While anyone can enjoy uploading videos to YouTube for fun, it's time for you to monetize your content. If you're thinking about spending serious time on your channel, you probably wondered how to make money on YouTube.
The truth is that very few people will earn millions of dollars on YouTube. However, as YouTuber, you have many options to monetize your content. Let's take a look at how to make money on YouTube by listing the most popular ways.
1. Advertising
Like most free services, YouTube runs through ads (unless you pay for YouTube Premium ). Before watching most videos, sometimes in the middle of longer videos, you'll need to see a short ad. Some money goes from this to the channel, and the rest goes to YouTube itself.
YouTube has some guidelines on when your channel is eligible for monetization (i.e. ads appear on your videos). At the time of writing, YouTube requires the channel to have 4,000 hours of watch in the previous 12 months, plus 1,000 subscribers, for monetization. See the YouTube Partner Program Overview page for more details.
This means that you will not be able to monetize ads until you start building a fan base. When you're eligible, you'll want to visit Creator Studio , then click the Channel tab on the right. Under Status and Features , select Enable under monetization to get started.
From there, you'll need to link your AdSense account, choose the types of ads you want on your videos, and review the review.
Unfortunately, there is no simple formula for how much you can achieve through ads. This depends on the number of people who see the entire ad, the number of viewers using the ad blocker, and other factors. In addition, YouTube has had a lot of problems in the last few years as advertisers pull their ads off the platform. This has made the video site demonic for several reasons.
In general, this means that when you start, advertising revenue is not guaranteed. To handle investment issues on YouTube , many creators are looking at other ways to make money on YouTube.
2. Product placements
Product placement is an old ad style that is popular in TV shows and movies, and is also monetizing YouTube. This is mainly the use of certain brands to promote them. For example, a Sony Pictures movie might include a person playing a PlayStation on a Sony TV.
On your YouTube channel, you may be able to enter into a product placement deal with a company related to the type of content you produce. Of course, you'll probably need to create the following before the brand wants to advertise with you.
Product placement should not be the full focus of your video - just a part of it. All that is required is to mention or use a brand in your video in a natural way. The "Rhett and Link" video shown above is an example of a good product placement, as the music video is stand-alone alongside Buick.
This is a powerful advertising tactic because people can not skip it. In addition, viewers often feel connected to their favorite content creators. This gives more credibility to your recommendations, but be careful that this does not backfire.
If you do not indicate that you were paid for promotion, or did not really like the product you reviewed, it could negatively impact your viewers' opinion. Fortunately, YouTube includes a box that lets people know which video contains a promotional content.
3. Sponsored Video
Promoted videos are similar to the position of the product, but with some key differences. Although the placement of the product involves merging a trademark into an existing video, the promotional video is entirely brand-based.
If you run a game channel (one of the most popular types of YouTube channels ), for example, a developer may ask you to create a video about their game. Since you probably will not have played this game otherwise, viewers will know that the developer paid you to make the video.
Care comes in less severe forms, too. Many YouTube users have a short sponsor message at the beginning of their videos. This is primarily a quick ad for a separate brand from YouTube ads. Sometimes, this includes a discount icon for viewers to save a little money if they sign up for the service.
Like product placement, Promoted Videos are a good alternative to making money, but you should be careful. If you do not find an original, your audience may find these videos tasteless. Therefore, you should try to avoid advertising that you have not already used or do not support.
4. Affiliate links
You probably heard about affiliate links, where many affiliates use affiliate websites to make money. Basically, child links let you create a unique website URL. When someone follows this link and buys a product, you get a small percentage of the sale.
These are easy to setup and do not require sponsorship deals from brands. If you're talking about a specific product in your video, you can include a link to the Amazon page in the description. Or add a link to services like Audible, where you'll make some money if someone decides to sign up.
Affiliate links are a good negative source of income. After all, if someone buys a product anyway, there will be no difference if they buy it through your affiliate link. Like other methods, we recommend that you clearly disclose when you include links to your audience.
5. Subscriptions
Many have turned to encouraging finance as an alternative way to make money. This involves joining a service like Patreon or SubscribeStar that allows fans to donate some money every month to support their favorite channels.
Most creators who use a service offer such levels of rewards in exchange for support from their fans. You can put their names at the end of each video, host a video chat with them every month, or make clips from behind the scenes. It's a great way to connect the biggest fans to their favorite channels and provide a fairly stable form of revenue that does not depend on advertising.
YouTube now offers its own way to do this through channel membership . Once your channel meets certain guidelines, you can allow viewers to watch you monthly via YouTube for certain privileges. It's up to you if you prefer to do this on YouTube or turn it off.
If you stream live on your channel, you can also use the Super Chat feature . This allows viewers to donate money to show their message for a while during the broadcast.
6. Sale of goods
Another income option is to create goods to sell to your fans. Web sites such as TeePublic allow you to create customized designs for shirts, mural paintings, mugs, and more. Many creators offer designs featuring popular people, jokes, or art from their videos.
Once you've created some great designs, let viewers know about them in a few videos. Include a link to your merchandise page in your video descriptions, and anyone interested can support you and get a great booty at the same time.
You now know how to make money on YouTube
Although you have many monetization options available to you, remember that making money from YouTube is not easy. You'll need to produce high-quality content for some time to build the required viewership for advertising, care, and more.
If you're just starting out, focus on creating great videos and do what you can to make YouTube a better place . Hopefully, over time, your audience will come. You can then take a deeper look at these monetization options once your channel becomes more popular.
