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?
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.
Facebook’s power as an advertising platform is well-established at this point, and with good reason. While Facebook’s penchant for collecting personal data on its users is a point of contention in the world of privacy, that data collection allows Facebook to offer incredibly targeted advertising.
Being able to direct your ads with pinpoint accuracy is an incredibly appealing prospect for advertisers because, ultimately, paying to show an ad to someone who has no interest in the subject matter is just a waste of money.
In other parts of Facebook, Groups has emerged as one of the leading platforms for community building and discussion. While sites like Reddit are still popular, the accessibility and ubiquitousness of Facebook have made it the go-to place for creating new communities.
But can you put ads on them?
There are a few ways to approach advertising on Facebook groups, but for just above every way you can think of asking this question, the answer is yes; you can put ads on Facebook groups.
Of course, we’re going to dive into this subject with a bit more attention to detail, so if you’d like to know more, keep reading!
What Are Facebook Groups?
Let’s start from the beginning. If you’re not familiar with Facebook groups, you could be missing out on a valuable promotional tool, or even just a useful social tool.
Groups give users a way to break off their Facebook experience into managed portions, as well as interact with like-minded people outside of your immediate social circle. For most users, Facebook comprises largely of real-world contacts—friends, colleagues, and family members—with the wider world being something they prefer to keep separate from their Facebook feed.
Unfortunately, this rather excludes users from using the power of Facebook to find people interested in their favourite TV show, movie, book, boxer, or anything else you can think of.
Enter Facebook groups.
Groups allow Facebook users to interact with other users who have a common interest without the need to “friend” them, meaning they can still keep their private Facebook lives private.
Groups can have varying degrees of exclusivity, from open groups that anyone can join to groups where members have to be accepted, and even invite-only groups. Groups can also have different levels of visibility also, such as groups that anyone can view irrespective of whether membership is open, to groups that can only be viewed by members.
Why Advertise On Facebook Groups?
If you know anything about advertising, you will already be able to see the potential of Facebook groups for advertising. These are essentially collections of users who have clustered together around a common interest. They are also engaged users, meaning they are making the effort to visit the group rather than being a passive audience that is being shown things they might not be interested in.
If you, as an advertiser, have something to advertise that meshes with a particular Facebook group’s subject matter, you are pretty much guaranteed an audience that fits the correct demographic for what you’re advertising.
Advertising on Facebook Groups
So, we’ve established what Facebook groups are and why you might want to advertise on them, but how do you go about it? There are two primary ways to advertise within a Facebook feed, be it a group or the regular feed, and they are regular posts that happen to be promotional or Facebook ads.
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads gives you a good deal of control over where your ads will eventually show up, and that includes Facebook groups feed placement. Unfortunately, Facebook Ads does not presently offer a way of targeting a specific Facebook group with your ads, so you can’t just say, “only show my ads in X group!”. What you can do is ensure that Facebook groups placement is selected, and then tailor your target audience to match that of the audience in your desired group.
It’s far from a perfect solution, of course, but using the official Facebook Ads platform will give you far more in the way of performance metrics than any other method you might try.
These kinds of ads will show up with a tag stating that they are sponsored, and users will have the ability to tell Facebook they’re not interested and don’t want to see the ad again, so it pays to put as much thought and research into your desired target audience as possible.
So you can certainly use Facebook Ads to advertise to Facebook groups, but you will not have the ability to target specific groups or get guarantees on where your ads will ultimately turn up. This should be an issue if you do a good job with your targeting parameters.
Advertise in the Group Feed
Another option is to post your promotional content in the group as you would a regular post, but beware, there will often be restrictions on this kind of post. For one thing, many groups explicitly prohibit ads and other promotional content from being posted under any circumstances. In these groups, you could try contacting the admins as they may be prepared to make exceptions in some cases, but you can guarantee that posting an ad in such a group without explicit permission will result in the ad being deleted and probably you being banned from the group.
Other groups may allow ads but will likely have rules regarding what can be posted, and may also require you to get permission from the admins before posting.
In any case, it’s best to join the group you are considering posting an ad in and actively participating for a while before attempting to post any ads. Members of the group will be more receptive to an ad from someone who is actively participating in the community than someone who has just joined and started posting promotional content out of the blue. It will also help you to get a real feel for the type of group it is, which in turn will help you more accurately judge if the group is the best place for your ads.
Other Uses for Facebook Groups
If, after reading that, you have landed at the conclusion that Facebook groups aren’t necessarily the best home for your ads, that doesn’t mean you should abandon groups altogether as a promotional tool.
If you have a skill or expertise that you have built a service or business around, you can still use groups to drive traffic where you need it to be, even if ads are not allowed in the group in question. By finding a relevant group and actively participating, sharing your knowledge and helping people out, you will gain a reputation within that group that can be directly parlayed to customers or clients. If the members of the group come to know you as someone with the expertise they need, they are more likely to come looking for your products or services outside of Facebook.
If you take this approach, it is important to make sure your Facebook page is full of useful information, such as links to any necessary websites. You should also keep it up to date in terms of posts. If you run a YouTube channel, make sure the latest videos get posted there. If you write a blog, link the latest posts. If someone from a Facebook group you are part of decides to come looking for your products or services, they will nearly always head to your profile first. You want to make sure they find what they’re looking for when they get there.
Facebook Groups as Promotional Tools
So far we’ve been mainly concerned with using existing groups for promotional purposes, but you can also start your own group with promotional reasons in mind.
Like any attempt to use social media as a promotional tool, you will need to offer people something inherently valuable. Starting a group and just posting ads and links to your other content might work if you already have a large following, but for someone with a more modest fanbase, it will be an uphill battle getting people to join a group that it’s just full of ads.
Much like the above advice to participate in the group and establish yourself as an authority, starting a group around the subject matter you want to promote and actively helping people can lead to members searching you out.
Final Thoughts
As with almost all strategies for using social media to promote things, advertising and promoting through Facebook groups needs a careful approach. Always strive to remain relevant—posting ads in a group that isn’t interested in the subject matter will just be a waste of your time and/or money.
Beyond that, don’t expect to get traction just because you’ve posted something. If you are joining a group to promote things, be sure to participate in that group first and establish relationships with the members and build a reputation first. Then, when you do promote things, it will not feel disingenuous and exploitive to the people you are promoting to.
Gaming is big business these days, whether you are a game developer with a cool idea, a programmer on the bleeding edge of technology, or a streamer growing your following on Twitch, there is plenty of money to be made within the realm of gaming.
But is any of that money on Facebook?
The quick answer is yes, you can make money on Facebook gaming, and this is true for both gamers and developers. Of course, if you’ve clicked on an article with this headline, you’ll naturally want to know more about it. Don’t worry, we have you covered.
Facebook and Gaming
Though it’s not necessarily one of the more well-known aspects of Facebook, the platform actually has a long history with gaming, stretching right back to the early days of poking and throwing sheep at users.
Yes, throwing sheep on Facebook was a thing.
These days, Facebook games are a little more sophisticated, ranging from quizzes to perennial favourites like Farmville, and even games of the kind of quality that would once have been a standalone release.
Of course, making games is not your only avenue. Gaming streams are very popular these days, and Facebook provides the means to post and live stream video content. These two approaches naturally have very different implications for how you can make money, but the money is certainly there to be made.
That being said, there are many important keys to success online, and two of them are;
Write what you know
Know your audience
We are going to be guided by both in this post. Firstly, we’re not game developers. Secondly, the typical audience for this blog is far more likely to want to read advice on monetising gaming streams than games themselves. For that reason, the rest of this post will be primarily concerned with Facebookers who are playing games, rather than making them.
Playing Games on Facebook
The first thing to make clear about Facebook in regards to gaming is that the platform is not designed for this. Unlike Twitch, which is practically built with gaming in mind, or YouTube, which was built for something else but lends itself well to gaming content, Facebook was built with very different goals in mind.
What this means is that you shouldn’t expect much help from Facebook itself in your quest to make money gaming.
There are ways to make money gaming on Facebook, of course—there are almost always ways to make money these days. We’re going to go over some of these ways very soon, but the point we’re trying to get across is that you will, for the most part, have to find ways to monetise your content that Facebook perhaps hadn’t intended when they set out.
But before we get into how you get paid, let’s start with how you game.
How to Game on Facebook
Gaming content is, of course, mostly video-based. Facebook has a few options for you when it comes to getting video content out there, and any of them can be pressed into service as a gaming medium.
The first way you can get video content out on Facebook is, simply, by linking it. Whether it’s on Twitch, YouTube, Vimeo, or anywhere else, you can always create a post linking out to your content so that your Facebook audience is aware of it. Of course, this doesn’t present you with any way to monetise that content through Facebook, but in this case, Facebook is really just acting as a promotional platform. Any monetisation you have in effect elsewhere for the content you are linking should still be in effect.
If we’re keeping things on Facebook, however, there are two main options for monetising gaming content; posting videos and Facebook Live.
Posting videos is simple enough; you create a new post, attach your video, and away you go. As long as you make sure it is public, you can promote your Facebook video just like you would with videos on other platforms. Alternatively, going Live is more akin to streaming on Twitch. You will need to have a little technical knowledge with live streams to get your game onto Facebook Live, but there is plenty of help out there for you. Indeed, Facebook even has resources of their own to help you out.
Monetising Facebook Gaming Content
We won’t go into how to monetise content on other platforms that you are linking to from Facebook because, well, we’ve done that in other posts and videos. So, for the purposes of this post, we’re going to stick with Facebook’s built-in methods of monetisation.
Stars
For those of you who are familiar with Twitch—perhaps you’ve dabbled or perhaps you are established there and looking to branch out—Facebook’s stars are essentially the same as bits on Twitch.
These are only available for Facebook Live streams. Viewers can gift stars to the streamer who will get one cent per star received. Facebook users can buy stars in bundles, the price (at the time of writing) is around double what the streamers get per star, meaning Facebook users are paying roughly two cents per star. Viewers can gift as many stars as they want, but by default, they are presented with a selection of preset amounts, such as 50, 200, 1,000, and more.
In-Stream Ads
In-stream ads are a far more traditional form of monetising video content. These ads can be played before, during, or after the video, with a percentage of the revenue being shared with the creator. In the case of Facebook Live, mid-roll ads (ads that are played part-way throught the video) will take over the main view, but the live stream itself will still be playing in a smaller floating window for the duration of the ad. This way, the viewers are served ads with minimum possible disruption.
Of course, like other platforms, it is not as simple as clicking a button to get ads on your video content—you have to meet the criteria set out by Facebook (or as of very recently, Meta).
The first and most obvious criteria is being compliant with Facebook’s Partner Monetisation Policies. These things change regularly, so always worth have a read through before signing up to anything, but at the time of writing, there is nothing out of the ordinary in these policies. Things like residing in an eligible country, adhering to community standards, sharing content you have the rights to, and so on.
After that, the criteria gets a little more straightforward and clearcut. You must have at least 10,000 followers, for one thing. Another hurdle to jump is the fact that you must have at least 600,000 watch minutes over the last 60 days. These watch minutes are counted across all on-demand, live, and previously live videos, but does not count crossposted content or boosted/paid watch time. And, finally, your page must have at least five active videos. Again, these can be live, previously live, or on-demand, but not crossposted or boosted videos.
If you don’t meet all of these criteria, it’s not the end of the world. As we said above, there’s always other ways to monetise your Facebook content.
Speculative Side Note
You might have noticed earlier that we made a passing reference to “Meta”. Meta is something of a rebranding for Facebook (the company, not the website), and a large part of that seems to be their intention to make big waves in the virtual reality world.
Granted, Facebook has already made big waves in the virtual reality world with their release of the Oculus Quest 2, a game-changer in terms of what you get for your money, but they have even bigger plans.
The reason we bring this up is that VR is already a rapidly growing market in the gaming content space, and it looks set to keep growing in the near future. At the same time, Facebook (or, rather Meta) look poised to be one of the major players in this space. So, if you are a gamer looking to make money through Facebook and you’re not already experimenting with the possibilities of virtual reality, it may be something you want to look into. It’s not quite getting in on the ground floor, but it’s something.
Final Thoughts
Facebook’s requirements for showing ads on your gaming content may seem a little steep at first glance, but they are not your only option. With a dedicated audience (which, remember, is not necessarily the same as a large audience), you can easily make a decent amount of money through Facebook’s stars. Failing that, you can always monetise your content elsewhere, such as using a Patreon, or selling merchandise. Even just using YouTube as a traffic funnel to get viewers to your Twitch or YouTube page can be an effective strategy.
As always, however, the trick is to stick with it, and don’t be discouraged if the money isn’t pouring in after the first few months. These things take time.
Whether you are just heavily interested in a particular subject and would like to find like-minded individuals to socialise with, or you are looking to build a community for promotional reasons, Facebook groups are an excellent tool in your arsenal. Still, as useful as Facebook groups can be, they have to have members—often lots of them—to achieve that potential.
There are several ways to grow a Facebook group, and, fortunately, the majority of those ways have nothing to do with spending any money. In this post, we’re going to take a deeper dive into what Facebook groups are, why they might be useful to you, and what you can do to ensure the success of your group or a group you are part of.
What is a Facebook Group?
A Facebook group is essentially a place for people with a common interest to get together and discuss that interest, much like any other internet forum. The interest in question can be anything that doesn’t break Facebook’s rules and guidelines, and anyone can set up a group.
The reason Facebook groups are so popular is, ultimately, down to the popularity of Facebook. With billions of people already on the platform and familiar with how it works, it is often far easier to set up a new Facebook group and get new members interested in joining than it is to build a community on places like Reddit, even as popular as Reddit is.
Group admins have the ability to set the rules of their Facebook group, removing members if they don’t follow them. They can also have the group be public, private, visible to all but only members are allowed to participate, invite-only, and more.
All standard Facebook rules apply within groups, so doing or saying anything that breaks Facebook’s terms of service can still get you in trouble, even if the admins of a group allow it.
Are Facebook Groups Worth It?
The natural question you should be having at this stage is; are “Facebook groups worth the effort?” The answer very much depends on what you are trying to achieve, but we’re going to hazard a guess that, yes, they are worth it if you are reading this page.
Firstly, if you are just looking for a community to talk about something you are interested in, Facebook groups will certainly be able to give you that. That being said, there is a strong chance that a group already exists, and you might want to consider joining one rather than making one. We’ll get into whether you should start a group a little later on.
If you are looking to Facebook groups as a tool for promotion, it is certainly worth it, but you will have to put the time and effort in to make things work. Like most things in life and online promotion, there’s no quick fix to reaching your goals.
Things to Consider Before Starting a Facebook Group
It’s all well and good concluding that a Facebook group can get you what you’re looking for, but that doesn’t automatically mean you should make one. Running a successful Facebook group is not without effort, and even if you’re willing and able to put in the effort, there’s still no guarantee of success.
Before we look at how to grow your Facebook group, let’s take a moment to ponder whether you should be starting or running a group at all. And, remember, this is independent of whether a Facebook group could be good for you in terms of goals. A Facebook group might be an amazing tool for promotion, but if you don’t have the time and willingness needed to make it work, it won’t help you.
Do I Have a Good Subject Matter for a Facebook Group?
This is especially important if you are planning to use your Facebook group as a promotional tool. If you just want to create a community to talk about something you’re interested in, it doesn’t matter what that interest is, because your only goal is to find people to talk to about it. If you are promoting something, however, your subject matter needs to be relevant but still interesting enough to foster genuine discussion.
For example, if you are promoting a YouTube channel about technology, such as new gadgets, that subject may be too broad to create a successful Facebook group around. Remember, the beauty of these groups is the ability to find people with the same specific interests as you, not general interests. But, if you zero in too far and create your group around, say, a specific type of technology, like mobile phones, you run the risk of people in the group not being interested in your general technology YouTube channel.
Do I Have the Time to Run a Facebook Group?
Running a successful Facebook group, whether for personal or promotional reasons, takes time. This is especially true in the early days of the group, where you will need to get out and about to garner interest and draw attention to the group. As things progress, the group will need less and less of your time to keep ticking over, but you will need to be actively working to get to that stage.
And, if promotion is your goal, this applies even more to you. If you just want to talk, you can always get the group started and then dip in and out as you please. If you want to promote things, you’ll need to keep your hand in constantly, or the members of the group will stop seeing you as someone of interest.
What Rules Should My Facebook Group Have?
There are two types of rules to consider; Facebook enforceable rules, and arbitrary rules. Facebook enforceable rules are things that Facebook provides a mechanism for, such as having the group be private and invite-only. Arbitrary rules can be literally anything you want, but you have to enforce them yourself, such as by kicking people from the group.
The best rules will vary from group to group. The only advice we can really give here is to be as unrestrictive as you can within the scope of your group. For example, it wouldn’t be wise to allow misogynist language in a group for survivors of domestic abuse. On the other hand, it would be unwise to ban adult language in a group about alternative comedy.
How to Grow Facebook Group
So, you’ve decided you want to start a group and you have the time and willingness to do so. How do you make it grow?
Have Compelling Reason to Join
The first thing you need to do is make sure your potential members have a compelling reason to join your group. The most effective way of achieving this is by offering something they can’t find elsewhere.
Of course, if you have a topic that there is no other group for, that would be the ideal situation… but it’s an unlikely one. There are a lot of groups on Facebook. If you haven’t got a unique subject matter, have a good look at the competition, and see if there is anything you can offer that they can’t. This could be more relaxed (or stricter) rules, or even just your expertise if the subject matter is something you are particularly knowledgeable about.
Leverage Your Existing Audience (if you have one)
If you already have an audience—perhaps you run a YouTube channel or blog—be sure to promote your Facebook group to them. This may seem counter-intuitive if the main reason for creating the group is to promote the thing your audience knows you for, but having a larger number of members gives your group more legitimacy in the eyes of newcomers.
We’re not suggesting paying for fake members, of course. That rarely works. Bought users will not engage, and a large group with no activity often looks less appealing than a small group with no activity.
Branch Out to New Audiences
Obviously, you will want to stay within the subject matter, but when letting people know about your group, don’t limit yourself to things like your own audience from other places. Reach out to other communities and try to find new people.
Always be sure to be respectful when you do this, however. Just barging into a subreddit or a YouTuber’s comment section and spamming about your group is unlikely to win anyone over.
Encourage Members to Promote the Group
Once you have members, encourage them to let others know about the group. Don’t just tell them to go get more members, of course, they’re not your employees. Just politely mention it from time to time, and be sure to emphasise the fact that everyone benefits from more members, as there will be more discussion.
Final Thoughts
Whether you want to talk about your favourite series of novels or promote your YouTube channel about miniature castle building, Facebook groups are a powerful tool to achieve your goals. And, what’s more, it’s free! All it takes is a little time and effort on your part to build an active community.
Facebook Marketplace has been something of a revelation for many people, combining the convenience of sites like eBay and Gumtree with a distinctly more localised approach. Many people prefer to sell one-off items on Facebook because of how easy it is to find buyers nearby. And the same goes for buying things—it’s often more appealing to look in your local area for something you could perhaps walk to pick up, rather than something that might have to be shipped across the country. But what about something a little larger in scale?
In other words, can you make money on Facebook marketplace? Like, real money. Not just a bit of extra change for some old items you don’t need anymore.
The answer, of course, is yes. As long as you have something to sell, you can certainly make money on Facebook Marketplace. As for getting items to sell, we’ll leave that for another post, as it can be quite an in-depth topic in its own right. But, whether you buy items in bulk, import from China, or even make the thing you’re selling yourself, we have a slew of tips to help you ensure that product gets sold.
And, if you are just selling one or two items you don’t need anymore and have no intention of making this a regular thing, read on! These tips should still be useful for you.
What You Should Know About Facebook Marketplace
Before we get started, let’s cover a few basics about Facebook Marketplace for anyone who is new to it, or wants a little refresher course. The Marketplace is open to anyone who has a Facebook account and is not in trouble for breaking any of Facebook’s rules.
For the most part, there are no restrictions on the types of things you can sell. The exceptions to this include anything that is illegal, weapons or explosives (even if they are legal where you are), and anything that would require the buyer to be a legal adult, such as alcohol. Oh, and animals. You can’t sell animals.
Finally, you can’t sell services. That means you’re not allowed to offer something like car washing, dog grooming, house painting, or anything else that doesn’t involve money being exchanged for an item.
Tips for Making Money on Facebook Marketplace
Now, onto the tips. We’ve put together six tips we feel will give you the best chance of a successful sale on Facebook Marketplace.
Presentation is Everything
Often the first mistake people make when selling things on Facebook Marketplace is being too casual with their listing. This can seem a little paradoxical because one of the reasons Facebook Marketplace is so popular is the decidedly local feel it gives. It’s a lot more like selling something to a neighbour at a garage or car boot sale than it is taking your items to auction.
Still, even with that in mind, it pays (literally), to put a little effort into the presentation of your item when you make your listing. Potential buyers may know that they are buying a second-hand item from a neighbour, but given two identical items for the same price, they will nearly always go for the one with the nicer photos. Here are some sub-tips for making sure your photos are up to scratch.
Clean Your Item
Firstly, give whatever it is you are trying to sell a bit of a sprucing up. If it can be cleaned, clean it. We’re not saying you should turn it into a full restoration project, but a bit of wipe or dust down will usually go a long way.
Of course, it’s important not to damage the item, so be careful about what you clean it with, as many cleaning products will have some materials they are not meant to be used on. And, if the item is somewhat fragile, such as an antique of some kind, it might be best to leave it well enough alone.
Stage Your Photo
Making sure the thing you’re selling is presentable is only half the battle, if the pictures you take don’t show the item off in all its glory, it can the same effect as not sprucing it up a bit before taking the pictures.
Always make sure you have good lighting when you take your photos. You don’t need to buy a professional lighting rig for this—everyday sunlight will do just fine. The placement of the lighting is important, too. If you have a lot of light behind the item, it will make it hard to see. Also, try and get the item in front of as plain a background as possible. If the background of the image is too busy, that also makes it harder to see the item.
Take Multiple Photos
So you’ve cleaned your item up and you’ve staged the photo perfectly… now what? Well, you certainly shouldn’t just sit back and admire your handiwork. Get the camera back out and snap a few more pictures from different angles.
Not only will having more pictures increase the likelihood of someone purchasing your item, but it could also save you time in responding to questions from potential buyers. If there are any points of interest on the item, try to include them in a picture. For example, if you are selling something electronic, try to include a picture that shows any stickers or stamps regarding voltage or classification information.
Make Your Description Useful
It can be easy to skimp on the descriptions when selling on Facebook Marketplace. After all, you’re not writing a product description for a professional store, are you?
Leaving aside the fact that a lack of information—or badly written information—is a turn off to some, this is another situation where you should put a little extra effort in to save yourself some time in the long run. If the listing does not answer the obvious questions about the item you are selling, either through the pictures or through your description, you will almost certainly get interested parties messaging you to ask.
Use Keywords
Keywords may not be the kind of thing you’d associate with what is essentially a classified listing, but they shouldn’t be overlooked. Facebook does its best to make sure any bargain hunters on the marketplace find what they’re looking for, but there’s no sense in making it harder than it needs to be.
Make sure your listing contains any important words. For example, if you are selling a used video game for the PS4 console, your description should, at the very least, include the words “PS4”, “game”, “console”, and “used”. Also, while we’re not sure how much of a difference it makes to Facebook’s search algorithm whether the description is well-written or not, you should try to write the description clearly anyway for the sake of the potential buyers who are going to be reading it.
Be Honest About Your Item
Being honest about what you are selling is important for several reasons. Firstly, it’s just morally wrong to lie about what you’re selling. If that’s not enough, however, there’s also the fact that it could lose you sales. You might fool someone, but someone who knows the item might be able to spot the lie. And, finally, lying would be a shortsighted way to make a sale, as you would then have a reputation for it, which would make it harder to sell items in the future.
List Items Individually
Don’t group several items together for convenience, because it makes them harder to sell. Now, we’re not suggesting you sell an Xbox gaming console and its power supply separately, but if you had a dozen Xbox games to sell, grouping them may make it harder to get a sale, as the buyer will have to be willing to purchase all of the game rather than just one of them.
Price Your Item High (But Not Too High)
Don’t go crazy, but pricing your item a little higher than you’re willing to sell it for will give you a little barter room. Many buyers on Facebook Marketplace like to haggle the price down and are more likely to buy if they can get a bit of money knocked off. Adding a little on allows you to get the price you’re after while letting the buyer feel like they’ve got themselves a better deal. Of course, if you price it too high, most buyers will just keep on browsing straight by your item.
Final Thoughts
Facebook Marketplace is certainly more of a tool for selling things you no longer have a use for but could still be useful to someone else, like electronics you have upgraded from, or old furniture. That being said, it is still a viable business tool, as you can sell almost anything on there, and that includes products you stock.
As with any marketplace, presentation is most of the battle. Make sure your descriptions are accurate and give the buyer all the information they need, and make sure your pictures are clear and show all parts of the item that might need to be seen.
Facebook remains something of an untapped resource for many when it comes to making money from your video content. YouTube is obviously the most well-known option for regular video content, Twitch might be your go-to if you’re a streamer, and there’s a myriad of other places to check out, like Vimeo, Instagram, and more. But Facebook has an understandable reputation as a platform for keeping in touch with your friends and family.
And Facebook is great for that. But there’s a lot more you can do with it.
Facebook has been making serious inroads into the video content space and a natural part of becoming a platform for releasing video content is giving content creators a reason to put content out on their platform. The main incentive, of course, is the ability to generate revenue from your content.
Can You Make Money on Facebook Videos? – Facebook has a monetization system that will run adverts on videos and offer branded content on pages. There are multiple levels and various requirements to qualify.
Let’s dive in.
Video Content on Facebook
There are a few ways to get video content on Facebook, and each one has very different use-cases. There is, of course, the standard method of posting a video to your wall or page. Facebook supports video files up to 10 GB in size with a maximum length of 240 minutes, so it should be sufficient for the vast majority of content creators. Video resolutions are limited to 1080p at the time of writing, however, so if you are looking to put 4K content out, you will need to look at other platforms. In most cases, however, even 4K content producers will be able to put a 1080p version of their videos on Facebook without it negatively affecting things.
Another way to get video content on Facebook is by using Facebook Live. This is Facebook’s live broadcasting solution and allows users to instantly start streaming to their followers (and other Facebook users) with hardly any setup needed. Facebook Live is heavily geared towards people switching on their phone camera and holding what could be termed as intimate live streams with their followers, but it is certainly suitable for more traditional live streams. Facebook is even taking steps to make this side of things more accessible for a wider range of live streamers, such as their Facebook Gaming push.
There are also Facebook Stories, which are Facebook’s answer to Snapchat—short videos that only exist for a brief period before disappearing off into the ether.
Monetising Video Content on Facebook
There are many ways to monetise your Facebook video content, and we’re going to start with Facebook’s own mechanisms. As with any platform, Facebook’s monetisation has certain criteria that you will need to meet, but don’t worry, we’ll give you all the information you need.
In-Stream Ads
In-stream ads are probably the most recognisable way to monetise video content, so it makes sense that Facebook would offer this on their platform. These ads can show up in a number of ways, including before the video (pre-roll), and during the video (mid-roll).
For the most part, these ads will work exactly how you’d expect them to, though mid-roll ads work slightly differently for Facebook Live videos. As Facebook want to cause as little disruption to the live viewing experience as possible (but, obviously, still show the ads) these ads will take over the main video window, but the live stream will continue playing in a smaller floating window, so the viewers don’t miss any of the action.
As per Facebook, these types of ads are suitable for longer content and content that is “suitable for advertisers”, meaning you’ll probably miss out on that ad revenue if you are making content about controversial topics. Facebook will automatically look for natural breaks in the content to insert ads, and your pay is determined by things like how many views the video gets, and who is advertising on it.
Fan Subscriptions
If you are familiar with services like Patreon, or features like YouTube Membership, you will understand Facebook Fan Subscriptions. This feature allows Facebook users to support you by contributing recurring monthly payments. In exchange for these payments, as well as supporting content they like, these users will get a special badge, as well as other perks and discounts.
This option is not limited to video content, of course, as anyone on Facebook with a big enough following can enable fan subscriptions, but if you are producing video content on Facebook, this is certainly a way to monetise that content, as well as any other content you happen to produce.
Branded Content (Brand Deals)
Branded content is Facebook’s version of what you might call a brand deal in other places. Essentially, you, the content creator, strikes a deal with a brand where they will pay you to promote them. These are different from sponsored videos in that they will typically cover a period of time, or set a number of videos.
Facebook facilitates these deals for eligible channels, aiming to bring suitable brands and content creators together… and taking their cut of the deal, of course. That being said, there is nothing to stop you from striking up brand deals yourself. This can be a little trickier, as you will need to be able to market yourself to the brand, and any legalities will have to be taken care of, but for those that can do it, it will often mean more money than going through Facebook.
Subscription Groups
Subscription groups are essentially a group version of fan subscriptions, and allow fans to join smaller, more exclusive groups with the creators they want to support. Like fans subscriptions, subscriber group members will get special perks.
Selling Merchandise
Moving away from Facebook specifically, there will always be ways to monetise your content if there is a big enough following, whether that content is on Facebook, YouTube, your personal website, or anywhere else. One such method is selling merchandise.
Granted, this doesn’t work for every type of content creator, as not every niche lends itself well to merchandise. If you are a content creator in a niche that does lend itself well to merchandising, however, you can certainly monetise your content this way.
Third-Party Subscriptions
Facebook may offer fan subscriptions, but you are in no way obligated to use them if you want to offer this kind of option to your viewers. Indeed, with Facebook’s eligibility criteria (more on that below), many content creators don’t even have the choice in the first place.
Services like Patreon do not have any eligibility criteria regarding the number of views you get, how much watch time you have over a given period, or how long you have been on the platform.
Now, we’re not saying that signing up for a Patreon account will automatically lead to the money rolling in. You still need to have a decent following to take advantage of this kind of service, and in most cases, people who don’t meet Facebook’s eligibility criteria probably aren’t missing out on much in the way of revenue. But there are always exceptions, and if you are such an exception, don’t feel like Facebook’s monetisation solutions are your only options.
Promoting a Product or Service
In this day and age, many content creators have other things on the go. This might be the aforementioned merchandise line, some kind of product or endorsement, an online course, or even public appearances, such as professional speaking, stand up comedy, or music gigs.
If this applies to you, try not to see your video content as a single entity that has to be worth your time in its own right. Consider how many of your viewers might become customers or fans of your other ventures as a result of your videos, and don’t discount that value.
Of course, you will need to take steps to make sure your viewers know about your other ventures.
Facebook Eligibility
Eligibility for the various Facebook monetisation options we have mentioned varies a little depending on the specific type of monetisation you are going for, but, for the most part, you should expect to have to meet the following criteria if you want to take advantage of Facebook’s native monetisation;
Adhere to Facebook rules, standards, and guidelines
Have at least 600,000 watch-minutes over the previous 60 days
Have at least five active videos
Have at least 10,000 page followers
Reside in an eligible country
Other criteria include at least 60,000 of the 600,000 watch minutes being live video minutes if you want to monetise live videos.
Final Thoughts
Facebook seems committed to making it as easy as possible for content creators to monetise their video content on the platform. And it makes sense—the more money you make, the more they make. That being said, you should never feel as though Facebook’s monetisation solutions are your only option. As long as you have an engaged following for your videos, there will always be ways of monetising that content.
YouTube and blogging are two powerful ways to earn a fairly passive income online. YouTube is a visual platform that relies on video content while blogging gives you a little more licence to deep dive into ideas with writing, images and videos blended into a comprehensive article.
But how can you monetize your youtube channel and blogs, and what one is more profitable?
Lets look into making money online in the first place. You can make your site a profitable business by monetizing it in the following ways:
Affiliate Marketing
It’s one of the most popular ways that bloggers use to make money. with this type of marketing, you need to promote certain products that belong to other businesses. So, every time a person buys the product through your affiliate link, you earn a commission.
Some of the most popular affiliate programs include:
Amazon associates
Commission junction
ShareASale
Publish Sponsored Blog Posts
You can get paid to write and publish a blog post on your site. This is simply sponsored content, and it offers one of the best ways to improve your blog monetization strategy. A business organization, company, or individual can pay to create content about their products. In some instances, they might prepare the content themselves and then give you for publication. Some of the best blogger networks that can provide you with such opportunities include:
BlogDash
ValuedVoice
Sell Ad Space
If you have ad space on your site, you can sell it at a set price to an interested buyer. This sounds better than getting a small amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad, and you simply charge a flat rate.
Write Product Review
Once you have built your site and become a reputable writer, you can get paid to write reviews. You can try out a sponsored product, write a product review about it, and get paid to do that job. But it’s important to find a niche that you understand and products relevant to your audience. For instance, if your blog is about health and fitness, it will make sense to review supplements, smartwatches, wellness applications, and fitness apparel.
Get AdSense
When you start writing and publishing content for income, advertising is usually at the back of your mind since you want to profit from your work. The easiest way to monetize your blog is by using Google AdSense, i.e., an Ad Network run by Google. AdSense usually displays adverts on websites, and when a visitor clicks on it, you make money.
YouTube.
Just like blogging, there are several ways you can use to monetize your YouTube channel. If you are in the YouTube Partner Program, then you can earn money through:
Ads
If you meet YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guidelines, then you can turn on ads. You can check your eligibility by checking out the self-certification examples and guidance found on this platform.
But understand that choosing to turn on adverts doesn’t mean they will automatically appear on your video. Your content must go through the standard ads process that includes human and automated reviews to determine if it meets the guidelines. Besides that, you need to have all the rights to the audio and visual elements in the video. YouTube has two types of ads options; hence you can turn on ads for:
Individual videos
Multiple videos
Merch
YouTube has a merchandise shelf that allows interested creators to sell their branded merchandise on this platform. Note that this feature usually appears on certain video pages that are eligible channels.
Memberships
Allow viewers to join your channels via monthly payments. However, you should be ready to give them members-only perks such as emojis, badges, and other types of goods. YouTube has policies and guidelines to help eligible account holders.
Chat and Super Stickers
You can turn on this feature and connect with your fans during live chat. Making super stickers and chat content can earn you up to$500. Viewers can purchase the super chats option to highlight your message in the live chat.
Premium Revenue
YouTube premium revenue will automatically turn itself on. If a viewer is subscribed to YouTube Premium, then every time they watch what you publish, you will earn part of the fee they pay for their premium account.
In this blog vs YouTube earnings overview, it’s clear that both platforms offer multiple channels of earning money. However, more people prefer to watch videos rather than read blogs, and this is because they have a better chance to view content in a “live” way.
Q: When to get AdSense
If you are a blogger, you can apply for AdSense once your site starts receiving at least 100 unique visitors daily. Blogging rules have changed, and it may be quite difficult to get accepted, especially if your site doesn’t generate a reasonable amount of traffic every day. Besides that, you need to have a Google account, e.g., Gmail, to use AdSense. With YouTube, you need to have at least 1000 subscribers with a total of 4,000 watch hours.
Q: Does AdSense Pay Per Bloggers Per View?
Blog: No. AdSense doesn’t pay bloggers based on ad views. Instead, people get paid using cost-per-click (CPC). This is an established payment system that allows you to receive a portion of your payment when a person from your target audience clicks on the targeted ads by Google AdSense. So, if one of your users clicks on your ad, you should receive 68% of the payment as the publisher.
Q: How Much Does AdSense Pay Per Click/View?
Blog: Your commission is 68% of the total click amount, but this can go down to 51% in AdSense for search. Generally, the amount you get in terms of the commission depends on the existing competition on the Google Search engine platform and the CPC in that niche. The commission per click usually ranges between $0.20 and $15.
YouTube: according to various sources, you can earn between $0.01 and $0.03 per view with YouTube AdSense, but this amount usually averages out at around $0.18 per view. Like blogging, Google will pay you 68% of the generated AdSense revenue, and so for every $100 that the advertiser pays, you get $68 as the publisher.
Q: How Can You Improve Your AdSense Earnings?
For bloggers, AdSense earnings matter. To maximize your AdSense revenue after monetizing your website, here’s what you need to do:
Craft High-Quality Content
Your content is what will make you stand out. Valuable content will always get more clicks, which will organically raise your revenue. This is because it will generate more traffic and leads. By doing so, your chances of getting more clicks will increase, making your site attractive for product or service advertisers.
When crafting content for a specific niche, look at what your competitors are doing first, including their writing styles. This way, you will know what’s expected of you and how you can uniquely craft your content for your audience.
Use the Right Keywords
A combination of engaging, high-quality content with the right keywords will be highly effective in revenue generation. Look for those keywords that people commonly use when searching for specific content. Optimize your keywords so that search engines can easily crawl on your site and rank your content on top of search results.
Of course, more traffic will lead to more clicks, and the result will be more earnings from Google AdSense.
Consider Best Ad Placement Best Practices
Ad placement is important in maximizing your earning. On your homepage, you can increase the click-through rate (CTR) by:
Using 728 x 90 leaderboard ad image unit just right above your homepage’s fold and below the main bar navigation.
Consider testing different ad units, i.e., 300 x 250 medium rectangle or 160 x 600- a wide skyscraper in your sidebar.
On your main blog page, use:
A 336 x 280 large rectangle image for your ad unit right on top of your article.
Consider using a similar type of ad unit before the comments section at the end of your post.
Ad size and style all matter in boosting a blogger’s AdSense earnings. This gives your visitors several chances to notice and then click on your ads. When considering ad style, understand that the goal is to make them more visible while simultaneously reducing ad blindness.
That’s why google usually recommends that you consider using different colors for your links and ad text to make them stand out.
There are three main ad styles that have been proven to be technically effective, and they include:
Color contrast: use ads with colors that easily stand out against your website’s background.
Blend: ensure that your ad units are the same color as your site’s borders.
Complement: use colors that preferably already exist on your website even though they don’t exactly match with the borders or background but easily blend.
Use a Plugin for Ad Management
Ads that generate good revenue must be managed. This makes it possible to group ads depending on the content and where they can be inserted. Some of the useful features of an ad plugin include:
Ad rotation: you can opt to use a timed or on-page rotation for your site’s ad group
Adblocker: it checks if the browser has an ad-block software and then issues notification for it to be disabled.
Expiry date: you can set an expiry date for your ads.
For YouTubers, you can only make money with your YouTube partner account to get AdSense Revenue. The best way to increase your YouTube earnings include:
Publish Quality Videos
In content creation, quality will always sell. There is more to creating videos, which means creating content that can easily captivate the viewer. There are already several other creators in your niche; hence, you should create videos that people can watch. But how can you effectively do this?
Create videos that meet YouTube guidelines
Create a schedule for your video posts- it is important to upload videos to create a schedule that your audience will be in-tune with. Do you want to upload videos twice weekly, 5x monthly, etc.? You can learn more about scheduling here
Create your Thumbnails. Even though YouTube offers you the thumbnail option, it’s great to create your own since you can customize it to meet specific user preferences. You can use a graphic editing app to do this.
Briefly describe what happens in the video in the description area. Note that the summary of the information you provide here should be accurate, and you can even add blogs or websites that you are affiliated with.
Ensure that you sparsely use the relevant keywords to fill out all the details outlined in the title, tags, and description. SEO is also relevant in YouTube.
Create a quick but captivating intro that highlights what the viewer should expect.
Manage your Channel
Only a great channel with a reliable number of viewers will earn you a good income. YouTube success doesn’t come easily, so you must build and manage your channel. Ensure your channel’s description, including colors and logos, matches your niche and user profile. Besides that:
Fill in all your profile information
Customize your site’s color scheme and background
Use a captivating cover photo
Use a captivating cover photo
Channel management also requires you to vary the presentation of your videos. There are those subscribers that love short videos while others love longer versions. Analyze the performance of different videos based on the length and use that information to create relevant content. This way, you can:
Publish video content of varying lengths to cater to the different needs of your target audience
Create your playlist featuring a series of various videos
Lastly, consider your community in content management. There isn’t any successful YouTuber who doesn’t have a community. How can you build your community?
Directly interact with your fans by replying to comments
Ask them to give you their opinions
Make them feel like they are part of your content creation journey
Improve your AdSense Ads
Use your YouTube partnership account to improve your AdSense. Do keyword research to drive more traffic and result in better showing ads. The more traffic you get and the better the quality of the ads, then the more money you will earn.
In this case, consider the type of tags you use. Tags should be ideally used to connect videos with similar characteristics. So, the more connections you get, the better your chances of getting more views.
Market Your Channel
It would be nice for your channel to get more exposure on YouTube and other platforms. A high level of exposure guarantees you more leads and traffic, which leads to more views that generate revenue.
Q: How Many Views Does a Blogger/Youtuber Need to Get Paid?
Blog: There isn’t a specific fixed number you need to get paid. You can get paid with as little as 100 visitors. However, you should understand that every page view generates $0.01 and $0.25. That means that you would earn $1 -$25 monthly.
If you want to make money from blogging, you need to get around 10, 000 views unique visitors monthly. This way, you can monetize your blog easily and use it nicely for a revenue stream. However, the biggest challenge for most people is getting these numbers. For a YouTuber, the views you need can be equated to 4,000 hours of watch time.
Q: What Kind of Blogs/Channels Make More Money?
You can flourish in any niche and earn a modest income if you put in the work. However, there are niches that if you invest in, you are guaranteed more revenue. This is because such niches are popular, and their content is highly demanded.
We “interact” with money almost every day. Whether it’s buying food, transport, paying for accommodation, or even accessing the internet, so, money is an important factor for the sustenance of our livelihoods, and that’s why starting a finance blog will put you a step ahead in ensuring you earn more.
People are always looking for effective ways to handle money, and finance blogs are the best in providing actionable insights that the user might need. Whether it’s a busy professional, a retiree, or a young college student, finance content will never go out of style as it appeals to most people. Some of the aspects of finance you can focus on. Include:
• Passive income – blogging is one of the best ways to earn a passive income or use it as a side hustle.
It is currently one of the best niches to focus on since most people are actively looking for ways to make passive or active income through marketing.
With your marketing blog, you can help your target audience learn how they can master e-commerce skills before starting a business. Some of the areas that seem to be attracting big numbers include:
• SEO
• blogging
• Email marketing
• E-commerce marketing
Travel Blog
Travel blogs have become a necessity in this era, with more people keen on exploring their locals, regions, or even international areas.
Travel blogs are quite popular, and you can always make good money, regardless of the zone you decide to focus on. You can make money through affiliate links, accommodation reviews, etc. Additionally, you sell travel apparel on your blog.
Food Blog
If you are a foodie, this is a new area for you to flourish. Food blogs are popular currently, and you can make yours the online recipe book. Teach your target audience how to prepare different tasty dishes, and you can even use some nice photos from your kitchen.
Besides that, you can prepare specific meal recipes that target a certain group of people e.g.
• New moms
• Those struggling with weight loss or weight gain
• Diet time limits
• Fitness enthusiasts
Some of the other areas you can focus on include:
• Restaurant reviews
• DIY meals
• Food and traveling
• Affordable outdoor dining
Fashion Blog
You don’t need your clothing line to write a fashion blog. You can still express your unique sense of style on your blog through product reviews. There are new fashion trends almost every month, and this means that people are always trying to keep up to date with what’s happening in the fashion world. The best thing about being a fashion blogger is that you can link your site to your social media page, become a social media influencer as well, and add affiliate links.
Not all YouTube videos are the same, and there are certain types of videos that tend to perform better than the others, regardless of the publisher. These videos generate more income, and they include:
How-to videos
They are quite popular since people are always looking for popular solutions to fix and do things. How-to videos top the charts since they are better off than instructional manuals. You can cover a wide range of topics ranging from education, travel, and photography.
Product Reviews
These are videos that involve a YouTuber testing out a product then giving the target audience a review, including the downsides and pros, based on their personal experience. According to Google, product reviews have generated more than 50,000 years of YouTube watch time in the last couple of years only.
Vlogs
These are videos that cover a wide range of niches depending on the creator. You can vlog about basically anything but lifestyle topics, including music, comedy, and entertainment
You can learn more about YouTube side hustles here
Q: What’s Easy Monetize, YouTube Channel or a Blog?
It depends on your content and the effort you put in. it takes about six months to start earning from your blog. With YouTube, your channel needs to have t least 1,000 subscribers and a total of 4,000 watch time hours within the last 12 months.
It will take you roughly a year to get to 4,000 watch hours, i.e., 240,000 minutes, if you maintain an average watch time of 20,000 minutes per month. But YouTube divides watch time across the whole channel, and so you can achieve the watch hours in less than a year if you produce a few high-quality videos.
To get quickly monetize your channel and get up to 4,000 hours of watch time, here’s what you can do:
Create fresh content
To be discovered on YouTube can be easy if you upload fresh content that appears on top of YouTube’s search results. Your goal should be to publish videos that remain relevant all year round, and this means that you can continue to earn revenue from the same video for months to come.
The best way to make evergreen content include:
• Interacting with your viewers and asking them about which content they prefer
• Answering their questions as much as you can
• Consider trending topics and offer valuable information regarding them
• Create videos that offer solutions or give deeper insights
Do Livestreams
Of course, your community of fans wants to know and interact with you on a one-to-one basis. The best way to boost viewership and improve your target audience’s confidence is by hosting live stream sessions. Understand that the numbers might be small at first, but the more you do, the better your chances of growing your channel and earning more revenue.
consistently Upload Your Videos
More hours mean that you need to have more videos under your belt. Create viral videos that will quickly give your channel the needed boost to attain those 4,000 hours. Don’t forget to be consistent. There’s a lot that goes in during video creation. Hence you must be ready to put in the work.
Go for Quality
The length of your YouTube video matters in attracting and retaining your target audience. But sometimes, to hit those high numbers, you need more quality content than quantity. A popular video with your audience will generate more traffic, and your channel will quickly hit those hours.
Q: Blog vs YouTube Earnings: Which One Should You Consider?
It all depends on what you have in your hands at your interests. There is a whole blog vs YouTube earnings debate that never seems to go out of style. But here are a few tips to help you consider the right type of platform that suits you:
Rate of earning income
A blog will quickly earn you a reasonable income, especially if you can monetize your ads and work with affiliate links. While YouTube has a better-earning potential, it’s more volatile and only seems more profitable for people who have fully established themselves with short- to medium-term goals. Overall, getting your foot in the blogging field seems easier, and you can get the job done within 3-4 months.
SEO Benefits for Growth
You stand a better chance to grow exponentially if you start with blogging. Blogging can help your YouTube channel to grow. Some of the benefits of starting a blog before a channel include:
• Understanding keyword research and its benefits in content creation
• Improving click-through rates
• Content length and what appeals to your audience
• How to describe photos and videos
With this information, you can create SEO-friendly videos that increase watch-time and more audience retention, leading to more revenue generation. Besides that, you will learn the importance of creating longer videos because they give you more watch time, a better chance of retaining viewers, and provide your target audience with more values. Lastly, you can use your blogging skills to caption and describe your videos using the right keywords. You can learn more about YouTube captions here
Startup Costs
Before you start blogging or vlogging, you need to invest a sustainable amount of money. While there are cheap ways to do this, it remains a fact that you need to put some money aside for content creation.
Blog costs
You will mainly invest in services. Here is a brief overview of blogging costs:
• Hosting: you need a host for your website. Expect to pay at least $60 annually, but this depends on the host you choose.
• Domain name: your blog needs a unique identifier in the form of a domain name. a basic domain name will cost you around $13.00. remember that you should choose a unique domain name that complements your site’s profile.
• Paid theme: while this isn’t a requirement, remember that you want to use your blog to generate revenue. Some bloggers may avoid this and opt to use free themes with limitations. To be on the safe side, ensure that you get a paid theme, and this can cost you around $30.00
YouTube Costs
You need a camera and a good microphone to start a YouTube channel. However, some may argue that you can use your smartphone. However, your success with a smartphone is quite limited based on the 720p to 1080p standard. You will be disadvantaged if you don’t produce high-quality content because your competitors are, and that’s why they are earning more revenue. On average, here’s what you need:
You can find more information regarding the tools from alanspicer.com
Starting a blog is cheaper, and you can leverage that to create a good YouTube profile. You will probably have better deals initially as a blogger, and the whole setup process is cheaper.
Selling Your Work
If you need a platform with a good exit strategy, you should probably consider blogging. People sell their websites all the time, which can generate up to 50x of the platform’s monthly average profit. Overall, it’s easy and quite profitable to sell a blog.
Meanwhile, how many times have you heard a person sell their blog? This is because it’s highly unlikely for that to happen. In fact, if you do so, then you will be going against the terms and services of YouTube/Google.
This doesn’t mean that people don’t sell their YouTube channels, but the whole process is complex and involves many backdoor deals.
In conclusion, if you want to grow your target audience quickly with a moderate income, then you should consider starting a blog. But if you are patient, want to build a community, and earn a significant amount of money in the long run, then YouTube should be your go-to solution. To learn more about starting a YouTube channel, here’s what Alan Spicer, a certified YouTube Expert, offers.
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;
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.
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.
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.
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;
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;
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.
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.
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.
The prevalence of social media in our lives has opened many doors to success that would scarcely have been dreamed of in the past. And, by “the past”, we could be talking as recently as fifteen years ago. But, while there is an abundance of success stories from platforms like YouTube and Instagram, Facebook rarely is rarely brought up in this regard.
Sure, Facebook is an important tool in getting success on other platforms—you have to promote those YouTube videos somewhere, after all—but what about a more direct approach? Can you make money on Facebook?
The short answer is yes. There are several ways to make money through Facebook, ranging from “a little extra cash” to “this is my job now!”. In this post, we’re going to outline a number of ways in which you can start earning cash through Facebook. So let’s dive in!
How to Make Money on Facebook
With well over two billion users and a well-established advertising platform, there is certainly plenty of money floating around Facebook to be shared. Here are nine ways for you to get your hands on some of it.
Become an Influencer
We’re starting here because this is probably one of the most common ways in which people want to start making money online these days—the influencer route. Making content for an army of fans and making money from that content is the present-day version of being a celebrity, though much more attainable than being the next Tom Cruise or Lady Gaga.
It’s not nearly as well advertised as things like Facebook’s advertising platform, but Facebook does have a system in place for content creators to make money directly, and it comes in three parts.
Brand Collaborations
Brand Collabs Manager is Facebook’s system for bringing together popular content creators and brands in a managed environment where everyone can feel safe from… well, safe from being ripped off.
Essentially, Facebook ensures the brand is getting a legitimate content creator with an active audience while making sure the content creator gets paid for their collaboration efforts.
In order to qualify for this, you need to have at least 1,000 fans on your page and at least one of the following; 15,000 post engagements or 180,000 minutes watch time over the last sixty days.
That being said, even if you don’t qualify for Facebook’s system, you can always make brand deals directly with brands if you have the audience and negotiation skills.
In-Stream Ads
Much like YouTube, if you are creating video content on Facebook and you are seeing high enough levels of engagement, you can benefit from in-stream ads, earning you a small amount of cash per impression or click.
The criteria for monetising your content in this way is to have a fan or business page with at least 10,000 followers, at least 600,000 watch-minutes across live, on-demand, and replayed videos, five on-demand or previously videos published, and you must meet their policy guidelines.
Fan Subscriptions
Fan subscriptions are essentially Facebook’s answer to services like Patreon, and other platform’s solutions like YouTube Memberships. The criteria for this is a little simpler than the other options; you need to have at least 10,000 followers and at least 250 returning weekly viewers.
Once you meet those criteria, your fans can choose to pay your a regular fee for exclusive content.
Promote Your Services or Business on Facebook
Moving on to more indirect ways of making money through Facebook, if you have a service to offer or a business you are running, Facebook is an excellent platform for advertising your wares.
Like any good advertising platform, Facebook puts a lot of effort into making it so you can get your ads in front of exactly the right kind of people because paying to show an ad to someone who is not interested in what you are offering is a waste of money. Their rates are competitive compared to alternatives like Google Adsense, and you can generate a lot of traffic using this method.
Crowdsource Your Blog
If you run a blog—or you are thinking of starting one—Facebook can be an invaluable resource for researching your posts. Now, we’re not suggesting you start ripping posts directly off of Facebook and claiming them as your own. That would be wrong.
Facebook is full of groups put together with specific purposes in mind, and those groups are populated by people who are ready and willing to give their opinions and advice. If you are a little stumped for ideas, you can always ask questions in a relevant Facebook group. As long as the group is active and has plenty of members, you’re practically guaranteed to get answers.
Sell Things on Facebook Market
If you’re more interested in selling goods—or even if you just want to have a clearout of some of your old stuff—Facebook Marketplace is an effective way to do so.
Facebook Marketplace is heavily location-based, making it easier to find things that are local to you. This lends itself well to sellers who are perhaps looking to move on something like furniture they no longer need, or electronics they have outgrown. If you are running a business, it can also be a good way to build a local customers-base.
Become a Facebook Marketplace Re-Seller
Facebook Marketplace works both ways, of course, and you can buy just as easily as you can sell. You will often find things cheaper on this platform because of the local nature. Sellers have more of a “garage sale” (or car boot sale if you’re in the UK) attitude towards their items.
This presents an opportunity for someone interested in selling items because you can often find things on Facebook cheaper than those same items would be on something like eBay, or Amazon. You can then buy those cheaper items from Facebook Marketplace and sell them on platforms like eBay and net yourself a little profit!
Find Bugs
The technology behind Facebook is obviously critical to the success of the platform. And, with so many people’s data being at stake, Facebook knows how bad something like a data breach or fatal error could be for business. For this reason, Facebook has a “bug bounty”, where they essentially offer a reward for users who can find problems with the platform.
You will need some technical expertise for this—we’re talking security flaws and other vulnerabilities in Facebook’s systems, not simply reporting a link not working. The above link contains all the details about what Facebook considers a legitimate vulnerability, but if you find one, the minimum reward is $500!
Become a Social Media Manager
If you have a flair for social media—and, of course, your talents extend to Facebook—you could market yourself as a social media manager. Companies, and even individuals, are increasingly willing to pay people to take care of their social media presence for them, growing audiences and keeping them out of trouble. If this is something you would be good at, Facebook presents a huge opportunity to make money. And you wouldn’t be limited to just one client in this line of work.
Create a Popular Facebook Group
If you have an area of expertise—whether it be a professional thing or an area of deep interest on an enthusiast level—you could start a Facebook group centred around that subject matter.
This will require plenty of active participation from you, sharing your expertise and encouraging others to do the same. Once the group has reached substantial numbers, it can be a powerful tool for promoting things. And you, as the founder and established expert of the group, will be in a prime position to take advantage of that.
Become an Expert
Of course, you don’t need to create a group to establish yourself as an expert in something on Facebook. Posting helpful content on your area of expertise will likely garner interest from those people who seek that knowledge, and that can be parlayed into something more profitable.
It could simply be a way to funnel traffic from Facebook to your website or business, but it could also be the start of something. For example, you could start out answering questions on Facebook, and then move onto a podcast or YouTube channel with your already-established user-base.
Final Thoughts
Like all platforms on the Internet, Facebook is an invaluable tool for making money. And, like most platforms, there are several ways to go about making that money. The trick is finding the method that suits you the most.
For example, if you do not like dealing with people directly—and especially if you are not a fan of negotiation—you should probably steer clear of selling things through Facebook Marketplace. Similarly, if you do not have expertise in developing online systems like Facebook, you probably shouldn’t put much hope in the Facebook Bounty program.
And, most importantly, remember that nothing happens overnight. With a few very lucky exceptions, Facebook success takes time and effort, so don’t be discouraged if you’re not rolling in money by the end of your first month!
People today understand more than ever the importance of diversifying when it comes to your source of income. After decades of financial crisis’ and global pandemics, younger generations are acutely aware of how risky it is to put all your eggs in one employment basket.
This has always been the case for YouTubers, of course. Since the beginning of YouTubers making money from their content, it has always been the advice for smart YouTubers not to rely solely on YouTube to pay their bills. Adpocalypses, changes to personal situations, and much more can make YouTube earnings evaporate in no time.
Of course, telling you that it’s important to spread your wings a bit financially is all well and good, but we want to go that extra step and give you a few ideas on where you can spread your wings!
A side hustle is defined as any job or occupation that is not your main job or occupation. In a traditional sense, an example of this might be someone working in a factory through the week and then doing a few shifts tending bar on the weekend. In this case, the bar work would be a side hustle.
Of course, things are a little more fluid these days, with the lines between side hustles and a “main job” being a little blurrier, but there is an emotional component that is strong these days than it once was. It is not uncommon for people who make their money online to have something that they consider a side hustle actually be their primary source of income!
Still, whether you classify something as a side hustle based on the money it makes you or how important that activity is to you, the basic premise remains the same; it’s a way of earning money that you consider secondary to another way of earning money.
How Much Money Can You Make With a Side Hustle?
The amount of money you can make with a side hustle will, of course, vary tremendously depending on several factors, such as what the side hustle is, how good you are at it, how much time you put into it, and more.
As mentioned above, how much money it makes does not necessarily affect its status as a side hustle. If you consider YouTube your “primary” hustle, you may well find one of your side hustles overtaking as your largest source of income. Our advice would be to not think too much about things like the exact amounts. As long as you’re making enough (whatever “enough” means to you), it doesn’t matter which hustle is making the most money.
Don’t Think of it as a Side Hustle!
While you should get too hung up on the specific amount being made by any form of hustle, it’s important not to think of things as secondary, or unimportant. If your job involves making money on the Internet, you should consider all of it your job, whether it’s making the most or not.
If you start thinking of legitimate income sources as unimportant, you run the risk of letting them slip until they stop being legitimate income sources. You may think of yourself as a YouTuber, but if you have half a dozen side hustles, they will quickly amount to a significant portion of your income, so you probably literally can’t afford to neglect them.
Top 10 Side Hustles for YouTubers
That’s enough about what side hustles are, it’s time to get to our top ten side hustles for YouTubers. Of course, if you simply searched for side hustles and found this post, you aren’t a YouTuber, don’t stop reading. We’ve picked these ten side hustles because they work well with YouTubing, but they are perfectly viable side hustles for other walks of life, too.
In fact, if you see your main hustle on here (blog writer, or podcaster, for example), just swap that one out for “YouTuber” and keep on reading!
Oh, and a little side note about the YouTube Partner Programme, we haven’t included that in this list because we assume that if you’re looking to add side hustles to your resume, you’re already making money from YouTube.
#1 Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is perhaps one of the most well-established means of making money on the side for YouTubers. This is the process of promoting something in the course of your usual content and making a little money on the actions taken by your viewers.
The most well-known example of this is, of course, Amazon’s affiliate program. When enrolled as an Amazon affiliate, you will be able to get a personal affiliate link from any Amazon product. Viewers who happen to buy that product will not pay any extra—indeed, they wouldn’t even know it was an affiliate link if you didn’t tell them (more on that in a second)—but you will make a small commission on anything they buy through your links.
There are many forms of affiliate marketing available, as well as services designed specifically to facilitate linking companies with people like you. It should be noted, however, that you should always give some sort of indication to your viewers that a link you have put in the description or a product you are promoting in your video is something you are promoting as an affiliate. It’s not hard to find out, and viewers will be turned off by this kind of dishonesty. It could also get you in trouble with YouTube.
#2 Merchandise Seller
Whether you have some kind of merchandise that exists independent of your YouTube channel, or you start releasing merchandise that ties directly in with your YouTube channel, having that channel can be a great way to promote it.
Naturally, if your merchandise is tied to the channel (for example, t-shirts with the channel logo on them), you’re going to want to promote it from that channel. Alternatively, if you want to start (or already have) a small clothing line, you sell artwork, or you sell pretty much anything on a site like Etsy, you can leverage the popularity of your YouTube channel to give that side hustle a bit of a kickstart.
#3 Course Instructor
Many YouTubers have some area of expertise, even if their channel is not about imparting that expertise. These days, the administrative side of creating and hosting an online course to teach other people things is relatively painless. There’s still a lot of work in putting the course together, of course, but there’s a lot of work in running a YouTube channel, as well, and you’re not letting that stop you… are you?
Of course, if your channel is centred around educating, such as a DIY channel, or tutorials on coding, it will be much easier to translate that audience into an online course. But even channels that are not about teaching viewers something can take advantage of this side hustle, as long as the course is teaching a skill that is on display when you make your videos.
#4 Channel Manager
If you have a particular flair for handling YouTube channels, you might consider turning your attention to becoming a channel manager. Essentially, you would take on the management of other people’s channels, and handle almost everything except for the content itself.
Many people don’t have the time or desire to effectively manage their channel themselves, but proper channel management can make an enormous difference. As you will no doubt be aware of this is a side hustle you are considering.
The main thing to beware of here is letting this side hustle take over. A good channel manager will typically have several clients. And, while managing a channel doesn’t take nearly as much time as making content for it, it all adds up if you keep adding clients to your roster.
#5 Blogger
Bloggers may resent seeing their profession listed as a side hustle on a YouTube blog—especially since blogging was a viable source of income before YouTube—but don’t be mad; YouTube can just as rightly be called a side hustle for bloggers. And the good news is this makes sense whichever way round you look at it.
Essentially, you have something to share with an audience, and you are currently doing it in video form. By translating that content to written form, you can reach a whole new audience. Or you can make it supplemental, giving your YouTube audience something else to consume.
#6 Podcaster
In a very similar vein to being a blogger, you can get more of your message out in audio-only form through podcasts. And, again, if you are a podcast, you can easily look at this suggestion in reverse, with YouTube being the side hustle.
This suggestion works best for channels that already have a podcast-like feel, such as panel show channels, or interview channels. If you regularly put out hour-long videos that are mostly talking, you’re going to miss out on a lot of viewers purely because of the time requirements. Not everyone has that much free time to sit and watch YouTube.
Those same people might have an hour’s worth of commuting to do every day, or regularly go for a job and like to listen to something while they do. They might just want something to put on while they do a bit of cleaning around the home. If your content is already podcast-like, putting it out as a podcast will involve negligible work. And, if it succeeds, it could drive more traffic to your YouTube channel.
Of course, you can still make a podcast if your channel isn’t the kind of channel described above. As long as you have something interesting to talk about, you can find an audience.
#7 Produce Video Content
This one is a little trickier. As we mentioned above in the channel manager section, creating content for a channel is the most time-consuming part, so the idea of producing video content for others might not seem like the best plan.
While you could certainly produce video content for other YouTube channels, we’re suggesting something more specialist, such as making animations idents, or infographic clips. If you have a skill for this kind of thing, there will undoubtedly be plenty of people and companies that are happy to pay for your services.
#8 Stock Trader
This one doesn’t really tie in to you being a YouTuber unless your YouTube channel revolves around you being a stock trader, or talking about stock trading in some form. If this isn’t you, you can still get into stock trading (or currency trading), to earn a little (or a lot) extra on the side, just be sure you know what you’re doing. We categorically do not recommend anyone dabbling in the stock market without knowing what they’re doing beforehand.
#9 Become a Consultant
You don’t have to make content to take advantage of your expertise. Consultancy work is a great way for you to exploit your own knowledge while helping others. One example of this could be helping other YouTubers grow their channel (assuming you have proven yourself able to do this in the first place of course!), but it could just as easily be any other area of expertise you have.
#10 Champion a Cause
This one is kind of cheating. You won’t necessarily make any money from championing a good cause, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Whether it’s planting trees or donating to charities, you have the power to make an impact.
Final Thoughts
YouTube is undoubtedly a great platform for launching other projects, whether they are passion projects, side hustles, or even new careers. The list above is a relatively small selection of the possibilities for adding new hustles to your game, so don’t worry if none of the above work for you.
Of course, if all else fails, your side hustle could always be other YouTube channels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Anyone whose familiar with the topic of YouTube as a money-making opportunity will be familiar with the concept of niches.
If you’re not, all you really need to know for this post is that some niches are worth more to advertisers than others, and the more valuable a niche, the more revenue it has the potential to generate for YouTubers.
Choosing the right niche (or niches) is key to not only ensuring that your channel is financially successful, but also to ensuring that you can maintain the kind of momentum necessary to stick at it long enough to be successful. With that in mind, we’ve picked out seven of the highest paid niches on YouTube.
It’s best to pick a niche you are interested in, but that doesn’t mean you can’t lean towards a more valuable niche that you’re interested.
And now, in no particular order…
Affiliate Marketing
It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the best paying niches on YouTube is about another way of earning money.
Affiliate marketing—earning income through referrals—typically commands a CPM (cost per thousand views) of around $12 to $22, and is probably the highest paying niche available.
Because affiliate marketing is such a viable way to succeed, there is a lot of interest in affiliate marketing products and, as a result, a lot of interest in advertising said products And, because YouTube ads work on a bidding system, the more interest there is in advertising something, the more money those advertisements will generate.
Personal Finance
Our next pick, and something that you might see as establishing a bit of a trend on this list, is personal finance.
Being financially successful is about more than finding ways to make lots of money, you also need to manage your money well, and more of us are coming to learn that.
That’s where personal finance products come in. These might be anything from debt management consultations to services and software for tracking your finances. Videos making content in this niche can expect to see a CPM of between $4 and $12.
Business Advice
In much the same vain as the personal finance pick, business advice is also a very lucrative niche, often commanding CPMs in excess of $10. This one makes a lot of sense, as more and more opportunities for small businesses become accessible to regular people, more of us are looking to start a business of our own.
It could be a craft brewery, a 3D print on demand business, an Etsy store, or any number of other ways to start a business without hundreds of thousands in capital. But those people still need advice on running a business, which is why this niche is so competitive.
Drop Shipping
Very much continuing the theme of our last pick, drop shipping is a business model whereby a business owner markets and sells products that another company stocks and ships, that company being a drop shipping company.
This works to both companies advantage, as the smaller company does not need to worry about purchasing and storing lots of expensive stock, and the larger company does not need to worry about things like customer service.
There isn’t a great deal to be said about print on demand that wasn’t said in our drop shipping pick because the basic business model is very similar, and so are the CPM figures.
Many drop shipping services will offer a print on demand component on some of their products, allowing companies to offer those products with their own branding.
Trading and Investing
It’s probably obvious to you now that all of the highest paid niches on YouTube are ones that revolve around finances in some form or another, so you shouldn’t be surprised to see investing and trading on here.
Videos on the hows and whys of investing, as well as tips for those brave YouTubers who are willing to put that information out there, do very well in their own right, but content in this niche that trading platforms, signal services, and the multitude of investing and trading related services and products can advertise on routinely see CPMs as high as $18.
Content Creation
Our last pick might not be the most lucrative in terms of CPM—typically around $5 to $10, if you were wondering—but it is probably the most relevant to anyone reading this post.
Content creation is big business these days, whether it is creating content on video platforms like YouTube, or making podcasts, writing blog posts, or any number of other ways to make things and put them out into the world.
Crucially, there is a seemingly endless supply of products, tools, and services to help people in their content creation endeavours, which means there is plenty to advertise about.
Final Thoughts
While the niches shown here are hot right now, this is very much a volatile marketplace, and there are so many factors that can affect it.
If you can find a niche you are comfortable working in and interesting in making content for, you are in the ideal position as a YouTuber, because you will enjoy what you do.
We understand that many YouTubers don’t necessarily have that luxury, however, and it is sometimes necessary to hunt for the niche that makes the most financial sense. As with most areas of online revenue generation, the best advice you can take here is to not put all of your eggs in one basket.
If you focus everything on one niche, and that niche takes a dive for some unforeseeable reason, you will find yourself in a sticky spot.
If you can diversify your content and tackle multiple niches in different areas, you stand a much better chance of withstanding any dramatic changes to any single niche’s popularity.
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
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.
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.
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.
One of the most commonly asked questions about YouTubing is how much money a typical YouTuber makes, and it’s a tough one to answer because the variation between one YouTuber and the next can be substantial. A much less commonly asked question is what percentage of YouTubers make money?
Arguably, it’s a more enlightening question for someone considering getting into YouTube to ask. Here’s why;
If you ask how much a YouTuber earns, you could have an answer anywhere from $30 per month to £30,000 per month. It’s not a particularly useful question in that regard. But the question of what percentage of YouTubers make money at all will give you pretty good idea of how hard it can be to make money on the platform, which, for most users, isn’t as easy as they’d like.
What Percentage of YouTubers Make Money?
Firstly, let’s set a few ground rules for this section.
When we say “make money” we are talking about a substantial enough sum to be considered an income, be it a secondary income or the main thing. Technically speaking, someone who makes the equivalent of $3 a month from their YouTube channel is making money, but it’s hardly worth noting. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to arbitrarily put a cut-off point at $50 a month. This is still a very small amount when you consider the amount of work that goes into an average YouTube channel, but it’s at least enough to pay for a nice meal or the occasional upgrade of your gear.
The other rule is that we are talking exclusively about money made through YouTube. We’ll explore this a little more near the end of the post, but it is entirely possible for someone to make almost nothing on YouTube and still be earning a lot from Patreon or merch sales. We are looking exclusively at things like the YouTube Partner Programme, memberships, and super chats.
YouTubers That Are Eligible to Make Money
At the time of writing, there are around 31 million YouTube channels on the platform. If we start with the lowest barrier to entry for YouTube monetisation—the YouTube Partner Programme—we know that the criteria here requires the YouTuber to have at least a thousand subscribers. There are other factors, such as 4,000 hours watch time and good standing regarding the community guidelines, but we can’t easily find this information out for every YouTuber on the platform. However, according to AskWonder, the number of YouTube channels with over 1,000 subscribers is less than 80,000. Now, granted, these numbers are a little rough around the edges, but the disparity is clear, even if you allow for a substantial margin for error.
Based on these two metrics alone, we can estimate that at most, around 0.25% of all YouTube channels are making money. That’s not a lot.
And, when you consider that not all channels that are have over a thousand subscribers can actually make money, and that even those that can make money might not be making much money at all, it starts to paint a bit of a bleak picture.
Updated YouTube Earnings Statistics (2023)
With the ever-evolving landscape of YouTube and its creators, it’s essential to stay up-to-date with the latest statistics. Here, we present the updated earnings statistics for YouTubers in 2023, showcasing the growth and potential of this thriving platform.
YouTube Earnings Stats Table (2023 Projected)
YouTube Channel Subscribers
Percentage of YouTubers
Estimated Monthly Earnings (USD)
Estimated Yearly Earnings (USD)
1 – 1,000 subscribers
88%
$0 – $50
$0 – $600
1,001 – 10,000 subscribers
9%
$50 – $500
$600 – $6,000
10,001 – 100,000 subscribers
2.5%
$500 – $5,000
$6,000 – $60,000
100,001 – 1,000,000 subscribers
0.4%
$5,000 – $50,000
$60,000 – $600,000
1,000,001 – 10,000,000 subscribers
0.09%
$50,000 – $500,000
$600,000 – $6,000,000
10,000,001+ subscribers
0.01%
$500,000+
$6,000,000+
Key Takeaways
A significant majority (88%) of YouTubers have less than 1,000 subscribers, with earnings ranging from $0 to $50 per month.
Only 2.5% of YouTubers have between 10,001 and 100,000 subscribers, making it a competitive range to break into. These creators can expect to earn between $500 and $5,000 per month.
The top 0.1% of YouTubers, with over 1 million subscribers, make up the most successful and highest-earning tier. They can potentially earn over $50,000 per month and more than $600,000 per year.
These updated statistics demonstrate the income disparities between different levels of YouTube creators. While a small percentage of YouTubers make a significant income from their channels, the majority earn relatively small amounts. Aspiring creators should be aware of these realities and have a diversified income strategy to maximize their chances of success on the platform.
Why is the Percentage so Low?
There are probably a lot of complicated factors that play some role in this number, but the biggest, simplest explanation for this enormous disparity between channels and money makers is the low barrier to entry.
It costs nothing, financially, to set up a YouTube channel, and it doesn’t take much in the way of effort, either. This is great for giving more people the opportunity to create content, but it has the side effect of allowing people through the door that haven’t really thought about what they’re getting themselves into. For zero dollars and a minute or two creating a YouTube account and channel, you can have your very own YouTube channel. And, if it doesn’t pan out, you can just delete the channel, or even abandon it.
Potential YouTubers don’t need to ponder the implications or weigh up the pros and cons because there is no penalty for failing. If there was a fee to create a YouTube channel, there would be far fewer channels not making money, because YouTubers would put more thought into whether they really wanted to start a channel—and whether that channel could succeed—before they started.
Of course, we are not arguing for YouTube to raise the barrier to entry on YouTube, just highlighting this dynamic.
What Does This Mean?
We can’t tell you what to take away from information like this, but it is worth noting that there are two ways to look at this. On the one hand, the fact that such a vanishingly small percentage of YouTube channels are even in a position to make money through the platform (which, again, doesn’t guarantee that they are making money) is a bit grim if you are considering becoming a YouTuber and hope to make it a career.
On the other hand, the vast majority of the channels on YouTube are either hardly updated or abandoned entirely. We don’t know exact figures, but if YouTube ever decided to run an automated sweep and delete all the channels that have no videos, there would almost certainly be a noticeable drop in the total channels.
In other words, you shouldn’t be disheartened by the number of channels that fail. There is no external factor making them fail for the most part; it’s just them. Either a lack of ambition or drive. The truth is, if you can make semi-decent content in a niche that has enough interest, getting over a thousand subscribers is a matter of time and patience.
Other Ways of Making Money With a YouTube Channel
The above methods rely on YouTube’s moneymaking methods, and, as such, we can make inferences from other aspects of the platform, as we did with the subscriber count and the YouTube Partner Programme criteria. The reality of making money as a YouTuber is a little more complex than that.
It is entirely possible to make money from your YouTube channel away from the YouTube platform, and it is also possible to be in a position where you have a substantial following but can’t monetise your content on YouTube itself. Granted, we are not talking significant numbers here, but these channels do exist.
Now, if your YouTube channel doesn’t have a sufficient number of subscribers or watch time to meet the YouTube Partner Programme requirements, it’s unlikely you or your brand is known enough to be making any substantial earnings somewhere else, like Patreon.
But YouTube channels find themselves excluded from the YouTube Partner Programme—either on a video-by-video basis or channel-wide—on all the time.
The most common cause would be creating content that goes against YouTube’s monetisation policy (politics, violence, firearms, anything made for children, etc.). In this manner, a channel could have a million subscribers but be excluded from the YouTube Partner Programme and be unable to make money through YouTube directly. They could also be excluded because of copyright or community guideline strikes.
Still, given the above information about how many channels have over a thousand subscribers, we can’t see the percentage of YouTubers making money using systems other than the YouTube Partner Programme being significant enough to change the shape of things.
Multi-Channel YouTubers
In addition to channels that make their money from places other than YouTube, we could also quickly mention YouTubers with multiple channels.
It’s not uncommon among popular YouTubers to have more than one channel.
This typically happens because they are in a niche and their audience wants to see a specific type of content from them, but the YouTuber wants to branch out and do new things. Creating a second channel allows them to do that branching out without alienating any of their audience who might not be interested, since anyone who follows them to the second channel will know they are getting something different.
Now, we can’t practically find out how many of those 31 million YouTube channels belong to a YouTube with more than one channel. Almost certainly some of the 99.75% of YouTube channels that have less than a thousand subscribers will belong to a YouTuber with another channel that is making money. Still, we see no reason to believe the number is high enough to significantly change the landscape we have laid out.
After all, even if every single channel in the 0.25% that has over a thousand subscribers owned a second channel with less than a thousand, that would still only be a quarter of a percent shifted from the not making money side to the making money side.
Final Thoughts
At first glance, the number of YouTubers that are able to monetise their YouTube channel at all—let alone make a good amount of money from it—looks a bit depressing. Sure, 80,000 is a big number, but it’s a tiny fraction of the 31 million strong whole that is all the YouTube channels.
Just remember that most of that 31 million belongs to YouTubers who gave up, or perhaps never even got started in the first place. Let this post be a reminder that success is far from guaranteed when you start YouTubing, but don’t let it put you off starting at all. If anything, this should illustrate the importance of having some kind of plan.
Now get out there and be the 0.25%!
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.
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.
