Tag: money

Top 20 Richest YouTubers Of 2022

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 22 April 2022

It wasn’t that long ago that making YouTube videos were created just for fun. But now, it’s one of the highest-paying jobs on the planet. Content creators are making a living out of ad revenue, sponsorships, and using their influence to branch out to other business ventures. The competition is high, but here are the 20 of the richest YouTubers dominating the video-sharing platform right now.

Top 20 Wealthiest YouTubers of 2022:

1. Jeffree Star – $200 Million

The makeup artist and former musician is on the top of the list as he is a master of promoting his own brand, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, using his YouTube channel. He makes beauty content and shares his opinion on confidence, self-image, and fame.

Jeffree made money before YouTube by doing various makeup and modeling gigs. He also joined Myspace and gained a large following. He later started a YouTube channel to endorse his music. But when it didn’t work, he launched his own business.

With 16.1 million subscribers, he is far from being the most-subscribed YouTuber, but it’s enough to make him the wealthiest. His company alone makes him over $100 million yearly. Combine that with his other income sources, and Jeffree gets a $200 million estimated net worth.

2. PewDiePie – $40 Million

Felix Kjellberg, also known as PewDiePie, is dubbed by many as the king of YouTube. He has been on YouTube for a long time, popularizing commentary and reaction videos relating to video games and other pop culture topics.

PewDiePie was always passionate about gaming in his youth, so he recorded himself playing his favorite games. It wasn’t easy at first as YouTube didn’t have the monetization feature yet. He supported his lifestyle by selling artwork, working in the harbor, and running a hot dog stand.

He had the biggest YouTube channel for a long time until T-Series dethroned him after their rivalry. Still, he remains the most popular individual user on the site with 111 million subscribers and a net worth of approximately $40 million.

3. Markiplier – $35 Million

Markiplier is a YouTuber who makes comedic sketches and gameplay videos. Like PewDiePie, Mark has a long history on YouTube. He is a pioneer of the sketch style of playing every character involved.

He has created multiple YouTube channels throughout the years because of different reasons. The first time was when his Adsense account was banned. So, he made MarkiplierGAME. He is also a part of the now-deleted Unus Annus channel.

Now, his self-titled main channel has a subscriber count of 32.3 million. Mark has also found success in other ventures, such as podcasting and voice acting. He has a net worth of around $35 million as a result of his endeavors.

4. DanTDM – $35 Million

Originally referred to as TheDiamondMInecraft, DanTDM is another content creator who got most of his fame and fortune by playing video games. He primarily plays Minecraft, but he also tries other games, like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Pokemon.

In the category of dedicated Minecraft YouTube channel, he set a Guinness World Record for the most views. Dan also broke the record for the most goals scored by a Rocket League squad of two or three players in a single game.

Dan has acquired a total of 26 million subscribers. With this following, he wrote the book titled Trayaurus and the Enchanted Crystal in 2016. He did a book tour and starred in a YouTube Red series the following year. He has a net worth of nearly $35 million.

5. Ryan’s World – $32 Million

Ryan’s World is one of the most recognized YouTube accounts for children. In this channel, a child named Ryan Kaji reviews toy products, performs DIY science experiments, and completes numerous tasks.

It was previously known as Ryan ToysReview, but it was later renamed to its current moniker as Ryan tried new things. The 10-year-old’s mother had given up her full-time career to work with her son for this channel.

They currently have nine total channels, but they garnered 32 million subscribers on their main account. There’s a Spanish and Japanese version of Ryan’s World. They also sell merch, which is mainly toys and clothing. This gives Ryan a $32 million net worth at a young age.

6. Dude Perfect – $30 Million

Cody Jones, Tyler Toney, Garrett Hilbert, and twins Cory and Coby Cotton make up Dude Perfect. They gained popularity by making trick shot videos. Now, they are also doing other wild challenges and fun video series.

The five members were all roommates in college at Texas A&M University. They started by recording trick shots at Tyler’s ranch. When their videos became viral, ESPN called them and asked to feature them.

Dude Perfect has amassed 57.3 million subscribers. Players from several professional sports leagues have collaborated with them. They also created a mobile game with the same name as their channel. Now, the group has a total of $30 million in net worth.

7. MrBeast – $25 Million

This may come as a surprise to some, but MrBeast is not the wealthiest YouTuber alive. He just likes to make philanthropy and challenge videos in which he gives away thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars to random people and organizations.

Jimmy began posting on YouTube as MrBeast6000 when he was 13 years old. He started getting mainstream attention in 2017 when he made unique vlogs and rigorous challenges.

MrBeast is now close to getting the Red Diamond Play Button as he racked up 91.8 million subscribers. This fame also helped him launch other ventures such as Finger on the App, MrBeast Burger, Feastables. That’s why it’s not surprising that he has over $25 million in net worth.

8. VanossGaming – $25 Million

Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, is a Canadian online figure, creative director, gaming commentator, and disc jockey. He showcases most of his talents on his YouTube channel.

He created his YouTube channel around the same time he went to college to study economics. When he began to devote more time to content creation, his parents became concerned. But everything worked out in the end for Fong.

He is regarded as a key character in the expanding video game commentary subculture. This is how he got 25.6 million people to subscribe to his channel. He also makes money as a DJ called Rynx. It eventually gave him an estimated net worth of $25 million.

9. Ninja – $25 Million

Ninja, whose real name is Richard Tyler Blevins, is a professional gamer known for streaming Halo 3, Fortnite, PUBG, and more. Team Liquid, Cloud9, Renegades, and Luminosity Gaming were among the teams he played for.

He never went to a university and started streaming in 2011. He was slowly getting viewers at first. His mainstream media debut came in March 2018, when he streamed Fortnite with Travis Scott, Drake, and JuJu Smith-Schuster.

At the time of writing, Ninja’s subscriber count is hidden, but it’s known that he reached 23.9 million in the past. Apart from YouTube, he has many fans on Twitch, even becoming the most-followed channel on the platform in late 2021. He now has a net worth close to $25 million.

10. Rhett and Link – $24 Million

Rhett James McLaughlin and Charles Lincoln “Link” Neal III are a comedic pair that dubs themselves as the “Internetainers”. They have made several comedy projects together, but perhaps their most successful one is the web series Good Mythical Morning.

The duo met in first grade at a North Carolina elementary school. They went on to share a dorm room at North Carolina State University. They both worked in their respective fields for a period while also creating skits.

Their Rhett and Link channel has 4.99 million subscribers, while Good Mythical Morning has 17.5 million. They run five channels in total. They are also the current owners of another comedy group called Smosh. With this, the two have a combined net worth of $24 million.

11. James Charles – $22 Million

As a creator who thrives in the beauty genre, James Charles Dickinson is known for his makeup tutorials. He has stated that cosmetics is a creative expression and an art form for him.

He got into beauty by assisting a colleague with her makeup for a school dance. He eventually taught himself how to do it alone and began doing it professionally for others. James started his channel while working as a small makeup artist in New York.

James has about 24.2 million subscribers currently. After a tweet displaying his makeup made headlines, he was named CoverGirl’s first male brand ambassador. He’s over $22 million after releasing his own makeup line.

12. Jake Paul – $22 Million

Jake Paul is a vlogger who has turned his focus to celebrity boxing. His YouTube channel is known for its pranks, controversy, and music. He is a part of Team 10, who dropped the song, It’s Everyday Bro, which received mixed reactions from listeners.

He first became known on Vine and then for his role as Dirk Mann on the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark, which he played for two seasons. Paul has been the target of numerous controversies during his career as a result of his actions.

Even with the disputes, Paul has gained 20.4 million subscribers. As of his professional boxing career, he has a 5-0 record. Content creation and boxing made him one of the most prosperous YouTubers today, worth $22 million.

13. KSI – $21 Million

JJ Olatunji, alias KSI, is known for posting hilarious reactions and gaming commentary videos on his YouTube channel. He is also involved in celebrity boxing, and he releases his own music. He is also a member of the British influence group Sidemen.

In 2008, he began publishing gaming videos on YouTube, and most of them were about FIFA. He drew a large number of viewers and quickly increased his material coverage.

The JJ Olatunji channel, where he uploads his vlogs, has 14.8 million subscribers while his music account, KSI, has 23.7. JJ was the first rival of Jake Paul in their amateur boxing career. It ended with a draw, and both turned pro later on. This contributed to KSI’s current net worth of $21 million.

14. Preston Arsement – $20 Million

With multiple gaming channels, Preston Arsement is one of the leading content creators in his category. He mainly plays Minecraft, and he’s a part of The Pack, a Minecraft community he started with his friends. He also makes videos from the Minecraft server he runs.

Like many gaming creators, Preston has been a video game lover since childhood. He eventually decided to skip college and create the TBNRfrags channel with two of his friends, TBNRKenWorth and ChocoTheChocobo.

TBNRfrags has reached 7.53 million subscribers. But later on in Preston’s career, he decided to make a channel of his own. It now has 19.3 million subscribers. Arsement’s online pursuits have earned him a net worth of over $20 million.

15. Like Nastya – $20 Million

Like Nastya is the second children’s channel to make it on this list. The channel stars a little Russian girl named Anastasia Radzinskaya, who often does toy unboxing, reviews, and travel vlogs.

At birth, Anastasia was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Her parents both worked and owned businesses that they eventually sold. They devoted all of their time to caring for their daughter, eventually making a YouTube channel dedicated to her.

Fortunately, the girl is doing well now, and their efforts have earned them 89.2 million subscribers. They translated their videos into different languages. It helped Anastasia gain a net worth of approximately $20 million at eight years old.

16. David Dobrik – $20 Million

As a long-running social media personality, it’s not a shock to many that David Dobrik is one of the most affluent content creators on the planet. His YouTube channel featured individuals with whom he had previously collaborated on other platforms.

David started out on Vine. Before Vine was shut down, he had over a million followers. Because of this, he was able to shift to YouTube faster than most other influencers.

The Slovakian personality continues to grow with his 18.3 million subscribers. He made a second channel, David Dobrik Too. He uploads challenge videos and blooper clips there. David also has a podcast with Jason Nash. All of this amounts to a net worth of around $20 million.

17. Lilly Singh – $20 Million

Formerly called Superwoman, Lilly Singh is an accomplished comedian and actress. Her YouTube channel is full of skits and crossovers with well-known celebrities.

Singh had planned to obtain a degree as her parents had wanted but instead chose to make YouTube videos. She decided that if her YouTube career did not take off, she would return to grad school. But her YouTube channel exceeded her expectations.

She now has 14.7 million subscribers and has been involved in projects outside of YouTube to improve her wealth. She got the chance to make music, host a talk show, and tour the world. Though she still studied for a degree, she also has a net worth close to $20 million.

18. Logan Paul – $19 Million

Logan is the big brother of Jake Paul. The siblings have a similar career and content, consisting of pranks, challenges, and vlogs. Both of them have been involved in several controversies and have dived into the world of professional boxing.

At ten years old, Logan was already making videos. In 2015, he was the most famous Vine creator. He moved on to act in some television programs and even write a screenplay.

He now has 23.4 million subscribers. Aside from his typical content, he’s a frequent guest at boxing, mixed martial arts, wrestling events. He also hosts a podcast titled Impaulsive that adds a lot to Paul’s $19 million net worth.

19. Blippi – $16 Million

Blippi, also referred to as Stevin John, is a popular children’s entertainer who can be seen on a handful of streaming platforms. He depicts a lively and curious character in his informative videos so that kids can relate to him.

Stevin didn’t start out as Blippi. In fact, he was far from child-friendly in his early days of playing characters. He portrayed Steezy Grossman, a child born as feces.

Switching to a different look is perhaps the best decision he’s made now that he has 15.1 million subscribers on YouTube. He also makes foreign language videos and releases them to various platforms. That’s why Blippi is worth $16 million.

20. Roman Atwood – $14.5 Million

Roman Bernard Atwood was known initially for his prank videos. However, he ultimately transitioned to another content style. He made vlogs, in which he chronicles his daily activities.

While still in high school, Roman Atwood began filming and making videos. He even made The Nerd Herd DVD series. In Columbus, Ohio, he’s also worked on a number of films and commercial gigs.

His original prank channel earned 10.3 million subscribers until he stopped posting there in 2016. Now, he is active on his second channel. Overtook the first one with 15.5 million subscribers, giving Roman Atwood a 14.5 million net worth.

Tags money, richest youtubers, top 10 youtubers, top 20 youtubers, youtube money

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE LISTS

9 Ways To Make Money Using Your Computer

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 17 April 2022

Whether you’re looking for ways to make extra money online or on your PC, or heck — even your cellphone! Stick around, your 2022 is about to get a whole lot better.

1. Leveraging the gig economy

There are tons of websites out on the internet that provide you the opportunity to earn some extra money — using skills that you already possess and equipment you may already own.

I’m talking about the gig economy here. It’s a great way for people to make money and earn a steady and passive income — all in the comfort of your own home. These sites only require that you sign up, with some offering premium subscriptions to boost sales and grant access to features like bidding on more proposals.

Some of these include

Freelancer
Upwork
Fiverr (⭐ my personal favourite)
TaskRabbit

2. Writing

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”. Alright, alright, I admit, not all writing is Shakespearian. But you’ll definitely need some strong lingual skills to be able to qualify as a copywriter. Luckily it’s not like in the olden days, using typewriters, amiright?

But seriously though, there’s a chance you’ll make some really good dough (👏 3 claps for the rhyme) writing as a skill.

Here are just some of the ways you’d be able to get some moola typing away on your fancy keyboard or whatever:

Start a blog
Self-Publish a book
Create affiliate content
Write scripts for video creators
Create written content for social media
Peer check books
Help with marketing content

Phew, that was a list in a list!

3. Coding

That’s right kids. If you understand this

print(“hello world”);

to some degree, you’ve probably done some coding before. Coding, programming or developing, as some may call it, would stand the test of time (at least for now) to be one of the most lucrative ways to earn extra money, or even as your main source of income.

There are plenty of resources out there that use low-code/no-code to build you an app or website, and then of course, there are the hardcode coders (like me) that write everything line by line, binary di — okay fine, that last part is definitely over exaggerating a bit.

But on a more serious note, you can make money writing websites, apps, making cloud platforms, or using low code or no code platforms.

Pretty cool, right?

4. Content Creation

The internet has gifted us many platforms that we can leverage to gain unfathomable wealth and extra money out of this world — if we use them correctly. This one’s a bit tougher than the rest, though. It requires a LOT of upfront time investment, unlike some of the other items on this list.

I’m talking about platforms like YouTube, or writing your own blog using Medium. It’s an incredible way to generate an income — both passive and active. YouTube, for one, have birthed many millionaires with the likes of Jake- and Logan Paul, PewDiePie (a.K.A. Felix Kjellberg) in the last decade and a half of it’s existence, and it’s never too late. New YouTubers are always on the rise, making it to the top with high quality content.

5. NFTs and Cryptocurrency

NFTs and Cryptocurrency exchanges have become one of the fastest ways to amass some great deal of money through the owning and selling of digital assets. Binance’s Initial Game Offer promises great rewards for those who invest early and yield the best results.

One game that’s pretty awesome (and that’s had a piece of it’s plot essentially sold for at US$7.2 million! That’s crazy!) is Axie Infinity. It’s downloadable via the Google and Apple stores, and it’s free!

6. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company pays others (e.g bloggers) to advertise their products and services and generate sales. Here, I’ll use an example. I write a blog (like this one) and I post a link to an item I’d recommend buying — say, a camera — through Amazon’s Affiliate Program, and if you end up buying said camera, I’d get a portion of the sale as commission!

Here are some high paying programs:

Elementor
AWeber
Sendinblue
ConvertKit
Leadpages
GetResponse
SEMRush
Fiverr

7. Create a blog

Now folks, if you’re an avid writer, or you are just really passionate about a specific thing or niche, then, as an expression, blogging could potentially monetize said passion!

Think of something — anything — and start a blog on that. Heck, you can even start right here on Medium like I did!

8. Try Drop-shipping

And I do mean this in the best way possible — drop shopping is stupidly easy to set up, but would, for some, be quite challenging to keep the ball rolling.

Luckily, Shopify has made it incredibly easy to create and run an online store. Drop-shipping from China’s biggest, like AliExpress and DHGate are quite common. But if you can manage to score a local distributer that’s willing to let you drop ship their product — you’ve got a winner!

9. Set up an Online Course

If you have a skill, and you can articulate said skill, then look no further than online education.

Online education, with the likes of Skillshare, Pluralsight and Coursera have made inroads in the last couple of years, upskilling individuals from courses that YOU can create and earn from.

Tags freelance, hustles, money, online money, side hustles, work from home

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA

How Pinterest Makes Money

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 5 April 2022

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.

Tags income, make money online, money, pins, pinterest, pinterest money, pinterest stats, pintrest, stats

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

How Can You Monetize a Site – Blog vs YouTube Earnings

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 6 January 2022

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:

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.

Popular Blogging Niches with Top Revenue – The top niches that guarantee bloggers more revenue include:

Finance

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.

• Frugal spending

• Investing

• How to save for a side hustle

• Mortgage and early retirement, among others

Marketing Blog

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:

• A camera- a good one should be around $450+

• A camera stand – $15

• A microphone – $60

• Video editing software- $60

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.

Tags adsense, affiliate marketing, blogging, making money online, money, vlogging, youtube

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Can You Make Money on Facebook Groups?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 30 December 2021

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.

Watch this space.

Tags facebook groups, make money on facebook, make money online, monetize facebook, money, passive income

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE YOUTUBE

Top 30 Side Hustles for Students

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 30 December 2021
1 Comment on Top 30 Side Hustles for Students

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;

Become a Secret Shopper

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

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

Take Paid Surveys

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

Become Part of the Machine

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

Offer Online Tutoring

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

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

Start an Online Course

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

Sell Old Items

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

Become a Reseller

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

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.

Tags entrepreneurship, freelance, hustles, income, make money, make money online, money, passive income, self employed, side hustles

BUSINESS TIPS DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE LISTS SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Top 10 Side Hustles for YouTubers

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 6 December 2021
5 Comments on Top 10 Side Hustles for YouTubers

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!

With that in mind, we’ve put together our top 10 side hustles for YouTubers to dip their toes into (click here for side hustles for students). Never heard of a “side hustle” before? Don’t worry…

What is a “Side Hustle”?

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.

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

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

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

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

Big mistake!

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

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

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

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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

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

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

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

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

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

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

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

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

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

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

Tags affiliate, affiliate marketing, income, money, passive income, side hustles, youtube money

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 24 November 2021
2 Comments on Can I Use YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes?

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

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

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

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

Uploading Videos for Commercial Purposes

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

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

Embedding Videos for Commercial Purposes

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

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

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

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

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

Playing YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes

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

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

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

Additional Factors

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

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

Summing Up

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

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

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

It always pays to think through all of the implications.

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big mistake!

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

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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

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

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

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

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

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

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

Tags commercial, copyright, make money online, money, sales, youtube sales

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA YOUTUBE

Can YouTube Shorts Be Monetized?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 30 October 2021
1 Comment on Can YouTube Shorts Be Monetized?

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

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

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

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

What Are YouTube Shorts?

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

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

Where Is The Money?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YouTube Shorts Fund Explained

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

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

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

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

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

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big mistake!

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

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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

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

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

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

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

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

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

Tags best way to make money on youtube, make money online, monetization, money, passive income, youtube, YouTube Monetization, youtube shorts

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE LISTS YOUTUBE

Top 7 Highest Paid Niches on YouTube

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 28 June 2021
8 Comments on Top 7 Highest Paid Niches on YouTube

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.

This model of business has found a lot of success in the Internet age, and videos in this niche can expect to see CPMs in the region of $7 to $14.

Print on Demand

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

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.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

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

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

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

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

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

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

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

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

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

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

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

Tags adwords, cpm, highest paid niches, income, make youtube money, money, passive income, rpm, youtube money

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE YOUTUBE

Do All YouTubers Make Money?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 1 April 2021
1 Comment on Do All YouTubers Make Money?

Though it’s becoming less of a thing as YouTube and other video platforms become evermore pervasive in our lives, there is a weird psychological aspect to seeing someone on screen.

Almost certainly left over from the not-too-distant days when broadcast television was the only way to get video content and being on TV in any significant capacity almost inherently meant you were famous, we have a tendency to “celebritise” (yes, I made that word up) our favourite YouTubers.

And, if someone is a celebrity, they’re probably making plenty of money, right?

Of course, while the likes of James Charles and DanTDM are making a small fortune and can be considered to be celebrities by most reasonable standards, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of YouTubers—even the ones that make their living from YouTubing—are living considerably more modest lives than your average A list celebrity.

So, when asking the question, “do all YouTubers make money?” – we can confidently and absolutely say no, no they do not. Many YouTubers make nothing at all from their YouTubing exploits. Making money on YouTube depends on niche, consistency and the ability to monetize properly. If you can convert views into clicks and sales you can do very well.

But it is the grey area between no money and filthy rich that is the most interesting, and that’s what we’re going to take a look at today.

YouTubers Who Make No Money

Before we get to that more interesting area, let’s take a look at the people who don’t earn money from their YouTube channels.

As implied above, we are generally more savvy to the fact that literally anyone can become a content creator, and no matter how exciting and lavish something looks on YouTube, there is a good chance they are filming in a studio flat in between shifts tending bar. There’s nothing wrong with bar tending, of course, but it’s not something people who don’t need the money typically choose to do for fun.

The first thing to consider is that changes to YouTube’s monetisation policies not so long ago made it so that many YouTubers can’t monetise their channel.

For YouTubers who have less than a thousand subscribers or fewer than four thousand hours combined watch time, or any of the other criteria, monetising their content through the YouTube Partner Programme is not an option.

They could monetise their content in other ways, of course, but a channel that doesn’t meet the criteria for the YouTube Partner Programme will often be too small to make any significant income from other means.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course; some YouTubers may make content in niches that YouTube will not allow to be monetised, but still have a big enough following to make money in other ways, such as selling merch, but for the most part, people who can’t monetise their YouTube content are probably not making any money from their channel.

Of course, there is a whole separate discussion to have over whether making money should be considered important. While life is rarely ideal, the ideal scenario would be that the YouTuber makes videos they want to make regardless of whether they are getting paid, and any revenue can then be treated as a nice bonus, and if things progress to the point where you can earn your living from the channel, event better! That being said, we know life is not ideal, and YouTube is a regular job for many people, rather than the dream career it can sometimes look like to outsiders.

How the Other Half Lives

Much like society, the very successful make up a tiny fraction of the total number of YouTubers out there.

The exact amount that any given view is worth varies quite significantly depending on the type of content and things like how long the video is, but as a rough guide, YouTubers can expect to earn between $3 and $5 per thousand views of monetised content. Using the aforementioned DanTDM as an example, Dan consistently gets 2-3 million views a day. Using these numbers and sticking to the conservative end of the scale, we can estimate that Dan makes around $6,000 per day from the YouTube Partner Programme alone. And that doesn’t factor in things like merchandise sales, sponsored videos, super chat money, and anything else he might be doing that earns revenue.

And if that makes you feel a little jealous, Dan ranked approximately 50th (at the time of writing) in terms of video views across the whole platform, meaning there at least 49 YouTubers out there probably making a lot more money!

The reason we’ve included this envy-inducing section is to illustrate just how big the numbers we are dealing with can get. Even with YouTube’s notoriously low rates of pay and unreliable nature when it comes to changing their terms of service, there are YouTubers out there who can easily break a quarter of a million dollars in one month on ad revenue alone. They are by far the minority, but when it comes to YouTubers who get millions of views a day, it’s probably harder for them to not make money.

The Grey Area

So now we come to that interesting middle ground between the people who make nothing and the people who make more money than they know what to do with.

The YouTubers we are talking about here can be a mixed bunch. We might be talking about YouTubers who have a substantial following but make the kinds of videos that YouTube refuses to monetise.

We might be talking about people whose channel has grown enough to be approved for the YouTube Partner Programme but is still relatively small and not making a great deal of revenue.

This swath of YouTube covers everything from people who spend large portions of their week making YouTube content and make very little money, to people who spend a few hours a week streaming off-the-cuff content and make thousands.

And, of course, the many YouTubers whose time-to-earnings ratio is comparable to a regular job.

Understanding Revenue and Motive

When trying to wrap your head around this topic, it is important to remember that YouTubers do what they do for a variety of reasons.

Some people have no interest in money, and only do the bare minimum of monetisation on their channel. Some people do absolutely everything they can to monetise their content and end up making a respectable income from a relatively small number of views.

It is also important to remember that revenue is far from a simple, clean system that looks the same for every YouTuber. For one thing, even the ad revenue earned through the YouTube Partner Programme can vary dramatically between YouTubers. Not only are some ads worth more than others, but the watch time can play a huge role. Consider a two-minute video; YouTube might put an ad at the start of that video, earning the YouTuber a cool $2 per thousand views. Now let’s say a different YouTuber in the same niche puts up a video that is ten minutes long, has two ad placements and gets the same amount of views; that YouTuber will be making $4 for their thousand views. Same amount of views, twice as much revenue.

Of course, this example assumes that both videos are watched all the way through and all the ads are seen, but the fact that we need to clarify that fact illustrates another way in which revenue calculation on YouTube is a messy business.

Then, of course, there are the many and varied ways that YouTube content could be monetised. Someone who seems to be getting relatively low viewing figures on their YouTube channel could be making a comfortable living from their content over on Patreon.

We tend to think of viewing figures through the YouTube revenue lens, which is to say, we assume you need at least 50,000-100,000 subscribers before you can have any hope of making decent money. The truth is you can do it with a lot less if that audience is dedicated and invested in your channel. If a YouTuber had 5,000 subscribers and 5% of those subscribers are happy to send the

YouTuber $10 a month in YouTube memberships, Patreon subscriptions, or something similar, that YouTuber could easily live off the money they make, even if they are getting viewing figures in the hundreds, rather than tens of thousands. Conversely, a YouTuber making all of their earnings through the YouTube Partner Programme would have be getting at least 800,000 views a month to make the same amount of money.

Final Thoughts

Do all YouTubers make money? Certainly not. At least, not from YouTube. But there are so many factors that go into how much money YouTubers make that it is almost impossible to make an accurate guess based only what you can see from the outside.

They could be a relatively unknown YouTuber with a dedicated following who makes plenty of money in memberships, or they could be a well-known YouTuber who gets millions of views, but their content is in a poorly-paying niche, constantly has videos demonetised, and pays agent fees.

The truth is, unless a channel has no subscribers or millions of subscribers, the only way to be sure is to ask, but you probably won’t get an answer.

Tags do all youtubers make money, money, youtube money

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

What Are Virtual Influencers?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 1 March 2021

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

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

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

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

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

What is an Influencer?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are Virtual YouTubers?

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

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

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

What are Virtual Influencers?

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

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

Why Virtual?

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

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

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

What’s in it for Brands?

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

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

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

Brand Mascots

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

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

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

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

How to Become a Virtual Influencer

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

Pick Your Niche

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

Be Mindful of Your Own “Brand”

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

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

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

Don’t Rush It

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

Tags influencers, make money online, money, virtual influencers, vtuber, vtubers, what are tubers, youtube money

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Do YouTubers Get Paid for Views?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 1 March 2021
1 Comment on Do YouTubers Get Paid for Views?

How YouTubers get paid is often a point of interest for people who are considering getting into the platform.

And, for that matter, many people who have no interest in becoming a YouTuber but nevertheless are curious.

There are, of course, several ways in which a YouTuber can get paid from their channel, and there is plenty of information about the different aspects of YouTuber earnings, many of which you can find on this very blog.

Do YouTubers Get Paid for Views?

So, straight to the meat of the topic. Do YouTubers get paid for views? The answer is a little mixed – YouTube channels need to be part of the YouTube Partner Program to earn money directly from the adverts displayed on their videos. Once a channel has 1000 subscribers, 4000 watch time hours and are accepted into the program they ca earn anywhere between $1-10 per thousand advert views.

There are other YouTubers that do get paid but that choose to operate in ways that don’t earn them money on a per-view basis.

Let’s back up a little.

It’s worth noting that, effectively, all YouTube earnings are based on views one way or another. Even YouTubers who earn their revenue primarily through things like brand deals and crowdfunding need to have enough interest in their content to make money, and that interest is expressed through views. Granted some methods of generating revenue require considerably fewer views to make a given amount of money than others, but it all comes to back to views one way or another.

Still, a channel getting a lucrative brand deal because they have millions of views a month is not what we typically mean when talk about getting paid for views on YouTube. So what do we mean?

The YouTube Partner Programme

We are, of course, talking about monetisation through YouTube’s Partner Programme, which is the most common way that YouTubers monetise their channels—at least in the beginning.

This programme works by displaying ads on your content and, for channels that qualify, splitting the revenue. There are certain criteria that need to be met, such as how long an ad is watched for, or whether the ad was interacted with, but for the most part, the basic rule of more view equals more revenue applies.

Watch Time

Of course, like most things in life, the reality is a little more complex. We’ve already hinted that the amount of time an ad is watched affects whether it earns any money, but when we are talking about revenue per view, the length of the video is also important.

YouTube doesn’t just show one ad on a video, it will cram as many in there as you let it, and the longer the video, the more ads that can be shown. Again, whether the ads get watched is a different matter, but a video that is long enough to show four advertisements has the potential to earn four times as much revenue as one that only shows one ad.

Engagement

Those of you who can read between the lines may already have made this connection, but the natural result of more ads increasing the revenue doesn’t just mean that longer videos have the potential to earn more money, it also means that engagement is important, too.

The crucial point about having that video we mentioned that is long enough to show four times as many advertisements is that those advertisements only earn revenue if they are watched. That means that if a viewer checks out before the second ad, the rest of those ads may as well have not been there for all the good they do.

How is Revenue Calculated?

For view-based revenue on YouTube, there are two central metrics for calculating how money a channel is making; CPM and RPM.

CPM—cost per mille—refers to the amount of money that a channel is making per thousand views. CPM factors all the videos that are eligible for monetisation (and only those videos), which means that you get an average spread in terms of revenue, which is to say that videos that make very little will bring your CPM down, whereas videos that make a lot will bring it up.

CPM does not account for YouTube’s share of the revenue, nor does it factor any of the many other ways which you can make money through the platform, or external to the platform for that matter.

RPM—revenue per mille—is a metric designed to give YouTubers a better sense of how much revenue their channel is making. Like CPM, it refers to the amount of money you are making per thousand views, but unlike CPM, it factors in all views. It also factors in several other sources of revenue (from within the YouTube platform) such as memberships, and super chat.

Revenue Sources YouTube Doesn’t Account For

YouTube can only factor in revenue that you make through their platform, but there are other ways to earn money from the success of your channel.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the more popular ones.

Third Party Subscription and Donations

The most direct way for your viewers to support you is by sending you money, of course.

This can be done through direct donations, such as through PayPal, but it can also be done using platforms like Patreon, which allow your viewers to set up a recurring payment to support your content.

This is essentially the same model that the YouTube Membership system is based on.

Brand Deals and Endorsements

For YouTubers who have a significant influence in a particular area—or just a heck of a lot of subscribers—brand deals and endorsements can become an option.

This is where a company comes to you directly, paying you to endorse a product or service, sponsoring a video.

These deals are typically far more lucrative than anything you would get through the YouTube Partner Programme, but are much harder to get since your channel has to be very successful to get noticed by brands. It is possible to get brand deals as a smaller channel, but you generally have to be a big player in a specific niche for that to happen.

Affiliate Marketing

For YouTubers whose content lends itself well to affiliate marketing, tying in your content to a relevant affiliate program can be a great way to increase the revenue your channel earns.

The most common example of this is YouTube channels that review or highlight products sharing Amazon Affiliate links to those products in their descriptions.

How to Increase Revenue Per Views

Though there is no one-size-fits-all solution, we can boil down the keys to success to a few significant points. Firstly, focus on watch time and engagement. The longer your videos are, and the more watch time they accumulate, the more revenue they will have the chance to generate.

There are also ways to direct your content so that it is more likely to earn more money. Generally speaking, targeting niches that have a high click through rate, or that get bid on highly by advertisers, will mean that your videos generate more money per view.

Beyond that, though it no doubt feels like a bit of a cop out, the best advice for increasing the revenue of your channel is to focus on the content and make the best videos you can. High quality content is the foundation upon which successful channels are built, and starting with a good foundation will always give you a better chance of success in the long run.

How Much is a View Worth on Average?

As we have hopefully made clear, there is no fixed amount we can give, but for a rough idea of how much a view is worth, the average ad view on YouTube will make somewhere between $0.01 and $0.03.

This is, of course, subject to any criteria regarding how long the ad is watched for. Ads that are watched for less than a given amount of time will not earn the channel any money.

If this number seems a little low, it generally is considered to be, which is why YouTube Partner Programme earnings are rarely deemed a good method to base your entire income on.

Final Thoughts

Trying to put a solid number on something like YouTube earnings is a losing battle; there are simply too many variables that can change that number.

And, while YouTubers can often calculate their earnings as a per view metric, the reality of those earnings is often considerably more complicated, with revenue coming from several different places, and at a far from consistent rate.

If you are becoming a YouTuber with revenue generation being the primary goal, it will help to shape your channel from the very beginning with that in mind; focusing on appropriate niches, making content that lends itself well to earning money.

If you are joining YouTube for the love of making content, however, just focus on that to begin with, and figure the rest out as you go along.

Tags do youtubers get paid, money, youtube money, youtuber money

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

A Zero-waste YouTuber With About 125,000 Subscribers Explains How Much Money He Earned Each Month In 2020

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 8 February 2021

Levi Hildebrand is a YouTube creator who films videos on how to help preserve the planet, be a minimalist, and follow a zero-waste lifestyle.
He started his YouTube channel in 2017 and now has about 125,000 subscribers.
By monetizing his videos with ads and brand deals, he turned his YouTube channel into a full-time job.
Hildebrand spoke with website blog Insider about how much money he makes on YouTube, and why he only works with brands that align with his message.

Levi Hildebrand wants to help preserve the planet and he has turned this mission into a full-time career by sharing his message on YouTube.

Hildebrand launched his YouTube channel in 2017 and now he has 125,000 subscribers. On his YouTube channel, Hildebrand has videos about urban farms, compostable phone cases, and how to follow a zero-waste lifestyle.

His channel’s slogan is: “You don’t need to be a hero to save the planet.”

To make a career out of posting content on social media, Hildebrand has developed several revenue streams, including brand sponsorships, affiliate links, Patreon, and money earned from ads placed in his videos through YouTube’s Partner Program.

Read more: A 5-step guide to making the most money possible from YouTube video ads, with advice from top creators

To be accepted into YouTube’s Partner Program, creators must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, and once they are in, their videos are monetized with ads filtered by Google. How much money a creator earns (called AdSense) depends on the video’s watch time, length, video type, and viewer demographics, among other factors. YouTube also keeps 45% of the ad revenue, with the creator keeping the rest.

Hildebrand’s YouTube channel is a One Percent for the Planet member – an organization where members contribute at least one percent of their annual earnings to help save the environment. And for 2021, Hildebrand said he will be donating all of the money his channel makes this year from YouTube AdSense to the organization.

But how much money does a YouTube channel about sustainability and minimalism earn?

Hildebrand broke down how much money he’s earned on YouTube by month in 2020.

January: $756
February: $967
March: $682
April: $1,008
May: $995
June: $1,181
July: $1,167
August: $1,199
September: $1,722
October: $1,444
November: $1,549
December: $1,156

YouTube ad rates fluctuate month to month, and at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, some YouTube creators saw a decline in their March earnings as advertisers pulled campaigns and lowered budgets. You can see that reflected in Hildebrand’s earnings.

A post shared by Levi Hildebrand (@levi_hildebrand)

Since Hildebrand follows a sustainable, zero-waste lifestyle, he only supports brands and companies that have similar values.

For instance, some of the brands and products that Hildebrand has promoted on his channel include the shoe brand Allbirds, a phone case company that makes compostable products, and a sunglasses brand that uses sustainable materials.

Only working with eco-friendly brands can be tricky and he rarely says yes to working with new companies, Hildebrand said.

“I never agree to a product review or a collaboration of any kind until I’ve actually held and used the product for a significant chunk of time,” Hildebrand added. “Because if your product sucks it doesn’t matter if you have the best branding and you save 1,000 whales for every purchase. I will take a better produced high-quality product over an overtly sustainable product in the same niche.”

To help him decide whether a brand is worth promoting, he created a checklist of must-haves:

The product must be high quality.
The company has to have good branding.
The brand must have some focus on sustainability or giving back to the planet.

Hildebrand’s message to the YouTube community is that he hopes to see more creators sharing tips on how to care for the environment.

“Big creators like MrBeast and Mark Rober have a voice and when they do things like the TeamTrees challenge and other things like that, they are normalizing environmental actions,” he said about the 2019 movement started by two YouTubers where for every dollar donated one tree would be planted somewhere around the world (to-date TeamTrees has raised over $22 million).

“If we see creators of any size using a reusable bottle and mentioning the fact that you shouldn’t use disposable, or creating a lifestyle that is sustainable that they are representing to their audiences, that can make a huge difference,” he said.

Tags Levi Hildebrand, money, youtube money

TIPS & TRICKS

How Much Do YouTubers Make an Hour?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 30 January 2021
1 Comment on How Much Do YouTubers Make an Hour?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When is it YouTube Work?

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

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

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

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

Revenue Sources

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

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

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

Revenue Differences Between YouTubers

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

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

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

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

Improving the Hourly Rate

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

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

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

Get Better!

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

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

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

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

Have a System

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

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

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

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

Focus

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

Don’t Get Hung Up On Numbers

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

Tags income, make money online, money, youtube income, youtube money, youtuber money

HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

What is YouTube RPM?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 11 December 2020
1 Comment on What is YouTube RPM?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is YouTube RPM?

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

Those revenue sources are;

Ads
Channel Memberships
YouTube Premium
Super Chat
Super Stickers
YouTube BrandConnect

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

What is the Difference Between CPM and RPM?

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

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

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

Why is my RPM so Much Lower Than my CPM?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is RPM Important?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Increase YouTube RPM?

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

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

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

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

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

My YouTube RPM is Going Down, Should I Worry?

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

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

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

Is There Any Revenue RPM Doesn’t Factor?

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

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

Tags best way to make money on youtube, earn money online, make money on youtube, make money online, money, passive income, what is rpm, YouTube CPM, youtube income, youtube money, youtube rpm

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

Top 5 Ways to Monetise Your YouTube Channel in 2021

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 4 December 2020
10 Comments on Top 5 Ways to Monetise Your YouTube Channel in 2021

“There are more ways than one to skin a cat.”

It’s a horrible old saying that dates to 1840, but there is another part to the saying that you don’t hear too often —

“so are there more ways than one of digging for money.”

This advice applies to YouTube monetisation too.

There are plenty of ways to make money from your YouTube channel apart from the obvious one of shared ad revenue from the YouTube Partner Program.

This post covers the latest rules for the YouTube Partner Program and offers a high-level overview of some alternative ways you can monetize a YouTube channel in 2021.

Here we go.

How Do I Make Money With the YouTube Partner Program?

The best way to approach making money on YouTube is to create a number of income streams. That way, if one bites the dust you still have others to fall back on.

But one method you should always aim to qualify for is the YouTube Partner Program itself. The YouTube Partner Program is where you earn a share of the advertising revenue YouTube makes from showing the short ads before, during, and at the end of videos.

There are five criteria to qualify, you must ―

Have over 1000 channel subscribers.
Have over 4000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months.
Have registered for a Google AdSense account.
Be in compliance with the content rules that YouTube sets.
Be over 18 years of age (ideally).

Having 1000 channel subscribers is self-explanatory. It perhaps seems like a tough ask when you start, but once you begin to regularly put out good content, your sub-numbers can soon stack up.

4000 hours of watchtime relates to the videos that you’ve uploaded to your channel and had watched by others. Say you upload a 10-minute video and 100 people watch all of it, then you have 1000 minutes of watchtime. Don’t delete any of your videos when you start ― any video you remove also erases it’s watchtime from your account.

To register for a Google AdSense account you have to be at least 18 years old. Though if you are under 18 it may be technically possible to link the AdSense account of a parent to your YouTube channel.

Once you’ve met the criteria for the YouTube Partner Program, you still need to apply as It’s not something that happens automatically. Once you’ve applied you may need to wait as much as 30 days for a response as your account has to undergo a human review.

How much can you expect to earn?

According to Intuit, YouTubers, on average, earn $4 per 1000 video views. So to make $100 a day, you’d need to get around 25,000 video views a day.

YouTube doesn’t have to grant you monetisation, though, even if you meet all the criteria. It’s their platform and their rules. So if you do get rejected, or the YouTube Partner Program isn’t available in your country, there are still plenty of ways you can make money from the platform.

Let’s take a look at a few.

How Do I Make Money on YouTube With Endorsements?

Influencing is not a new thing. Businesses have paid prominent people money to promote their products for over a hundred years.

Once you’ve built up an audience for your channel in a niche that lends itself to promoting a product, you can register with an agency like Upfluence. Upfluence matches businesses with content creators to create influencing opportunities.

You don’t have to have a massive following to take advantage of influencing opportunities. But the amount you’re paid will depend on the size of your audience.

YouTube has launched an influencer hub too, called BrandConnect. Eligibility is restricted at the moment to creators located in the USA with over 25,000 channel subscribers.

It’s a fairly new venture for YouTube, so they may roll it out to new locations and relax entry conditions as time moves on.

Of course, you’re free to set up your own influencing opportunities by proactively approaching businesses yourself. Just make sure you have a large enough audience in a niche that plays well with your target company.

How much can you expect to earn?

Top earners can make thousands of dollars per video. But the cash you earn will depend on the size of your audience and the market niche you serve.

Starting with a small channel will likely mean that you only receive a free sample of the product you are endorsing, like a protein shake or an eyeliner for example.

How Do I Make Money on YouTube with Patreon?

You can make money with crowdfunding on YouTube, where you ask people to send you money directly. This is a method best left for those raising money for a good cause. And it could lead to a fraud claim if you aren’t transparent with what the requested money will be used for.

Much better, and a step away from crowdfunding, is using a service like Patreon.

Patreon allows you to create a page where you can distribute additional content not uploaded to your YouTube channel. You tap your fans for a small recurring monthly payment in exchange for access to exclusive content.

You can set several levels of subscription, and save you juiciest content for your top-level subscribers.

Patreon is like having your own pay-TV channel, and you have full control over the content and the schedule.

If you don’t want to commit to the extra workload that running a Patreon account brings on top of an already busy filming calendar for YouTube, consider using the Patreon pay per content model instead.

This lets you charge people to see bonus content as and when you make it.

How much can you expect to earn?

Patreon subscription prices charged by people are usually around the $4-$5 per month mark. This price is small enough for many people not to have to think too deeply about signing up.

And the recurring monthly payments are likely to continue, at least for a while, as many are too lazy to cancel them!

If you can get 1000 patrons paying you an average of $4 per month, then you have an income that most could live on.

Here’s an example from a small YouTuber with an associate Patreon account. Nate Maingard is a singer-songwriter with a little over 5K subscribers. Nate’s Patreon has three levels of subscription priced from around $5 up to about $100 for his biggest fans.

If you look at his Patreon page it says that he has 151 patrons, at the time of writing. You can’t see how that breaks down across the various levels, but he is making a minimum of $500 per month.

How Do I Make Money on YouTube with Merchandise?

You can sell products branded with your logo or channel identity and sell them on YouTube via a merch shelf.

YouTube says ‘The merch shelf allows eligible creators to showcase their official branded merchandise on YouTube. The shelf appears on the video page of eligible channels, but may not be shown on all video pages.’

To access the YouTube merch program, your channel needs 10,000 subscribers and not make content primarily aimed at kids. Your merch should also be visually appealing and desirable enough for your fans to want to buy it.

Some of the items that are best for branding and selling are everyday items that people are likely to make use of. Baseball caps, reusable water bottles, and mugs are all popular choices and cheap enough for an impulse buy.

Make sure that your designs are of good quality, so hire a designer from Fiverr or Upwork if need be.

You don’t need to buy and stock your merch products. You can sign up with a print-on-demand service that can sync with your YouTube merch shelf. When you get an order, it’s automatically sent to the print-on-demand provider who makes the product and ships it directly to the customer.

If you’re in the UK then Printful has a good service. For those elsewhere, YouTube has a page of recommended retailers.

How much can I expect to earn?

This is difficult to approximate. It all depends on your fans, the design, and how much you promote them in your videos. This Sellfy calculator tries to give you a rough idea. Sellfy reckons that 10,000 monthly video views could earn you between $340 and $1,740 from merch sales.

How Do I Make Money on YouTube with Affiliate Sales?

An excellent way to earn extra money from your YouTube channel is by seeking out affiliate sales.

This is where you act as a middle-man between a product seller and buyer. Basically, you are saying to your audience; ‘hey, I think [this product] is really good, you should go buy it’.

When someone buys a product that you recommended, and they followed a special link that identifies you as the referrer, then you earn a percentage commission on the deal.

The great thing about affiliate sales is that earnings are open-ended ― the sky’s the limit.

You can earn a few dollars when someone buys a cheap item on your recommendation. But you can earn hundreds of dollars per sale for more expensive things like premium training courses.

The easiest way to start making affiliate income on YouTube is by signing up with the Amazon Associate program.

You can pick a few products and highlight them in a video. Then, you link to the item using your affiliate link in the video details section underneath.

When a viewer follows the link and buys it you earn a commission. You also earn a commission if they buy something else too ―all sales are attributed to your referral link for that one shopping cart.

I include links to various products that I genuinely recommend in the video description for each one I upload.

How much can I expect to earn?

It’s impossible to say. How long is a piece of string? But you can easily make a living from affiliate sales only on YouTube, as long as you have enough video views.

Conclusion

Like the poor skinned cat I mentioned at the top of this post ― there are many ways to make money on YouTube.

But, your first focus should always be on growing your subscriber count and adding to your video stockpile. Like many things in life, there is a natural order to things on YouTube. One study from 2018 showed that 3% of YouTube channels had 90% of the total views.

To become a money-making powerhouse on YouTube, aim to be a 3-percenter. After that, you have as many ways as you want to earn money from YouTube in 2021 and beyond.

Tags make money on youtube, make money online, monetisation, money, YouTube Monetization, youtube money

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE TIPS & TRICKS YOUTUBE

Do YouTubers Have Other Jobs?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 3 December 2020

YouTube has grown to the point that being a YouTuber is now a legitimate career path that one could aspire to, rather than an obscure Internet hobby, or something that only a select few lucky souls could ever succeed at.

Unlike a traditional job, however, there is no corporate ladder to climb when you become a YouTuber, no starting salary. That means that anyone starting out on the path of becoming a professional YouTuber has to lay their groundwork for success without the financial help that that eventual success might bring.

Not earning any money from your channel, in the beginning, isn’t always a problem. Many YouTubers start young, for example, when they are still living at home with their parents and have no bills to worry about. But YouTubers who have more financial responsibility when they get started, on the other hand, will need to cover those responsibilities somehow, and that means finding money elsewhere until YouTube can take over.

In this post, we’re going to be asking the question “do YouTubers have other jobs,” as well as covering a range of related topics.

Do YouTubers Have Other Jobs

Naturally, every YouTuber’s story is different. Some people come to YouTube after an incredibly successful career doing something else and do not need to worry about money in the immediate future. Some are not yet financially independent, like those YouTubers who start while they are still living with their parents that we mentioned above. Some might even take the risk of relying on their savings to tide them over until YouTube takes off.

Side note: YouTube is not the most predictable or reliable source of income, and we would strongly advise against relying on your savings to pay the bills in the hope that your YouTube channel will achieve success before you run out of money.

For some, there may even be an incredibly understanding and supportive partner who is willing to carry those financial burdens for a while while you get your channel up and running.

For many, however, the reality is that they will have to find a way to cover their bills themselves, and YouTube simply cannot do that in the beginning. Unless you come in with a huge following from somewhere else that can be translated to brand deals and sponsored content, you will probably be looking at at least a year before you could even consider quitting your day job. For many YouTubers, it is more like multiple years.

So, yes, YouTubers certainly do have other jobs a lot of the time, but things are not as clear cut as you might expect. Let’s explore a little further.

What Do We Mean by “Other Jobs”?

The lines between occupations have blurred considerably over the past couple of decades. In days gone by, it would often be the case that any given person could answer the question “what do you do for a living” clearly and unambiguously. For some who were particularly ambitious or who needed extra income, they may have a second job that would make the answer to that question a little more complicated, but these days it is becoming increasingly common for people to earn their living through a mish-mash of different ventures.

For example, if a YouTuber makes half of their income directly through their YouTube videos—the YouTube Partner Programme, sponsored content, brand deals, etc.—and the other half of their income from streaming on Twitch, would you consider them a streamer who YouTubes, or a YouTuber who streams? These days a person like that would refer to themselves as a “content creator,” but that kind of removes YouTube from the equation.

When we talk about YouTubers having “other jobs,” we typically mean more conventional jobs. A YouTuber might have a regular nine-to-five office job and make YouTube videos on an evening, or before work in the morning. In this respect, many YouTubers certainly do have other jobs.

So, the next question on your lips probably regards what is involved in going from a YouTuber who has other jobs to a YouTuber who doesn’t need other jobs to pay the bills.

When Does YouTube Start Paying the Bills?

This is where things start to get a little messy. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how much success you need on YouTube to start earning enough money to live off of. Let’s tackle these different aspects individually.

The Value of Your Audience

For this section, we are referring specifically to money earned through the YouTube Partner Programme. We will get to things like brand deals in the next section. Not every video is worth the same in terms of monetary value, and because of this, you can’t be sure that a million views on your channel will earn the same as a million views on another channel.

The driving force between these differences is the value of your content to advertisers. The more advertisers are willing to pay to target their ads at your content; the more your videos will be worth.

Now, we emphasise “worth” because what your videos are worth and what they earn are two different things. The value of the ads being shown determines what your videos are worth, but the amount of engagement of your audience with those ads is what determines what you actually earn. You could make videos in the most expensive niche on YouTube, but if none of your viewers engages with those ads, your earnings will be severely limited. Similarly, if you could have one of the highest engagement rates on YouTube, but if your niche is saturated, you may that engagement won’t be worth much.

Now, you shouldn’t use this information as a reason to make significant changes to your content. Most YouTuber’s are guilty of at least the occasional video that is “for the views,” but you should not build an entire channel concept around what has the most earning potential.

Additional Earning Power

If you ask any successful YouTuber about earning through the platform, they will likely tell you that relying on the YouTube Partner Programme alone is a bad idea. Earnings from advertisements in this manner can be volatile, unreliable, and subject to the many different whims. Beyond that, YouTube themselves frequently make significant changes to their monetisation policies that have a tendency to drastically cut down the earning potential of many YouTubers, if not remove it entirely.

For this reason, many YouTubers rely on other means to monetise their channel. This includes brand deals and sponsored content, as well as things like affiliate programs. In the grand scheme of things, these methods are no more reliable than the YouTube Partner Programme, but they can offer a little job security in the short terms. For example, a brand deal might pay you an amount equivalent to what you would earn from the YouTube Partner Programme over the same period as the brand deal, but the Partner Programme can fluctuate and is generally inconsistent, whereas a brand deal is guaranteed income for the period it covers.

YouTube as a Promotional Tool

Many creators and entertainers have found YouTube to be an excellent platform for driving audiences to what they would consider their main work. There are many situations where this might be the case, but comedians are one of the most readily available examples of this. In this case, comedians make YouTube videos—often filmed podcasts or sketches—that may make a respectable income in their own right, but whose main purpose is to bring attention to the comedian in the hope that more people will go their shows and buy their comedy specials.

In these cases, the YouTuber has an “other job” in a very practical sense, though they will typically not be looking to make YouTube their primary source of income since their other job is what they want to do.

Advice for “Going Pro” on YouTube

This wouldn’t be much of a YouTube blog if we didn’t give you a little advice on taking your channel from that thing you do in your spare time to your main career, so let’s delve into that topic a little.

The first thing we will always say when talking about moving towards a career as a professional YouTuber is do not go all in too soon. We understand how exciting it can be the first time your YouTube earnings reach a point where you could realistically pay your way using that money, but it is important to remember that YouTube earnings can be volatile for the reasons we mentioned above.

In an ideal world, you would wait at least a year after hitting that remarkable milestone to ensure that your YouTube earnings are going to be consistent enough to rely on as your primary source of income. And, in advice that is more generally applicable outside of YouTube, it would be prudent to ensure that you have a backup plan, often in the form of savings that could cover your living expenses during times that your YouTube earnings aren’t quite enough.

This can also serve as a buffer in the event that you realise YouTube isn’t working out, giving you time to work out what your next move will be.

Advice for Building Your YouTube Channel While Employed

Whether you are working part-time or full-time, living alone or supporting a family, getting a YouTube channel off of the ground around a job can be difficult. Still, there are some bits of advice that transcend your specific situation.

Firstly, if you are not concerned with making YouTube your job, if you are making videos purely for fun, don’t let it become a chore. The only reason there would be pressure to achieve a certain level of quality or meet a particular upload schedule is if you were intending to grow your channel and succeed in the long run. If that is not your goal, don’t push yourself too hard. Just enjoy it.

For the rest of us, there is a balance to strike. On the one hand, if you don’t enjoy your YouTube venture, there is a far higher chance you will burn out and lose interest before you ever achieve success. But, on the other hand, if you don’t treat it with at least a modicum of seriousness, there is a higher chance you won’t succeed. Try to treat your YouTube channel like a job but within reason. If you find yourself neglecting essential parts of your life—work, family, etc.—you will need to reevaluate things and decide what is really important to you. But for YouTube success, consistent quality and uploads matter, and you should find ways to achieve that if you want to succeed.

On the subject of finding ways to achieve those things, you will probably have to accept that there will be some late nights and early mornings in your future—especially if you have a job and a family. There are only so many hours in the day, and you will already have quite a few of those hours spoken for. If the idea of getting up an hour or two early to get some YouTube work in before you head off to your day job is a deal-breaker, you may have to take a long, hard look at yourself and ask if you really want this as much as you thought.

But, hey, the good news is that if you manage to succeed in making your YouTube channel financially viable while also working a regular job, you will suddenly have more free time than you know what to do with when you do finally quit that job to do YouTube full-time. You will also be considerably better-placed to appreciate your new role in life.

Final Thoughts

Many successful YouTubers have tales of toiling away in the unsociable hours of the morning to get their latest video done before the kids wake up.

For the younger members of society, being a YouTuber is something they can aspire to, but there are plenty of people out there—people in their mid-twenties and up, right through to senior citizens—who never had the option when they were growing up, and now that it is an option they are already in a job and have financial responsibilities. For those people, YouTube is no less attainable than for the youngsters.

You just might have to work a little harder to get there.

Tags do youtubers have jobs, jobs, money, youtube money, youtuber, youtuber jobs