• Leonardo Orantes-Paz, 23, is a YouTube producer and editor who also attends college full time.
  • He worked as a producer for the esports organization NRG’s YouTube channel and as a video editor.
  • He shares how he established himself in the space and how much he made in 2021 and 2022.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Leonardo Orantes-Paz, a 23-year-old YouTube-channel producer and video editor from Las Vegas. Insider verified his income with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been editing videos for almost eight years, but I only began doing it professionally in November 2020.

Then, in April 2021, I got in touch with the lead video editor of the esports organization NRG, which has several YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

They were launching a new channel, NRG Speedrunning, and they needed a video editor. Within two weeks, they hired me, and I edited the first four videos that were posted there.

After about a month, they promoted me to a community-manager and producer role.

In this role, I was responsible for the whole channel. I had free rein to do what I wanted — come up with video ideas, decide how we marketed videos with thumbnails and titles, schedule talent for the shoots, direct the shoots, design the thumbnail outlines, write copy, and edit the videos.

I was a contractor in that role until the channel shut down in April 2022. In that period, the channel grew to over 120,000 subscribers and generated over 10 million views.

During this time, I was attending college full time, but I’m the type of person who likes it when there’s a bunch of things going on. Now, I went back to video editing while I study for my final year of college.

Between March and December 2021, my income was around $21,000. In 2022, it increased to about $31,000.

I consistently increased my rates. When I first started working with NRG, I charged $100 for one video edit, then I increased it to $300. When I became a producer, I made about $3,000 per month.

Now, my income stays consistently over $3,000 a month with freelance jobs.

I got my job as a producer because I constantly shared ideas

What really helped me was that I was always big on suggesting things.

The team at NRG was always open to hearing my thoughts about video ideas and improvements we could make, and I think they appreciated how open I was about it.

I would give advice based on what had been successful in the past, what other successful gaming YouTube channels were doing, and what would be entertaining for a viewer like me.

Sometimes things were really good, so we would not have to worry about much.

Other times, we would have to adjust and brainstorm what videos we wanted to do and the direction that we wanted to take the channel. I enjoyed the process; it was stimulating.

I owe my success to four things: presentation, skill set, networking, and luck

Presentation relates to how you present yourself to others. This goes for both social platforms and general interactions.

With my website, I went for a professional-looking portfolio that clearly lists my past experiences, brands I’ve worked with, my background, and a reel showing what services I offer. I want potential clients to have a good first impression when they look at my pages.

It’s also important to have a social-media presence. This could be posting your work and analytics, or just occasionally providing value to others, particularly on Twitter. It should be easy for people to find your work and social-media handles on any platform, so I recommend linking your accounts and portfolio together.

Skill set refers to knowing the basics — and a bit more — of whatever creative endeavor you are undertaking.

You do this by continuously studying other people’s processes. You don’t need a crazy skill set of your own to be moderately successful, but you should definitely try to build up your list of skills if you are not seeing results.

Networking, to me, is just getting to know a bunch of people.

When I first started, I tried to find where the community was, tried to follow people on social media, and tried to find opportunities to talk one-on-one with people I looked up to.

For example, I met one of my friends, who is also a video editor, while he was livestreaming on Twitch. I commented on his livestream and asked some questions about video editing, and from there, I joined a Discord server he created about the topic. That helped me connect with a lot of people.

Luck is the last one, and this means that sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time. When the lead video editor of NRG contacted me, it was a stroke of luck.

But I also think that my presentation, skill set, and networking helped increase my chances of being seen.