David McNabb turned his penchant for filming home videos into a budding second career.
The cop, who has been with Canada’s Peterborough County police force for almost 30 years, has made $25,000 Canadian dollars (about US$19,600), in just 18 months by uploading and licensing home videos on video platform Rumble. Thanks to his video work, he plans to retire a couple years early in November.
“I look at the world differently now,” he said. “Anything that looks remotely interesting, I think how would that be a good video.”
McNabb got a GoPro camera in the summer 2013, and started filming his family on vacation for friends. At first he only made “pennies.”
“I got a camera with no experience,” he said. “I just started videos putting together for fun with our family.”
When one of his videos of Syrian child refugees playing in the snow for the first time went viral, he started to realize he could make real money licensing content. McNabb posted the snow video to “contradict the fear and anxiety people were feeling at the time” about refugees, and didn’t monetize it on YouTube. However, people started going to older videos on his account, which gave him more views overall.
The second time he struck viral gold was when he posted a video of a World War II veteran playing with a lion cub in February 2016. When other people started using his clip without permission, he reached out to video platform Rumble, which helps creators license their clips to publishers and advertisers. the veteran lion cub video ended up getting two million views.
Currently, McNabb posts videos around a minute long twice a day because “it’s hard to keep people engaged for that long of a time.” He’ll post videos from his every day life, including scuba diving trips on vacation, videos of homeless dogs being airlifted, or taking care of hurt animals that his wife or the police department have discovered. Two of his videos were used for a bank advertisement in the U.K., for which he was paid $6,500.
Most of McNabb’s videos successful are about one of the internet’s favorite subjects, animals. His family members are “animal nuts” — he said his wife is a veterinarian and his kids are environmental activists. One of his most popular videos is a 37-second clip of a gopher sniffing his camera. The critter has earned about $670 to date.
“Keep a camera with you at all times and record everything,” he said.