How Caleb Hammer of Hammer Media became #1 in YouTube Memberships
How did Caleb Hammer go from a Craigslist camera guy to the #1 membership on YouTube? Hammer Elite stalled at $1–2K a month until value-first shows changed everything. Here's what he learned from a flopped app and why he's moving members off YouTube.
What does it take to go from a camera guy you found on Craigslist to the #1 membership on YouTube?
Caleb Hammer and Rob Kaliati of Hammer Media sat down with Allison Yazdian of Uscreen to answer that. They covered the membership that almost didn't work, the app that flopped, and why they're moving their community off YouTube.
Want to turn your YouTube audience into paying members? Uscreen lets you build your own membership site, launch an app, and keep more of what you earn.
Note: Any links to Uscreen is an affiliate link.
Who is Caleb Hammer before Hammer Media?
Even before Hammer Media, Caleb had always been a creative person. When he was in middle school, he would make little movies with his cousins. In high school, he and Robert Kaliati (President and COO of Hammer Media) started a YouTube channel with their other friends.
"That was a lot of fun, but eventually, you got to grow up. Even though I studied music in college, I went and got that adult job. Didn't really make videos. Didn't make as much music anymore. I wanted to pay off all my debt and that goes into the Caleb Hammer financial story."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Caleb got bored of his job of 4 - 5 years, and he started mass applying to jobs. One of those jobs he applied to was for a YouTuber named Tyler Oliveira. After waiting for a long time just to be stood up by Tyler, Caleb's disappointment brought him to find someone with a camera on Craigslist and started his YouTube channel.
Caleb thought about Financial Audit the same way he thought about his music or when making a new show in Hammer Elite (the #1 membership on YouTube).
"What is something that I want to watch that doesn't exist yet?"
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
He really liked financial shows, but they were often in Shorts format or only 15 minutes long. He really wanted a deep dive in to finance with an element of drama and 'tea'. As we've seen, this format was a big hit.
He loved financial content. The problem? Most of it was Shorts or 15-minute videos. Caleb wanted something longer. A real deep dive into money, with drama and tea mixed in.
Nobody was making it, so he did. That show became Financial Audit.
How Hammer Elite became the number one membership
Like most creators, Caleb started his membership on Patreon. He figured that this would be extra money and assumed people will sign up. However, the membership offered no value other than to "support the creator."
It went on like that for months without much movement. At most, it cracked at around $1000 - $2000 a month.
"Then we just started to add extra value. We're like, okay, this is a membership. Let's do some extra things."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Then his rep talked about doing extra things on YouTube, so they started the membership on YouTube. They added behind the scene content and Mario Kart streams.
That brought them to $10,000 dollars a month. It helped cover some payroll, but when Hammer Media moved into their new office with a really expensive lease, they started to think what the future of this membership looked like.
"We called ourselves at the time the Goon Squad because we were a bunch of Gooners, and we decided to change it to Hammer Elite because that has a little more longevity than Goon."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Caleb brought in a producer to run Hammer Elite and produce premium high-quality shows like the Financial Audit Post Show—an easy conversion tool into memberships, but not great for retention.
People were signing up for the post show without having a good reason to stay. That's why Hammer Elite began building more shows, posting from 3 times a day to 6 days a week with the Hammer Media personalities. What started off as a post show as premium content became its own entire network.
Hammer Media looked at the monthly median views across every show in the Hammer Elite universe and whatever's on the lowest end, they thought of a way to either correct it or understand why the audience didn't like it. For example, they scrapped their Mario Kart streams because it simply wasn't providing any value.
During the Q&A, one creator expressed feeling "dirty" when it comes to asking money from their audience. They asked Caleb for advice on how to approach memberships.
"I think the only way for it to be dirty is for it to be asking for value you're not delivering. Saying you're going to give something behind the paywall and then you don't. That'd be like scamming them. If you say you don't deliver anything and someone just wants to support their favorite creator, that's not scammy. That's them wanting to support the person they want to support. That's their choice.
But I do think that the best way to do it, and what I've learned, and what you should really focus on everyday is what is the value that the customer is getting. What are they watching? What are they enjoying? It's now my responsibility to serve them and give them what they want on the highest quality possible."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Don't be afraid of asking your audience for support, and we recommend you start building up your community from the get-go. The YouTube Partner Program requirement is doubling on February 2027, so it's only going to get harder for new creators to get adsense.
However, when you build a community that trusts you, you won't need to rely on YouTube or any other social media's partner program if you have a well-loved membership.
Think about what your paying members like and give them more of it.
How the failure of Simple Budget gave rise to Dollarwise
So many of us creators are afraid of taking risks and experiencing disappointment, but what we thought was amazing about Caleb was that he was willing to talk about his failures and how it impeded his growth.
He made bad decisions and bad hires. This is something every creators will have to go through. You've just got to learn from it and do better the next time.
One story he went into, in particular, was his app Dollarwise. He figured that as a creator, he should have a product of sort. And since his channel was about finance and Mint (a free budgeting app) was shutting down, he thought he could create a basic app that would help people budget.
However, he took shortcuts and hired an external agency instead of building it in-house. His company barely had any oversight, they couldn't speak on the technical aspect, and they couldn't audit the app. So when it came out, the app was a mess.
"We failed our customers, and we didn't serve them correctly, and we deserved the damage and reputation that came with that at the time."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Their app, called Simple Budget, had a 1.7 rating on the app store. Something that Caleb said was deserved. Usually, this is where people or companies would give up and start a new project. Caleb saw potential in the app, despite the backlash.
In 2025, Caleb hired an in-house team to recreate and rebrand Simple Budget into Dollarwise in order to get his customer's trust back.
"After all those negative reviews that will hold it down for a long time and forever, [the app] has gone up to 4 stars."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
If there is anything you learn from reading this, it would be that Caleb heavily recommends investing in bringing in the right people. It's the time and energy in building a relationship with people you're able to bring in and build something from scratch that you have full control over that you just can't get from external agencies.
Allison Yazdian's last question to Caleb was what advice would he tell himself four years ago, and he said this:
"I would say take more risks. At the beginning, we were super risk conscious about starting new projects or doing new things or spending money, and it kept us from doing some of these bigger projects a lot earlier.
We should have just spent money on Dollarwise. We should have just put money into employees earlier, and if we did that, we would have grown much quicker than we did today. So just have confidence in yourself, confidence in your content, and understand your audience."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Invest in yourself because that's who you'll be with your whole life. Nobody will be there to vouch for you, especially when you're starting out on your own.
Why Caleb Hammer made the switch to Uscreen
Allison asked Caleb why after over 175k members did he decide to build his own platform through Uscreen. And what he said was quite simple. It was the matter of safety and security.
Remember that YouTube and other social medias like Instagram and TikTok are rented land. You could run a successful channel/account with over 10k, 100k, or even a million subscribers... and it could all be taken away in an instant.
"At this point, we've scaled a large business where people's rent, food, and insurance comes down to us paying for those bills. That's our responsibility."
- Caleb Hammer, Founder and CEO of Hammer Media
Caleb admits that he's kind of a crazy guy and he could absolutely get cancelled; maybe even demonetized. With his own app, his audience will be able to subscribe to said app and support Hammer Elite. He wouldn't have to worry about being demonetized or the chance of YouTube removing memberships.
He'll always be on YouTube because it is still the number 1 platform. It's even beat Netflix in most watched on television.
But with his own app, he would get a little more profit on the margin side.
YouTube takes 30% of the membership. Even Patreon takes 10% of your monthly revenue. When you're starting out, the percentages might not sound too bad... but when you're making 10k/mo or 100k/mo, even just 10% is a lot of your revenue.
With Uscreen, you only have to pay a monthly fee and about $0.99 - $1.99 per subscribers.
Being off platform gives Hammer Media the extra flexibility and the ability to present the content is whatever way they want to. They could be a little bit more crazy if they wanted to.
"I think I saw a stat the other day that was very encouraging, which was 85% of people sign up for Uscreen are actually watching the content on a weekly basis. So we're getting that recurring subscription revenue, but we're also getting people tuned in and engaged with the content we're creating."
- Robert Kaliati, President and COO of Hammer Media
Allison's advice to all creators is to start your community as soon as possible. One of the biggest hurdle creators have when it comes to Uscreen is the pricing, but that's why they've made the Starter plan at $49/mo. You can build your community from the start and flesh it out as you go.
Words from Andew Kan
When it comes to membership and YouTube success it's interesting how similar the trial and error to success can be. A lot of creators are scared to make a membership, and it is a process.
Ike and I can tell you that personally, but similarly you are doing something challenging with YouTube.
Caleb's story above shows that if you are willing to take ownership, do right by your community, and keep showing up in your best. You too can grow a success membership. It's one of the things that's rewarding, and gets you away from adsense.
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