Kiwis, and the mindset shift from trading time for money to building an audience. Your expertise is valuable. The internet just makes it scalable. Find Andrew on YouTube: Amy from has come on as a sponsor of Keep The Change to help people with their financial planning. Stuck? Find Amy : amy@levridge.co.nz Instagram: Website: Generate are supporting my vision to improve the financial literacy of 100,000 kiwis by sponsoring Keep The Change. Cheers Generate. Head to to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How This Kiwi Teacher Built a Global Following & Income Online is an episode from Keep The Change by nextAdvisory.

This episode is 1:02:50 long.

This episode was published on Apr 22, 2026.

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