How To Make Money on YouTube
In today’s day, there are tons of ways to make money online. There’s Twitter, there’s Facebook, and then there’s YouTube. So you’re looking to start a creative YouTube venture, or maybe you’ve already started one, and you’re wondering how to make money doing so. You’re the kind of person who wants to work on your own time and make a living doing something you love. Maybe you heard that the top YouTube earner, Ryan Kaji, made $26 million last year! It looks like with the right amount of creativity, determination, hard work, and belief in yourself; you can make some big bucks on YouTube!
How to make money on YouTube? There are five main ways to make money on YouTube are:
- YouTube Monetization
- Selling Your Own Merchandise
- Licensing
- Working with Brands
- Fan Funding
If you haven’t already started a YouTube channel, it would be wise to first figure out how to earn subscribers. Once you’ve figured that out, you can begin to make money. Read on for more details regarding starting your YouTube channel and how to make money on YouTube.
Starting A YouTube Channel
Before you can make money on YouTube, you first need to start a channel. You can create a channel about anything you’d like. Indeed, the possibilities are endless. Some ideas for content you can create YouTube videos about are:
- Fashion
- Makeup
- Lifestyle
- Travel
- Comedy
- VideoGaming
- Skits
This list is by no means an exhaustive one. Regardless, this is your YouTube channel, and you get to be as creative with it as you’d like!
Choosing A Name
When it comes to picking a username, you need to choose carefully. You don’t want to choose a name that’s too complicated. The more complicated the username is, the harder it will be for people to find you. You should select a username that is easy and memorable. You want people to remember your name when they refer your channel to their friends. That way, you can get even more viewers and subscribers.
Tips For YouTube Success
The more success your YouTube channel has, the more money you’re going to be able to make. Therefore, you should do everything in your power to try to make your YouTube channel as successful as possible.
Make sure when you’re creating videos that you come up with creative content and a unique video style. You want to be entertaining your audience and keeping them intrigued throughout the entire video. Also, don’t make your videos too long. According to a Microsoft study, the average human being has an attention span of just eight seconds. You clearly wouldn’t want your YouTube videos to be only eight seconds, but you also don’t want them to be so long that people lose interest halfway through.
Always focus on improving the quality of your videos. As video quality improves, so will your views. As time goes on, invest in improving your videos by getting a better camera, better lighting, better sound equipment, better editing software, and anything else you might need.
Additionally, make sure you post frequently. You don’t want people to forget about you, and the more you post, the more regularly engaged your audience will be.
Most importantly, pay attention to your analytics. The YouTube analytics will help you immensely in your YouTube monetization endeavor. You can use the analytics to determine what content is most engaging to your audience, so you can keep making more of that same type of content. Additionally, you can use it to determine your target audience so you can better work with brands in the future.
How To Make Money On YouTube
Now, you have your YouTube channel up and ready to go. Maybe you’ve only been at it for a few weeks, or perhaps you’re more of a veteran. Either way, you’re hungry for financial success, and you want to know how to cash in on your YouTube channel. Below are the details.
YouTube Monetization
To monetize your YouTube channel, you need 4000 watch time hours in the last 12 months and 1000 subscribers. Once you accomplish this, you can start monetizing your YouTube.
Here are the steps to enabling monetization on YouTube:
- Click the top right area where your account is. See the drop-down menu and choose “YouTube Studio.”
- On the left side, scroll down, and you will see the word “Monetization.” Click that.
- Read and agree to the terms of the YouTube Partner Program.
- To get your money, set up a Google AdSense account if you don’t already have one.
- Set your monetization preferences
Enabling the monetization will allow YouTube to run ads on your videos. If you want to monetize old videos, open the video manager, and click on the dollar sign next to each video.
Noteworthy, though, is that earning money through ads on YouTube isn’t the most lucrative way to get paid on YouTube. While it is a way to make money without doing much else outside of continuing to create content, or, in other words, earn passive income, YouTube does keep around 45% of the ad revenue. Additionally, an increase in views doesn’t increase revenue. If no one watches or clicks the ad on your YouTube video, even if you get thousands of views, you won’t make any money.
For you to get paid via YouTube ads, the viewer would need to click on the advertisement or watch the ad in full.
However, you no longer need to rely on YouTube advertising alone to earn revenue. YouTube has created YouTube Premium, which is a paid membership program that allows fans to watch and support your content without ads. You would get paid based on how many members watch your content through YouTube premium. Therefore, you would be able to use YouTube Premium as a secondary revenue source, while your primary would be earning revenue through ads.
Additionally, if you rack up 15,000 cumulative hours for your channel over the last 90 days, you can become a YouTube partner. Being a YouTube partner gives you access to more creation tools, community support, and tips. You can also use it to start selling merchandise when your channel becomes more popular.
Selling Your Own Merchandise
Another way to make money on YouTube is to sell personal merchandise. You can sell anything from t-shirts to coffee mugs to tote bags and more. If you do well on YouTube, your content would be able to drive traffic to your store consistently. Additionally, you would have the trust of your fans. These two aspects combined increase your chances of successfully selling merchandise to people who are already more inclined to support your brand.
Although you may have several ideas for merchandise to sell, it’s best to start with one or two items to test out first. You can even poll your audience so that they can be involved in the decision-making process. Also, you can raffle off a product to one or two fans after hitting a certain subscriber count to get viewers excited about the product.
In terms of logistics, you can use a print-on-demand website like Printful to create your products, set up your store, and start selling. They will take care of your order fulfillment as well.
YouTube Partner also has a shelf feature you can use to sell your channel’s merchandise if you are eligible. Follow YouTube’s instructions to enable it.
To further promote your brand, you can wear or use your merchandise in your videos. You can also feature fans who have bought and used it.
Make sure to add your store’s link to your video descriptions and have compelling calls to action at the end of your videos.
Lastly, if your YouTube channel has content focused on specific products, you can use that to further promote your products. For example, if you have a video channel dedicated to doing makeup tutorials, and you create your own makeup product line, you already know your audience is more likely to purchase because they enjoy doing their makeup.
Licensing
Licensing is for when a video goes viral. If you can make a video go viral, you can license that content in exchange for money. TV news, media outlets, and other creators would have to reach out to you to get the rights to your video.
You can also use a video marketplace, such as Jukin Media, to increase exposure to your video. Your content will be more accessible and more easily purchased this way.
Working With Brands
Additionally, you can sell other people’s products as an affiliate marketer in exchange for a commission on sales. If you aren’t already the kind of YouTube channel that reviews products, you may end up needing to change your content slightly. You’ll have to use and review products, leave links in your description to the products, or make “how to use” tutorials.
You have to be careful with changing your content because some audiences will be more responsive to this than others. Ultimately, it will depend on what kind of content you were putting out before. For instance, a lifestyle YouTube channel would likely be able to introduce product reviews more seamlessly than a channel focused on providing comedy.
Two affiliate programs you can use are Amazon’s affiliate program (up to 10% commission per sale) and Click Bank (1% to 75% commission, depending on the vendor). You can also reach out to brands that would complement your content that are running their own affiliate programs.
With affiliate marketing, your subscriber count doesn’t matter. All that matters is that people purchase the product you are promoting.
If you are someone with more subscribers, you should look into partnering with brands to advertise their products. Make sure you are choosing brands you believe in and are being transparent with your audience about why you are promoting them. Sponsored content is considered advertising. Therefore, you need to follow Google’s AdSense policies as well as the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) policies. Transparency is good for legal reasons as well as your relationship with your audience. Use YouTube’s visible disclosure feature to help make sure your audience is aware of your advertising.
Here is a breakdown of how much brands will spend on YouTube advertising:
- 50,000 to 100,000 channel subscribers: $500 to $1,000 per video.
- 100,000 to 500,000 channel subscribers: $1,000 to $3,000 per video.
- 500,000+ channel subscribers: $3,000 to 5,000+ per video.
As you can see, you can make a lot of money by doing brand advertising on your YouTube channel.
Lastly, you can also include your channel to an influencer marketplace to get discovered by more brands. Listing yourself in as many places as possible will increase your visibility and maximize your potential for success. The ones to use are below:
- Grapevine Logic: One of the most commonly used influencer marketplaces: you only need 1,000 followers to join.
- Famebit: Has a wide range of brands to work with, but you need 5,000 followers to join.
- Channel Pages: Partners with other YouTubers and brands.
- Crowdtap: You can make money and other rewards by completing their small content creation projects. There is no minimum follower requirement.
Fan Funding
Lastly, you also have fan-funding as an option. Using a fan-funding platform provides another way for viewers to find your content. It also creates a way for your most loyal fans to engage with you and for you to reward them for their support.
To increase the chances of your fans investing in you and your vision, let them know why you are asking for money. Let them know that it’s going towards creating better content for them and helping you financially. Let them know that YouTube is how you support yourself. Make it clear that you want to be able to keep giving them content and that with their support, you won’t have to stop making content by needing to go back to a regular day job. Be honest with them. The ones who love your content and see your vision will appreciate that and be more inclined to support you.
Also, you can offer special rewards to the highest donors, like an in-person meeting with them, to create exclusivity around the act of donating. More people will contribute in an attempt to be apart of the exclusivity or as an attempt to get the reward.
One way to receive the funds is to start a campaign on websites like Kickstarter or GoFundMe. For these platforms, you can also have non-fans, such as your family and friends, fund you for specific projects you are attempting to accomplish.
Other popular fan-funding platforms include:
- YouTube’s Super Chat: This is a feature you can use when going live on YouTube. It sets up a tipping jar for users to donate as much as they would like. Make sure you enable monetization on your YouTube for this.
- Patreon: Frequently used by creators because of how easy it is to get paid. Fans can subscribe to you for just a dollar a month and receive exclusive rewards.
- Tipeee: Allows you to get one-time and recurring donations.
Final Thoughts: How To Make Money On YouTube
Now you know the ways to make money on YouTube. Be aware that it will take time to grow your YouTube channel and to bring in money from all of these various revenue sources. However, by consistently providing engaging content and building a strong fan base, you can get tremendous results. The idea that you could be a millionaire while doing something you love is an enticing one. It’s a feat for the most determined and ambitious of individuals, but if you feel you’ve got the chops to make it happen, get out there and go for it!