Beloved hobby leads to enviable employment

“I never pictured myself doing this,” admits Jessie Niño. “But I’m glad it worked out this way.”

 

Even since before graduating from Waseca High School in 2009, Niño had begun a YouTube channel. “It was always just a way to have some fun,” he recalls. He would carry around a handheld camera, film casual moments and make humorous, light-hearted observations, then post the videos online.

 

Back in those days, he would not have predicted he would someday become a “YouTube Partner” and be able to make a living with his hobby.

 

“People ask me, ‘So that’s all you do?’ and I get to say ‘Yep. I travel around making videos and post them online.’”

 

He goes on to explain his channel, “Jessie’s Drone Adventures,” is a one-person operation: “I’m my only employee, and I’m my own cameraman, editor, researcher, and technician.”

 

Currently visiting family in Waseca, Niño is staying a couple of months looking for likely subjects in southern Minnesota.

 

His current residence is in Arizona, so the majority of his videos feature the desert and mountain areas of that state. He says he searches out surprising and unfamiliar locations, and is able to use his drone to film things not visible from roads or paths. This includes wildlife; in Arizona he has caught footage of deer, coyotes, gila monsters, javelina (also known as “cactus pigs”) and rattlesnakes.

 

He has also traveled to Alaska, where he visited forgotten locations and managed to catch video of black and brown bears, and–to his tremendous pleasure–humpback whales and a pod of orca.

 

While his videos include occasional tense moments, Niño says he bases his choices as he films on what is morally right, what is safe for him and his equipment, and feedback from viewers about what they want to see more of.

 

“Feedback is a blessing,” he comments. “Without it, I feel like I’m working in a vacuum.”

 

Niño’s path to becoming a professional YouTuber was far from direct.

 

After graduating high school, he got a “regular” job at Brown Printing, where he filled various roles until leaving in 2016. Next, he got a job at the Verizon Wireless call center located, at the time, in Mankato.

 

The work paid the bills and provided money to support his continuing YouTube hobby, but “I always found myself thinking there must be something more.”

 

In 2018, the Mankato call center closed and offered employees the chance to relocate to any of a few other locations around the country. Niño says he chose Arizona because he had been on vacations in the Las Vegas area and richly enjoyed hiking, riding his bike, and exploring in the desert, providing even more opportunities for filming.

 

At his own expense and strictly for the fun of it, he continued making and posting videos. He says the shutdown in 2020 gave him the motivation to increase his activity, since it allowed him extra time outdoors and people were spending more time online. It was something of a surprise to him when he received an email from YouTube in 2022 informing him he had reached the threshold to become a partner: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours. This meant YouTube would begin inserting advertisements into his videos and he would be paid for it.

 

“By 2023, I was bringing in some fairly respectable part-time income,” he describes. In 2024, he realized he could step away from the call center job and support himself with the work he enjoyed.

 

As for what draws people to his channel, Niño says he has no “special sauce,” or, if he has it, he can’t define what it is.

 

He believes his sincerity, the personal energy and sense of fun he puts into his work, and his moral approach to filming are part of his success.

 

“I don’t interrupt when people or animals are out doing something,” he says. “I make my choices on the basis of being a decent human being.”

 

When he visits an area to make a video, he does some research ahead of time, he says, but doesn’t want to know “everything” in advance. “You want to be genuine,” he observes. “People like it when you’re honest with them.”

 

He films his walks with a handheld camera about the same size as a small television remote, a traditional Nikon camera, and, of course, his drone.

 

He sends the drone out above difficult to reach areas and sometimes finds significant surprises, including old car wrecks still lying among the trees; buildings and structures blocked from sight; and picturesque waterfalls or streams.

 

“I’ve crashed multiple drones,” he admits, telling the story of one which fell in a remote, difficult to access location. Two days of rain kept him from hiking in to find it until it was rendered completely unusable.

 

Niño says he is the only person he knows who makes his living as a YouTuber, but he points out he had no plan or system that got him where he is. The best advice for someone who might want to make it a goal, he says, is “Stop talking and start filming.”