While you used to be able to earn advertising revenue through YouTube Partners even as a first-time Youtuber, today YouTube requires channel owners to have a total of 4,000 hours of video viewing over 12 months and at least 1,000 subscribers to be eligible for the YouTube Partners Program.
Meeting these requirements is a good goal, but ad revenue isn't your only way to make money on YouTube. Similar to blogging, YouTube offers a variety of ways to monetize your channel.
Here are five other ways to make money from YouTube besides the affiliate program. You can choose one or combine them to maximize your earning potential.
1. Drive traffic to your blog or website to generate sales
Video marketing is a great way to promote your business from home. Ways you can market your business on YouTube include:
- Introducing yourself and your business
- Behind the scenes of your business
- Tours and demos of your business
- Q&A to answer your market's questions about your niche and industry
- Tutorials
When you create your YouTube video, you can include links to your website or blog in the description and then have YouTube send you traffic. You can also embed the video on your website and share it on social media for even more exposure. YouTube viewers can also share it.
For example, if you have an online course, you can post a lesson to YouTube and then add a link to your course where people can sign up to get all the lessons.
Another example is using YouTube to publish your blog. The more traffic you get on your blog, the more money you can make from all your monetization methods like Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, or selling your own products.
2. Sell Your Own Products or Services
YouTube gets so much traffic and is so effective that many business owners use it almost exclusively to promote their business. Instead of a blog, they use YouTube to share their experiences, tips, and ideas to build trust and a relationship with their market.
Just as videos drive traffic to your website, demos can sell your products and services, share your experiences and tips, answer questions, run tutorials, and more.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Don't have your own product or service? No problem. YouTube allows you to promote other companies products and services through affiliate marketing. To be effective, you need to start a YouTube channel in a specific niche and then find affiliate products and services that solve your target market's problems in that niche. For example, you can start a healthy baking YouTube channel and find quality baking equipment and good healthy options through the Amazon Associate program or other companies that offer baking supplies. Just add the links to the products you use in the description of your YouTube video. Don't forget to add the required details for affiliate links.
Besides sharing the tools and resources you use, you can also use YouTube to promote affiliate products through reviews and demos.
4. Ads/Sponsorships
In general, you need good traffic to sell ads or get sponsorship for a YouTube video, but it's possible to earn this kind of income before you qualify for the YouTube Affiliate Program when your traffic is steady and growing. Also, selling ad space or getting sponsors can generate more revenue than YouTube Affiliate Program, so It's worth a try.
To sell ads or get sponsorship, you need to contact brands with an offer. In your proposal you must:
- Introduce yourself and your YouTube channel. Be sure to include how your channel relates to their business.
- Share your YouTube channel and provide information about your engagement including views, comments, likes, etc. If you have a good following on social media, you can add these numbers to give it more authority and your influence to demonstrate.
- Focus on how you can help the company instead of talking about yourself. If you have used their product please let them know and share how much you enjoyed it.
- Submit your idea, for example, you can write a review and get a free sample of the product in return. Or you reward the company with a cash payment.
- Have a media and sponsorship kit ready to share with potential advertisers and sponsors.
You can also join sponsorship platforms like Famebit to find and submit brands for sponsorships.
5. Crowdfunding
With crowdfunding via YouTube, it is possible to generate regular income or project-based income. A lot depends on the topic of your channel and what your crowdfunding donors will get in return. For example, you can use crowdfunding funds to improve the value of your production or create special themes. Usually, YouTube channel owners offer different rewards depending on the amount of contribution. Some rewards channel owners may offer recognition in a video or something more substantial for more money than contributed.
Crowdfunded can be earned on a recurring basis, similar to a subscription or membership model, or project-based, where people help fund a specific video or series that requires a larger investment to create.
Success Making Money on YouTube
As with any other method of making money in business, your success on YouTube largely depends on how well you engage with your target market. While you don't need an expensive video production system, you do need to provide quality content on a regular basis and use tools and resources like keywords and social media to promote your videos. In fact, besides providing videos that people want to watch, growing your YouTube channel should be part of your plan if you're hoping to make money.
Also, YouTube is a social media platform, so you need to engage and respond to your audience after they comment and interact with you.
The more YouTube views and engagement you have with your audience, the more money you can make. In fact, there are entrepreneurs who make a living off YouTube.
Whether you want to become a famous vlogger or add videos to your existing business to generate an additional income stream, YouTube allows you to market and make money all in one.
