He Tongxue's Overseas Videos Hit 10 Million Views: Six Months of YouTube Income, Just $20K
Industry rumors claimed he made $1–10 million annually from YouTube. He Tongxue set the record straight: six months in, total income was just $20,000—about $2–3K per long-form video.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
TNT's direction was right; resources and timing were the problem
Luo Yonghao reflects on Hammer's TNT (phone connecting to monitor for desktop-level operation): he was correct that compute would become commodity, and using a phone for desktop productivity made vastly more sense than building phone and computer separately. Apple, he notes, is still just reinventing the wheel with iPad–Mac integration. He acknowledges the error wasn't direction—it was insufficient company resources and the lack of AI-assisted speech recognition at the time. He even suggests 2018's shutdown might have been mercy: had the company limped along until AI's 2023 breakthrough, the five and a half intervening years of barely-alive operation might have killed the team before they got there.
— Luo YonghaoThree buyers wanted Tianti, not Hammer's hardware
When Hammer was failing, four potential acquirers circled; three of them—ByteDance and Lenovo among them—were after the TNT and Tianti (天梯) human-computer interaction system. Lenovo even disguised the acquisition as a way to poach core engineers, since their own team matched Samsung's mediocrity. Final price: 180 million yuan to ByteDance. Luo argues the company had zero cash value without Tianti. This distinction crystallizes his view: established tech brands like Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi are fundamentally followers; they thrive through process and management. Innovation-driven firms depend on individual heroism, and the odds of success are structurally lower.
— Luo YonghaoTopping out in an ordinary class hurts less than bottoming in the best
He Tongxue recalls entering the top track at the best middle school—and becoming depressed. With grades as the sole measure, he collapsed from elementary-school #1 to 53rd place; his nearsightedness spiked to 500 degrees, but shame kept him silent with his parents. A regular high school track freed him. Luo Yonghao adds a parallel: talented students from ordinary U.S. states who barely scrape into Harvard or Yale at the bottom of their class often suffer more disappointment than elite resources justify.
— He Tongxue / Luo YonghaoAfter fame, every video faces triple scrutiny before it even posts
He Tongxue says the hardest part of fame isn't mockery—it's the exploding cost of armor. He describes a coworker with a broken leg who volunteered to film a wheelchair-drifting video. Before posting: review and rewording. After posting: simultaneously facing three kinds of attack—claims the injury was fake (the crutch supposedly supported a healthy leg, not an injured one), backlash that they're working injured, and the platform flagging it as dangerous. Luo offered concrete countermeasures on set: post the hospital receipt, add a line about taking leave, and the whole mess evaporates. This playbook only comes from getting roasted enough times to extract the pattern.
— He TongxueNever taking funding didn't protect the studio from a major loss this year
The studio has never raised venture capital—He Tongxue's logic: "Good content has nothing to do with money; the only thing that matters is finding quiet to create." Yet this year the studio is in the red; last year it was profitable. The cause: one controversial tweet cost them several ad deals. The flagship origami-pigeon pipeline—from pitch to publish took eight-plus months—meant shipping 88,000 paper pigeons to viewers with logistics alone running approximately 800,000 yuan. Total project cost was over 3 million yuan, with behind-the-scenes footage failing to recoup its share.
— He TongxueNo public apology—he feared it would just reignite the controversy
The year's biggest crisis: He Tongxue posted about refusing false praise, choosing to tell a driver the truth to his face—and triggered massive backlash. He apologized to the driver by phone, to his team, to clients. But he issued no public apology, fearing the apology letter itself would be analyzed from new angles and spark a second wave. In hindsight, he sees the failure: lack of empathy. To the driver, that "honest truth-telling" cut far deeper than politeness would have.
— He TongxueIdeas are everywhere; finding topics that hit both criteria is the real constraint
He Tongxue distilled topic selection into two criteria—rooted in real-life need, and able to deliver visual spectacle. Only ideas meeting both become true hits; finding one a month feels like grace. He admits the bottleneck isn't talent or equipment. It's the screenplay-quality premise. His team spends most hours keeping the lights on—shooting content that holds the upload schedule but has zero viral potential—pushing back his dream of DIY-project monthlies indefinitely.
— He TongxueThe short-video creator built anti-addiction tools to fight what he designed
He Tongxue revealed the studio is rebooting an app designed to cut users' phone-scrolling time. An earlier version stalled for lack of maintenance, but system API access has improved. He tested it on himself: video and feed time dropped two-thirds. This sparked Luo's riff on short video: "We deploy enormous human brainpower engineering algorithms and hooks to make you addicted." His countermeasure: repeatedly install and uninstall addictive apps, keeping most of them off his device most of the time as a defense against state-of-the-art attention hijacking.
— He Tongxue / Luo YonghaoIn their own words · checked verbatim
I believe a desktop-class computer using multitouch and voice input could deliver real work far more productive than today's PCs and Macs—not toy stuff.
那我是觉得一个桌面级的电脑里边 用多点触控加语音这类的东西 可以实现远比今天的PC Mac效率高得多的实实在在的工作 而不是玩的那些东西
Luo Yonghao27:16
Hammer ultimately barely managed to sell for 180 million yuan only because we had Tianti. Without it, we wouldn't have gotten a single cent.
所以垂直科技最终1.8个亿 勉强卖掉还是因为有天梯 要不然的话一分钱都卖不了
Luo Yonghao32:24
Nobody likes phoniness, nobody likes lies. So even though it's hard, I can try to tell the truth. So I posted this tweet. Then I looked at the comments and thought it was over—this whole idea was completely wrong.
肯定没有人喜欢虚伪 肯定没有人喜欢谎话 所以说虽然很难 但是我可以试着说真话 所以就发了这么一条微博 结果发完一看评论感觉完了 这个想法完全是错的
He Tongxue1:49:02
When we're selecting topics, we have two enormous standards. One: sourced from real-life needs. Two: capable of delivering visual spectacle.
我们选题的时候有两个非常大的标准 就是我们第二个项目的选题 一个叫源于真实生活需求出发 一个叫可以呈现视觉奇观
He Tongxue2:33:22
We've been at this for a while now—our total YouTube revenue from six months of work is just $20,000.
我们真做这么长时间 我们YouTube的总共收入就是2万美元 就是做了这半年
He Tongxue2:56:31
Figures
| He Tongxue studio team size | 32 | 1:44:02 |
| Studio projected loss this year | 1–2 million yuan | 1:44:02 |
| Origami pigeon project cost | Over 3 million yuan (including approximately 800,000 yuan shipping) | 1:16:47 |
| English channel six-month YouTube revenue | $20,000 | 2:56:31 |
| Trash bin video total views | 140 million | 2:28:20 |
| Channel audience age and gender ratio | 18–25 years old (primary), approximately 64:36 male-to-female | 1:22:52 |
| Mobile internet average speed increase vs. 2019 | 6× (5G 10×) | 52:32 |
Glossary
- MVP
- Minimum Viable Product—using the simplest version to rapidly validate product direction.
How to listen
Self-media creators and content studio founders interested in topic selection methodology, team management, and real numbers on monetizing content overseas.
Opening small talk and gift-giving, plus childhood after-school activities (0–20 min) are low-signal; you can skip them.