As you can see from the title of this post, this is going to be about how to start a YouTube channel and make money on YouTube even as a small YouTuber. I got a notification that I had made sixty-six dollars after a month of being on YouTube. But you can’t get paid until you’ve made your first 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours.
With these 9 strategies, I’m going to show you how to make a lot of money with a small channel. I am also going to show you how I was able to generate a 5 figure income with just a four-figure subscriber base and now it’s six-figure income with only a five-figure subscriber base and my goal now is going for that seven-figure income with a six-figure subscriber base.
A lot of people underestimate the amount of money that you can make on YouTube and they feel like it has a lot to do with your subscriber count which is not very true.
I want to introduce you to a principal called a thousand true fans. A man named Kevin Kelly who’s an executive editor at Wired magazine had introduced the principle or the theory that as a
creator, an artist, a musician, or an author in this instance a YouTuber whatever type of creator you are as long as you have a thousand true fans you’ll be able to make a living.
A lot of people think that you need all these subscribers to make money on YouTube which is not the case. What you truly need is a good community of people and a core audience that it’s consistent.
I’ve learned a lot about being on YouTube.
What Are The Best Ways To Make Money On YouTube?
Let’s just get right into it number one.
1. Adsense revenue
Your Adsense revenue account is basically, the money that you get directly from YouTube it’s actually from Google. You get a paycheck every month. It’s based on all your views for the
entire month on all of your videos and the cost per mille on each video.
There’s something on YouTube called a CPM which is your cost per million which is basically, the amount of money that you get per 1000 views. Your cost per Mille is going to determine how much money you make per month.
For most YouTubers, this isn’t necessarily where you’re making the bulk of your money and I find that the higher your subscriber count is the higher your cost per Mille is.
It also depends on the type of video you’re creating and if advertisers can put their advertisements on your videos.
Beauty videos, as well as health and fitness videos, are some of my videos that had the highest cost per Mille and it’s based on the ads that are put onto those videos and how much advertisers are willing to pay to put their advertisements on videos that are towards their target audience.
The amount of money you can make with your Adsense revenue account varies and is also unpredictable because you’re not sure how much you’re going to make. You don’t determine that number either. It’s all YouTube.
It’s kind of you upload a video out there and how much money it makes, it makes.
I’ve had videos that have gone viral and I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve had videos that have reached past the million mark, I think I only have one video that has passed one million. But that video over time has made way more than my viral video made.
It’s very hard to determine how much money you’re going to make with your cost per Mille. It’s a little bit difficult to rely solely on your Adsense revenue account because you don’t know what you’re going to be getting monthly with that.
Adsense revenue in my opinion it’s great. I love when it comes in monthly but it’s not a stream of revenue that I depend on or I can include in my budget because I don’t know what I’m going to get from my absence revenue every month.
If you’re making good money with your Adsense revenue account it’s something to appreciate and accept, be grateful for it. What I’m trying to say is that it is unpredictable.
2. Brand Deals/Sponsored Videos
Typically brands will reach out to you once they notice your video come up on the recommendations if they are doing searches. They can come across your channel and reach out to you to do collaborations with them.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that once you have a steady audience you can reach out to brands and ask them to collaborate with you. On my channel in particular a source of revenue that I could rely on is hair deals or hair extensions companies and also clothing companies.
When a company reaches out to you to work with them or to do an advertisement it’s important that you quote them a price that is fair for the amount of work that you’re doing and the amount of exposure that you’re giving to the company.
A lot of times people get very excited you need to pause for a second and think logically. Think from the standpoint of a business owner.
You need to think about the time it takes you to set it up, to record, edit, and the time it takes you to upload to a platform that you’ve built on your own to their target demographic because they’re reaching out to you.
One thing I will say is that creating a media kit helps your proposals to look very professional and it helps for you to look like an actual business. A media kit is a combination of your digital portfolio.
Consider it to be like your YouTube resume. It contains all the information that brands need to decide if they want to partner with you.
A media kit is important because a business that has established themselves and they want to pay an influencer or a YouTuber to promote their products. They want to make sure that this is someone they can trust and they can rely on.
Your media kit should contain your statistics, analytics, your subscriber count, engagement count, your comments, your likes, your reaches, your social media accounts, etc. All your details.
It helps them feel secure when sending their products over to you and it helps them to feel secure in getting results from you.
You have to think from the point of business for yourself and also think about how they would be thinking and how they’re operating as a business as well. They don’t want to spend money when there’s not gonna be any results.
Ultimately, you send them a media kit and you let them know your engagements, you let them see your past works and they can decide on whether they want to work with you.
There’s no harm in asking. If you never ask the answer is always going to be no. Go ahead and send out your media kit and proposals to as many brands as you would like and if they’re not interested in working with you just move on.
The worst that can happen is that they don’t reply. There’s no harm in sending off some emails. This is also another stream of revenue that you can use to make money on YouTube.
Read: Top 10 New Online Survey Sites That Pay You Cash
3. Affiliate links and Promotion codes
An affiliate link is a specific URL that a company will use or assign to you to track the number of sales you bring to a company. It lets the company know how much traffic they’re gaining on their website based on your video and your advertisement.
Oftentimes they’ll give you a percentage of how much product was sold based on the people who clicked on that link and bought the product.
It doesn’t cost your subscribers or your viewers any more money to click on that link or shop there. The company gives you a bit of a percentage of their profit because you ultimately helped them to get that lead.
You ultimately helped them to get the traffic and most importantly you also helped them to get a customer which is pretty expensive.
If they’re able to gain a customer based on your advertisement the company will pay you a certain percentage.
Affiliate marketing is very common in this industry. Something that I use is Magiclinks and this doesn’t cost the subscriber any more money to use the link.
If a customer uses your link it helps you because you earn a commission and the company to know where their traffic is coming from as well.
Magiclinks allows you to create links for products you share on the description bar and get paid a commission like an affiliate link. You can use Magiclinks even if the video is sponsored.
Something’s very similar to affiliate links is an affiliate code. For example: “use my promo code for 20% off”. You can get a kickback for every sale that is made using your code.
4. An online Store
This is the fourth and final way to make money on YouTube. It is probably one of my most favorite because the possibilities are endless and your opportunities are infinite with this one.
Some people can take this particular route and just propel themselves forward with this. It’s basically to have your online store and use YouTube as a platform.
I’ve seen people create an online store and it just goes crazy.
I have an online store where I create the wig and sell them on my online Shopify shop and it is a very steady and reliable stream of revenue for me.
I’ve seen people sell hats, t-shirts, mugs, keychains, phone cases, etc. The possibilities are endless. Some people start a whole hairline, clothing line, makeup line based on the core audience that they build from YouTube.
Then they could create a YouTube video using their products or wearing their products and showing off their products and then telling people to click the link on the description below and purchase it from their online store.
The thing is if you’re able to advertise for other people’s companies, of course, you’re able to advertise for your own company. You can create a store for whatever your channel is based on.
Let’s say you have a beauty channel, you can create a makeup brush line and tell people for example: “these brushes that I’m using are great. They’re from my line, you can click the link down below to purchase it”.
Whatever your channel is about you can sell products that relate to that and have your core audience visit your website and make purchases. You can use platforms like Shopify to create your store that fits whatever your niche is.
5. Live Streaming
If you are somebody who does live stream already, maybe you do it on TikTok or Instagram and you feel comfortable doing it on YouTube you can try Streamlabs.
Streamlabs is a great website where you can have people donate to what you’re doing. You could also host different things on there like merchandise.
Live streaming is a great way to start generating some extra income and revenue from your YouTube channel and the cool thing with Streamlabs is that you can accept payment with PayPal, credit card, and other options.
If you’re into live streaming that is the way to go.
6. Create a Viral Video
Don’t take this one lightly because this has been a game-changer for my youtube channel this year. It only takes one video to carry all the weight for your YouTube channel and to bring you that audience.
What is the audience mean? Audience means traffic and traffic means revenue. Before we get into tips, please understand that none of this is going to work unless you have a specific niche channel.
You want to win the click and how do you do that? It boils down to two things and that is your thumbnail and title. These two things together are very powerful.
You want to have an emotionally enticing thumbnail, that is going to attract a viewer. You want to have a title on that thumbnail that is emotionally attractive. You want your viewers and audience to have that FOMO or fear of not watching your content.
Give YouTube a good reason to make your video go viral. What do I mean by this? In all my two years of being a YouTuber, I’ve boiled viral videos down to three things. They fall into one of these three categories.
The first one is it is entertaining and trendy. Videos that are about trending topics right now going on in the news or that are super entertaining always win.
The next category of a viral video is emotionally triggering. This is huge because here’s the thing people will always remember how you make them feel.
The last category is giving value. Teach people a skill that you know how to do. Keep viewers on the platform. How do you do this? The main thing is after you win that click and start watching your video, you have to keep them interested in your video through the retention within that first minute of the video.
7. Coaching and Consulting
YouTube is the number one platform for social media and to grow your business online especially if you are in the coaching and consulting niche.
The idea is you’re giving massive value on your YouTube channel about topics that you coach or consult about and that way you’re attracting people who want to learn more about this topic and who want you to solve their major problem in their life.
Group coaching is a business model that’s crushing it online. If you are doing one-on-one coaching that’s great, but it is limited and it’s not scalable.
You have to find a way to impact more people and a good way to do that is with group coaching. In this way, you’re able to impact more people and have a group setting of coaching.
8. Crowdfunding
This works well if you are offering additional perks to your audience. To do this you can use Patreon. Patreon is a way where people can donate to your course and it also offers whatever you could offer your viewers eg: additional content, additional behind-the-scenes, and more detailed information into the topics of what you talk about on your YouTube channel.
It’s a win-win to create a recurring revenue every single month.
You can put up your PayPal link on your YouTube channel and just tell people if they like this content you can send donations here to support the channel.
If you want to charge a monthly fee I think that you should be giving back and adding more additional content to the people who are willing to go all-in, be your number one supporters and fans, and are willing to pay that extra price per month.
9. Selling your Digital Products and services
This is hands-down the best route to go. If you have a YouTube channel and if you’re utilizing it for your business you want to create a product as fast as you can.
People will pay a lot of money for your knowledge if it will dramatically change their situation or the problems in their lives. The key is to treat YouTube as a business.
That’s where people go wrong and they are not making anything from their channel. The other thing is posting content that people don’t care about that you like but other people don’t find valuable and you’re not offering anything for people to buy making your YouTube channel unprofitable.
Where do I start with selling something? The first thing is to create a lead magnet. Create an e-book, a mini-course, a PDF, a free training, or a free webinar where people can opt-in. They’ll give you their name and their email in exchange for this free piece of content which is called a lead magnet.
This brings me to my next point. You have to start building your list. How do you build your list is by giving away a lead magnet.
It is very important to have your email list because it is your audience that YouTube, Instagram, t Facebook or any search engine cannot take away from you.
The next step is to create a digital product. As I said you can create a digital video product or you can have a membership site. You can offer your services on a website where people can directly book a coaching call with you.
The other thing you can do is create a digital book and publish it on Amazon, you can also have an e-commerce store on your channel, the list goes on and on of the ways you can monetize and create your products for YouTube.
Whatever product that you create you want to make sure it is accessible in the description of your YouTube channel because that is where your traffic is going to go to reference more information, to learn more about the video, to see what kind of resources you have to offer.
My advice to you is to start with one product make it profitable and scale it up and then create another type of product.
In that way, you’re generating multiple streams of income from your YouTube channel. You’re not relying on one product, you’re not just relying on Google Adsense, you’re not just relying on your coaching. You have lots of income streams filling that bucket.
Those are the nine main ways that you can make money on YouTube. If I have forgotten something please leave it down below in the comment. I would love to hear other ways that you know of making money on YouTube.
Overall I would say that I’ve been able to successfully turn YouTube into a stream of revenue that helps me today to make a living.
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