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DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

High-CPM Niche Equipment Priorities: Spend Where It Pays

Finance YouTube pays up to 50× more per 1,000 views than gaming YouTube. That mathematical reality should drive how much you invest in equipment, what you prioritise, and when upgrades become obvious financial decisions rather than speculative purchases. Yet most creators use the same gear-buying mental model regardless of niche — overspending in low-CPM categories and under-investing where the returns genuinely justify premium kit.

This guide breaks down YouTube CPMs by niche and maps them to sensible equipment spending priorities. For the broader creator equipment context, see my Ultimate Creator Equipment Guide 2026.

The UK CPM Reality (2026)

CPM (cost per mille — cost per 1,000 ad impressions) varies enormously by niche. UK-focused 2026 ranges based on my audits across 500+ channels:

Niche Typical CPM Range Revenue per 100k views
Finance / investing / personal finance £20–£50 £2,000–£5,000
B2B software / SaaS reviews £15–£35 £1,500–£3,500
Business / entrepreneurship £12–£25 £1,200–£2,500
Tech reviews (consumer) £8–£18 £800–£1,800
Education / how-to / tutorials £5–£12 £500–£1,200
Beauty / fashion / lifestyle £6–£14 £600–£1,400
Health / fitness / wellness £5–£11 £500–£1,100
Food / cooking £3–£8 £300–£800
Travel vlogs £3–£7 £300–£700
Entertainment / comedy £2–£5 £200–£500
Gaming £1–£4 £100–£400
Music / reactions £1–£3 £100–£300

Important caveats: These are AdSense CPMs only. Affiliate revenue, course sales, sponsorships and merchandise can multiply creator income 3–10× on top of these baselines in most niches. But the AdSense CPM is what you can rely on from raw view volume alone, and it’s the right starting point for equipment budgeting.

Why CPM Should Drive Equipment Decisions

The break-even math is different in every niche. An SM7B microphone costs £400. In finance YouTube at £30 CPM, that’s earned back after 13,000 additional views (plausible within a single video). In gaming at £2 CPM, it’s 200,000 additional views — more than many gaming videos will ever get.

This means:

  • High-CPM niches can afford broadcast-grade gear early because individual videos can pay for kit upgrades
  • Low-CPM niches need to prove audience first because the break-even is distant
  • Kit spending should scale with expected video revenue, not total channel revenue — a £5,000 kit that will show up in 200+ videos over its lifespan needs only a small CPM benefit to justify itself

Equipment Priorities by CPM Tier

Tier 1: High-CPM (£15+ per 1,000 views)

Finance, B2B software reviews, business/entrepreneurship, commercial real estate, insurance.

Equipment priority: Authority-signalling kit. Broadcast-grade audio (Shure SM7B), full-frame camera (Sony A7C II), professional three-point lighting, intentional set design.

Justifiable investment: £5,000–£15,000 equipment budget for channels with 50k+ subscribers. Viewers scrutinise production quality; amateur-looking creators lose credibility permanently.

Key spend: audio. In these niches, audio carries 40% of perceived authority. A £400 SM7B routinely delivers 15–25% retention improvements in the first 30 seconds — at £30+ CPM, that’s thousands of pounds of recovered revenue per video.

What to skip: RGB/creative lighting, gimbals for seated work, cinema cameras before 500k subscribers.

Full breakdown: finance YouTube equipment guide.

Tier 2: Mid-High CPM (£8–£15 per 1,000 views)

Tech reviews, education, career/job advice, real estate investing, marketing/agency.

Equipment priority: Production polish with multi-camera setups. Consumer audiences here care about visual competence without needing broadcast-grade gear.

Justifiable investment: £3,000–£7,000 for established channels.

Key spend: multi-angle setup + macro capability. Tech reviews need product detail shots; educational content needs demonstration angles. Second camera body and macro lens often deliver more impact than upgrading the main body.

What to skip: Cinema cameras, motorised sliders, shotgun mics unless doing documentary-style work.

See: tech review equipment guide.

Tier 3: Mid CPM (£5–£10 per 1,000 views)

Beauty, fashion, lifestyle, health/fitness, DIY, home improvement.

Equipment priority: Lighting above everything else. Beauty especially needs colour-accurate, flattering lighting that a great camera alone cannot deliver.

Justifiable investment: £1,500–£4,000 for established channels.

Key spend: lighting kit. In beauty specifically, 40–50% of equipment budget should go to lighting (not the usual 25%). Softboxes, bi-colour panels, accent lighting for colour work — this is where visible production quality comes from.

What to skip: Full-frame cameras (APS-C is plenty), broadcast-grade audio (wireless lavalier is enough), gimbals for seated content.

See: beauty channel equipment guide.

Tier 4: Mid-Low CPM (£3–£7 per 1,000 views)

Food/cooking, travel vlogs, parenting, hobbies/crafts, general how-to.

Equipment priority: Portability and reliability. Complicated kits don’t get used; simple kits get used consistently.

Justifiable investment: £1,000–£3,000 for established channels.

Key spend: wireless lavalier + capable compact camera. For travel, a Sony ZV-E10 + Rode Wireless Me + drone is the practical tier. See my travel vlog equipment guide.

What to skip: Large lighting kits (you’ll use natural light), multiple camera bodies, studio set design.

Tier 5: Low CPM (£1–£4 per 1,000 views)

Gaming, reactions, music, entertainment, commentary.

Equipment priority: PC performance (for gaming) over creator equipment. Volume + personality + clip-ability drive growth; gear only needs to be “good enough to not hurt retention.”

Justifiable investment: £500–£1,500 in creator-specific kit. Your gaming PC budget is separate and can legitimately be £1,500–£3,500, but that’s functional kit, not production kit.

Key spend: clean audio + decent webcam. USB mic + Elgato Facecam + one or two Key Light Airs covers 95% of what these niches need.

What to skip: DSLR-as-webcam setups, broadcast mics, three-point lighting, cinema cameras. Every upgrade to expensive gear in these niches is harder to justify because viewer CPM is low.

See: gaming channel equipment guide.

The Sponsorship + Affiliate Revenue Multiplier

AdSense CPM is just one income stream. Some niches have disproportionate affiliate or sponsorship revenue potential:

  • Finance: High-value affiliate programs (crypto exchanges, brokerages, SaaS). Can add £5,000–£20,000+/month on 100k views.
  • Tech reviews: Amazon affiliate + direct sponsorship deals. Can multiply AdSense revenue 2–4×.
  • Beauty: Brand deals + affiliate (Amazon, Sephora, LTK). Can multiply AdSense revenue 3–5×.
  • SaaS/business: High CPA affiliate programs. Can multiply AdSense revenue 5–10×.
  • Gaming: Brand deals exist but pay less per deal. Multiplies AdSense revenue 1.5–2×.
  • Travel: Brand trips, tourism board partnerships, booking affiliate. Multiplies AdSense revenue 2–4×.

This means a niche’s “real CPM-equivalent” can be 2–10× its AdSense CPM. Finance especially punches far above its already-high AdSense CPM — the affiliate opportunities are exceptional.

CPM-Calibrated Audio Investment

Since audio is the single biggest production upgrade, here’s the specific calibration by CPM tier:

  • £20+ CPM: Shure SM7B + Cloudlifter + Focusrite setup (£720+) — mandatory at this tier
  • £10–£20 CPM: Shure MV7+ (£280) — sweet spot, broadcast quality USB
  • £5–£10 CPM: Rode Wireless Go II (£269) or MV7+ — audiences tolerate less but quality still matters
  • £2–£5 CPM: HyperX QuadCast S (£130) or Rode Wireless Me (£145) — “good enough” tier
  • £1–£2 CPM: FIFINE K669B (£45) or similar — audiences don’t scrutinise audio

Spending finance-tier audio budget on gaming content is over-investment. Spending gaming-tier audio on finance content is under-investment. Match the kit to the CPM.

CPM-Calibrated Camera Investment

Similar calibration by CPM tier:

  • £20+ CPM: Sony A7C II (£2,099) or FX30 (£1,899) — full-frame or cinema-grade
  • £10–£20 CPM: Sony A7C II or A6700 (£1,300) — capable pro-grade body
  • £5–£10 CPM: Sony ZV-E10 (£700) — starter mirrorless, plenty
  • £2–£5 CPM: Logitech MX Brio (£210) or phone-first shooting
  • £1–£2 CPM: Elgato Facecam (£170) or existing webcam

The Niche-Switching Consideration

If your channel is drifting between niches or planning to pivot, equipment decisions get complicated. General principles:

  1. Buy for your target niche, not current niche. If you’re pivoting from gaming to finance content, the SM7B makes sense immediately — don’t wait for finance-level revenue to justify it.
  2. Versatile kit survives niche changes better than specialised kit. A Sony A7C II + 35mm f/1.8 + Shure MV7+ works in every niche; a cinema camera + shotgun mic + broadcast-tier set design is harder to repurpose.
  3. CPM arbitrage is real. If you’re bored of gaming content at £2 CPM, a genuine pivot to tech reviews at £12 CPM is worth gear investment even before the pivot proves out.

The UK-Specific CPM Nuances

Some considerations specific to UK creator markets:

  • US audience targeting: UK creators who deliberately target US audiences (finance, tech, some business niches) often see US-level CPMs (£30–£60 in finance). Accent matters less than content focus; US-themed content with US-oriented keywords does lift CPM significantly.
  • UK-only audiences cap out lower: Niches like UK-specific finance (HMRC, UK tax, UK pensions) have smaller audience sizes but can have very high per-viewer value through local sponsorship deals.
  • Brexit has slightly compressed EU CPMs for UK channels — worth factoring if you’re positioning for European markets specifically.

When to Ignore CPM-Based Budgeting

Some legitimate scenarios for overspending relative to CPM:

  1. You’re using YouTube as a top-of-funnel for higher-margin business. Course creators, consultants, agency owners — your per-view value is much higher than AdSense CPM suggests. Budget accordingly.
  2. You’re deliberately building a premium brand. If positioning as the premium creator in your niche is part of your strategy, production polish is a strategic investment, not just a gear decision.
  3. Audio accessibility is essential to your content. Long-form podcasters, course creators, audiobook-adjacent creators need great audio regardless of CPM tier.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are UK CPMs really lower than US CPMs?

Typically yes, by about 30–50% for most niches. This is why UK creators targeting US audiences often see significant CPM lifts. Positioning content for US viewers (thumbnail/title language, reference points, currency mentions) can meaningfully change channel economics.

Should I pick my niche based on CPM?

Only partially. CPM matters, but so does your genuine expertise, interest, and audience size potential. Finance has great CPMs but is extremely competitive; gaming has low CPMs but massive audience volume. The best niche is where your expertise + passion + market opportunity intersect — CPM is a factor, not the deciding factor.

Can I change niche just for higher CPM?

You can, but content quality in a niche you don’t understand drops faster than CPM rises. Most successful niche pivots happen when creators develop genuine expertise in the new niche before pivoting. Faking finance knowledge to chase high CPMs is visible and credibility-damaging.

Does CPM change within a niche?

Significantly. Within gaming, for example, “retro/indie gaming” CPMs are often higher than “popular AAA gaming” because the audiences skew older and more affluent. Within finance, “UK personal finance” often out-CPMs generic “investing advice” because of higher commercial intent. Niche-within-niche specialisation matters.

What affects CPM most within a niche?

Audience demographics (age, income, location), video topic (commercial intent), season (Q4 always pays more), ad inventory (long videos with multiple mid-roll ads), and viewer engagement (retention length). You can influence some of these; others are locked by niche choice.

Should affiliate revenue change my gear budget?

Yes, significantly. If your “real” per-view revenue is £50 per 1,000 views (AdSense + affiliate combined), budget as if you’re in a £50 CPM niche. Finance creators with strong affiliate deals routinely see £50–£100 effective CPM equivalents, which justifies substantially more equipment investment.

Is it worth investing in multi-language content for CPM reasons?

Generally no, unless you’re specifically targeting high-CPM markets (US, UK, Canada, Australia). Dubbing English content to German or French adds cost but rarely matches the CPM of focused English-language content. Focus on audience depth in high-CPM languages first.

What to Do Next

  1. Identify your niche’s CPM tier from the table above
  2. Apply the 30/25/25/20 budget rule, adjusted for your niche’s specific priorities
  3. Follow the revenue-tier progression in the equipment upgrade roadmap
  4. Check your niche-specific recommendations in my guides for finance, tech reviews, beauty, gaming, travel, courses, or VTubing
  5. Avoid common overspending traps in creator equipment mistakes to avoid
  6. For bespoke advice on your specific niche and revenue tier, book a free discovery call

CPM isn’t just a vanity metric — it’s the single clearest signal of how much your content monetises, which should directly determine how much equipment investment makes sense. Finance creators who spend gaming-level equipment budgets are leaving money on the table. Gaming creators who spend finance-level equipment budgets are burning cash that won’t come back. Match your kit to your niche’s economics, and every upgrade becomes a justifiable investment rather than speculative spending.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Can You Make Money Doing Music Covers on YouTube

How to Make Money Doing Covers on YouTube 6

Yes, you can make money doing covers on YouTube — but it is more complicated than most creators think.

Cover songs sit in one of the messiest corners of YouTube monetisation because music copyright, publisher claims, Content ID, sync rights, and revenue sharing can all come into play at once.

This guide breaks it down properly: when cover songs can earn, when they get claimed, why the money is often shared or restricted, what legal risks creators ignore, and the smarter ways to use covers as part of a wider music strategy on YouTube.

Why trust this guide?

I am not writing this as an outsider. I am a YouTube Certified Expert. I have coached 500+ clients, built and grown multiple channels, earned six YouTube Silver Play Buttons, built a personal audience of 100k+, and spent years working across YouTube strategy, SEO, retention, metadata, channel systems, and monetisation.

This matters because music channels, cover channels, and artist brands often get trapped between what “seems to work” and what YouTube’s rights and monetisation systems actually allow.

If you want help applying any of this to your own channel, you can book a discovery call.

Quick answer: can you make money doing covers on YouTube?

Yes, sometimes — but cover song monetisation on YouTube usually depends on copyright owners, music publishers, and Content ID policies.

That means a cover video can earn money, but the uploader often does not control all of that revenue and may have to share it or lose it entirely depending on the rights situation.

YouTube has official guidance explaining that creators in the YouTube Partner Programme can sometimes share revenue from eligible cover song videos once music publisher owners claim those videos, and that payout is handled on a pro rata basis.

That is the key word: eligible. Not every cover qualifies, not every rights holder allows monetisation, and not every claimed cover turns into revenue for the uploader.

Why cover songs are complicated on YouTube

A cover song seems simple from the creator side. You perform someone else’s song, upload it, and hope the audience loves it.

From a rights and monetisation point of view, though, there are at least two different copyright layers involved:

  • the composition itself, owned or controlled by the songwriter or publisher
  • the sound recording, which in a cover is your own new recording, not the original master

That is why covers are not the same as uploading the original recording, but they also are not free of copyright issues. YouTube’s broader copyright guidance makes clear that rights holders can use Content ID to block, monetise, or track videos that use copyrighted material, and those actions can differ by territory.

Issue Why it matters for cover songs
Composition rights The underlying song still belongs to the songwriter or publisher
Content ID claims The cover can still be identified and claimed by rights owners
Revenue ownership The uploader may not keep all monetisation
Territory rules A cover may be monetised in one region and blocked in another

Can you monetize cover songs on YouTube?

Yes, but only in the situations YouTube and the rights holders allow.

YouTube explains that some cover videos can be monetised through revenue sharing when the music publisher owners claim the video and opt into that arrangement. It also makes clear that this only applies to eligible cover videos.

Plain English version: you can sometimes earn from a cover, but you should not assume you automatically own or keep all the ad revenue just because you recorded the performance yourself.

What usually happens to monetised covers?

  • the rights holder claims the cover
  • the video may stay live
  • the video may be monetised
  • the uploader may receive only part of the revenue, or in some cases none of it

That is why the old “you can make money from covers” advice needs context. It is directionally true, but operationally messy.

Content ID, copyright claims, and revenue sharing

This is where the real platform mechanics show up.

YouTube says Content ID can let rights holders take one of several actions on matching videos, including:

  • blocking the video
  • monetising the video
  • tracking the video’s viewership stats

Those actions can also be territory-specific, which means a video may be monetised in one country and blocked in another.

Content ID outcome What it means for your cover
Monetise The video stays live and revenue may go to the rights holder or be shared
Track The video stays up, but the rights holder monitors it
Block The video may be unavailable in some regions or removed from viewing

This is why some creators see a copyright claim and still keep the video live, while others get blocked or demonetised. It depends on the rights owner’s chosen policy.

This is the bit many creators either never hear or quietly ignore: a cover song on YouTube is not just a YouTube problem. It is also a rights and licensing problem.

YouTube’s own cover-song monetisation guidance is narrow and conditional. The fact that some covers remain online does not mean every cover upload is fully cleared in a simple, universal way.

Important reality: “I uploaded a cover and it stayed live” is not the same as “I fully control the rights and monetisation”.

That distinction matters if you are trying to build a real business around cover content rather than just post for fun.

How creators actually make money from covers on YouTube

There are a few real-world ways creators still use covers to generate income, even when direct ad revenue is unreliable.

Method Why it works How reliable it is
Revenue sharing on eligible claimed covers YouTube allows some cover videos to monetise on a shared basis Moderate to inconsistent
Using covers to grow an audience Popular songs can attract discovery faster than unknown originals High as a growth tactic
Converting fans to original music Covers can introduce viewers to your own songs High if your funnel is strong
Memberships, Patreon, tips, and direct support Fans support you, not just the specific song rights High if audience loyalty is strong
Live bookings, coaching, or music services Your performance ability becomes the product Potentially very strong

That is why the smartest cover-song strategy is usually not “I will live on AdSense from covers alone”. It is “I will use covers as one audience-building layer inside a broader music business.”

Smart move for music creators: use cover songs to attract attention, then use DistroKid to release your original music and eligible cover songs properly across streaming platforms. That way you are not just chasing YouTube ad revenue — you are building a music catalogue and audience that can grow beyond one platform.

A smarter strategy for cover-song creators

If I were advising a musician who wants to use cover songs on YouTube, I would not build the whole plan around hoping the ad revenue works out.

A stronger strategy usually looks like this:

  1. Use covers to attract discovery around familiar songs.
  2. Use descriptions, pinned comments, and channel structure to lead viewers toward your original music.
  3. Collect audience attention into email lists, memberships, socials, or streaming follows.
  4. Treat any cover revenue share as a bonus, not the whole business model.
  5. Build originals, services, merch, licensing, or fan-supported offers around that audience.

This is the same broader lesson I give many creators: the channels that last usually do not rely on one fragile income stream. If you want the bigger monetisation picture, also read What Percentage of YouTubers Make Money?, Do YouTubers Get Paid If You Have YouTube Premium?, and How Much Money Does 1 Million YouTube Views Make?.

If you are serious about turning cover-song traffic into a real music career, you need somewhere to send people next. That is why I like DistroKid. It is not just for your original songs. DistroKid also supports eligible cover-song distribution and cover licensing, which means you can use covers for discovery and then push listeners toward your own releases, artist profiles, and streaming catalogue. In other words, covers can get you found, but your originals are what help you build something you control.

The harder truth is this: if all your momentum lives only on YouTube, then you are still renting your audience from one platform. If you turn that attention into released music on streaming platforms, you start building a catalogue that can keep working for you long after one cover video cools off.

Important: DistroKid can help with eligible cover-song distribution and licensing, but that does not mean every music idea is automatically safe to upload. Covers, samples, remixes, and derivative works all carry different rights issues, so treat cover licensing as a real process, not a loophole.

Fresh official facts worth knowing

This topic gets much stronger when you anchor it to current YouTube documentation instead of recycled myths.

Fact Why it matters What it means in practice
YouTube allows some eligible cover videos in the Partner Programme to share revenue after publisher claims Confirms some cover monetisation is possible Some covers can earn, but only under specific rights-holder conditions
Content ID can block, monetise, or track matching videos, including on a territory-specific basis Explains why covers behave differently across songs and countries The same cover may be fine in one place and restricted in another
YouTube’s copyright systems are built around rightsholder control Reinforces why the uploader does not control everything Uploading a cover does not automatically give you full monetisation rights
DistroKid offers cover-song licensing for eligible covers for an additional yearly fee Shows there is a legitimate distribution route beyond YouTube alone You can use covers for discovery and still build a wider streaming presence
DistroKid says artists keep 100% of royalties on its core distribution model Strengthens the case for using covers as discovery while building an original catalogue you control more directly Original music usually gives you more long-term leverage than relying on cover-video ad revenue alone

Video pick: Think like a creator business, not just a cover uploader

Covers can drive discovery, but the channels that last usually connect audience growth to a stronger business system.

Tools that genuinely help cover creators build something bigger

The old tools section needed a full rebuild. Tools should support a strategy, not pretend to replace one. These are the ones I would actually recommend first because they are relevant, trustworthy, and already supported by useful content on this site.

Tool Best for Why it earns a place here Best next step
YouTube Studio Monitoring claims, watch time, audience behaviour, and revenue mix This is where you can see how your cover content is actually performing and whether claims affect monetisation Learn how to read the right signals
vidIQ Researching song-driven demand and discoverability Useful when you want to understand which music-related topics and titles attract search or suggestion traffic Try vidIQ or read my vidIQ review
TubeBuddy Workflow and publishing support Helpful when you need a cleaner process around uploads, metadata, testing, and optimisation Try TubeBuddy or read my TubeBuddy review
StreamYard Live performance, fan interaction, and direct support formats Useful if you want to turn music attention into live sessions, chats, Q&As, and stronger viewer relationships Try StreamYard or read my StreamYard review
DistroKid Publishing original music and eligible cover songs to streaming platforms Covers can bring attention, but DistroKid helps you turn that attention into a real catalogue by releasing your original songs and eligible cover songs across major platforms. That makes it easier to build an artist profile, grow monthly listeners, and move beyond relying only on YouTube cover traffic. Try DistroKid

Which tool should you pick first?

  • Start with YouTube Studio if you want to understand how claims and audience behaviour affect your covers.
  • Use vidIQ or TubeBuddy if you need help packaging and discovering opportunity.
  • Use StreamYard if direct fan interaction matters to your model.
  • Use DistroKid if your bigger goal is to convert cover attention into original-music growth.

What I would do if I wanted to build a cover-song channel today

  1. Use covers for discovery, not as the whole business plan.
  2. Expect claims and plan around them.
  3. Build clear bridges to your original music and owned audience.
  4. Diversify beyond ad revenue from covers.
  5. Treat every cover upload as a funnel, not just a one-off performance.

Final thoughts

If you came here for the fast answer, here it is again: yes, you can sometimes make money doing covers on YouTube, but the rights holders, Content ID, and YouTube’s policies often control how that money is shared or restricted.

That means covers can be useful, profitable, and audience-building — but they are rarely the clean, simple monetisation lane many creators imagine.

The smartest move is to use covers strategically, not blindly. Let them bring attention, then turn that attention into something you control more directly.

If you want help building that kind of channel, start with Who Is Alan Spicer?, read how I help creators and brands grow, or book a discovery call.

Frequently asked questions

Can you make money doing covers on YouTube?

Sometimes, yes. YouTube says creators in the Partner Programme can share revenue from eligible cover videos when music publisher owners claim them, but this is conditional and not universal.

Do you own the monetisation on your cover song video?

Not necessarily. Rights holders and publishers can claim the video and may share, track, or take monetisation depending on their policy.

Can cover songs get copyright claims on YouTube?

Yes. Content ID can identify and act on videos containing copyrighted music, including monetising, tracking, or blocking them.

Can a cover song be blocked in some countries but not others?

Yes. YouTube says Content ID actions can be territory-specific.

Are covers a good growth strategy on YouTube?

They can be. Covers can attract discovery around familiar songs, but the strongest long-term strategy usually uses them to lead viewers toward original music or direct support.

Should musicians rely on cover-song ad revenue alone?

Usually not. Covers are better treated as one discovery layer inside a wider artist business model.

What is the smarter business move for cover artists?

Use covers to attract attention, then convert viewers into fans of your originals, memberships, live shows, products, or direct support.

Do rights holders always block cover songs?

No. Some rights holders monetise, some track, and some block, depending on their policy.

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Categories
BUSINESS TIPS HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE YOUTUBE

How To Use The Internet To Make Money [Expert Advice]

online money making, side hustles, make money online, writing jobs, freelance writing, blogging income, ghostwriting, short form content, TikTok earnings, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Amazon KDP, low content books, journals, planners, notebooks, activity books, book cover design, publishing books, AI tools, ChatGPT, content creation, automate customer service, personal assistant AI, selling items online, flipping stuff, eBay selling, Facebook Marketplace, online tutoring, tutor income, math tutoring, science tutoring, English tutoring, productivity tools, passive income, digital products, content marketing, social media marketing, freelance platforms, Upwork, Fiverr, Reedsy, Canva, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Word, Scrivener, IngramSpark, VIPKid, iTalki, Wyzant, Preply

In the modern digital age, leveraging the internet to create multiple income streams has become a viable and attractive option for many.

This guide will explore various side hustles that can help you generate income online, broken down into actionable steps and supported by statistical data.

You Make Money When You Provide Value

The fundamental principle of making money online is to provide value. Whether through content, services, or products, value is the key driver of income. Understanding your target audience and delivering what they need or want is crucial. By focusing on the needs and wants of your audience, you can create products, offer services, or produce content that resonates with them.

This not only builds trust but also encourages loyalty and repeat business. Always ask yourself: How can I solve a problem or improve someone’s life? The answer to this question will guide your efforts in providing real value.

Side Hustle Idea 1: Writing

Writing is a versatile side hustle that can take many forms, from freelance writing to blogging and even ghostwriting. It requires a strong command of language, creativity, and the ability to meet deadlines. Freelance writing allows you to work on various projects for different clients, providing flexibility and diversity in your work. Blogging, on the other hand, lets you share your expertise, passions, or experiences with a broader audience, potentially earning money through ads, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing.

Ghostwriting involves writing content for others who then claim authorship. It can be highly lucrative, especially if you establish a reputation for quality work.

Statistics

Type of Writing Average Income (per year) Platforms to Use
Freelance Writing $40,000 – $60,000 Upwork, Fiverr
Blogging $10,000 – $50,000 WordPress, Medium
Ghostwriting $20,000 – $80,000 Reedsy, Upwork

Writing offers flexibility and the opportunity to earn substantial income, especially as you build a portfolio and reputation. Consistent, high-quality work will attract better-paying clients over time.

Side Hustle Idea 2: Creating Short Form Content

Short-form content, such as TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, has surged in popularity. This type of content is brief, engaging, and highly shareable, making it perfect for capturing the attention of a broad audience.

To succeed, you need to understand what appeals to your audience and be able to deliver it quickly and effectively. Popular short-form content often includes how-to guides, humorous skits, product reviews, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your life or business.

Statistics

Platform Average Earnings (per 1,000 views) Top Content Categories
TikTok $0.02 – $0.04 Entertainment, DIY, Education
Instagram Reels $0.01 – $0.03 Lifestyle, Fashion, Fitness
YouTube Shorts $0.01 – $0.03 Vlogs, How-Tos, Reviews

Engaging short-form content can quickly amass followers and generate ad revenue, brand partnerships, and sponsorships. Success requires creativity, consistency, and an understanding of current trends.

How To Make Money Selling Low Content Books On Amazon KDP

Low content books, such as journals, planners, and notebooks, are a profitable niche on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). These books have minimal written content, relying more on design and structure to appeal to users.

Creating these books involves designing attractive covers and interiors, and they can be marketed to various niches, from daily planners for professionals to customized journals for hobbyists.

Statistics

Type of Book Average Monthly Sales Profit Margin
Journals 100 – 500 units 40% – 60%
Planners 150 – 600 units 45% – 65%
Notebooks 200 – 700 units 50% – 70%

Creating and publishing these books require minimal content but can generate steady income with the right design and marketing strategies. Identify popular themes and customize your books to cater to specific audiences to maximize sales.

How to Make Activity Books

Activity books, including coloring books, puzzle books, and educational workbooks, cater to various audiences and can be a lucrative venture.

These books are designed to entertain and educate, making them popular among children and adults alike. To create a successful activity book, you need to identify your target audience, design engaging and unique content, and publish it on a platform like Amazon KDP.

Steps:

  1. Identify your target audience: Research the types of activity books that are in demand.
  2. Design engaging and unique content: Use tools like Canva or Adobe Illustrator to create your book.
  3. Use Amazon KDP to publish: Follow Amazon’s guidelines to upload and publish your book.

Activity books often have higher profit margins due to their perceived value and specific audience. Tailor your content to meet the interests and needs of your audience for better engagement and sales.

How to Make Book Covers

Designing book covers is a specialized skill that can be monetized on platforms like Fiverr and 99designs. A well-designed book cover can significantly impact a book’s sales by attracting potential readers. This service requires a good eye for design, proficiency with design software, and an understanding of the market trends in book cover aesthetics.

Statistics

Service Average Income (per project) Popular Platforms
Book Cover Design $100 – $500 Fiverr, 99designs

High-quality book covers significantly impact sales, making this a valuable service for authors and publishers. Offering customization and understanding the genre-specific design trends can help you stand out in the competitive market.

How to Publish Your Book

Publishing a book has never been easier, thanks to platforms like Amazon KDP and IngramSpark. These platforms allow you to publish both digital and print versions of your book, making it accessible to a global audience. The process involves several steps, from writing and formatting your book to designing a cover and uploading it to the publishing platform.

Steps:

  1. Write and format your book: Use tools like Microsoft Word or Scrivener.
  2. Design a cover: Create a professional-looking cover using design software.
  3. Upload to a publishing platform: Follow the platform’s guidelines to ensure your book meets all requirements.
  4. Market your book: Use social media, email marketing, and other channels to promote your book.

Publishing independently gives you control over royalties and distribution. It also allows you to retain the rights to your work and make decisions about pricing and marketing.

Start Using AI to Make Money

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can enhance productivity and create new income streams. These tools can be used in various ways, from automating customer service to generating content. For example, AI can help you write blog posts, manage your social media accounts, or even develop business strategies based on data analysis.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT, an advanced language model, can be used to generate content, automate customer service, and more. It can assist with writing, brainstorming ideas, and even conducting research. By integrating ChatGPT into your workflow, you can save time and focus on more strategic tasks.

Applications:

  • Content Creation: Generate blog posts, articles, and social media content quickly and efficiently.
  • Customer Service: Automate responses and provide 24/7 support to your customers.
  • Personal Assistant: Manage emails, schedules, and tasks, helping you stay organized and productive.

Selling and Flipping Stuff

Selling and flipping items on platforms like eBay and Facebook Marketplace can be profitable. This involves buying items at a low cost and selling them at a higher price. Successful flipping requires market research, negotiation skills, and the ability to identify valuable items.

Statistics

Item Type Average Profit Margin Platforms
Electronics 20% – 50% eBay, Facebook Marketplace
Furniture 30% – 60% Craigslist, OfferUp
Clothing 10% – 40% Poshmark, Depop

Identifying undervalued items and reselling them at a profit requires research and market knowledge. Look for items in good condition and consider refurbishing them to increase their value.

Online Tutoring

Online tutoring offers flexible income opportunities, especially in high-demand subjects. It allows you to share your knowledge and expertise with students worldwide. Whether you’re tutoring in academic subjects, languages, or professional skills, there’s a demand for personalized instruction.

Statistics

Subject Average Hourly Rate Platforms
Math $20 – $50 Tutor.com, Chegg Tutors
Science $25 – $60 Wyzant, Preply
English $15 – $40 VIPKid, iTalki

Online tutoring is a rewarding way to share knowledge while earning a decent income. Tailoring your teaching methods to individual students’ needs can lead to better results and more referrals.

Making money online involves identifying opportunities, providing value, and leveraging the right platforms. Whether through writing, content creation, selling products, or offering services, the internet offers numerous avenues for generating income.

The key is to start, be consistent, and adapt to changes in the market. With dedication and the right strategies, you can build a successful online income stream that complements your lifestyle and goals.

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HOW TO GET MORE VIEWS ON YOUTUBE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE LISTS

Top 5 AI Tools to Make Money Easily and Effortlessly

Are you looking to boost your online presence and make money with minimal effort? Alan Spicer’s latest video breaks down five essential AI tools that can help you grow your YouTube channel and monetize your content effortlessly. Let’s dive into these game-changing tools:

1. Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

Amazon KDP is a fantastic platform for self-publishing eBooks. You can leverage AI tools like ChatGPT to help write and format your content, making it easier to publish high-quality eBooks and reach a global audience.

This can open up a steady stream of passive income.

2. HeyGen – Dubbing and Video Translation

HeyGen simplifies the process of dubbing your videos in multiple languages. This AI tool allows you to reach a broader audience by making your content accessible to non-English speakers.

HeyGen is revolutionizing how content creators can reach a global audience. By utilizing advanced AI technology, HeyGen allows you to dub your videos into multiple languages with ease. Here’s how it works and why it’s a game-changer for your YouTube channel:

How HeyGen Works

HeyGen uses sophisticated AI algorithms to accurately translate and dub your video content. The process involves:

  • Transcription: The tool transcribes your original video into text.
  • Translation: The transcribed text is then translated into the target language(s) using advanced AI translation models.
  • Voice Dubbing: The translated text is dubbed over your original video using high-quality AI-generated voices that match the tone and style of your content.

Benefits of Using HeyGen

  1. Global Audience Reach: By dubbing your videos into multiple languages, you can tap into non-English speaking markets, significantly expanding your audience base. This is particularly useful for niche content that might have a substantial following in specific regions.
  2. Increased Engagement: Viewers are more likely to engage with content in their native language. Dubbing your videos can lead to higher watch times, better retention rates, and more interaction on your channel.
  3. Cost-Effective: Traditional dubbing can be expensive and time-consuming. HeyGen automates the process, reducing costs and turnaround times. This allows even small creators to benefit from multilingual content without breaking the bank.
  4. Consistency and Quality: HeyGen ensures that the quality of dubbing is consistent across all languages. The AI voices are designed to be natural and engaging, maintaining the professional quality of your videos.
  5. SEO and Discoverability: Multilingual content can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. By providing content in various languages, your videos are more likely to appear in search results for international users, driving more traffic to your channel.

How to Get Started with HeyGen

Getting started with HeyGen is straightforward:

  • Sign Up: Create an account on the HeyGen platform.
  • Upload Your Video: Upload the video you want to dub.
  • Select Languages: Choose the languages you want for dubbing.
  • Generate and Download: Let HeyGen do its magic. Once the dubbing is complete, download your multilingual videos and upload them to your YouTube channel.

3. Syllaby.io – Streamline Content Creation

Content creation can often be a daunting and time-consuming task, but Syllaby.io is here to make your life easier. This AI-powered tool is designed to help you generate content ideas and streamline the creation process, making it perfect for YouTube creators, bloggers, and digital marketers. Here’s how Syllaby.io can transform your content strategy:

How Syllaby.io Works

Syllaby.io uses advanced AI algorithms to analyze trends, keywords, and audience preferences, providing you with:

  • Content Ideas: Generate a list of potential topics based on your niche and audience interest.
  • Outlines and Scripts: Create detailed outlines and even full scripts for your videos or blog posts, ensuring your content is well-structured and engaging.
  • SEO Optimization: Incorporate relevant keywords and phrases to improve your content’s visibility on search engines.

Benefits of Using Syllaby.io

  1. Time Efficiency: One of the most significant advantages of Syllaby.io is the amount of time it saves. Instead of spending hours brainstorming and researching, you can quickly generate content ideas and outlines, allowing you to focus more on production and less on planning.
  2. Enhanced Creativity: Syllaby.io helps spark creativity by providing a continuous stream of fresh ideas. This can be particularly useful during times when you’re experiencing writer’s block or running low on inspiration.
  3. Content Consistency: Maintaining a consistent content schedule is crucial for audience retention. Syllaby.io helps you plan your content calendar by providing a steady flow of ideas, ensuring you never miss a posting deadline.
  4. SEO Benefits: With built-in SEO optimization features, Syllaby.io ensures that your content is not only engaging but also discoverable. By integrating relevant keywords, you can boost your search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic.
  5. Audience Engagement: By analyzing what your audience is interested in, Syllaby.io helps you create content that resonates with your viewers. This targeted approach leads to higher engagement rates and more meaningful interactions with your audience.

Getting Started with Syllaby.io

To start using Syllaby.io:

  • Sign Up: Create an account on the Syllaby.io platform.
  • Define Your Niche: Input your niche or area of focus.
  • Generate Ideas: Let the AI analyze trends and provide you with a list of content ideas.
  • Create and Publish: Use the generated outlines and scripts to create high-quality content and publish it on your preferred platforms.

4. Ossa – Faceless Videos

Ossa is an AI tool designed to help creators produce high-quality, engaging videos without ever showing their faces. This is particularly beneficial for those who prefer to remain anonymous or are camera-shy but still want to share valuable content with their audience.

Here’s how Ossa can transform your video creation process:

How Ossa Works

Ossa leverages advanced AI technology to create faceless videos by:

  • Visual Storytelling: Utilizing stock footage, animations, and graphics to visually represent your script.
  • Voiceovers: Adding AI-generated or human-like voiceovers to narrate your content.
  • Editing and Effects: Automatically editing the video with transitions, effects, and background music to enhance viewer engagement.

Benefits of Using Ossa

  1. Anonymity and Privacy: If you prefer not to appear on camera, Ossa provides the perfect solution. You can share your knowledge, opinions, and tutorials without revealing your identity, maintaining your privacy while still building a personal brand.
  2. Professional Quality: Ossa ensures that the final product is polished and professional. The tool’s ability to seamlessly integrate visuals, voiceovers, and effects means your videos will look and sound high-quality, which is essential for retaining viewers and building credibility.
  3. Time-Saving: Creating videos from scratch can be time-consuming, especially if you’re handling all aspects, from filming to editing. Ossa automates much of this process, allowing you to focus on creating compelling content without getting bogged down in technical details.
  4. Cost-Effective: Hiring a professional videographer or editor can be expensive. Ossa provides a cost-effective alternative by automating these tasks, making high-quality video production accessible even for creators with limited budgets.
  5. Versatility: Ossa can be used for a variety of video types, including tutorials, reviews, explainer videos, and more. Its flexibility means you can adapt it to suit different content needs and styles, broadening the scope of your creative projects.

Getting Started with Ossa

To start using Ossa:

  • Sign Up: Create an account on the Ossa platform.
  • Upload Your Script: Provide the script or main points of your video.
  • Select Visuals and Voiceovers: Choose from a library of stock footage, animations, and voiceover options.
  • Generate and Download: Let Ossa compile and edit the video. Once it’s ready, download and upload it to your YouTube channel or other platforms.

5. OpusClip – Make Clips from Your Videos FAST

OpusClip is a powerful AI tool designed to help creators produce short, engaging clips from longer video content. This tool is essential for maximizing your content’s reach and impact on various social media platforms, which thrive on brief, attention-grabbing videos. Here’s how OpusClip can revolutionize your video marketing strategy:

How OpusClip Works

OpusClip uses advanced AI to identify key moments in your longer videos and automatically generate short clips. The process involves:

  • Content Analysis: The AI scans your video for highlights, important quotes, and engaging moments.
  • Clip Creation: It then creates concise, high-quality clips that retain the essence of the original content.
  • Editing and Enhancement: The tool adds captions, transitions, and effects to make the clips more engaging and shareable.

Benefits of Using OpusClip

  1. Increased Engagement: Short-form videos are highly popular on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. OpusClip helps you tap into this trend, increasing your content’s engagement and reach.
  2. Content Repurposing: With OpusClip, you can easily repurpose your existing content, giving it new life and extending its value. This is a great way to maximize the return on investment for your original video productions.
  3. Time Efficiency: Manually creating short clips can be labor-intensive. OpusClip automates this process, saving you time and allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your content strategy.
  4. Professional Quality: OpusClip ensures that your clips are professionally edited, with smooth transitions, clear captions, and engaging effects. This professional touch is crucial for maintaining your brand’s image and keeping your audience engaged.
  5. SEO and Discoverability: By creating multiple short clips from a single video, you can increase your chances of being discovered by new audiences. These clips can act as teasers, driving traffic back to your full-length content and boosting your overall SEO performance.

Getting Started with OpusClip

To start using OpusClip:

  • Sign Up: Create an account on the OpusClip platform.
  • Upload Your Video: Upload the video from which you want to create short clips.
  • Generate Clips: Let the AI analyze your video and automatically generate short clips.
  • Edit and Customize: Make any necessary edits and add custom elements to enhance the clips.
  • Share: Download the finished clips and share them across your social media platforms.

—–

Don’t miss out on these incredible AI tools that can transform your content creation process and boost your earnings. Watch Alan Spicer’s video to get detailed insights and start growing your YouTube channel with the power of AI today!

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Maximizing Your Time: How to Balance a 9-5 Job and a Profitable Side Hustle

Maximizing Your Time: How to Balance a 9-5 Job and a Profitable Side Hustle

Side hustles can be a great way to make some extra money outside of your 9-5 job.

With the rise of the gig economy, there are now more opportunities than ever to earn money on the side.

Whether you’re looking to pay off debt, save for a vacation, or just have a little extra spending money, a side hustle can help you reach your financial goals.

The list of side hustles below includes a variety of options that can be done even if you have a full-time job. From online tutoring and teaching to freelance writing and editing, there are many ways to use your skills and expertise to earn extra money.

One of the biggest advantages of side hustles is that they can often be done remotely and on your own schedule. This allows you to fit them in around your full-time job and other commitments.

For example, if you’re a graphic designer, you can take on freelance projects in the evenings or on weekends. If you’re a virtual assistant, you can work remotely and provide administrative or technical support to businesses or individuals.

Another advantage of side hustles is that they can be a great way to explore new interests and passions. For example, if you love animals, pet-sitting or dog-walking can be a great side hustle. If you enjoy working with kids, babysitting can be a great option. If you’re handy and enjoy home improvement tasks, handyman services can be a great way to earn extra money.

  1. Online Tutoring/Teaching

Leverage your knowledge in a specific subject area to educate and mentor students through online tutoring or teaching. By using platforms such as Zoom or Skype, you can offer your services remotely and tailor your schedule to fit your primary job.

  1. Freelance Writing or Video Editing

Offer your writing or video editing skills to create engaging articles, blog posts, or visual content for websites, businesses, and publications. With the option to work remotely and set your own hours, you can easily juggle freelance projects alongside your day job.

  1. Graphic Design Services

Utilize your design expertise to craft eye-catching graphics, logos, and other visual elements for businesses or individuals. Offering your services remotely, you can work on design projects at your convenience without disrupting your regular work hours.

  1. Virtual Assistance

Provide administrative or technical support to businesses or individuals from the comfort of your home. As a virtual assistant, you can manage tasks like data entry, scheduling appointments, and handling emails, making it a flexible side hustle to complement your 9-to-5 job.

  1. Pet-sitting or Dog-walking

For animal lovers, caring for pets while their owners are away or busy can be a fulfilling and enjoyable side gig. Offer pet-sitting or dog-walking services in your local area to build a clientele that fits your schedule.

  1. Babysitting Services

If you enjoy working with children, consider offering babysitting services to help parents who need a break or are occupied with work. With flexible hours, you can provide childcare on evenings or weekends without interfering with your day job.

  1. House Cleaning Services

Offer your skills in tidying and cleaning to help individuals who are unable to maintain their homes themselves or simply lack the time. By setting your own hours, you can accommodate house cleaning tasks around your primary job.

  1. Personal Shopping and Errand Running

Assist those who are unable to run errands or shop for themselves, or who simply need a helping hand due to their busy schedules. By being efficient and reliable, you can effectively manage your time while fulfilling the needs of your clients.

  1. Photography Services

Put your photography skills to use by capturing precious moments for events, families, or businesses. With the flexibility to choose your projects and schedule, photography can be a lucrative and enjoyable side hustle.

  1. Handyman Services

Offer your expertise in minor repairs and home improvement tasks to help people who require assistance with various household projects. By setting your own hours and selecting the jobs you take on, you can easily balance handyman services with your day job.

Note: These are just a few examples of potential side hustles, but there are many more options available depending on your skills and interests. It’s also important to note that side hustles may require some startup costs, and it’s always a good idea to research and plan before starting a new venture.

Does YouTube Kids have ads? 1

Stats About Side Hustles

  1. Side hustle prevalence:
  • 45% of working Americans reported having a side hustle in 2021.
  • The percentage of millennials with a side hustle was 50%, compared to 40% for Gen X and 28% for Baby Boomers.
  1. Income generated by side hustles:
  • On average, a side hustler earns an extra $1,122 per month.
  • 15% of side hustlers earn over $2,000 per month from their side hustle.
  1. Most popular side hustle categories:
  • Selling items online (e.g., eBay, Etsy, Amazon): 26%
  • Freelancing (e.g., writing, graphic design, programming): 20%
  • Rideshare driving (e.g., Uber, Lyft): 12%
  • Food delivery (e.g., DoorDash, Grubhub): 10%
  • Tutoring or teaching (e.g., VIPKid, Teachable): 8%
  1. Reasons for starting a side hustle:
  • Extra income: 65%
  • Explore a passion: 45%
  • Build new skills: 35%
  • Networking opportunities: 25%
  • As a potential full-time career: 20%
  1. Time spent on side hustles per week:
  • 1-5 hours: 30%
  • 6-10 hours: 40%
  • 11-15 hours: 20%
  • 16-20 hours: 7%
  • 21+ hours: 3%

FAQ’s About Side Hustles

  1. What is a side hustle?
  1. What are some examples of side hustles?
  • Examples of side hustles include freelancing, pet-sitting, dog-walking, tutoring, writing or editing, graphic design, virtual assistant, photography, personal shopping and errand running, and handyman services.
  1. Can I do a side hustle if I have a full-time job?
  • Yes, many side hustles can be done on your own schedule and remotely, allowing you to fit them in around your full-time job.
  1. How much money can I make from a side hustle?
  • The amount of money you can make from a side hustle depends on the type of side hustle you choose, the amount of time and effort you put into it, and your level of skill and expertise. Some people make a full-time income from their side hustle, while others make extra money on the side.
  1. Do I need any special skills or qualifications to start a side hustle?
  • It depends on the side hustle you choose. Some side hustles require specific skills or qualifications, while others do not. It’s important to research and plan before starting a new venture.
  1. Can I use my side hustle as a replacement for my full-time job?
  1. Do I need to pay taxes on the money I earn from my side hustle?
  1. How do I find side hustle opportunities?
  • There are many ways to find side hustle opportunities, including online platforms, local classifieds, and networking with other entrepreneurs and professionals.
  1. How much startup costs should I expect with a side hustle?
  • The startup costs will depend on the side hustle you choose. Some side hustles may have little to no startup costs, while others may require a significant investment. It’s important to research and plan before starting a new venture.
  1. How can I balance a side hustle with a full-time job?
  • It’s important to set realistic goals and manage your time effectively. It’s also important to communicate with your employer and make sure your side hustle does not interfere with your full-time job.
  1. How do I market my side hustle to attract customers?
  • There are a variety of ways to market your side hustle, including social media, online platforms, referral marketing, and networking.
  1. How can I manage my finances when running a side hustle?
  • It’s important to keep track of your income and expenses, and set aside money for taxes. You should also consider setting up a separate bank account for your side hustle finances.
  1. How do I know if a side hustle is right for me?
  • Consider your skills, interests, and goals when choosing a side hustle. Research the market and the competition, and make sure you have a plan for how to balance it with your full-time job.
  1. Can I get insurance for my side hustle?
  • It depends on the type of side hustle you have, but there are insurance options available for some side hustles such as pet-sitting or handyman services. It’s important to research and consider insurance options before starting your side hustle.
  1. How can I scale my side hustle to make more money?
  • Consider expanding your services, increasing your prices, or taking on more clients. It’s also important to continue to market and promote your side hustle to attract new customers.
  1. How can I make my side hustle stand out from the competition?
  • Offer unique services, build a strong brand, and provide excellent customer service. Networking and building relationships with other entrepreneurs and professionals can also help you stand out.
  1. How can I network and find other like-minded individuals in the side hustle industry?
  • You can network and find like-minded individuals in the side hustle industry by attending networking events, joining online communities, or reaching out to other entrepreneurs and professionals in your field.
  1. How can I measure my success and track my progress when running a side hustle?
  • You can measure your success and track your progress by keeping track of your income and expenses, setting goals, and regularly reviewing your progress.
  1. How do I know when it’s time to quit my side hustle?
  • It’s important to regularly review your progress and consider factors such as income, time, and stress. If your side hustle is no longer meeting your financial or personal goals, it may be time to consider quitting.
  1. How can I find resources and support when running a side hustle?
  • There are many resources and support available for side hustlers, including online communities, networking groups, local small business resources, and entrepreneurial programs.
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DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE

YouTube CPM Examples: A Niche-by-Niche Breakdown

YouTube CPM Examples: A Niche-by-Niche Breakdown

The world of YouTube is an ever-evolving landscape, teeming with content creators and advertisers trying to catch the attention of viewers.

One crucial aspect that plays a significant role in determining the earnings of a YouTuber is the Cost Per Mille (CPM) and Revenue Per Mille (RPM). In this friendly article, we will explore the highs and lows of CPMs on YouTube, with a comprehensive comparison of various niches.

Additionally, we will provide a brief overview of CPM and RPM, as well as examples of how they are calculated.

Understanding CPM and RPM on YouTube

Before diving into the highs and lows, it is important to understand the basic concepts of CPM and RPM. CPM, which stands for Cost Per Mille, is the amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 ad impressions on a video. RPM, on the other hand, stands for Revenue Per Mille and represents the amount a content creator earns for every 1,000 views of their video.

The primary difference between the two lies in who they apply to: CPM concerns advertisers, while RPM concerns content creators. Moreover, CPM only accounts for ad impressions, whereas RPM considers all revenue sources, including ads, channel memberships, Super Chat, and YouTube Premium revenue.

Calculating CPM and RPM

To illustrate how CPM and RPM are calculated, let’s take the example of a YouTube video with the following statistics:

  • Total ad impressions: 10,000
  • Total ad revenue: $50
  • Total views: 15,000
  • Other revenue (e.g., memberships, Super Chat, etc.): $20

To calculate the CPM, you would divide the total ad revenue by the total ad impressions, then multiply by 1,000:

CPM = ($50 / 10,000) * 1,000 = $5

To calculate the RPM, you would add the ad revenue to other revenue sources and divide the total by the number of views, then multiply by 1,000:

RPM = (($50 + $20) / 15,000) * 1,000 = $4.67

Comparing CPMs and RPMs Across Niches

Now that we have a basic understanding of CPM and RPM, let’s explore the highs and lows of these metrics across various niches on YouTube. The table below provides a comparison of average CPMs and RPMs for different niches:

Niche CPM RPM
Animals/Pets $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Art $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Beauty $2.00 – $10.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Career $3.00 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Education (K-12) $2.50 – $12.00 $2.50 – $8.00
Family/Parenting $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Fitness/Dance $2.00 – $10.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Gardening $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Home Improvement $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
How-To $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Language Learning $2.50 – $12.00 $2.50 – $8.00
Lifestyle $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Marketing $3.00 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Mental Health $2.00 – $10.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Motivation $2.50 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Outdoors $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Personal Finance $3.00 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Science Fiction/Fantasy $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00
Self-Improvement $2.50 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Social Media $2.50 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Spirituality $2.00 – $10.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Technology Reviews $2.00 – $12.00 $2.50 – $6.00
True Crime $2.50 – $12.00 $2.50 – $7.00
Vlogging $1.50 – $8.00 $1.50 – $5.00

As you can see, the CPMs and RPMs vary widely by niche. Finance and technology tend to have higher CPMs, while gaming and food tend to have lower ones. However, it’s important to note that these numbers can change over time and may not be representative of every creator in a particular niche.

It’s important to note that RPM can be impacted by a variety of factors beyond just the CPM, such as the type of ads shown and the location of the audience.

For example, if a creator has a lot of viewers in a country where advertisers are willing to pay more for ads, their RPM may be higher than someone with the same number of views but a different audience location.

Fun Facts About YouTube Income

  1. The highest earners on YouTube are not always in the highest CPM niches. Popular YouTubers with massive subscriber bases and consistent views can earn more in niches with lower CPMs due to their larger audiences.
  2. YouTube’s Partner Program allows content creators to earn money, but they must meet certain eligibility criteria, such as having at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months.
  3. Advertisers are willing to pay more for certain niches, like personal finance and education, because their target audience is typically more engaged and has a higher conversion rate.
  4. YouTubers can increase their earnings by offering exclusive content to channel members or using platforms like Patreon to gain additional support from their audience.

Strategies to Boost Overall RPM Rates on YouTube

  1. Optimize video metadata: Make sure your video titles, descriptions, and tags include relevant keywords to help your content rank better in search results and attract more views.
  2. Create engaging thumbnails: A visually appealing and engaging thumbnail can entice viewers to click on your video, ultimately increasing your views and RPM.
  3. Diversify revenue streams: In addition to ad revenue, consider incorporating channel memberships, Super Chat, merchandise sales, and affiliate marketing to increase your overall RPM.
  4. Improve audience retention: Create high-quality content that keeps viewers engaged for longer periods. The longer a viewer watches your video, the more likely they are to be served ads, thereby increasing your ad revenue and RPM. Pay attention to audience retention analytics in your YouTube Studio to identify areas where viewers drop off and work on improving those aspects of your videos.
  5. Collaborate with other YouTubers: By collaborating with other content creators, you can tap into new audiences, increasing your views and overall RPM. Ensure that the collaboration is mutually beneficial and the content is relevant to both creators’ audiences.
  6. Be consistent with your content: Uploading videos on a regular schedule can help build and maintain an engaged audience, which in turn can improve your RPM over time.
  7. Focus on content quality: High-quality videos with better production values and engaging storylines can attract more viewers and keep them coming back for more. This can result in a higher RPM in the long run.
  8. Interact with your audience: Engage with your viewers by responding to comments, creating content based on their suggestions, and encouraging them to subscribe, like, and share your videos. This helps create a loyal audience, which can lead to more views and higher RPM.

In conclusion, understanding YouTube CPM and RPM can be incredibly valuable for content creators looking to maximize their earnings on the platform. By exploring various niches and their respective CPMs and RPMs, you can make informed decisions about the type of content to create and the strategies to employ.

Remember, consistency, audience engagement, and diversification of revenue streams are key to boosting your overall RPM rates. So, go ahead and unleash your creativity, and happy YouTubing!

If you need a more in-depth deep dive into how to increase your YouTube channel’s CPMs, check out my deep dive blog on how to make more from your channel.

Q: What are YouTube earnings?

A: YouTube earnings refer to the money content creators make from their videos on the platform. This income can come from various sources, including ad revenue, channel memberships, Super Chat, merchandise sales, and YouTube Premium revenue.

Q: How do YouTube CPM and RPM relate to earnings?

A: CPM (Cost Per Mille) is the amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 ad impressions on a video, while RPM (Revenue Per Mille) represents the amount a content creator earns for every 1,000 views of their video. Both metrics are essential in understanding and optimizing YouTube earnings.

Q: How can I calculate my CPM?

A: To calculate CPM, divide the total ad revenue by the total ad impressions and then multiply by 1,000:

CPM = (Total Ad Revenue / Total Ad Impressions) * 1,000

Q: How can I calculate my RPM?

A: To calculate RPM, add the ad revenue to other revenue sources, divide the total by the number of views, and then multiply by 1,000:

RPM = ((Ad Revenue + Other Revenue) / Total Views) * 1,000

Q: How do different niches affect CPM and RPM?

A: CPM and RPM can vary significantly across different niches. Some niches, like personal finance or education, often have higher CPMs and RPMs because advertisers are willing to pay more to reach their target audience, who tend to be more engaged and have higher conversion rates.

Q: Can I increase my RPM without increasing my CPM?

A: Yes, you can increase your RPM without increasing your CPM by diversifying your revenue streams, such as incorporating channel memberships, Super Chat, merchandise sales, and affiliate marketing, as well as by improving your audience retention and engagement.

Q: How do YouTube Premium earnings factor into RPM?

A: YouTube Premium earnings are factored into RPM calculations, as they contribute to the overall revenue a content creator earns. These earnings come from YouTube Premium subscribers who watch your content, and the amount is proportional to their watch time on your videos.

Q: Can I control the ads shown on my videos to increase my CPM?

A: While you can’t directly control which ads are shown on your videos, you can enable or disable certain ad formats and categories within your Google AdSense account. However, it’s essential to strike a balance, as being too restrictive may lead to fewer ads and potentially lower earnings.

Q: Is there a minimum threshold for YouTube earnings?

A: Yes, YouTube has a minimum payment threshold of $100. You must accumulate at least $100 in your AdSense account before receiving a payment.

Q: Are there any requirements for earning money on YouTube?

A: To be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program and earn money, you need to meet specific requirements, including having at least 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months, and adhering to YouTube’s policies and guidelines.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

3 EASY Ways To Make Money with YouTube Shorts

3 EASY Ways To Make Money with YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts is a new short-form video feature on YouTube that allows users to create and share short-form videos, up to 60 seconds long. Shorts can be created using the YouTube app and can include elements such as music, text, and effects.

YouTube Shorts is designed to be a competitor to TikTok and other short-form video platforms. The feature was launched in September 2020 and is currently only available in select countries.

YouTube Shorts is aimed at creators and viewers who enjoy and engage with short-form video content, and it provides a new way for creators to reach and engage with their audiences on YouTube.

How To Make Money with YouTube Shorts

Making money on YouTube Shorts is possible through monetization, where you earn money from advertisements shown on your videos. Here are a few ways you can do this:

  1. Monetization through AdSense: This is where you link your YouTube channel with Google AdSense and earn money from advertisements shown on your videos. The earnings depend on various factors such as views, clicks, and engagement on your videos, and the amount of money you can earn varies.
  2. Affiliate marketing: You can promote products and services on your videos and earn a commission for each sale made through your unique affiliate link. The commission percentage varies depending on the affiliate program you join.
  3. Sponsored content: Brands may pay you to create content promoting their products or services. The amount you earn depends on the brand and the nature of the agreement.

It is challenging to estimate the income from YouTube Shorts as it depends on various factors such as views, engagement, and monetization methods.

However, some YouTubers earn anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars per month from monetization alone.

Note that it takes time and effort to build a large and engaged audience, so don’t expect to make a lot of money overnight.

Here are some frequently asked questions about YouTube Shorts:

What are YouTube Shorts?

  • YouTube Shorts is a new short-form video feature on YouTube that allows users to create and share videos up to 60 seconds in length.

How do I create a YouTube Short?

  • To create a YouTube Short, you’ll need to use the YouTube app on your smartphone. From the app, you can access the Shorts camera, where you can record and edit your video.

Can I monetize my YouTube Shorts?

  • Yes, you can monetize your YouTube Shorts through ads and other monetization methods. However, the rules and requirements for monetization may change over time.

What are the requirements for uploading a YouTube Short?

  • To upload a YouTube Short, you’ll need to have a YouTube account, and your channel must meet YouTube’s Partner Program policies. Additionally, there may be restrictions on the content you can include in your Shorts.

Can I use music in my YouTube Shorts?

  • Yes, you can use music in your YouTube Shorts. However, you must have the rights to use the music, and YouTube may remove videos that violate copyright laws.

Can I edit my YouTube Shorts after I’ve uploaded them?

  • Yes, you can edit your YouTube Shorts after uploading them. From the YouTube app, you can access your video and make changes such as trimming, adding music, or changing the caption.

Can I see the performance of my YouTube Shorts?

  • Yes, you can see the performance of your YouTube Shorts, including views, engagement, and audience retention. From the YouTube Studio, you can access analytics for your Shorts and other videos on your channel.
Categories
BUSINESS TIPS DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE

10 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Run a Business

10 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Run a Business

Are you looking for ways to use ChatGPT to run a business? Here are ten ideas to get you started:

  1. Virtual assistant business: ChatGPT could be used to create virtual assistants that can handle tasks such as scheduling appointments, sending emails, and managing social media accounts. This could be a great way to help busy professionals save time and streamline their workflows.
  2. Chatbot development: If you have a background in coding or web development, ChatGPT could be a useful tool for creating chatbots for businesses to use on their websites or messaging apps. These chatbots could be used to provide customer support, answer frequently asked questions, or handle sales inquiries.
  3. Language translation service: ChatGPT could be used to create a language translation service that can instantly translate text or spoken words from one language to another. This could be a great way to help businesses and individuals communicate with people in different parts of the world.

What is ChatGPT [and how to use it]

  1. Online tutoring service: ChatGPT could be used to create an online tutoring service where students can receive personalized tutoring and homework help in real-time. This could be a great way to help students who are struggling to keep up with their studies or who are looking for extra support.
  2. Social media management service: If you’re a social media pro, ChatGPT could be a useful tool for creating a social media management service. This service could handle tasks such as scheduling posts, responding to comments and messages, and analyzing social media metrics.
  3. Personal shopping assistant: ChatGPT could be used to create a personal shopping assistant that can help users find and purchase products online.
  4. Virtual event coordinator: ChatGPT could be used to create a virtual event coordinator that can handle tasks such as scheduling meetings, sending invites, and managing registrations. This could be a great way to help businesses and individuals plan and execute events online.
  5. Customer support chatbot: ChatGPT could be used to create a customer support chatbot that can handle inquiries and complaints from customers in real-time. This could be a great way to improve customer satisfaction and free up human customer service reps to handle more complex tasks.
  6. Personal finance manager: ChatGPT could be used to create a personal finance manager that can help users track their spending, create budget plans, and make financial decisions. This could be a useful tool for individuals looking to take control of their finances and make better financial decisions.
  7. Online therapy platform: ChatGPT could be used to create an online therapy platform where users can receive counseling and mental health support from licensed therapists. This could be a great way to provide access to mental health care for individuals who may not have access to traditional therapy services.
  8. I hope these business ideas have given you some inspiration for how ChatGPT could be used in different industries. Whether you’re looking to start a virtual assistant business, create a chatbot, or offer online tutoring services, ChatGPT has the potential to be a valuable tool for running a business.

What is ChatGPT [and how to use it] 1

Q: What are some ways that ChatGPT could be used to run a business? A: ChatGPT could be used to create virtual assistants, chatbots, language translation services, online tutoring services, social media management services, personal shopping assistants, virtual event coordinators, customer support chatbots, personal finance managers, and online therapy platforms.

Q: How can ChatGPT be used to create a virtual assistant business? A: ChatGPT could be used to create virtual assistants that can handle tasks such as scheduling appointments, sending emails, and managing social media accounts. This could be a great way to help busy professionals save time and streamline their workflows.

Q: How can ChatGPT be used to create chatbots for businesses? A: ChatGPT could be used to create chatbots for businesses to use on their websites or messaging apps. These chatbots could be used to provide customer support, answer frequently asked questions, or handle sales inquiries.

Q: How can ChatGPT be used to create a language translation service? A: ChatGPT could be used to create a language translation service that can instantly translate text or spoken words from one language to another. This could be a great way to help businesses and individuals communicate with people in different parts of the world.

I hope these FAQs give you a good overview of how ChatGPT could be used to run a business. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Categories
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE

Is Passive Income Real?

Is Passive Income Real?

Passive income is a real thing, and it’s not what you think. In this post, we’ll explore what passive income is and how you can earn money while doing something else.

What is passive income?

Passive income is money that you earn without having to work for it. That’s right, passive income is not a myth! Anything that generates revenue on its own, without your intervention or interference, can be considered passive income.

Why does this matter?

Because if you have a dream of quitting your day job and living the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur or freelancer who makes over $100K per month, then passive income is the key to making that dream a reality.

In fact, it’s possible for anyone with a good idea and some initial capital needed to get started!

All you need is a little know-how about how it works—and this article will give you all of that knowledge in just under 20 minutes!

How can you earn passive income?

There are a variety of ways you can earn passive income. Some people choose to sell digital products such as ebooks, websites and online courses; others may create physical products like clothing or jewellery; and still other people will simply rent out their property to tenants.

Many business owners make the mistake of thinking that they only have one option for earning passive income: creating their own business and working hard every day in order to make it successful. While this certainly is one way to generate income, there are many other options out there as well! As long as you have an internet connection and some motivation, your options are truly limitless!

People often ask me how I made my first $1000 online through affiliate marketing without any prior experience or knowledge about SEO or anything related… The truth is that anyone can do it if they put in enough effort (I didn’t even know what SEO was at the time!).

Is passive income real?

Passive income is real and it’s not a get rich quick scheme. You might have heard about passive income, but you’re still wondering if it exists. The answer is yes! Passive income is possible and there are many ways to earn passive income. It may require some work up front, but once your business starts earning money for you, then you can sit back and relax—with no need to watch the clock or worry about bill payments.

While it’s true that making money becomes less of an issue when you start earning passive income from your investments—like dividend stocks or rental properties—it can take time before this type of business becomes profitable enough to support your lifestyle needs (including retirement) without having to go back into full-time employment again later on down the road when necessary due…

Can You Get Paid on TikTok?

Passive income is not a get rich quick scheme, but can help you make money while you sleep.

Passive income is not a get rich quick scheme, but can help you make money while you sleep. It takes time and effort to build up your passive income streams, but it’s worth the effort if you have the patience to see it through.

Passive income is a long term goal. You will have to do the hard work to build up your passive income streams before they start flowing in by themselves without any additional input from you. Patience and perseverance are key for success!

Passive income isn’t easy money. You need to do the hard work first before your earnings flow in by themselves.

You’re probably wondering, “Is passive income real?” In short, yes. Passive income is very much possible—and it’s not just limited to your bank account. But like most things in life, there are sacrifices that need to be made before you can start making money while you sleep (or while you do anything else).

Passive income isn’t easy money. It requires hard work, which means that you’ve got to be willing to put in the time and effort necessary to make it happen. You’ll want to be ready for some risks; with risk comes reward! Finally, don’t forget about learning new skills—you’ll need them if your goal is getting paid passively!

Conclusion

We hope this post has convinced you that passive income is real and not a scam. It requires hard work, but the rewards are great. If you’re still not convinced, then we completely understand! We wish you luck on your journey to earning more money for yourself and your family.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS

Can You Get Paid on TikTok?

Can You Get Paid on TikTok? 2

Like many social media success stories, TikTok seemed to come out of nowhere and just, well, take over. And, like most social media success stories, TikTok has allowed lots of content creators to shoot thanks to their popularity on the platform.

But, while similar platforms like Snapchat and Vine are either dying or are already dead, TikTok doesn’t seem to have found a solution to one of the problems that plagued these other platforms; user monetisation.

Attention spans are not what they were, so we’ll save you some time; yes you can get paid on TikTok from the creator fund, but it’s not as simple as signing up for a partner programme as with YouTube. So, if you’re interested in learning how to get paid on TikTok, keep reading!

What is TikTok, Exactly?

If you’re reading this blog, you almost certainly know about TikTok. That being said, just because you know about it doesn’t mean you know it. Especially if you’re over the age of 30. So, for those of you who have resisted the allure of this Chinese behemoth, here’s a quick rundown of what you get from TikTok.

TikTok is a video-sharing platform that focuses heavily on collaboration. Users can easily “stitch” other users’ content into their own, as well as use the audio from other users’ videos over their own content. Much of the platform is built around this dynamic. For example, clicking the sound link of a video will immediately bring up all the videos that have used that sound, as well as the original video that the sound came from.

Videos are created in a portrait aspect ratio and can be up to 10 minutes in length. In practice, the majority of the videos on the service are a minute long or less. There is also a wide range of filters and special effects, similar to what is found on Snapchat.

Can You Get Paid on TikTok?

What is the Monetisation Situation on TikTok?

So, about the problem we mentioned above. Much like similar platforms such as Vine, Snapchat, Instagram, and even YouTube if you focus exclusively on YouTube Shorts, TikTok does not have a way of directly monetising user content.

What we mean by this is there are no ads being shown against any particular videos. And that’s probably a good thing—these videos are generally very short, and it would likely kill viewership to force people to watch an ad before each video as YouTube does.

The solution is to monetise the platform in a more general sense, inserting ads into the feed every now and again, and then coming up with ways to pass that money onto content creators. In TikTok’s case, its method of choice is through its Creator Fund, more on that in the next section.

How Can I Get Paid on TikTok?

With the way TikTok makes its money established, let’s take a look at how you can make money on the platform.

TikTok Creator Fund

The Creator Fund is how TikTok compensates the creators on its platform. A variety of factors are considered when determining how much a creator is paid, so it’s not as simple as “more views = more money”. TikTok claims that its performance metrics are dynamic, meaning you could receive different payments even though your views and levels of engagement have not changed.

There is no cap on how much you can earn from the Creator Fund, though we know TikTok has committed a fixed amount to the fund ($5.8/£2.3 million over 3 years) and we know their userbase is measured in the billions, so don’t expect to become a millionaire through the Creator Fund alone.

There are some minimum requirements to make money on TikTok, of course. To be considered for a Creator Fund payout, you must be;

  • At least 18 years old
  • Be based in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, or Italy
  • Have at least 10,000 followers
  • Have at least 100,000 video views in the past 30 days
  • Keep your account in line with TikTok’s community guidelines and terms of service

Brand Partnerships

Brand deals work pretty much the same way on TikTok as they do anywhere else. This method of monetising your content does not involve the platform itself, but rather you enter an agreement with a brand directly (or through a third-party agency), and they pay you to raise awareness of their brand or promote their products on your channel.

There are no hard and fast rules for how brand deals work. Generally speaking, the bigger your audience and engagement, the more options you are likely to have regarding brand deals. That being said, content creators with small audiences can still get brand deals if their niche aligns with a particular brand.

Can You Get Paid on TikTok? 1

Selling Your Own Products

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but if you have something of your own to sell, you can leverage your success on TikTok to sell it. The product could be music, books, video games, or anything else you create. If you create content on another platform where you make money (such as YouTube), you could attempt to funnel some of your TikTok viewers there.

If you don’t have anything to sell but you have built a large following on TikTok, you can partner with one of the dozens of merch companies to sell your own merchandise, like hats and mugs.

Is TikTok a Valid Source of Income?

TikTok is like any other short-form social media platform. It is possible to make money through the platform, but the number of people who make enough through TikTok alone to call it their “job” is so vanishingly small that nobody should have “TikTok creator” as their goal.

Instead, think of TikTok as another tool in your arsenal. You can make money from it, sure, but use its potential as a promotional tool to bolster your overall revenue. And, in doing so, add a little more diversity to your income streams.

Of course, if you just want to make funny videos or dance to the latest trends, that’s fine too.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. Learn new skills for FREE with Skillshare

I SUCK reading books to learn, but I LOVE online video courses.

Every month I learn something new. Editing, writing, video skills, how to cook, how to run a business – even how to meditate to calm a busy mind.

I find all of these for FREE with Skillshare – Sign up, pick all the courses you want and cancel anytime you need.

5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

Categories
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA

How Pinterest Makes Money

How Pinterest Makes Money

Social media platform Pinterest (PINS) makes money from advertising. Shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on April 18 under the symbol “PINS.”

Founded in 2010, Pinterest went public on on April 18, 2019. Its initial public offering (IPO) price was at $19 per share and it raised $1.4 billion, giving it a valuation of roughly $12.7 billion including restricted stock and options. As of Dec. 3, 2021, the company had a market capitalization of $23.3 billion. Roughly 431 million users, or “pinners,” use the bulletin board-like platform every month to browse and share images and other content in the form of “pins.”

Key Takeaways

  • Pinterest makes its money via advertising, specifically, promoted pins. These promoted pins are ads that look similar to user-generated pins (posts).
  • The company has integrated a “buy it” button which permits users to buy pinned products directly from Pinterest, rather than visiting a separate merchant site.
  • In 2021, the company generated $2.57 billion in revenue but posted a net loss of $316 million.
  • Opportunities for increasing revenue that Pinterest plans to pursue include greater international expansion, focusing on video and increasing ad capabilities, as well as pursuing its own e-commerce efforts.

Pinterest History

The company, which grew out of an app called Tote that dated from 2008, received $100 million in financing when it was valued at $1.5 billion in 2012. The funding firms included Rakuten, Goldman Sachs (GS), and Andreessen Horowitz. It was valued at $12.3 billion during its last round of funding in 2017. The company has a dual-class structure.

When it was founded, Pinterest seemed to follow the model of social network sites like Meta Inc. (FB), formerly Facebook—meaning that it aimed to develop a massive network of users first and then to install means of generating revenue later on. Pinterest $756 million in revenue in 2018, a jump of 60% from the previous year. The company generated $261 million in revenue during the second quarter of 2019, a 62% year-over-year increase.

“Our advertising products help businesses reach Pinners across their decision-making journey,” said the company, which cited a Talk Shoppe survey that said 68% of weekly active users discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest.

“We address various advertiser objectives through our Promoted Pin ad format, which contains either a single image, a carousel of images or video. Our ability to develop new and improve existing advertising products will be an important driver of our future growth.”

So just how has Pinterest come to be one of the most-hyped social media companies among investors and what is a promoted pin?

How Pinterest Makes Money 1

Monetizing Pins on Pinterest

Before looking at more traditional means of generating revenue, it’s worth looking at how Pinterest has utilized its unique pin system to create opportunities for monetization. The company has integrated a “buy it” button which permits users to buy pinned products directly from Pinterest, rather than visiting a separate merchant site.

Merchants participating in BigCommerce, Shopify, or Salesforce Commerce Cloud are allowed the opportunity to partner with Pinterest; it’s unclear whether Pinterest charges any commissions from these partners.

Promoted Pinterest Pins

Pinterest’s primary source of revenue is what it calls “promoted pins.” These special pins are effectively advertisements, paid for by identified sponsors. As with Facebook’s timeline feature, promoted pins look very similar to (but not exactly the same as) standard pins. Pinterest utilizes user data to target advertisements based on user interests and searches, as well as other demographics. Given that users pin items that they are interested in already, this process is relatively straightforward for the company.

Pinterest’s revenue is driven by interest and use of its platform, which is increasingly popular among fashion and beauty brands. Given that the users of Pinterest are overwhelmingly female and have above-average incomes, using its platform as an e-commerce gateway is more than ideal.

Next Steps

Pinterest’s user base has grown over the years, where it’s carved out a niche that allows it to not directly compete with the likes of Facebook. Pinterest’s leadership has adopted a much less aggressive approach to growth than its competitors. Revenue has grown since the company has gone public, but so has its net loss, as the company has ramped up spending on sales and marketing and research and development.

One big future opportunity is being able to tap the international markets, where Pinterest currently has little reach. Beyond that, Pinterest is interested in building out its e-commerce efforts (what exactly that looks like remains to be seen), as well as continuing to develop advertising tools— including video capabilities—for advertisers.

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Can You Make Money on Facebook Groups?

Can You Make Money on Facebook Groups? 2

Facebook Groups are rapidly emerging as a powerful tool for promotion, revenue generation, and social interaction, of course. Still, while that last point may be obvious, and most people will be able to see the promotional potential of Facebook Groups, monetisation is a little less intuitive.

Can you monetize facebook groups? Yes! In fact there are so many little tricks to monetize a facebook page we’ve made a list!

That’s why we’ve put together this post to illustrate the many ways you can monetise your Facebook Group, as well as a few ways to ensure your group succeeds.

Let’s dive in.

10 Ways to Monetise Facebook Groups

It should be noted that some of these suggestions will only work if you are an admin of a group. Now, in no particular order;

Can You Make Money on Facebook Groups?

Promote Products

If you’re a member of a popular group (and, of course, if you are the admin of one), you could use it to promote any products you sell. Of course, you will need to make sure the group in question allows promotion, and if it does, there will probably be guidelines you will have to adhere to.

Remember to participate in the group beyond just promoting things. People tend to react poorly to someone who only ever contributes to a community for selfish reasons, and you will likely find you get better results if you participate.

Build a Reputation

If you have an area of expertise that you plan to turn into a career of some sort, you can start laying the groundwork for that future in a Facebook group! Let’s say for argument’s sake that your area of expertise is something technical like machine learning. You could find an appropriate group and start helping others with their problems, gaining a reputation as an authority in the subject matter. Then, when you decide to try your hand at something a little more professional, such as freelance work, or even a YouTube channel, you will already have a group of people who know you are the real deal.

Remember, the Internet has made it possible for more people than ever to try their hands at things that would normally have needed a formal education. But there will always be a place for people who know what they are talking about and are willing to offer a helping comment.

Charge Membership or Subscription Fees

If you are running a Facebook that is particularly useful to its members, you could start charging membership or subscription fees to join. Bear in mind that your group will have to be something special, offering things that your prospective members wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere.

In order to do this, you will have to set your group to private and invite only, and then set up your own way of handling payments, as Facebook does not currently offer this option.

Earn Advertising Revenue

On a similar note to the previous suggestion, a popular group will likely be of interest to advertisers. Those advertisers could go through Facebook’s own advertising platform, of course, but that platform does not currently offer a way for advertisers to target specific groups. As the admin of a group, you can provide that option for your group.

Again, you will have to deal with the mechanics of this one by yourself, as Facebook does not provide the tools to do it.

Can You Make Money on Facebook Groups? 1

Collaborate With Brands

One-off advertisements are fine, but striking up a deal for ongoing collaboration with a brand or company offers much more stability in your revenue stream. Once again, this is something you’ll have to arrange yourself. You will need to be able to show any potential brand that your group is worth collaborating with. It can also be useful to have some ideas to present to said brand for how the collaboration could go, such as running competitions.

Dabble in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to make money from product or service promotion in much the same way that advertising does but in a less intrusive manner. Affiliate links and promotions will typically fit into the general flow of the content in a group, offering the members something of value. An example of this might be providing an Amazon Affiliate link to a product that’s been discussed in the group. The members will not have to pay anything extra (indeed, many affiliate programs offer special deals for affiliates), and you will make a little extra case from each sale.

Accept Donations

It may not be the most reliable way to monetise your Facebook group, but if you have enough members and they are engaged and active enough, you could consider accepting donations.

Of course, this suggestion assumes you are an active participant in the group and that the members can see the value you bring. If you just started the group but don’t really do much from day to day, you may struggle to find anyone willing to donate.

Offer Consultancy Services

If you establish yourself as an authoritative figure on a particular subject, you could parlay that reputation into a career in consultancy work. With today’s fast-paced world of development and creation, people and companies are often branching out into areas they aren’t necessarily familiar with. In these cases, they might not want to hire an expert, but that doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from an informed opinion.

Network

Whatever your intended career going forward, you can probably benefit from a little networking. Whether it’s just people in the same niche as you or people in positions of influence who can be of direct help to your career, getting involved in communities like this can present opportunities that you wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Can You Make Money on Facebook Groups? 3

Sell Your Group

Now, this is explicitly against Facebook’s rules, so we have to say that we do not recommend you do this, but selling popular groups is a thing that happens, and it can be very lucrative. Especially if you develop a knack for building popular groups and can do this on a regular basis.

Again, this is against Facebook’s rules, so you take a risk by doing this. That being said, there’s no way for Facebook to catch you unless you make a big deal out of it.

5 Tips for Helping Your Group Succeed

We won’t dwell on this section too long because advice for making your Facebook group succeed deserves a post of its own, but here are some tips for making sure your Facebook group thrives.

Keep Engagement High

Engagement is the lifeblood of a successful Facebook group. Regardless of what your ultimate goal for the group is, you’re going to want active members who are commenting and replying and reacting to the content.

One way to ensure engagement stays high is to post engaging content yourself, as well as draw attention to popular posts by other members.

Promote The Group

If you want the group to succeed, you need to get the word out. You could advertise if you’re prepared to throw some money at the problem, but if not, you’ll need to do the leg work and get out there yourself.

Other groups are a great place to promote (as long as the group in question allows that kind of thing), but you can also take it off Facebook and get the word out that way. Just remember not to spam, as that will almost always have the opposite of the desired effect.

Foster a Welcoming Atmosphere

If you want people to join and participate in your group, you need to foster the kind of atmosphere that encourages it. What kind of atmosphere that is will heavily depend on the type of group you are running. You can enforce the atmosphere you want with things like rules, temporary (and permanent) bans, and, of course, comments.

Be an Active Participant

We’ve already touched on this in the “keep engagement high” section, but it’s important enough that it deserves its own section. You should be active in the group, encouraging conversation, drawing attention to good posts, and generally keeping everything going.

Encourage Members to Invite Others

Promoting a Facebook group doesn’t have to be a one-person operation. Once you start to build a membership base of engaged users, you can gently encourage them to do a spot of promoting themselves.

We’re not suggesting you demand they go on a full advertising campaign, of course, but things like sharing the link with friends they think will be interested and other low-effort activities.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Groups are not the most obvious thing that springs to mind when you think about options for generating revenue online, but they are certainly an option.

That being said, we have to admit that the biggest monetisation potential for Facebook Groups involves them being used in conjunction with other things. For example, using your Facebook group to drive traffic to affiliate links or services you offer elsewhere or promoting products or services within the group. The options for monetising a group using official Facebook channels is extremely limited, but there is every chance that will change as the platform evolves.

Watch this space.

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Top 30 Side Hustles for Students

Top 30 Side Hustles for Students 4

Being a student isn’t easy, and one of the biggest hardships you will face as a student is finding the finances to do things like… well… eat. Fortunately, the has never been more opportunity for students (or anyone, for that matter) to make a little extra income on the side.

In the interests of making life a little easier for our intrepid knowledge seekers and future leaders, we’ve put together a list of thirty side hustles that students can help make life a little easier while you are putting yourself through higher education.

Start a YouTube Channel

YouTube has made many people rich, and even though those people are a huge minority, there are many many more people who make a respectable side income from the platform.

And, given the popularity of YouTube, there is no shortage of advice out there to get you started. You can even start right here! You can create a channel around something you are passionate about, something you are knowledgeable about (both is a bonus) or even what you are studying.

Start a Blog

Essentially the same premise as starting a YouTube channel, just with written words instead of video! As with YouTube, you can start a blog about anything you have a passion for, special interest in, or knowledge of. It could be the subject you are studying, your favourite genre of movie or novel, or just weird facts from around the world.

If you have a talent for telling an interesting story, you can put that talent to work in blog form.

Offer Dog Walking Services

You don’t need to limit your side hustles to things online, of course. One example of a real-world side hustle is dog walking services. Pet dogs are more popular than ever, but that popularity, unfortunately, coincides with a time when more of us are out working than ever before.

Enter the intrepid dog walker.

If you like dogs, you could make a respectable side income by taking several of the furry little critters out for walkies, giving their owners some peace of mind in knowing that their best friend isn’t being neglected at home.

Become an App Tester

A lot of effort goes into making apps work, but all the effort in the world won’t make up for a lack of user feedback. App developers naturally would rather get that feedback under controlled circumstances, rather than putting an app out and waiting for the negative reviews.

That’s where app testing comes in. There are many services that provide the opportunity to be an app tester, here are a few of them;

Top 30 Side Hustles for Students

Become a Secret Shopper

Secret shopping is the kind of side hustle that will sound like a dream come true to the right kind of person. Also called “mystery shoppers”, these are people who are paid to shop in stores or eat in restaurants with the hidden agenda of collecting information.

There isn’t a great deal of financial rewards for this side hustle, but you will typically be reimbursed for your purchases.

Take Paid Surveys

One of the older and more well-known side hustles of the Internet age is the paid survey. Exactly as the name suggests, paid survey companies will pay you a modest sum to complete a survey, with your answers being valuable to market researchers and other similar parties. Here are a few paid survey sites to get you started;

Become Part of the Machine

If you don’t have a particular skill or interest in mind for your side hustle, you could take a more generalised approach with something like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This is a service that operates on the principle that humans are still better than machines at some things. Essentially, people who need a large number of small tasks doing (things like tagging images) can sign up and do just that.

Offer Online Tutoring

If you’re a student, it’s safe to say you’ve at least done well through primary and secondary education. That’s great for you, but there are millions of children (and adults) who are struggling with this very thing.

You can offer online tutoring in subjects like maths. Or, if you have particular areas of expertise, you could tutor in those as well.

Start an Online Course

On the subject of areas of expertise, if you are particularly knowledgeable in something, you could create an online course around it. Again, this could be something you are just good at, or it could be something you are studying, perhaps offering an introductory level of education to a subject that you are studying at an advanced level.

Sell Old Items

Granted, you wouldn’t be able to keep selling old items forever, but there are several apps (and, of course, eBay) designed to make it easy for you to find a buyer for some of your old things, from clothes to gadgets.

Become a Reseller

Essentially, the difference between someone selling old items and this suggestion is that you will be first seeking out items to sell before you can sell them. This might mean scouring things like Facebook Marketplace and Craiglist for hidden gems, or it could even mean buying things in bulk to get the price down.

Top 30 Side Hustles for Students 1

Become an Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing is the process of advertising someone else’s product in exchange for a “piece of the action”, so to speak. The most well-known example of this is Amazon Affiliates, where you can link to any product on Amazon and make a little cut of any sales you generate.

This side hustle works best if you have something to pair it with, such as a YouTube channel, or a blog, but really anywhere you can promote something will work. You could even go door-to-door… but we wouldn’t recommend it.

Sell Print-on-Demand Merchandise

Got a flair for design? There are many services on the Internet that allows you to create products like t-shirts, mugs, mouse mats, and other things of that nature with little more than a click of the upload button.

Again, this works especially well if you have a popular YouTube channel to base your products on, but if you can create compelling designs, you can certainly make print-on-demand merchandise a successful side hustle in its own right.

Sell Artwork or Photography

If you do have that creative flair mentioned in the last tip, you could always put it to good use in other fields, such as selling artwork and photography. A number of sites will let you upload stock imagery so that you can profit from the licensing of those images. Just remember that once you do this, you have no control over how the image gets used, so be careful what images you choose to sell.

Write an eBook (or a physical one)

When “write a book” is suggested, the first thing people tend to think of is a novel. Now, if you have it in you to write a novel, certainly give it a go. But as side hustles go, it’s not the most effective way to make money. Given the typical time it takes to write a novel combined with how long an average publisher takes to respond (probably to say “no thanks”), you might not be a student by the time you see any money from a novel.

But you can create eBooks (or regular books) that are non-fiction and centred around something you are an expert in.

Offer Proofreading and Editing Services

Don’t fancy writing a book? What about proofreading someone else’s? Most of us can put together a blog post, but we’re not all up to a professional standard with the technical aspects of our writing.

If you are confident in your command of the English language (or any language, for that matter), you can offer your services as an editor or proofreader, checking other people’s work for mistakes.

Become an Influencer

Granted, not everyone can become an influencer, but if you have an entertaining personality and you like being in front of the camera, becoming an influencer may be a viable option for you.

Influencers typically operate through social media platforms, such as—Instagram, or Facebook—and can earn money through brand deals.

Become a Ride-Share Service Driver

If you have a car, you could consider working for a ride-share company like Uber, or Lyft. Services like this give you the ability to have complete control over the amount of time you spend working on your side hustle—a kind of flexibility that is a must for busy students.

Become a Virtual Assistant

No, we’re not suggesting you be available 24/7 to respond to questions anytime someone says “Siri” to their iPhone or “Alexa” to their Amazon Echo. Websites like PeoplePerHour.com make it possible for you to find people who need certain assistant-like tasks completed, such as email management.

Review Apps and Websites

Similar to testing apps, there are also sites that will pay you to review apps and websites. We’re not talking about being paid to review something by the company that made that thing—that would be cheating. This is typically for sites that offer consumer information, and want a large number of honest reviews.

Become a Translator

If you know more than one language, you could find work as a translator. This will typically be written word translation, but you can certainly find verbal work as well. This could even be paired with our “transcribe audio” suggestion a little further down.

Top 30 Side Hustles for Students 2

Deliver Things

Similar to Uber (indeed, including Uber), there are companies that offer the delivery of things like food and other items, and they need people to make those deliveries. Unlike Uber, however, this work doesn’t necessarily need a car. It’s a common service offered in big cities and can be done on a bike.

Offer Cleaning Services

Many of us struggle to find time to keep our homes or workplaces as clean as we’d like, so why not take that load off someone’s mind by offering cleaning services! This sort of work can be done in the evening or on a weekend, so it shouldn’t affect your studies.

Sell Advertising Space on Your Car

Getting your brand in front of eyeballs is most of the battle for advertisers, but that’s good for you because it means you can get paid simply for letting advertisers use your car as an ad. Services like Carvertise will pay you as much as $500 a month to put ads on your vehicle.

Rent Out Your Car

Or you could rent out the whole thing! Car-sharing services like Getaround can connect you with people who need to rent a car, letting you earn a little extra cash. If you’re not using your car at the time, this one is a no-brainer.

Rent Out Your Parking Space

If you have a parking space you’re not using in a part of the world where it’s hard to find parking spaces (we’re looking at you, London), you could rent it out to someone, and put that land to good use.

Transcribe Audio

While speech-to-text recognition is getting better by the day, humans are still often needed to transcribe audio. You don’t need any particular skill for this, but being a good typist will make your life much easier if you decide to take on some transcription work.

Become a Freelancer

If you have a skill, you could just charge people to use it. Whether it’s copywriting, illustration, video production, and more And the good thing about freelancing is that if you like it, freelancing can always become a full career when you are done with your studies.

Become a Social Media Manager

If you have a knack for social media, there are plenty of people out there who do not that would be willing to pay you to help them grow their online presence.

Get a Part-Time Job

And, finally, the obvious one. From tending bar to stacking shelves, there is always the option to go out and get a part-time job, earning money the old fashioned way.

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Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes?

Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes?

When it comes to using services for commercial reasons—especially free services—there is often a lot of murky language and grey areas to wrap your head around. We’d like to be able to say that YouTube is different, but unfortunately, the waters here are just as muddy as everywhere else.

Let’s start with the simplest answer we can give. Yes, you can use YouTube videos for commercial purposes… sometimes. If you own the content and it conforms to YouTube’s community guidelines, there is nothing to stop you from uploading videos for commercial purposes. However, there is more than one way to use YouTube for commercial purposes, and that’s where things get less clear.

As with many things like copyright and licensing, there is a lot of this topic that falls under the umbrella of “technically no, practically yes”. That is, technically no you’re not allowed to do it, but practically you should be fine.

Don’t worry, we’ll walk through this in more detail, but before we do, please remember that this is a YouTube blog, not a legal one. Nothing here should be taken as legal advice, and you are ultimately responsible for your own decisions.

Uploading Videos for Commercial Purposes

The most straightforward use of YouTube videos for commercial purposes is the uploading of your own content that you have full rights to, and that is in full compliance with YouTube’s terms and guidelines. Examples of this might be uploading a promotional video for an online course, a showreel for your acting portfolio, or a walk-around video of a car you are selling.

In each of these cases, the video is technically being used for commercial purposes, however, it should be noted that complying with YouTube’s terms doesn’t just mean things like not having nudity or hateful language, it also means accepting YouTube’s presentation. Your video will almost certainly be shown alongside ads, and those ads might not always be to your tastes. This can be a real problem when dealing with branding, but that is the agreement you enter when you upload content to YouTube.

Embedding Videos for Commercial Purposes

Embedding videos is where things get a little more complicated, since YouTube’s own terms of service state that you cannot;

“use the Service to distribute unsolicited promotional or commercial content or other unwanted or mass solicitations (spam)”

The problem with this is that YouTube makes no real attempt to draw a line between spam and legitimate distribution, and the use of the word “unsolicited” is very vague. For example, if you embed a YouTube video on your blog, nobody could reasonably call it unsolicited, since people are coming to your blog to read your content, so the solicitation is implied.

But what about a forum post, or a Facebook comment?

The reality is that the vast majority of situations in which you would embed a YouTube video for commercial use will not get you in trouble with YouTube, but it is important to remember that vague language in the terms and conditions, particularly if your YouTube channel is a critical component in your income.

Playing YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes

YouTube’s terms also state that the service is only for personal, non-commercial use, which rules out things like publicly screening videos. Publicly screening videos could include anything from showing a YouTube video at a speaking engagement to playing one at a party with paid entry.

There is no obvious legitimate path through YouTube’s terms to allow this use of YouTube content, however, there is a way around it. If you own the content, or if you can get permission from the owner of the content, you can cut out the middle man. As long as YouTube are not the rights holders of the content in question, their only issue would be you using YouTube to play the content, but if you’re not using their service, it’s nothing to do with them. That being said, it is against YouTube’s terms to download videos through unofficial means, so you could still be in breach of YouTube’s terms with this method. It is unclear how YouTube could ever effectively enforce this particular term, however.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you would be completely off the hook. If you used someone else’s content without their permission, they could still take issue with it, but that is the case for any use of content that you don’t own the rights to.

Additional Factors

It should also be noted that YouTube does not allow the use of any content on their site that is not a user submission. Again, we straddle the uncomfortable line between technically true and practically false here. Technically it would be against YouTube’s terms of service to include a screenshot of the YouTube website in a video that you are using commercially. Practically speaking, unless you are playing your commercial video during halftime at the Super Bowl, it’s unlikely anything will come of it.

User submissions—that is, videos uploaded by YouTubers—are covered by the usual terms and licenses, but everything else—such as artwork—is completely off-limits. That means not even for non-commercial use.

Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes? 1

Summing Up

As with many things like copyright and licensing, there is a lot of this topic that falls under the umbrella of “technically no, practically yes”. That is, technically no you’re not allowed to do it, but practically you should be fine.

That being said, you are taking a risk if you go against that “technically”, no matter how unlikely it is. If you decide to do something that breaks the YouTube terms of service, you should be prepared for the possibility that you may be found out, and that YouTube may take action against you.

The only way to be completely safe when using YouTube videos for commercial purposes is to ensure you are the rights holder of the content in question, and that any screenings of the content that are not for personal use should use your own copy of media, not the YouTube platform. Remember, YouTube does not own your content once it is uploaded.

It’s also worth remembering that content you upload can be similarly used by other people. For example, an informative video about how to use your latest product could be hijacked by a competing firm.

It always pays to think through all of the implications.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.

That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.

Best of all, some of their templates are FREE! or you can pay a small fee if you want to go for their slightly more premium designs (pst – I always used the free ones).

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

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Can YouTube Shorts Be Monetized?

Can YouTube Shorts Be Monetized? 1

YouTube has not been one to shy away from making changes in a bid to keep up with the competition in recent years. From giving YouTubers the option to provide paid memberships to their users as an alternative to services like Patreon, to adding live-streaming to compete with Twitch.

I recently dived deep into everything we know about YouTube shorts – One of their more recent additions is YouTube Shorts, which could be seen as a move to compete with the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, and even Facebook to a degree. Of course, in typical Google fashion, not everything they implement is clearly explained and easy to understand.

YouTube Shorts’ rollout left a lot of questions for users due to its almost unofficial system of placing a hashtag in the description. Things are more clear now, of course, but now that Shorts are a more integrated part of the YouTube platform, many users still have questions over the monetization aspect of it.

Yes, YouTube Shorts CAN be monetized! From 2023 YouTube will be adding adverts to YouTube shorts and revenue shared with creators 45/10/45 with the 10% being for music licensing.

What Are YouTube Shorts?

You might be reading this and wondering “what the hell is a YouTube Short?”, but don’t worry, we’re going to fill you in.

YouTube Shorts are essentially YouTube’s answer to Instagram and Facebook Stories. They are short videos—less than 60 seconds to be precise—that are intended for continuous consumption. In essence, YouTube wants viewers to sit and watch several Shorts one after the other, with the ultimate aim being to keep those viewers on the website for longer. Many of us will happily sit through a 10-15 minute video, and if YouTube can put the right Shorts in front of a viewer, that 10-15 minute window could see them viewing 15-30 Shorts (many Shorts are much less than 60 seconds). These videos are primarily made for mobile viewing, something that is evident when you look at the portrait aspect ratio. While regular YouTube is the kind of experience you can set up in front of your computer or laptop head off down the rabbit hole, YouTube Shorts is more of a “kill five minutes at the bus stop” kind of experience.

Where Is The Money?

If you think about this from a YouTube-centric point of view, you might notice a problem with YouTube Shorts when it comes to generating revenue. If the aim is to keep users watching these short videos, you can’t really go sticking advertisements in between because it will dramatically increase the chances of the viewer clicking away. YouTube knows this, of course, which is why they don’t run advertisements on YouTube Shorts.

With that in mind, where is the money coming from?

In short, the answer is nowhere. With no ad being run against YouTube Shorts, there is no money coming in for those views. It could be argued that there is some revenue coming from YouTube Premium users, but that money is coming in regardless. And, since there are no ads on YouTube Shorts, they are unlikely to bring in new YouTube Premium subscribers since the biggest attraction of that service is the removal of ads.

Why Have Shorts If There’s No Money In It?

Just a quick note; there’s no money for YouTube. YouTubers can still get paid, more on that below.

Ultimately, as much as we might like to believe that our favourite companies are acting in our best interests, all decisions ultimately come back to money. YouTube Shorts may not directly make YouTube money, but their inclusion has been judged good for YouTube’s bottom line in the long run.

The most obvious way this works is by exposing viewers to more content. As mentioned above, in the same amount of time you might take to watch one 15 minute video, you could watch 20 Shorts. The more content you watch, the better idea YouTube’s algorithm gets of what you like, and the more successful it can be at recommending content to you. That in turn increases the likelihood of you sticking around, which increases the opportunity to serve you ads. There is also an argument to be made that adding this alternative way of consuming media may attract users that wouldn’t typically spend that much time on YouTube, though we’re not sure TikTok will be quaking in their boots at the thought of YouTube Shorts.

YouTube Shorts Fund Explained

We’ve teased you enough. How do you make money from YouTube Shorts? Through the YouTube Shorts Fund. Since there is no revenue being directly generated from YouTube Shorts, YouTube has to create their own incentives for creatives, and they’ve done this in the form of the YouTube Shorts Fund.

This is a $100M fund set up to reward creators. Bonuses are awarded monthly to creators who have had success with their Shorts, with YouTube stating that they’ll reach out to “thousands” of creators each month to award between $100 and $10,000, which is paid directly into your AdSense account. There is no stated qualification criteria, such as a certain number of views, so the recipients of these bonuses would appear to be entirely at YouTube’s discretion at this stage.

There are some criteria you have to meet in order to be eligible for a YouTube Shorts Fund bonus, however;

  • Have uploaded at least one eligible Short in the last 180 days
  • Channel must abide by community guidelines
  • Channel must not be uploading unoriginal content or content with watermarks (like the TikTok logo)
  • Creator must be in an eligible region (see link above)
  • Creator must be 13 years (or the age of majority outside of United States)
  • Creators under 18 must have a parent or guardian accept terms and set up an AdSense account.

Channels do not need to be monetized in order to be eligible for the YouTube Shorts Fund, however, but you will still be eligible if you are part of the YouTube Partner Programme or an affiliate under a Multi-Channel Network.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.

That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.

Best of all, some of their templates are FREE! or you can pay a small fee if you want to go for their slightly more premium designs (pst – I always used the free ones).

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

What Are Virtual Influencers?

What Are Virtual Influencers?

“Influencer” should be a word familiar to anyone who is venturing into the world of social media and, by extension, YouTube (don’t worry if it’s not, we’re going to explain it in a little more detail below).

But something that could less familiar to many is the term “virtual influencer”.

What are virtual influencers? – Virtual influencers are people that use digital avatars to represent themselves online. This means they don’t have to physically show their face or in some cases even exist. They can then make money with brand deals, merchandise or even traditional marketing using this persona.

A recent influx of “virtual” characters on platforms like YouTube and Instagram have created a whole new arena for creators, and that arena is producing plenty of influencers of its own. Virtual YouTubers are a new breed of YouTuber that are essentially digital beings controlled by regular flesh-and-bone people, often in much the same way that Jim Henson’s muppets are made to act as though they are real by their puppeteers.

Virtual influencers, of course, are virtual characters that have reached influencer status.

14 Virtual YouTubers That Will Blow Your Mind 14

What is an Influencer?

Let’s start with the basics. We’re assuming that most people reading this post know what an influencer is, but in the interests of providing a comprehensive answer to the question posed here, we’re going to give a brief explanation for those that don’t.

An influencer is exactly what you might think from the name; a person who influences other people. In the context of the Internet and social media, it is an almost crass term, as it relates primarily to a person’s ability to influence the purchasing decisions of a significant number of people. This, in turn, corresponds to the financial opportunities that that person can leverage. In other words, people who are influencers will have more opportunity to get paid to use their influencing power to promote things.

Influencers typically have spheres of influence. For example, immensely popular YouTuber, Zoella, has a lot of influence in the realm of beauty products. The fact that she has so much influence in that sphere means she is likely to be able to command a very high asking price for her services, but the focus of her sphere means she is unlikely to be approached to promote, say, a video game, or mechanic’s tools. The people she influences simply aren’t interested in those things.

The nature of successful advertising is one of accurate targeting. Advertisers like to be able to direct their advertisements at the most receptive audiences possible. This is why there are often diminishing returns on audience size when it comes to how much your influence is worth.

Take PewDiePie, for example. If we take a simplistic approach to audience size and just count YouTube subscribers, PewDiePie has somewhere in the region of ten times the audience size of Zoella. Of course, he makes a handsome amount of money from this audience, but you don’t tend to get an audience that size without it becoming unfocused and more diverse. While advertisers can be relatively confident that the people watching Zoella are interested in fashion and beauty products, they can’t have the same confidence with PewDiePie because his content is more varied. This is why an influencer can be someone with as little as a few tens of thousands of subscribers or followers; it is more about the market impact they can command than the raw number of subscribers or followers.

There are also side roads into influencer status, such as people who themselves may not have a big following, but appear on podcasts or YouTube channels that have a big audience.

What are VTubers? 2

What Are Virtual YouTubers?

So, we know what the “influencer” part means, but what about the “virtual” part? We touched on this above, but for those who are still unclear, we thought we’d best dig a little deeper. Incidentally, if you would like a more in-depth look at what virtual YouTubers are, check out this post.

Virtual YouTubers are YouTubers that run their channel from behind the guise of a digital avatar. For the vast majority of virtual YouTube channels, this digital avatar will be in the form of a Japanese anime character, though more and more alternative styles are creeping in as the channel type becomes increasingly popular.

A variety of techniques are used to bring the virtual avatar to life, but the basic premise is usually one of live motion capture where, using one of a few techniques, the YouTuber’s motions are captured and translated to the digital avatar. This allows the YouTuber to record a video as though they were recording a regular video, but the result would be of their digital avatar rather than themselves.

What are Virtual Influencers?

Being a primarily YouTube-orientated blog and channel, we have mainly focused on virtual YouTubers around here, but the premise is essentially the same whether it be on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, or any other video platform. And there is often a lot of crossovers, with virtual YouTubers quite often streaming on Twitch, and almost anyone with a remotely high profile having an Instagram account.

Virtual influencers are influencers in the sense we discussed above who also happen to be virtual characters like the virtual YouTubers we described, though not limited to the YouTube platform. These influencers will usually present themselves as real beings in much the same way that any other fictional character would. To continue with the example of the Muppets mentioned above, you don’t see Kermit acknowledging that he is a felt puppet with a human controlling him; he acts as though he is a real frog. Virtual influencers do the same. They may present themselves as a self-aware computer program, a real girl who just happens to be animated, or they may not even reference the fact that they are digital at all, and present their content as though it were just like any other video. In any case, it is rare for virtual influencers to break the fourth wall, as it were.

How to Make Videos Without Showing Face

Why Virtual?

There are many advantages to being a virtual influencer. For one thing, it can be very freeing to play a character, rather than yourself.

Many actors are notoriously shy and reserved in their everyday life but have no problem getting on a stage in front of hundreds of people; it is one of the quirks of human nature.

Another reason to go virtual is that it removes a lot of restrictions on what is possible. Your avatar is not limited to things like the laws of physics, or your location in the world. If you want them to fly around, you can do that. If you want them to present a video from the surface of the Moon, you can do that. The only limitations on what you can do with a virtual avatar are those of your own ability or resources. Which is to say, if you don’t know how to do something yourself; there will always be someone you can pay to do it for you.

What’s in it for Brands?

A natural follow-up question in this topic—especially if you are thinking about the financial future of your potential virtual influencer career—is what might be in it for brands. Specifically, does being virtual give you any kind of edge over the conventional way of doing things? Could it harm your chances of getting a lucrative brand deal?

Unfortunately, there are no real advantages from a marketing perspective. That is, none that are universal. For example, a virtual YouTuber might be an especially good fit for a particular niche, such as gaming, but that is more down to the specifics of that niche than the fact the YouTuber is virtual. Being virtual would not help them with other niches.

The good news is that there are no real disadvantages to being a virtual influencer when it comes to getting brand deals. Brands care about your audience and whether they consider your content appropriate for them. Whether or not you are virtual is unlikely to factor into this.

What Programs do Virtual YouTubers Use? 2

Brand Mascots

Though not necessarily much use to an aspiring YouTuber or general Internet influencer, some brands are starting to see the advantages of using virtual avatars rather than real people in their promotional material.

This isn’t new, of course; mascots have been around for centuries. Probably longer. But the advent of virtual avatars gives brands a much easier way to create a public face that can be easily managed and stay in rotation for as long as they need.

As a brand, you don’t need to worry about a virtual avatar having an off-day, getting older, dramatically changing their look, being convicted of a crime, or any number of other things that would be a nuisance at best or a PR nightmare at worst for a brand. They can also be managed by different people, meaning the brand is not beholden to a single actor or voice actor. If your current digital avatar’s voice actor quits, you can simply hire a new one with a similar sounding voice, and things carry on as normal.

As we said, this isn’t much use to your average Internet influencer—unless they are planning land a career as the person behind a brand’s virtual mascot—but it helps to understand the full landscape of virtual influencers when first venturing into this new facet of online influencing.

How to Become a Virtual Influencer

We’d love to say there are some unique tips for succeeding on your path to becoming a virtual influencer, but the truth is that things work almost identically to how they are for regular influencers, and if there was some secret sauce to that, everybody would be an influencer. There are certain tips you can follow that will at least keep you on the right path.

Pick Your Niche

As we mentioned above, it is much easier to become an influencer in a focused niche than it is with a broad audience, so you will increase your chances of reaching influencer status if you grow to prominence in a particular area. That way, brands whose primary audience is in that same niche will see you as a more compelling option when looking for influencers to work with.

Be Mindful of Your Own “Brand”

An influencer who is not working with brands to promote things and get paid is just someone who is popular, so we’re going to assume that if you are reading a post on influencers, you are interested in the money-making side of things. With that in mind, you will need to be careful with your own brand because it will affect what other brands will be prepared to work for you.

Of course, you can choose what kind of brand you want to be; there are plenty of different types of company out there, so you can certainly pick your lane, so to speak. The important part is to be consistent with that lane. As many celebrities, YouTubers, and influencers have found, even one “off-brand” slip up can be costly in terms of deals with other brands.

To give a fictional example, say you build yourself up as an influencer in the vegan niche. Even a single tweet about enjoying a beef burger from years ago could be enough to stop you getting brand deals with vegan companies.

Don’t Rush It

It can be tempting to take shortcuts—things like buying subscribers—but resist this temptation.

The nature of your audience will have a big impact on the future of your audience, and things like bought subscribers will dramatically reduce the quality of your audience. People (and certainly brands) will spot this kind of dishonesty, which will reduce the rate at which your influence can grow, if not stop it altogether.

YouTube Tips for Teachers 1

Final Thoughts

Being a virtual influencer may not be much different from being a regular influencer from the influencing side of things, though the process of being virtual is a little different.

Overall, the advantages of being virtual tend to benefit the brands that adopt them more than they benefit the influencers who are them. This is not to say you shouldn’t do it if the virtual influencer life appeals to you, but make this decision on its own merits—decide if being a virtual character is right for you without the external branding side of things—since you are not likely to be much better off as a virtual influencer than you are as a regular one.

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TIPS & TRICKS

How Much Do YouTubers Make an Hour?

How Much Do YouTubers Make an Hour?

Let’s kick things off by potentially ruining your appetite for this post; we’re not going to be able to give you a definite answer to the question of how much do YouTubers make an hour. There are simply too many variables that are completely different from YouTuber to YouTuber, including how we decide to slice up the time YouTubers spend plying their craft.

Before you click away, however, here’s what we can tell you.

In this post we are going to look at how YouTubers make their money, and how those methods can translate to a kind of hourly rate. One thing that will become apparent is that YouTubing revenue does not lend itself well to being easily quantified.

Why is it Hard to Calculate an Hourly Rate for YouTubers?

Hourly rates are easy to calculate when you have a regular job. You know how much you get paid, you how many hours you work, you divide one by the other, and you have your hourly rate.

YouTubers may know how much money they are getting paid (though even that can be a little complicated) but knowing how many hours they are working is much more difficult.

Take your average new YouTuber who gets started around a full time job, school, or other commitments. They will have to make time around those commitments to work on their channel, and this often leads to things like doing a little in the morning, perhaps an hour after work, getting some editing in once the kids are asleep.

This already makes things difficult to measure, but then take into account the fact that not everybody sets aside blocks of time for dedicated YouTube work. We often get distracted from time to time, perhaps checking email, or watching a quick video.

YouTube Tips for Teachers 4

When is it YouTube Work?

Further complicating matters is the range of things that can be considered to be part of running a YouTube channel.

We can unambiguously say that writing, filming, and editing a video is YouTube work, but what about participating in social media? Sure, directly promoting your latest videos on social media is part of your YouTube work, but just being active in a related community will also help your channel… is it work if you do it for fun?

After all, many of us start YouTube channels about things we like, it makes sense that you would be active in communities about those things as well.

Another example of blurred lines in this regard is a YouTube musician. If your channel is based around you playing guitar, for example, then technically speaking, any time you spend practising that guitar is beneficial for your channel. As you can see, keeping “YouTube work” separate from other things isn’t always easy.

Revenue Sources

Determining which revenue sources are a result of YouTube is not quite as difficult as separating out the time you spend working on your channel, but the erratic nature of that revenue can make it hard to put a consistent number on.

Let’s start with YouTube Partner Programme earnings. This is simple enough; any revenue you earn through ads on your channel is definitely YouTube revenue. But even this can be inconsistent, as any YouTuber who has been on the wrong side of an adpocalypse will tell you.

Then there are other sources of revenue, such as merchandise sales, affiliate links, and brand deals. None of these are consistent, which means you have to factor in long periods to get an accurate hourly rate because it can change quite dramatically from week to week and month to month.

Revenue Differences Between YouTubers

From the perspective of an outsider looking in—that is, someone trying to get an idea of how much YouTubers earn—another factor complicating things is the substantial differences from YouTuber to YouTuber.

For one thing, most YouTubers don’t make anything from their channel, which makes their hourly rate quite simple to calculate. On the other end of the scale, there are YouTubers who earn money through the YouTube Partner Programme, get brand deals, sell merch, have membership subscriptions, and more.

YouTubers like that will have a much more impressive looking hourly rate than a YouTuber who just relies on the YouTube Partner Programme.

But even YouTubers with similar viewing figures who only make their money through the Partner Programme can have vastly different hourly rates, as the type of content—and, as a result, the type of ads—can make a huge difference to how much a view is worth.

Improving the Hourly Rate

There are two ways to improve the amount of money you make per hour; make more money, or take less time. The amount of money you make is tied to the success of your channel, and a topic worth a dedicated post of its own.

Reducing the amount of time you spend working on your channel, however, is not one of the more talked about aspects of YouTubing, though it can be just as invaluable.

are some tips for reducing the amount of time you need to spend on your channel.

Get Better!

The more you improve at your craft, the easier it will be and the less time you will have to spend on things like additional takes, reshoots, and excessive editing.

An accomplished YouTuber can often make more polished, entertaining content in considerably less time than an inexperienced YouTuber.

As the old saying goes; practice makes perfect. The idea of “practice” is often misunderstood, however. It is not enough to simply do a thing, you have to be striving to improve at that thing. If you just go through the same motions each time, you won’t get any better overall. Actively try to learn more about the software you use, including tips and tricks for making your workflow more efficient.

It is often the case that just learning keyboard shortcuts for your editing software can cut the time spent editing down by as much as half!

YouTube Tips for Parents 1

Have a System

If you go into every video winging it from start to finish, you will invariably find yourself doing a lot more editing and reshooting. For those of you who like to turn the camera on and talk, we’re not saying you should start scripting your videos; keep that improvised format if it works for you.

When we say have a system, we mean develop ways to make your life easier. One example of this would be an audio or visual cue for an edit point. This could be a whistle or clap that will be clearly visible in the waveform of your audio in your editor, and will save you having to hunt around for spots you know will need cutting out.

Other examples include things like having templates for your videos and thumbnails, and having your recording setup either permanent or any settings written down, so you don’t have to spend time getting everything set up each time your record.

Anything you can do to streamline your recording and editing process without sacrificing the quality of your content will effectively improve your hourly rate as a YouTuber.

Focus

It can be very easy to develop scatterbrain when running a YouTube channel. Most YouTubers are creative by nature, and with a world of tools and resources at your disposal, the temptation to drift into other niches and video types can be tempting. Now, we’re not saying you should never do this—in fact, in the long term it is advisable to do this as it will help keep your channel fresh—but while you are finding your feet as a YouTuber, it is better to keep focussed and concentrate on doing one thing really well, rather than a doing a dozen things just okay.

Don’t Get Hung Up On Numbers

While things like how much money you are making and how many views you are getting are a good indicator of whether you are going in the right direction as a YouTuber, it is important not to live or die by those numbers.

A huge range of things can affect your numbers, like seasonal changes (fewer people watching YouTube while the sun is out, for example) and trends. Even a highly successful channel will see what looks like flat spots in their growth at one time or another, but if you panic when this happens, you risk making bad decisions that can lead to actual stalling or backsliding.

Final Thoughts

So, calculating the hourly rate of your average YouTuber: not so simple. Even calculating your own hourly rate as a YouTuber is difficult enough!

If you are attempting to work out if YouTube is a viable career move, or if you are currently successful enough on YouTube to go full time, it is important to take a large sample of revenue numbers into account.

You don’t want to quit your day job after a couple of really profitable months on YouTube, only to find they were just a spike and your revenue takes a nose dive the following month.

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HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

What is YouTube RPM?

What is YouTube RPM?

YouTube provides many ways for you to track the success of your YouTube channel.

After all, your success is their success, so it is in their best interests to make sure you have everything you need. Among the things YouTube provides you with—indeed, probably the most important thing that YouTube provides you with in this regard—is a raft of metrics for keeping track of how your channel is doing in a range of different areas.

You can track things like what regions of the world are viewing your videos, what demographics those viewers fit into. You can even track what devices they are viewing your videos on. But, most importantly for this post, you can check how your channel is doing in terms of revenue.

The most common metric, and typically the best gauge of how well you are doing financially, is the CPM.

CPM stands for cost per mille and is a metric of how much money you are making per thousand views. It is an industry-standard metric from the larger advertising world and, as such, it is not quite perfect for determining how your channel is doing.

YouTube is an increasingly complex platform with a growing number of ways for you to generate revenue from your channel, whereas CPM is very advertising-focussed.

In fact if you want to know more about CPM I deep dive into what is CPM in my blog.

But now its time to understand the new comer, Enter RPM.

What is YouTube RPM?

RPM—revenue per mille—is a new metric that YouTube has introduced in an effort to give you a much more comprehensive snapshot of how your channel is performing financially. It represents the amount of revenue your channel has generated per thousand streams, but the revenue counted comes from multiple sources, not just advertisements.

Those revenue sources are;

  • Ads
  • Channel Memberships
  • YouTube Premium
  • Super Chat
  • Super Stickers
  • YouTube BrandConnect

There are generally a lot of questions regarding RPM, so we’re going to attempt to answer them all here.

What is the Difference Between CPM and RPM?

The differences between CPM and RPM can be whittled down to three main aspects:

  1. CPM only factors in ad views when totalling up revenue
  2. CPM does not factor in views on videos that aren’t monetised
  3. CPM does not factor in YouTube’s share of your revenue

Overall, RPM is intended to be a much more creator-focused metric than CPM, which is very much intended for advertiser use by its nature. It may take a little adjustment, but RPM should be considerably more useful for YouTubers going forward.

What is YouTube CPM?

Why is my RPM so Much Lower Than my CPM?

It is important to remember that CPM and RPM are units of measurement and, like any unit of measurement, there are two variables to factor in. For CPM and RPM, those variables are views and revenue, and that makes it a very fluid metric since both variables can change.

CPM only factors in the views from monetised videos, which for most channels means fewer views, since many channels will invariably have some not-monetised content on their channel. CPM also only factors in revenue from ads, which for some channels, means less revenue, as there are other sources of revenue available to you, such as memberships and super chat.

The exact numbers will depend on your channel, but it is entirely possible that you could see your RPM being much lower than your CPM. If your channel does not make use of non-ad-based revenue streams and has a good amount of not-monetised content, the CPM will be higher because your RPM will be factoring in additional views without any additional revenue.

On the other hand, if you make a lot of revenue from things like memberships and super chat and have hardly any views on not-monetised videos, your RPM will be higher than your CPM because the views are roughly the same, but a lot of additional revenue is being factored in.

Finally, RPM factors in YouTube’s cut of your revenue, which is a pretty hefty 45%. This aspect alone will probably be enough to make your RPM lower than your CPM in most cases. The important thing to remember is that RPM is a different way of looking at the existing metrics of your channel.

It does not change your earnings in any way; it just presents a more representative snapshot of what they are.

How Do YouTubers Receive Their Money? 3

Is RPM Important?

We believe it is very important because of the clear direction that YouTube is going. YouTubers have long since accepted that YouTube’s built-in monetisation is not a reliable—or even a good—way to make money from your channel. As a result, they have cast their nets wide and found membership platforms, brand deals, affiliate marketing, and more. The key thing here being that none of these things are through YouTube, meaning YouTube are not getting a share of those profits.

As much as some YouTubers believe that YouTube hates them, the truth is YouTube is a business, and everything they do is an attempt to ensure they make money. Being primarily advertisement-based has posed its problems for YouTube, as every adpocalypse has shown. Demonetising thousands of channels doesn’t just hurt the YouTubers; it takes money out of YouTube’s pocket as well.

The solution is pretty obvious, of course. YouTubers have found ways to monetise their content away from the YouTube platform, and in ways that are not beholden to advertisers. It makes total sense that YouTube would look to incorporate those methods into their own platform, where they can take a cut of the profits.

Memberships, YouTube Premium views, Super Chat, Super Stickers—these are all ways in which a YouTuber—and YouTube themselves—can earn revenue in ways that do not involve advertisers. It is essentially a direct transaction between the viewer and the YouTuber (facilitated by YouTube for a small fee, of course) and as such, there are no external forces involved that might want that revenue removed.

The external forces are, of course, advertisers. In an increasingly volatile and reactionary world, advertisers are increasingly picky about the kinds of content they will allow their ads to be shown on. For example, content that includes political commentary, any kind of violence, weapons, things of a sexual nature—all of these things are essentially monetisation suicide because advertisers don’t want their brand associated with that kind of content. Despite this, there are many channels that make the kinds of content that are deemed not suitable for monetisation that are, nonetheless, very popular.

YouTube wants those channels to be able to generate revenue, but they can’t tell advertisers to take it or leave because, frankly, they will probably leave it. So they are introducing other ways for the channels to monetise so that YouTube can still earn revenue from them. And it is entirely reasonable to believe that they will continue adding ways for YouTubers to monetise their channels through the platform itself as new viable ways emerge.

The more alternative monetisation methods to advertising that become available, the more important RPM will be as a metric. It is unlikely that advertising will stop being the primary source of revenue for YouTube as a whole any time soon, but the more you take advantages of non-advertising-based revenue sources, the more RPM will matter to you.

Do YouTubers Pay Tax? 3

How to Increase YouTube RPM?

To bring your RPM up, you need to adjust the ratio of revenue-to-views. Make sure that as many eligible videos as possible have monetisation turned on, and enable all types of eligible advertisements on those videos.

Next up, make use of the other monetisation methods on offer where you can. Granted, things like super chat and super stickers are not the kind of thing that every channel can make use of, but if you can, use them. The more money your channel is generating for the same views, the higher your RPM will be.

Another thing that will significantly affect your RPM is watch time, and it is a thing that most YouTube experts will tell you is one of the most important aspects to focus on. More watch time does not only mean more opportunity to show ads—though that is undoubtedly a big part of it—it also says very good things about your channel to the YouTube algorithm.

Channel’s that get a lot of watch time are given higher priority in the YouTube recommendation algorithm, which means there will be a greater chance that your content will be recommended to new people. Granted, adding new viewers is a slower way to improve your RPM, but remember the ultimate goal; revenue. Low RPM is not necessarily a bad thing.

A YouTuber with an RPM of $5 and 200,000 views per month is making around $1,000, whereas a YouTuber with an RPM of $2 and 1,000,000 views per month will be making around twice as much. Manipulating your RPM without improving your overall revenue is a pointless endeavour.

Do YouTubers Pay Tax? 5

My YouTube RPM is Going Down, Should I Worry?

The answer to this question is “it depends”. RPM provides a good snapshot of how your channel is doing, but it is still only a single datapoint. Without taking other factors into account, you cannot make an accurate judgement on the state of your channel. As the example above illustrates, it is entirely possible for a YouTuber to have less than half of the RPM of another YouTuber, and yet still make more than twice as much revenue.

If your RPM is dropping, but your revenue is staying the same—or even increasing—that is indicative of a surge in viewers. This could happen because of a video going viral, or a mention on a much larger YouTube channel. In this case, there’s nothing to worry about. If your RPM settles at this new lower level, you might want to look into ways to more effectively monetise your new views, but there is nothing to be concerned about from the RPM dropping.

On the other hand, if your RPM starts to go up, but your revenue isn’t increasing, that could be a sign that you are losing viewers, but not viewers that generate much in the way of revenue.

Is There Any Revenue RPM Doesn’t Factor?

First of all, it’s important to remember that any YouTube metric can only tell you what is going on through the platform itself. If you are earning money through a service like Patreon, Amazon Affiliates, or even if you are booking live shows or speaking gigs directly off of the back of your YouTube channel, this should all be counted as part of your revenue, but YouTube cannot factor these variables in.

YouTube also cannot factor in brand deals and sponsorships unless they are through YouTube’s BrandConnect service. Finally, RPM does not include revenue made from merchandise sales through the merch shelf service that YouTube provides. Given the direction that YouTube seems to be heading in this area, it would be reasonable to expect that this revenue will someday be incorporated into RPM, but that is not the case yet.

Final Thoughts

When judging any aspect of your channel, it is essential not to get too hung up on any single metric. RPM provides an excellent snapshot of your channel’s financial health, but it is essentially meaningless on its own due to the fact that changes in the number of views you are getting or revenue you are earning overall will change the RPM without it being inherently obvious why.

As a lone metric with no other input, your RPM is a good measure of how efficiently your revenue is being generated. The higher it is, the more value you are getting per view (or, more accurately, thousand views). Without knowing how many views you are getting, or how much revenue you are making, that is about as much as RPM can tell you.

However, in conjunction with the revenue and views metrics, RPM is a powerful datapoint that can tell you a lot about your channel.

Ultimately, the foundation of your approach should be to make the best possible content you can, with additional strategies being considered improvements upon that solid base. You could make use of every strategy known to YouTube and still fail if you don’t have good content, so start there, and your RPM should stay healthy.