Four years ago, after climbing out of personal debt, Caleb Hammer started posting his flagship series Financial Audit on YouTube. In each episode, he takes on a person (or couple, or throuple) in real time, goes through their monthly income and spending statements, dissects the habits keeping them from financial stability, and helps them set a budgeting plan to pay down creditors, protect themselves from unexpected expenses, and start saving.
But while Financial Audit was his first and is his core production, his content business has gone far beyond it. These days, he brings in over 250 million views a month on YouTube with nine different shows. He also offers his own budget app, Dollarwise.
And he runs one of YouTube’s largest membership communities: Hammer Elite, which has 115,000 monthly subscribers paying either $9.99 or $14.99, depending on the tier. Those folks get access to things like extra shows and exclusive episodes, a private Discord server, post-show follow-ups with guests from Financial Audit, and priority reply to comments.
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Last month, Hammer announced he’d teamed up with Uscreen to expand Hammer Elite. That expansion gives the program a dedicated off-YouTube platform and a mobile app where subscribers can watch paywalled content.
Robert Kaliati, President of Hammer Media, told Tubefilter’s own Josh Cohen that there’s a financial upside to having Hammer Elite flow through Uscreen’s system. It takes a smaller cut of the subscription revenue, versus YouTube’s 30% slice of Channel Memberships.
However, to be clear, Kaliati wasn’t disparaging YouTube. “They definitely deserve and should do that,” he said. “They’re bringing the audience to you.”
Hammer, speaking to us, agrees. “We do love YouTube,” he says–which is why he’s not pulling Hammer Elite off YouTube, nor downgrading any perks for the audience subscribing through Google’s platform.
“We’re keeping our membership on both platforms exactly the same,” he explains. “So wherever people subscribe, be it on YouTube or on our app with Uscreen, it’s going to be identical other than a couple caveats. We just wanted to make sure that we’re giving people a little more options.”
One of the perks of subscribing through Uscreen is an annual version of Hammer Elite that lets people pay for 10 months upfront and get 12 free. There are also quality-of-life perks like a calendar that shows drop dates for all upcoming episodes.
“YouTube’s our bread and butter, YouTube’s the platform we love until our dying days,” Hammer says. “But if anyone’s a die-hard fan, we wanted to make sure they could join us on our own exclusive platform, if they wanted.”
He says launching a dedicated streaming app through Uscreen made sense because “our Hammer Elite programming is, within itself, almost its own network of television.” So if fans are embedded in the Hammer universe, they can get the app and “really focus on the Hammer Elite stuff,” he adds.
As we mentioned above, this isn’t Hammer’s first experience with putting out an app for his viewers. His team built Dollarwise to help followers put what they learned from Financial Audit into action.
Constructing that app, though, was not a smooth process. Hammer says that initially, Dollarwise (going under a different name) was made by an outside app developer and “was just a broken mess and we couldn’t fix it.”
“We didn’t have hands on it and they fully ran it,” he says. “Then we brought in our head of tech, built out a team, and as of last year completely rebuilt it from the ground up, and now it’s ranking high on the app store. People absolutely love it and it’s changing lives and it’s pretty great. So now it’s fully us-built and we’re just making continuous improvements consistently.”
Building the Hammer Elite app, he says, was a much easier process.
“Uscreen has been super easy to work with. They’ve delivered exactly what I wanted, they’ve delivered it all on time. Nothing but happy things,” he says. “When we’ve worked with third-party companies for different things, oftentimes it just leads to endless amounts of complaints, unfortunately. But working with them, it’s been nothing but good things.”
With the Hammer Elite app up and running, Hammer and the team plan to introduce more shows, and keep investing in higher-production-cost content. Hammer specifically says he’s able to put more money into shows because “the audience has given us that ability.”
“We’ll be launching some more channels as well that people should stay tuned for,” he says.
Hammer Elite is the latest in a steady stream of creator-led platforms launching on Uscreen. Other recent additions include Theorist‘s Theoryverse and Keke Palmer‘s Practice by Palmer.
Curious why creators are choosing Uscreen? Go here for our deep dive on the company’s long history in our industry and what it offers entrepreneurial, community-minded content-makers.
Uscreen is a Tubefilter partner.
