It’s the dream, isn’t it? Making money doing what you love.
YouTube has made it easier for people to make money by making videos, but figuring out the path to earning the dosh by uploading isn’t straightforward.
From navigating YouTube’s Partnership Program to selling your own merchandise on your channel, here are seven ways of making money on YouTube.Â
Monetize Your Channel
Before even contemplating making money from uploading videos, you need to wrap your head around AdSense. Caution: This is not to be confused with AdWords.
AdWords is what you use to advertise your own brand, either on YouTube or Google’s search engine. AdSense opens up your YouTube videos and designated sections on your website to advertisements.
Once you have an approved AdSense account, it would be wise to register for the YouTube Partnership Program.
First, you have to ensure your content meets the Program’s policies (find out more about YouTube’s Partnership Program policies).
If you meet these criteria, here’s how to join:
1. Log in to your YouTube account
2. Head to the Channel Settings tab, and select ‘Enable Monetization’
3. Accept the YouTube Monetization Agreement
4. Familiarize yourself with all the literature and criteria for monetized videos
5. Then, you need to connect an AdSense account, discussed above. If you have one from using it on your site, great! If not…
6. Go to the section ‘How will I get paid?’
7. Choose the Google Account you want to use
8. Accept the AdSense association
9. Provide your contact and bank account details when prompted, and proceed
10. You’ll then be redirected to your YouTube page, with a message confirming your application
11. You should receive an e-mail update once accepted. This could take up to 48 hours.
Don’t rush into advertising. Ideally you want to build trust and highly engaged fan base that loves your content, before trying to earn money from ad’s.
Bombarding new viewers with ads is a sure fire way to put them off, as they may get the impression that’s all you care about.
If done well, after you’ve built that trust through delivering on a weekly basis, it is understandable that you would enable advertisements to sustain your costs.
Target Your AudienceÂ
Know who your audience is and make sure the content you upload aligns with their interests and values.
If you advertise yourself as a beauty vlogger but end up posting three gaming videos in a row, you aren’t attracting the right audience meaning that the number of subscribers isn’t going to go up.
In order to earn enough money to make a living from your channel after monetizing it, you need your number of viewers and subscribers per video to go up. You will reach that by knowing who your audience is.
The next to step to achieve that is to promote your channel to attract a specific audience. This could be done by designing your header in a certain way, talking about it on social media, and hopefully getting one or two videos to become viral.
In conclusion, practice what you preach or watch the subscriber count go down.Â
Link to Social Media Accounts
If you’re going to have a YouTube channel that you would like to make money off of, make sure you also have at least an Instagram and Twitter account that you link back to (Facebook is for parents).
Social media is where you can actively promote your channel during the week before or after you post a video. If you post little teasers, use hashtags, and always link back to your channel, you have a higher chance of increasing your view count than simply posting the video and leaving.
You can use Instagram stories to engage with your subscribers and Twitter hashtags unique to your channel so not only do your subscribers feel a bit more involved, they’ll also have more of an incentive to click on your channel.
Not to mention, if you’re using advertisements on your videos to gain profit, you can always do sponsorships on your social media accounts too, and make twice as much.
Just don’t try and start any Instagram story drama or apology videos, people have had enough of those.
Get Your Merch On
A very popular and widely used way for content creators to generate income is by selling brand merchandise. This can include apparel, accessories, mugs, jewelry, stickers, stationery, etc.
Either include a link to a third-party supplier you’ve collaborated with to create your own merch or use one of YouTube’s partner companies, and take home a sizeable profit.
This is one of the easiest ways to make money from YouTube, especially if you haven’t been accepted into YouTube’s Partnership Program.Â
Sponsorships and Affiliations
Before you think about reaching out to brands for sponsorships, you want to consolidate your own first.
Make sure you know your brand’s niche and that your presentation is professional and unique. This about your logo, headers and introductions to your channel and video and if they could be more polished.
Businesses are likely to approach you as you grow your following, but there are a number of sites that link YouTubers to brands and provide advertising services.
Check out Famebit, Grapevine and Channelpages to get you started.
You can also try out Affiliate Marketing, where a brand supplies you with a product, or range of products, and make a video entirely based on it.
Amazon is just one of numerous companies that offer this deal to creators, and it is a surefire way to earn a lot of money very quickly.
Interact and Engage With Your Audience
If you have won over the hearts and minds of your followers, they’ll be sure to want to give back and help you out.
If you’re just starting out and aren’t able to monetize your videos just as yet, consider linking a Patreon account to your YouTube where your followers can each donate a small amount towards you and collectively, you can end up with a surprising sum.
YouTube also offers a feature called ‘Channel Membership’ where you can collect a monthly fee from your top subscribers in exchange for exclusive content, perks and badges from you.
Consistency is Key
Last but certainly not least, consistency is key! CON-SIS-TEN-CY. You can’t post a video one day and disappear for the next month or two.
You need to let your audience know if you’re the type of YouTuber that will keep uploading. Tell your audience when you’re planning on posting a video and how often, including which day of the week and time of day.Â
If you consistently do this, your audience will know that a new video is up, even if they didn’t see it on social media and will take time out of a particular day knowing they need to see a new video.
Once you’ve monetized your channel, updated all of your social media accounts, determined who your audience is, and started to post consistent videos, you’ll start to earn money from your videos.
Your subscriber count will start going up and your views will go up too, and that’s just the easy part. The hard part is going to be coming up with new entertaining content that 500 other people haven’t already done in the past year.
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.
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