Falkon Digital MD, Luke Sherran, was a speaker at Tubefest 2025, sharing a 45-minute presentation on how to make some serious money using YouTube. He demonstrated how even a “part-time YouTuber” can make 5-figures per month just from Ad Revenue, and just using YouTube Shorts. Of course, the potential for “full-time YouTubers” is far greater, and the demonstrated earnings blew the minds of even the most dedicated long form creators that were originally dismissive of the earning potential from Shorts.

Tubefest 2025

This year, Tubefest returned to Birmingham and featured a huge range of top-level speakers. The event was split into 2 tracks – a creator track and business track, both held in different event spaces. The event was filmed so that attendees could watch replays of all the presentations, and you can also retrospectively purchase access to these replays even if you missed the event.

These were the speakers and their associated talks on the Creator Track.

• Louise Brogan – COPE with video: How to use YouTube as your pillar content for marketing
• Joey Fennema – How I Reached Over 2 Billion Views Making Smoothies
• Maddy Alexander-Grout – TikTok For The Win
• Ben Kaluza – How to Never Run Out of Content Ideas
• Luke Sherran – Make five-figures per month using YouTube Shorts
• Mike Russell – Incredible AI Tools for Video Creators

These were the speakers and their associated talks on the Business Track.

• Kirsty Carden – Stage to Sales: Speak Your Way To High-End Clients & Endless Opportunities
• Izabela Russell – Mastering YouTube – Practical Strategies For Success
• Ashleigh Watson – Hope Is Not A Strategy
• Callum McDonnell – How Steven Bartlett Broke Podcasting (And YouTube) with the Diary Of A CEO
• Samantha Hearne – 6 strategies to more sales without paid marketing or complicated funnels
• David Levin – Things we can learn from Hip-Hop

Making 5-figures per month with YouTube Shorts

Most creators and companies are very dismissive of the earning potential of YouTube Shorts, especially when you compare the advertising revenue RPMs to that of long form content. In Luke’s presentation, he shares his own data showing an average RPM of £4.88 for his long form videos, but an RPM of just £0.14 for his Shorts.

But there are 3 major factors that are often overlooked, that really help bridge the gap between those RPMs. Once you understand these, you can really increase your earning potential. On top of that, advertising revenue is really just the “cherry on top of the pie”, that makes up the complete earning potential of a YouTube channel.

Luke split his presentation into 2 parts:

1. In part 1, he showed how to increase the amount of money you get from Shorts, “essentially” increasing your RPMs
2. In part 2, he then shared the frameworks, strategies and techniques he uses to consistently achieve high views for his YouTube Shorts

A big part of this is learning how to differentiate your content. When people hear this, they automatically assume this is referring to the editing. While your editing can play a part in the success of your video, Luke shared what he thinks are the more important considerations. This included specific instructions on topic selection, packaging and storytelling techniques to really maximise your video potential.

Photos from Tubefest 2025

The event photographers captured some great images on the day – here is a small taste so you can see what happened on the day!