If you’ve ever asked yourself how people earn money from YouTube, then read this piece to the very end to learn more. Making money from YouTube used to be as simple as uploading great content, gaining millions of views, and earning a share of advertising revenue. Now, content creators have access to multiple ways to monetize their content. In addition to advertising, this can include corporate sponsorships from a major brand, fan funding, or merchandise sales.
Content creators aren’t paid by YouTube for the videos they upload neither are videos monetized by default. For you to start making money on YouTube, you have to enable monetization in your YouTube account settings. From there, you have options to join the YouTube Partner Program or have your videos listed on YouTube Premium.
In this article, I will be discussing in detail, how people earn money from YouTube.
Requirements for Making Money on YouTube
Before talking about how to make money on YouTube, there are minimum requirements to consider. Once you’ve been accepted into the YouTube Partner Program, you may get access to these monetization features. But just before that, you might want to familiarize yourself with some of the different requirements each monetization feature has:
- Be at least 18 years old or have a legal guardian older than 18 years of age.
- Have more than 1,000 subscribers
- Exceed 4,000 valid public watch hours over the last year (private, unlisted, or deleted videos don’t count)
- Abide by YouTube’s monetization policies
- Be based in a country or region where the YPP is available
- Have a linked AdSense account
- Create content that meets our advertiser-friendly content guidelines
- Create content watched by a viewer who is a YouTube Premium subscriber. This is if you are using the YouTube Premium feature.
Alongside attaining eligibility for the YPP, the channel is also required to meet YouTube’s additional policies and guidelines.
How to make money on YouTube
For many people, it is hard to produce regular content for a channel. This could be due to a number of reasons such as time, equipment, or skills. Another challenge is meeting and abiding by the rules and requirements of YouTube. Oftentimes, the platform changes its guidelines and it becomes easy to run afoul of it if you don’t keep yourself updated.
Here is a quick guide to getting started on YouTube today:
Find your niche
Picking a niche to market in can be both easy and tricky. Easy in the sense that you should always pick a vertical you are passionate about. This makes creating your video content to push your channel much easier for you.
The other side is the tricky aspect. There is the possibility that you fancy two or more niches. This is purely natural. The headache here now is which to select and which to drop. And seeing that the success of your YouTube business is dependent on picking the right niche, you want to be careful.
Not every niche that appeals to you has the potential of attracting a large audience. Even with a large audience, the next question is will the attracted audience be willing to perform actions that lead to conversion.
Create your channel
After zeroing in on a niche, the next step is to create a new YouTube channel. Setting up a YouTube channel is relatively easy. Chances are that you already have a Gmail or Google account and since Google is the parent company of YouTube, all you have to do is sign in with your account information.
After that, configure your channel as it suits you best and starts creating video content to help promote your channel.
Create Contents and Monetize your Channel
Growing a YouTube channel isn’t a day’s job as this might take weeks, months, or even years. This is where your perseverance and creativity come in. Creating awesome content will help you drive the growth of your channel but it might not be at the pace you desire which is why you need to optimize your channel as well as your content.
Creating content will have to be one of the biggest challenges to you earning money on YouTube. The platform requires creative, unique, genuine, and useful content from its creators before they can begin to earn. Whatever niche you pick will determine the types of content you produce. But the platform makes this easier for you by providing keyword search and autocomplete tools.
Creators can use this tool to search for popular keywords on the platform and use that to tailor their content for production. This can come in handy if you find it difficult to get new ideas on content creation. Now let´s pass to your content. Go to YouTube search type keywords within your niche than in the filter section tick creative commons and sort by count view.
When you finish the editing, add a thumbnail and use the keywords that you initially used for your research. To achieve fast results, upload daily one to seven times a month. You should be able to monetize your channel fast following this model.
Optimize your videos
To be sure that you will set your videos for success, you need to understand what brings you money on YouTube and it´s based on your click-through rate and your watch time. So I´ll leave you with my final tips on how to optimize your videos:
- Create attractive titles
- Use concise descriptions
- Leverage the right tags for each video
- Consider creating a playlist
- Design thumbnails every time
- Edit your videos
- Master the Art of Storytelling
- List your videos under a common license
- Be consistent
How People Earn Money from YouTube
Regardless of the technique, you use to make money on YouTube, your audience will be a great factor in determining exactly how much you earn. Building your own audience puts you in a great position to monetize content in a variety of ways. But you’ll only be able to take full advantage of the opportunities you have if you understand the makeup of your audience. Therefore, it is important for you to know your audience well enough.
In general, the more niched-down a channel is, the better its chances of earning more and diversely. This is because potential partners are always looking for a specific target audience market. If you are interested in monetization on YouTube, keep an eye on data sets such as location, gender, age bracket, and others.
That said; let’s get to the main task:
Earn with Google Ads
One method of how people earn money from YouTube is through Google ads on the platform. If you want to earn this way, then you have to first join the YouTube Partner program. The partnership gives content creators access to special tools, such as the ability to monetize their videos via Google AdSense.
YouTube monetizes videos via pre-roll, display, and other advertising formats. Advertisers pay based on clicks and impressions and not views, so keep that in mind. YouTube gives the content creator 55% of this venue and takes 45% for itself.
Content creators must adhere to advertising guidelines. Content that contains foul language, adult content, violence, and other subjects will not have ads placed against them.
Earn with Brand Sponsorship
Another way how people earn money from YouTube is through Brand Sponsorship deals. This is particularly lucrative and sometimes it’s often termed “influencer marketing”. Brands or businesses will pay a content creator to promote their products or services through video content. For example, early in her YouTube career, Michelle Phan drew the attention of cosmetics brand Lancôme with her popular make-up tutorials.
Earn with Channel Membership
Another popular way to monetize a channel is through channel memberships. Fans and followers make recurring monthly payments in exchange for bonus content such as badges, emojis, special videos, live chats, and other content. YouTube partners who have reached 1,000 subscribers can enable this monetization feature on their accounts.
One thing to note however with this feature is that creator don’t get to keep all their earnings. Just like ads revenue, YouTube takes a share of all membership fees paid. Content creators get to keep 70% of the revenue and YouTube takes the remaining 30%. So it’s wise to factor this into your membership price setting to give you an estimate of how much you’d receive charging certain amounts.
Earn with Merchandise sales
YouTube’s merchandise features provide a merchandise shelf for eligible channels to display their official branded merchandise on the platform. This is another method of how people earn money from YouTube. The shelf appears on the video page of approved channels.
YouTube Premium
YouTube Premium is another means a channel can get paid on YouTube. Asides from creating avenues for content creators to earn more money on the platform, it also offers exciting benefits to the audience.
Audiences who enjoy going through YouTube content can get to watch videos without ads interruption, view original content as well as videos that play in the background. Talk about real value! YouTube Premium is basically a rebranded version of its YouTube Red feature. It now combines a wide range of features to create the perfect YouTube binge atmosphere for the audience.
Logically, channels with more Watch Time from premium subscribers will earn more from this feature than one with fewer numbers. And since all videos available on YouTube’s free platform is also present on the paid version, your videos are bound to contribute to your Premium Watch Time and earnings.
Earn with Paid Promotions
Taking advantage of paid promotions, such as product placements, sponsorships, and endorsements, also can be an effective way to generate income. Certain niches, such as review-type channels or how-to tutorials, lend themselves particularly well to paid promotions.
Securing paid promotions can be accomplished in several different ways you can reach out to brands with a proposal, or if you become recognized enough in your field, you may find yourself being approached by companies.
Earn with Affiliate Marketing
If you sell a product or service, YouTube can be an ideal location to market your business, assert your expertise, and drive traffic to your site. Helpful video content, such as Q&As or tutorials, can lead potential customers to your business. Use product placement and video sponsorship
Here’s another way to get paid on YouTube: Companies interested in your channel’s audience might sponsor your videos or offer you product placement deals in exchange for a shout-out. You’ll likely receive payments on a per-sale basis or in commission tiers.
Search on affiliate marketing sites such as ShareASale, ClickBank, and CJ Affiliate for possible corporate partners, and be sure you’re willing to vouch for the company and products you’re selling before signing up.
Earn with Direct Support
Channels with a dedicated fan base could have success on crowd-funding sites as a method on how people earn money from YouTube. Platforms such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter are suitable for one-time projects, while Patreon and Ko-Fi provide options for ongoing support. YouTubers typically offer their followers various rewards for different contribution levels. Funds can be donated on a recurring basis or as a one-off to support a cause. Meet up with fans in the real world.
YouTubers can as well meet up with fans in the real world. Meet-ups and similar events let YouTubers connect with viewers and sell merchandise. They’re usually best suited to those with active and engaged subscribers.
Those with smaller audiences might want to skip ticketed events and bank on merchandise sales instead. Or if, for example, your videos teach viewers how to draw, you could set up a free class at a local park and sell your book of drawing techniques afterward.
Conclusion
Making money on YouTube is possible and the means are diverse. The methods we’ve shared here should have enlightened you on how people earn money from YouTube. Regardless of the method, dedication, hard work and time will be required before a substantial amount can be earned.
Despite the obstacles, YouTubers who are able to attract a large and loyal audience can make a substantial income on YouTube. And according to Forbes, some high-earning YouTube content creators are earning as much as $20 million a year. In the end, growing your YouTube channel will help you earn more.
