Youtubers are making money just by uploading videos where they showcase their life or a specific talent. It can be any vague idea such as your reaction to movies, cutting anything in 2 parts,  showcasing your singing, dancing, cooking almost anything as far as you consider it worthy for your audience to watch.

The cool thing is that this platform is also a great way for everyday people like you and me to make money through your own videos. You don’t need professional level equipment or experience to make it happen. You just have to know how to get paid by YouTube. And the rewards can be great.

Consider Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie, who was the highest paid YouTuber in 2016—bringing in $15 million.

In this article, I’m gonna answer the following questions:

• How to make money from youtube?
• How much money a youtuber earns from 1000 views?
• How to increase subscribers/ engagement on a channel?

A lot of people are making tons of money from the YouTube. Some of the Indian examples are JS Films for Bikes, Abhinav Mahajan for fitness, Mayank Bhattacharya for Men’s Lifestyle, Zakir Khan for comedy and the list goes on.

All these people are at the top of ladder but they started somewhere, let’s see the various ways through which these people monetize.

There are several ways you can money on Youtube:

1. Make Money From Ads

2.Affiliate marketing

3. Direct sell your Products or Merchandise

4. Work With Brands as an Influencer

5. Crowdsourcing

6. Customer leads for your business

7. Let Your YouTube Audience Support Your Work Via Fan Funding

Let’s take a deeper look at each one.

1. Make Money From Ads

The first revenue stream you’ll likely to explore is ads. Billions of dollars are spent each year on video ads that run in YouTube videos, allowing the makers of popular videos to generate passive income streams from their contributions to the site.

You need to join the YouTube partner program, where your youtube account needs to be linked with your google Adsense account which is easily done in the Creator Studio section of your YouTube account by going to the Channel menu to verify your account and enable Monetization (click here to go there directly)

Once that’s done, you’ll notice a green “$” next to your videos in the Video Manager. You will get paid as cost per view which is a variable factor.

Now for every view on your channel, you will get 55% of the ad revenue. Youtube keeps the other 45%. On an average you make $1 to $2 for 1000 views on your video. Besides, monetization also depends on the type of your audience and country.

It’s easy to set up, but advertising as a YouTube partner is far from being the most lucrative revenue stream you can create for yourself.

Why You Should Look Beyond Ads for Revenue

Main reason– If advertisers are paying an average of $20 per 1,000 ad impressions, the videos where those ads are being shown may generate only $2 or $3 per 1,000 views.

Other reason, YouTube takes 45% of the gross revenue generated, leaving 55% to the content creators.

In short, YouTubers should explore other revenue streams to sustain their creative hobby.

So let’s do that.

Related: 11 ways to make money online from home

2. Affiliate marketing

You can become an affiliate for brands and make residual passive income through commissions from every sale you generate through your channel. This works especially well if you review products as part of your YouTube channel and place affiliate links either in the videos or the video description.

You can see how YouTubers link products in the description box.

You can choose affiliate programs like Click Bank (1% to 75% commission depending on what the vendor sets) or Amazon/ Flipkart Affiliate program (earn up to 10% per sale). You can also approach brands in your niche and start linking their products to make money.

This amount can be anything from Rs. 50 to Rs. 2000 for every conversion through your link.

3. Direct sell your Products or Merchandise

Many YouTubers have  started to sell their own merchandise of clothes as a way to make money.

Selling merchandise—t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, snapbacks, you name it—has a benefit beyond revenue.

It increases your exposure by putting your online brand and personality out there into the offline world, and deepens the relationship between you and your fans as they literally “buy into” what you’re doing.

Bhuvan Bam sells a variety of merchandise in his own store under his Youthiapa brand. 

Selling branded swag is easier than it might seem at first.

You can order affordable designs tailored for specific products, like t-shirts, using freelance sites such as Fiverr.

You can provide a link to your product and help your audience understand it’s value so that people will appreciate and buy your product.

4. Work With Brands as an Influencer

6 in 10 youtube subscribers follow advice on what to buy from their favorite creator over their favorite TV or movie personality.                  -Google

Brands are investing more and more in influencer marketing, spending their typically large advertising budgets on influencers who’ve already won the loyalty of their audiences.

This creates a massive opportunity for you as a creator if you can negotiate the right deals.

To give you another idea of what you can potentially charge, Rates are decided on the amount of views you get on your videos. It can range from$200 to $500 per post for early YouTubers to as high as $2000 to $5000 per post for top YouTubers.

The key when partnering on brand sponsored content is to be transparent about it—not endorsing anything you don’t actually like or believe in, and being upfront with your audience about why you’re doing it.

5. Crowdsourcing

In Crowdsourcing model, you take help of internet users to start a service, run a company, or launch a product. Khan academy is a very popular educational channel where they daily upload videos on a wide variety of topics for school and college students. All their videos are free, although they ask for donations to help them keep going.

You too can crowdsource donations in form of money or resources that will help you in making  content for your audience. You can start accepting donations by creating a instamojo account.

Believe me, people donate a huge amount to these channels.

Following are the Popular crowdfunding sites:

• Kickstarter: One of the most well-known crowdfunding sites and great for funding cool products and creative projects. Be sure to set an attainable funding goal because you’ll only secure it if you actually meet the goal you set.
• Indiegogo: A Kickstarter alternative that offers more flexible funding options.

 6. Customer leads for your business

A very popular investor and entrepreneur, Tai Lopez  makes videos about Business, Entrepreneurship and  Digital Marketing, though all his videos are free but to get access to the whole course, you need to go to his website and purchase the whole course.

That way he leads his audience to his business.

Content is the king, always work on making your content worthy as your audience will happily follow you if you make them wanting for more.

7. Let Your YouTube Audience Support Your Work Via Fan Funding

Similar to crowdfunding a project, you can also set up “fan funding” streams to source donations from your audience.

As a creator, you’re contributing your voice to the internet without forcing your audience to pay for admission. So, if it’s good content, your audience might be inclined to support you on an ongoing basis.

Some popular fan funding options include:

• Patreon: The membership platform that makes it easy for creators to get paid. Fans can subscribe to their favorite creators for as little as a dollar a month and receive exclusive rewards.
• Tipeee:  Lets you get a combination of both one-off and recurring donations

 Those were the different ways through which you can monetize your videos on Youtube.

How to get more subscribers for your YouTube channel?

There are a few ways to go about this. One of the major elements is providing entertaining and useful content. You must give people a reason to watch your videos… and not only that… watch them until the end.

• Collaborate with other successful Youtubers

Along with your excellent content creating skills,  you also have to put your marketing skills to work. 

 Collaboration- This is very powerful and simple strategy to increase your earning potential from YouTube.

When other YouTubers will upload a collaborated video on their channel and mention your channel’s link in the caption, your channel will automatically get exposed to their viewers/ subscribers.

In another case, if you upload a collaborated video on your channel, then the other YouTubers will share the link of your video with their audience and this will direct the viewers to your channel. This will help you in increasing the engagement on your channel.

If they like your work then they will definitely subscribe your channel. The only thing you have to do is to make sure that your content is unique and entertaining and not just coping from other successful YouTubers in your niche.

So, more the views you get on your videos, more the probability of people buying your service or product.

In the above picture, you can clearly see the power of collaboration. Just have a look at the numbers of views on these two collaborated videos and compare the numbers with other videos.

• Record a Call to Action in Your Videos

“If you liked this video, then hit the like button, subscribe our channel and hit the bell icon.”

Many YouTubers include a call to action along those lines at the end of their videos to grow their viewership. By suggesting the intended action you want them to take, your audience is more likely to actually take it.

You can adapt this approach to direct your audience’s attention to a revenue-generating opportunity.

BONUS TIP:

• Promote Your Offer on Other Platforms

Just because your content is hosted on YouTube, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking advantage of all the other channels out there for distribution.

Spread the word about new campaigns or discounts on Twitter, Facebook and any other profiles you might own.

The more places your message lives, the greater the chance that it’ll be seen. So it’s always a good idea to grow your social media following beyond YouTube.

Add Links to Your Video Descriptions

You can funnel viewers to your store, Patreon page, Kickstarter campaign, or other revenue-focused part of your online presence by adding links to your video descriptions.

Tell me, what I missed! and ask me questions in the comments.

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