With the incredible popularity of online entertainment, YouTube has blossomed into an extremely viable career choice for young people all around the world. With the ability to watch content on the platform for free whenever you like, it is the perfect outlet to get your creations and opinions out to the greater world.
There are millions of videos uploaded to the site every day, so reaching a point where you can make a living from the service isn’t going to be easy, however, there are ways to make money from your videos even with a smaller audience.
In this article, we will be breaking down all the ways that creators can earn revenue from their YouTube content.
How do you earn money from YouTube?
AdSense
The first and most obvious way to make money from your videos is through the Google AdSense service. How this works is that YouTube will run ads before or during your video, or showcase them around the video on the site and for every 1000 people who view these ads, you will earn a small portion of the revenue, usually between one to five dollars.
AdSense’s payout does vary depending on how the platform is performing. In some situations where advertisers have chosen to pull their ads from the platform the rate per view may decrease, but sometimes circumstances can see them increase as well.
This is the perfect model to use if your channel is raking in thousands of views, but for smaller channels, this may not give the results you desire as you can only withdraw at a minimum of $100.
Brand Ads
While AdSense will use Google ads to place their customer’s adverts on your content, if you’re after a higher rate of pay or ads that suit your content, then you may want to seek out brand advertisement opportunities.
Often this process will come from a brand approaching a creator and asking them to do an advert for a product or service during a video in return for an amount of money. This is where larger creators can make huge amounts as brands look for creators with the perfect audience for their products.
Unfortunately, landing these opportunities as a smaller creator can be increasingly difficult, but there are other ways to build rapport with companies that could potentially lead to brand ads in the future.
Affiliate Links
You don’t always have to use YouTube itself to make money from your content on the platform. One of the best ways for newer creators is through Affiliate Links. If you’re only starting out brands may not want to take a risk and have you use your platform for their ad campaign, however, they may supply creators with affiliate links that can be used at checkout on their respective storefronts.
These links will be unique to each creator and for every viewer who uses the code at checkout, the creator will get a small financial kickback for helping to bring in business.
For those who are just getting started, but wouldn’t mind making a little money on the side then affiliate links are a perfect choice.
Patreon
Depending on your style of content you may not be eligible for monetization on YouTube at all. Over the years the platform’s policies have gotten stricter and plenty of content that was once acceptable for advertising no longer is, but there are still ways to make money.
Patreon is a subscription service that creators can set up offering exclusive rewards for a small monthly payment. Often creators will use this to offer access to videos early, an invitation to a private discord server, or exclusive discounts on merch.
The options are limitless when tailoring what rewards you’ll offer to your audience using Patreon and it can be a great way to get funding with a small but dedicated fanbase.
Merchandise
The last way to make money from your YouTube channel which we’ll talk about here is through merchandise. Selling T-Shirts, hoodies, stickers, toys, and other products can be a great way to make money. If your brand has a dedicated audience of even 100 people who will purchase merchandise relating to your channel then it should be a risk-free endeavor to test out some shirts.
One of the keys to finding out if this monetization method will work for your channel is to first poll your audience and then test a small print so that you can see how the demand lines up.
The best part of a merch line and really all of the options on our list is that you can use them all in unison to accrue the most revenue possible and attempt to make your channel a full-time gig.