So you want to make money on Youtube? Well, there are several ways that you can do just that. Below, we will discuss some of the most popular methods for generating income through YouTube.
YouTube Partner Program (YPP)
The YPP is a program that YouTube has created to share ad revenue with partners. Once accepted into the program, you can place ads in your videos’ beginning, middle, and end.
These ads are set automatically, but you need 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 watch hours and be in good standing with YouTube to be accepted.
The benefit of the YPP is that it is hands-off. You don’t need to edit your videos, and the ads are automatically placed. The downside is that you will only get a small percentage of ad revenue from these pre-rolls.
The Adsense program has been around for many years on YouTube, but it’s still one of the best ways to make money off video views.
Once accepted into the program, your videos will be eligible to have ads placed on them. Your earnings from these ad impressions depend on several factors – including the length and size of the video as well as how many clicks it receives.
The advantage of Adsense is that you can choose which type of advertisements appear on your channel and where they are located in your videos.
The downside is that you will only pay for clicks on ads and not impressions (views).
There are other, faster ways to make money with YouTube.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is making money by marketing other people’s products and services. For example, you can use your YouTube channel for marketing affiliate links in videos or on social media.
Then, when someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase, you get paid a commission.
The advantage of affiliate marketing is that you can promote any products and services on your channel. The downside is that it will take time to generate income, even when someone clicks the link in your video.
The key to affiliate marketing is promoting products that your target audience is interested in. For example, if you have a cooking channel, you can promote the tools you use while cooking.
Do not promote things that your audience would not be interested in. Using the same cooking example, do not promote basket weaving or anything unrelated to cooking.
To get started with affiliate marketing, follow the below steps:
- Find affiliate programs that are congruent with your audience
- Appy to programs
- If approved, place affiliate links in the description of your videos
- Remind customers to check out the links in the description
The most common affiliate programs are Amazon Associates, Commission Junction, Clickbank, and ShareASale. However, you can find affiliate programs just by searching “niche + affiliate program.”
For example, you can search “baking + affiliate program” to find affiliate programs in the cooking niche.
Sell Digital Products
Digital products can be anything from eBooks to webinars and courses. If you have expertise in a specific area, writing an eBook or creating a course would benefit your business. If you don’t have the expertise, you can find and hire someone that does.
You can either sell the product yourself using software like ClickFunnels, focus on the content, and let a company like teachable take care of the management of the course.
Click here to learn more about creating & selling digital products
Sell Merchandise
Another opportunity to make money on YouTube is to sell Sell merchandise. Some YouTubers have made millions of dollars by selling t-shirts, coffee mugs, and hats with their logos on them.
If you want to sell merchandise, there are a few things that you need:
A unique logo or design for the products (you can find someone inexpensively on Fiverr) A supplier to print the products (there are lots of printing companies in China that will produce your order for very cheap) Platforms to sell your merchandise
You can start selling merch by opening a Teespring store. However, if you want to maximize your income, consider selling the items on your website.
Sponsorships & Brand Deals
Sponsorships are when a brand or company pays you to promote their products in your videos. For example, if Coca-Cola sponsored YouTube Rewind and paid the creator $500,000 for product promotion.
The advantage of sponsorships is that you can make money off views without having ads on your videos (which may turn away viewers).
The downside is that you have to be careful what you promote. For example, if a company has bad business ethics or is going out of business, it’s not worth promoting for the short-term gain.
Brand deals are similar to sponsorships, except they don’t always include product promotion in your videos. Instead, companies will pay you an upfront fee for consulting or hosting a video.
For example, if you have a gaming channel and EA Sports wants to pay you $15,000 for an hour of consultation on improving their new Madden game, they would do that instead of product promotion.
Exclusive Access on Patreon
Patreon is a membership platform that allows you to get paid by your fans on a per-post or monthly basis. If someone wants exclusive access, they need to become a channel patron and pay an amount for each post (from $0 – 100+).
For example, if I was writing articles like this one, people could sign up as patrons and give $0.50 per article or a monthly membership of around $15 – 20 for unlimited access to content.
This is a great way to get paid by your biggest fans without having ads on your channel and not feel like a salesperson promoting affiliate links and recommending brands to try.
Email Marketing
Click here to start email marketing for free.
The final way you can make money on YouTube is with email marketing. Email marketing consists of collecting emails from your viewers and sending emails anytime you have new information.
For example, you could send an email when you upload a new video, an affiliate offer that will benefit them, or when you create a new product.
Email marketing consists of four parts:
- Landing page
- Lead magnet
- Autoresponders
- Broadcast emails
Landing page
A landing page is a page that someone goes to when they click on your link. The landing page will have a form where the person enters their email, name, and other information (depending on what is required for the lead magnet).
Lead Magnet
A Lead Magnet is an incentive you give away in exchange for emails. This could be an eBook, cheat sheet, report, etc.
Autoresponders
An autoresponder is an automated email that goes out to new subscribers after signing up for your list on the landing page.
You can set it so that this happens instantly, or you can choose a specific time (e.g., 24 hours later). An example of an autoresponder is a thank you message.
Broadcast Emails
The final part of email marketing is regular emails that go out to your list, which doesn’t require someone to sign up for the first (it’s more like newsletters).
These can be updated about what you’re working on, affiliate offers, or products/services you’re promoting.
You can use email marketing in combination with all the other ways to make money on YouTube mentioned above (sponsorships, brand deals, exclusive Patreon access) and build a big audience that you can promote your products/services to when they’re ready for launch.