Before he ran for president, not many people knew Andrew Yang.  

But the entrepreneur equipped with a professorial charm was thrust onto television screens across the country.

After that long-shot bid, Yang caught fire.  
 
And it turns out that run for president proved to be pretty lucrative.  

According to paperwork filed with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, Yang made somewhere between $677,000 and $2.5 million in 2020 on the heels of dropping out of the presidential race and before joining the race for mayor.  
 
The Conflicts of Interest Board only reports income in ranges, and we are still waiting for Yang to file taxes for 2020 and release them. Only then will we get a more detailed picture of his exact income.

But a review of previous tax filings by Yang by NY1 show the candidate had significantly increased his income compared to the years just before running for president. In fact, he didn’t even owe federal taxes in 2019.  
 
For instance in 2020 after dropping out of the race for president, Andrew Yang had at least 23 speaking engagements with universities, nonprofits and business groups across the country.  

Those speeches often centered on his run for president and his push for a universal basic income. One of them was in front of the New Jersey Technology Council where he compared his campaign to a start-up.

“Like a true entrepreneur and start-up person, I’m like ok, if I had to do this again, what would I do differently?” Yang said, reflecting on his presidential aspirations. “Because you have a different sense of the variables when you get to market.”

The market in this case was the campaign trail.
 
Each time, the candidate took in a speaking fee, where he got somewhere between $5,000 and $50,000 a pop.  
 
Yang’s team says, on average, it was closer to $5,000 each, but the campaign would not give us an exact number.  

One of those speeches was at the Trammell & Margaret Crow Foundation  — a wealthy Texas family linked to the GOP.  

After he dropped out of the 2020 race, Yang became a political commentator for CNN, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from them too, according to his disclosure form.  
 
On top of that, he won a $100,000 unrestricted cash prize for public service from the Vilcek Foundation (that award is given to immigrants who have a significant impact on American society.) His campaign to upend wealth inequity was one reason cited for the award.
 
Yang also got another book deal last year with an at least $100,000 dollar advance from Random House.  
 
A spokesperson for the Yang campaign team says the book is about his 2020 presidential run and will not include details of the mayor’s race. It’s unclear when it will come out.