Other Income Ideas Half-true — works only if you do the unspoken work

By the Income Reality Check Editorial Team · Updated 2026-06-09 · 7 min read

Shane Hummus’s ‘10 best jobs for starting over’: real demand, inflated paychecks

Verdict: Half-true — works only if you do the unspoken work. The careers are real and the demand is genuine, but the salary numbers are the ceiling, not the floor, and the recurring “build a YouTube channel about it” pitch leads to a five-figure coaching offer.

Shane Hummus, a former pharmacist with a large career-advice channel, opens “10 Best Jobs For People Starting Over In 2026” by promising at least one job that “pays upwards of over $300,000 a year and almost nobody’s talking about it.” The video has pulled in about 53,000 views. Most of the ten jobs he names are real, in-demand, and backed by federal labor data — that part checks out. What gets blurred is the gap between the headline salary he quotes and what a person actually starting over is likely to earn in year one.

What the video actually claims

The list is built around trades and technical roles that don’t need a four-year degree: crime scene cleaner, HVAC technician, wind turbine technician, insurance catastrophe (“cat”) adjuster, pipeline welder, ultrasound sonographer, locksmith, hazmat trucker, and solar door-to-door sales (with tech-sales SDR as the online version). For each, Hummus gives a salary range and a fast on-ramp — a short certification, a community-college program, or an apprenticeship that pays while you train.

The numbers he leads with are big. Pipeline welders make “$200 to $300,000 a year and sometimes more.” Cat adjusters can clear “$200 to $400,000 in a six-month period.” Crime scene biohazard specialists go “deep into the six figures.” Top solar reps hit “200 to 500,000 in commission.” He’s careful in spots — he won’t quote the exact figure a cleaner told him on vacation, and he flags that cat adjusting is “feast or famine.” But the framing throughout is that these ceilings are within reach of a beginner who’s willing to show up.

Then there’s the second pitch, woven through every job: “Every single job on this list can be doubled with a personal brand on YouTube or social media.” His brother’s HVAC channel, he says, made $214 in a single day within a month — “a $78,000 year run rate.” That story funnels to a free live training, and beyond it, to one-on-one coaching and a “done for you” channel service he describes as “typically in the 5 figure range.”

Are the BLS numbers in the video accurate?

Mostly yes — and that’s what makes the video persuasive. Where Hummus cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he’s close. Wind turbine technician really is the fastest-growing job in the country: BLS projects 50% employment growth from 2024 to 2034, with a median wage of $62,580 in May 2024 — almost exactly the “$62,000 a year on average” he states (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Sonographers earn a median of $89,340 (he said $84,000) with 13% projected growth (BLS). HVAC techs sit at a $59,810 median, matching his “$59,000 to start” almost to the dollar (BLS).

The slippage starts at the top of each range. Take the headline job — the $300,000 pipeline welder. BLS puts the median wage for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers at $51,000, with the highest-earning 10% making more than $75,850 (BLS). Hummus’s $300k figure isn’t invented, but it describes a narrow tier: certified 6G pipeline welders who passed the harder weld tests, joined a union local, and live on the road 9 to 10 months a year, paid by the foot plus per diem. That’s a real ceiling for a small, willing minority — not a starting salary.

Same pattern on trucking. He cites specialty hazmat and oversized-load drivers at “$80 to $150,000” and ice-road runs clearing $200,000. BLS data for heavy and tractor-trailer drivers as a whole shows a $57,440 median, with the top 10% at $78,800 (BLS). The endorsements and the brutal schedule are what move a driver above that band. The video is honest that this “can be brutal on your family life” — but the $200k number does a lot of the emotional lifting before that caveat lands.

What the method actually requires

Read the table left to right and the trade-off becomes clear. The ceiling figures are real, but each one is gated behind a specific cost the video mentions quickly and then moves past: years of skill-building, geographic relocation, months away from home, or a 1099 contract with no benefits and volatile pay.

Cat adjusting is the sharpest example. The income can be enormous — daily deployment rates commonly run $500 to $1,200, and adjusters who chase overlapping disaster seasons can reach $150,000 to $250,000 in a strong year. But independent cat adjusters are 1099 contractors who, as the trade itself puts it, work “feast or famine.” Deployments are unpredictable, run 12-to-16-hour days for weeks at a stretch, and leave you paying your own income tax, health insurance, and travel. A quiet hurricane season means a quiet bank account. That’s not a salary; it’s a bet on catastrophe frequency.

Solar door-to-door sales carries the highest variance on the list, and Hummus says so. What he frames as “fishing in a huge ocean” the industry experiences as turnover: most reps are commission-only 1099 contractors, the door-knocking market is increasingly saturated, and average tenure often amounts to about a year before reps wash out. Top closers genuinely make $200k+. The median rep does not last long enough to find out.

And the YouTube layer — the part pitched as the real wealth — has its own unspoken floor. To earn a cent from ads you need to clear the YouTube Partner Program bar: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in 12 months (or 500 subscribers and 3,000 hours under the newer early-access tier), plus a linked AdSense account (YouTube Help). His brother’s “$214 in a day” was a single peak off an 800,000-view debut, not a steady wage. Most channels never reach the threshold at all.

Who actually wins this game

The people who hit the numbers in this video tend to share one of a few traits. They’re willing to relocate and travel — the pipeline welders and oversized-load truckers earning $200k+ are the ones who live on the road most of the year. They specialize hard, adding the hazmat endorsement, the 6G certification, the high-security locksmithing niche that thins out competition. Or they tolerate instability that most people can’t — the cat adjuster who structures a whole year around two unpredictable deployment windows.

The YouTube winners are a different group again. Hummus’s brother had 30 years of HVAC expertise and an audience-builder (Shane) helping him launch. The plumbing channel with 721,000 subscribers and the Lockpicking Lawyer with 4 million didn’t monetize a trade — they monetized years of accumulated authority and a head start. That’s the missing variable in “every job can be doubled on YouTube”: the doubling assumes you can build the audience, which is its own multi-year job.

What you’d realistically earn

If you’re genuinely starting over with no relevant background, a fairer picture for most of these trades is the BLS median, reached after the training period — somewhere in the $50,000 to $90,000 range depending on the field, region, and whether you specialize. That’s a solid, stable income. It is not the $200,000-to-$400,000 the headlines flash.

So which number should you plan around — the median or the ceiling?

Plan around the median. Treat the ceiling as a bonus you might earn three years in.

The ceiling figures are reachable, but on a multi-year timeline and usually only if you accept the specific sacrifice attached: the road, the heights, the on-call disaster schedule, or the relentless rejection of commission sales. A first-year wind turbine tech at the $62,580 median who’s terrified of climbing a 300-foot ladder isn’t going to last; a welder who won’t leave his hometown won’t see $300k. The gap between median and ceiling isn’t luck. It’s the unspoken work.

Who this is (and isn’t) for

This video is genuinely useful if you’re physically able, location-flexible, and comfortable with hands-on or high-stress work — and if you read every salary range starting from the bottom number, not the top. The trades it lists are real, in demand, and reachable without student debt. If you can spend six months training and a few years specializing, several of them lead to a stable middle-class income, and a few lead higher.

It’s a poor fit if you’re hoping the big numbers arrive fast, if you can’t relocate or travel, or if you’re drawn mainly by the “double it on YouTube” promise. That last one is a separate, slower business with its own steep odds — and the funnel it feeds (a five-figure coaching program) is exactly the kind of money-making-opportunity pitch U.S. regulators are watching. In January 2025 the FTC proposed extending its Business Opportunity Rule to business coaching, which would require sellers to hold written substantiation for any earnings claim and hand it over on request (Federal Trade Commission). Ask for that proof before you pay for any “make money on YouTube” program — Hummus’s or anyone else’s.

For more on that second pitch, see our look at how creators sell YouTube income claims and our breakdown of starting-over income strategies.

What to remember

The trades in this list are a rare bright spot in the make-money genre: real jobs, real demand, real federal data behind them. The distortion is one of altitude. Hummus quotes the top of every range as if it were the entry point, and pairs each job with a YouTube dream that quietly requires a second career’s worth of work. Treat the BLS medians as your baseline, treat the ceilings as something you earn over years of specialization and sacrifice, and treat the coaching offer at the end like any other earnings claim — show me the substantiation first.

View counts and figures cited above were accurate at the time of review and may have changed since publication.