# Buying a Van in USA



## witzend (May 2, 2022)

The other day there was a thread about touring the US I just came across this English couple on Utube buying a van in the US and thought it might help some especially the registration part towards the end of the video


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## Thistle (May 4, 2022)

Or you could do what tread the globe have done, spend an eye watering £8000 shipping their van over the pond only to have it ransacked on the ship!


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## trevskoda (May 4, 2022)

Where do folks get the money to do it without working to you drop.


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## Thistle (May 4, 2022)

Best to see it as entertaining and not worry to much about how they fund it!

I just received my latest YouTube payment of £75 so I have a long way to go before I can retire or use the income to fund a seemingly endless holiday….hang on I have retired!

I get the occasional enquiry to review or sponsor stuff but not interested in doing so.

The reality is the few really successful social media channels amongst the thousands of wannabes have to make it virtually a full time job to be able to milk their audience in order to generate sufficient income to fund their lifestyles.

Affiliated links for products, sponsored ads for stuff no one really needs like surf shark nord vpn etc
Spending hours answer pathetic comments. Publishing themselves stupid on every platform going.

Some do it really well, cadging freebies left right and centre fine, if you have the neck to do so! 
But lying through their teeeth pushing things they’ve been given for free but would never buy or use otherwise is not a particularly honourable thing to do imho.

It must all take many many hours editing videos and interacting  with umpteen different platforms, we get to see the eye candy glossy fake Instagram style lifestyle but we rarely see the daily grind behind the scenes. 

Many also are able to ‘work from home’ I did for 10 years and it never occurred to me to get a van until years later.
However my variation of working from home was often a 10 hour day not something I could easily do on the road.


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## Thistle (May 4, 2022)

The other thing to remember is these successful channels have taken consistent work for years and often hundreds if not thousands of videos to get to the point that they are now generating a reasonable income.

If I added up the man hours I have spent making my own videos it would equate to doing them for fraction of pennies per hour, simply not worth it in monetary terms alone. Fortunately the majority of people just churn out stuff out of interest, I am very grateful for the wealth of knowledge available to me so like to give a bit back


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## Trotter (May 4, 2022)

Thistle said:


> Best to see it as entertaining and not worry to much about how they fund it!
> 
> I just received my latest YouTube payment of £75 so I have a long way to go before I can retire or use the income to fund a seemingly endless holiday….hang on I have retired!
> 
> ...


Going on from the above, this is a personal take on Youtube contributors. I accept watching videos is not for everyone, but for the most part, I enjoy them. The ability to _fast forward, _the boring bits, is a. plus
Meeting utubers in the flesh is the oddest experience.  Sharing the ups and downs of their, everyday, different lifestyle,  to that of your regular daily slog, sorry, routine. You are invited into their lives.  You know their likes, dislikes, eating habits, what makes them tick. Eventually, they become, pseudo family members. Unfortunately, they don't know you from Adam. That's when you realise, going in like a long lost brother, is probably a tad inappropriate. 
I'll let you into a little secret. Whatever they are doing, opening, building, they are rarely as _excited _as they make out. There's a Brummie pair out there who would seem to be in a state of permanent excitement. " I'm so excited to be using this new loo roll". Okay,I don't think that's been said yet. But it's got close.
Enjoy their video's. Or stick to Countdown, or the next cooking program. You are in control of the TV remote. Although, not in my case when at home


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## gasgas (May 4, 2022)

The skill to develop a successful youtube is to choose to video things that a) are cheap, b) are small if you don't have a big yard, and c) that you can repeat. I know of one chap who has three or five motorbikes that he uses for youtubes. He buys a motorbike - that is good for say 4 videos. £6000 ish. Then there isn't really anything more to say about them. He then has to do videos on how to polish them, how to change the oil, how to stick pretty stickers on, how to change the seat for a touring one. He quickly runs out of things to say and do, so he gets accessories and sticks them on and the whole video turns into an advertisement. The contrast to this is a chap called Big Clive. He lives on the Isle of Man (lovely, I used to live there) and does videos on tiny, cheap, throwaway useless electronic items. They cost nothingpencehalfpenny and he has a camera above his workbench where he dismantles the electronics and describes how they work and whether they are any good. Some videos are useful, some are informative and some illustrate inherent dangers. It turns out that IKEA LED light bulbs are the best made we can get- but did you know that Philips make a bulb called The Dubai Lamp? That country's government funded Phillips to make a truly everlasting LED bulb, on the condition that it can only be sold in Dubai. Big Clive tells you why it is everlasting, and in fact it costs a fraction of a penny to make it thus, but everyone else wants their bulbs to go pop of course. Search 



Anyway the point is, can you see the difference between the motorbike bloke who spends £6000 on a motorbike to do videos on - needs to be taxed, insured, garaged, petrol and so on, and a chap who lives on the Isle of Man (no unemployment, little tax) who looks at a 50p item, does a video in his spare room and gets presumably the same payment as the motorbike bloke. He's got it right. And then there is ElectroBOOM - each video he does, of something electrical causes him at least three high voltage electric shocks. He is hilarous, but like Big Clive is a very clever electronics engineer


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## trevskoda (May 4, 2022)

Scotty kilmer is best on car stuff in the USA utube.


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## Brockley (May 4, 2022)

gasgas said:


> The skill to develop a successful youtube is to choose to video things that a) are cheap, b) are small if you don't have a big yard, and c) that you can repeat. I know of one chap who has three or five motorbikes that he uses for youtubes. He buys a motorbike - that is good for say 4 videos. £6000 ish. Then there isn't really anything more to say about them. He then has to do videos on how to polish them, how to change the oil, how to stick pretty stickers on, how to change the seat for a touring one. He quickly runs out of things to say and do, so he gets accessories and sticks them on and the whole video turns into an advertisement. The contrast to this is a chap called Big Clive. He lives on the Isle of Man (lovely, I used to live there) and does videos on tiny, cheap, throwaway useless electronic items. They cost nothingpencehalfpenny and he has a camera above his workbench where he dismantles the electronics and describes how they work and whether they are any good. Some videos are useful, some are informative and some illustrate inherent dangers. It turns out that IKEA LED light bulbs are the best made we can get- but did you know that Philips make a bulb called The Dubai Lamp? That country's government funded Phillips to make a truly everlasting LED bulb, on the condition that it can only be sold in Dubai. Big Clive tells you why it is everlasting, and in fact it costs a fraction of a penny to make it thus, but everyone else wants their bulbs to go pop of course. Search
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway the point is, can you see the difference between the motorbike bloke who spends £6000 on a motorbike to do videos on - needs to be taxed, insured, garaged, petrol and so on, and a chap who lives on the Isle of Man (no unemployment, little tax) who looks at a 50p item, does a video in his spare room and gets presumably the same payment as the motorbike bloke. He's got it right. And then there is ElectroBOOM - each video he does, of something electrical causes him at least three high voltage electric shocks. He is hilarous, but like Big Clive is a very clever electronics engineer


Ha ha, I’ve watched a fair few of Big Clive’s videos, they’re very good, had no idea he lived on the island. I doubt he’ll be paying the 20% tax rate if the income is from off island though.


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## GeoffL (May 6, 2022)

trevskoda said:


> Where do folks get the money to do it without working to you drop.


FWIW, in 2006/07 I worked out a way to make a year or two's continuous touring of the North America continent almost self-financing. At the time, you could get something like a two to three year old Damon Daybreak 3270 (GVWR 16,000lb, so driveable on a C1 licence) for less than $50k. At the time, the same vehicle was fetching between £80k and £100k in UK as a 5-year-old. So my plan was to head out over there, buy a suitable 16,000lb class A, hop between the USA, Mexico and Canada for a year or two, get it shipped back to UK and converted for European use; then sell it on. The profit should have paid for most of the costs of our trip.
We planned to go for it in 2010 but the credit crunch and personal factors put the kybosh on the plan.


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## colinm (May 6, 2022)

We have several successful youtubers near us, they don't do 'cheap and cheerful', they do expensive lifestyle, AFAIK they don't pay a penny for anything, companies line up to get their stuff on the channels. In that respect I say good luck to them, BUT, when an ambulance turns up to take your kid to hospital and within the hour you get it out on your channel, that seems very odd to me.


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## Trotter (May 6, 2022)

GeoffL said:


> FWIW, in 2006/07 I worked out a way to make a year or two's continuous touring of the North America continent almost self-financing. At the time, you could get something like a two to three year old Damon Daybreak 3270 (GVWR 16,000lb, so driveable on a C1 licence) for less than $50k. At the time, the same vehicle was fetching between £80k and £100k in UK as a 5-year-old. So my plan was to head out over there, buy a suitable 16,000lb class A, hop between the USA, Mexico and Canada for a year or two, get it shipped back to UK and converted for European use; then sell it on. The profit should have paid for most of the costs of our trip.
> We planned to go for it in 2010 but the credit crunch and personal factors put the kybosh on the plan.


Watching Bob Wells's ( CheapRVliving) sister channel, HOWA (Homes On Wheel's Alliance). Where they  buy cheapish 7 seater soccermom vans, Strip out the seats, and convert them into basic campervans. And then pass them onto homeless people. 
I suggested to Nic,, that I could send him 3 grand to buy one for me, then I could use it for 6 months ,and then hand it back, to give away, when I'd finished with it, That way, I could have 6 months in the states, without car hire, or motel fees. I thought, jobs a goodun.  A win, win situation.
She said _NO. _When asked why,she said,
1, I wouldn't be going to the states for 6 months on my own.
2, If I thought she was going to spend 6 months in a van, in a desert, I had another think coming.
3. I said, Yes Dear.  ( I know my place. )
Oh well. Plans of mice and men. 

Now because of Nic, some homeless Yank is being deprived of a home. I hope she's able to sleep at night.


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