It's not passive. He has many employees.

Yup, around a hundred:

https://twitter.com/linusgsebastian/status/16094698614949519...

wat

If you've ever watched LTT, you'll know that his business is anything but passive. They own buildings, have employees, HR departments, R&D, and all that stuff. This sort of approach is probably not too different, except in scale, to huge media companies.

Indeed, he says he spent more than the youtube income on salaries.

Of course he has other income streams - sponsorships, lttstore.com, commissioned videos etc.

There’s very little passive about running a YouTube channel, and if you stop publishing then traffic to your existing videos will start to drop off over time.

I saw a standalone video ad with him the other day (on LinkedIn?) for Supermicro server products. It was clear from his voice that it was a paid promotion (not the same tone as a typical semi-objective modern product demo/review), but I'd guess that would have some reputation cost with some viewers. So I'd guess his company makes good money from that as well.