YouTube

Being a “YouTuber” is a way to make cash online that didn’t exist just 10 years ago. Now there are people of all ages that don’t just make a full time living from uploading videos to YouTube but some make hundreds of thousands of dollars and the top ones make millions.

Here we will explain the straight forward process to making money with YouTube but as with a lot of long term methods to make money, most people don’t succeed because they fail to persist.

The first step is to set up your own channel. This is just another name for a YouTube account. You can call it anything you like as long as the name hasn’t already been taken. Ideally you want it relevant to the topic you are making the videos about.

Next you need to decide what you want to make videos about. You can make videos about absolutely anything with the choice only being limited by your imagination. Similar to blogging the best place to start is something you have a natural interest in or experience/expertise in a certain area. Some of the most successful YouTube channels do nothing more than talk about what’s on their mind. This is known as something called a Video Blog or Vlog. Others film their pets or show off a talent such as singing, some make comedy sketches or instructional videos. Really it’s up to you what you choose to focus on.

How well you complete the next step will directly impact how much money you make but it is by far the hardest thing to do and that is to build an audience and increase the number of views of your videos. The idea behind building an audience is to get people who regularly view your videos and will watch new ones that you upload. You can see ways to increase your viewers here. Increasing views is what directly affects how much you make in the next step by monetising your videos.

To make money from your videos there are several ways you can monetise them:

  • You can apply through YouTube to put adverts on your video. These usually pay a flat rate of something like $2 per 1000 views of your videos.
  • By using Affiliate Marketing you can recommend something related to what you are talking about in your video and every time someone buys it you can get a commission. You can put links in the video description or ask them to visit the site in your video.
  • Selling your own merchandise. This can include T-Shirts, Calendars, photos, digital products, coaching art or creative products
  • Receive sponsorship or brand deals. This is similar to advertising but companies will give you merchandise to review or talk about on your videos. These products are generally given to you for free which you can keep and then it is often linked to an affiliate store which you can make a percentage of any sales that you make.

With all these methods to make money you don’t have to limit yourself to just one method and often several will work well together.

So to summarise, it is quite straightforward to make money from YouTube, it will take time and persistence but simply follow these four steps:

  1. Set up a channel (open an account)
  2. Create videos and uploading them
  3. Build an audience and increase views
  4. Monetise through any combination of: Adverts, affiliate marketing, selling merchandise, sponsorship.

Top Tip

This is a medium to long term way of making cash. You have to constantly upload and promote your videos. The best way to do this is on other social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. But ultimately create videos of value which are worth watching. Draw yourself up a schedule and stick to it such as creating and uploading one video per day. There are lots of instructional videos on YouTube which explains how to make money on Youtube!

Recommended Reading

YouTube for Beginners – Everything you need to get started making money with YouTube

YouTube by Ace McCloud – An in depth guide to making money with YouTube

Sites to use

YouTube – The largest online video sharing site.

Youtube Secrets – How to generate an income without making your own videos.