Tag: youtube income

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

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.

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Does YouTube Have an Affiliate Program?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 10 November 2020
2 Comments on Does YouTube Have an Affiliate Program?

Affiliate programs are one of the most popular ways of earning money online; whether it is as a nice side-hustle for a little extra cash or the backbone of a five-figure a month income, they provide a way to earn revenue while doing the things you are already doing.

They can invisibly add additional revenue streams that, in some cases, can even add value for your viewers.

With all of this in mind, it is natural to wonder; does YouTube have an affiliate program of their own.

After all, being profitable is a serious concern for the platform, not to mention the added incentive it would give to content creators.

Does YouTube have an affiliate program? – No, YouTube does not have an affiliate program, but you can monetize your channel with the Partnership Program if/when you meet the 1K subscribers and 4K hours of watch time requirements. However you can still use external affiliate programs to make money on YouTube with click through traffic.

Through using YouTube marketing for your channel, you can grow awareness and drive traffic to your affiliate account.

We’re about to take an in-depth look at affiliate programs and how you can use them on YouTube, so let’s get comfortable.

What is an Affiliate Program?

If you’ve made it this far into the post without knowing what an affiliate program is, don’t worry; we’ve got your back. An affiliate program is a system whereby you can earn a fee in exchange for actions taken by your viewers. With the most popular forms of affiliate programs, this fee often comes in the form a commission of a product or service sale. In some cases, it can be a fixed fee in exchange for a user signing up to something.

By far, the most popular affiliate program for individual YouTubers—and many other content creators—is the Amazon Affiliate program, which allows you to generate a unique link for any product on the Amazon marketplace. If one of your viewers clicks through your link and buys something, you earn a small percentage of the sale.

The other way in which affiliate programs are typically run is when a service that is looking for members will reward people who refer new users to them. Fiverr is an excellent example of this with its affiliate program explicitly designed to reward people for driving traffic to their service.

If you want a hugely in-depth deep dive into how to get started with affiliate marketing, best ways to leverage affiliate marketing and my 10+ years of experience in generating income with affiliate marketing – check out my Affiliate Marketing for Beginners blog post.

Why YouTube Doesn’t Have an Affiliate Program

Once you understand how affiliate programs work, it should be easy to understand why YouTube doesn’t have one.

First of all, they don’t sell any products, so they can’t offer a commission on the sale of those products. But secondly, there is no paid service to subsidise a traffic-driving affiliate program like the one Fiverr has. Granted, there is YouTube Premium, but that is a very narrowly focussed product that would not have much re-use value for any given YouTuber.

With a platform like Fiverr, there are dozens and dozens of different services available, so one person could theoretically want to keep going back, which in turn means there are far more ways in which an affiliate link can be worked into the content that is being created.

As for the non-YouTube Premium content, it doesn’t make much sense for YouTube to incentivise people to drive traffic to their platform, given the sheer number of people who are on that platform attempting to drive to traffic to their own videos already.

YouTube is all about retention—once a new person lands on their site, they aim to keep them there as long as possible, and they’ve gotten very good at that over the years.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a popular YouTube who drives millions of unique views a day to the site, or an unknown YouTuber who is just starting out who might bring three new sets of eyeballs to the platform, YouTube will work to keep those people on the site viewing videos, and that retention just as valuable—if not more so—than bringing in new viewers who might not be so interested in sticking around.

Tips for Using Affiliate Marketing with your YouTube Channel

So, YouTube doesn’t have an affiliate marketing program, that much we’ve made clear.

But what we also made clear was the fact that this doesn’t stop you from running affiliate marketing programs through your YouTube channel in order to increase your revenue, so let’s talk about that.

The strength of affiliate marketing lies in invisibility—when you can provide a link to a service or product that fits seamlessly into your content and provides your viewers with something of value to them, you are on to a winner.

To help you achieve affiliate success, we’ve put together some of our top tips for using affiliate programs in your videos and on your channel.

Full Disclosure

We live in a cynical age, borne of many web services and content creators taking advantage of their audience, more and more people assume that anytime something is hidden from them, it is for negative reasons.

To that end, you should always be upfront about any affiliate links you use, even if all you do is put “(PAID)” next to the link in your description. YouTube viewers are generally accepting of the fact that their content creators need to make money somehow, and will not go out of their way to stop that from happening.

But including affiliate links without disclosing this fact can breed bad blood with your audience—especially if you are reviewing a product or service that you are linking out to through an affiliate program.

Keep it in Context

Google puts a lot of time and effort into figuring out the best ads to show a particular individual at any given time.

This is because merely showing the ad is only part of the battle—if nobody ever clicked those ads, advertisers would stop paying for them.

The same approach should be taken for affiliate links. There is no sense in making a video about guitar building and then including an affiliate link to an eBook on making money online.

Sure, some of the viewers of that video might be interested in the eBook, but it is such a shot in the dark, it would hardly be worth the effort of typing the link.

While we’re not saying there is never a good time for an out of context affiliate link, the best use of these links is within the context of your video. If you are doing a video on the top five sports cameras, have affiliate links to each of the cameras on Amazon in your description. The people watching that video are far more likely to be in the market for a new sports camera than viewers on other videos, and your video might just be the thing that pushes them to pull the trigger.

By including a link to the product, you are saving them the effort of going off and searching for it themselves.

And, as affiliate programmes are almost never more expensive—if anything you can often get a better deal through affiliate links—you are not inconveniencing your viewers in any way.

As an additional note, being in context doesn’t necessarily mean the product or service relates to the subject matter of the video directly. A

s an example, a channel whose content is primarily about how to make better YouTube videos might list off the equipment they use in the description, along with affiliate links to where that gear can be bought. This is useful to that channel’s viewers since “what equipment do you use” is one of the most commonly asked questions that successful YouTubers get asked.

Pick Something you Believe In

I am a huge fan of services like Rev – They help me add captions and foreign language subtitles to my youtube videos at a time fee per minute. I use them personally so I know they are good and that is why I promote them using an affiliate program. It is this personal edge that helps my audience understand that if I use it, its a god product and not just a huge list of products you could grab from Amazon in a blind blog post.

Not every channel creates videos of the top ten latest gadgets that can be easily linked to on Amazon, but that doesn’t mean those channels should miss out on the affiliate marketing train.

Firstly, remember that Amazon—and direct product sales in general—are not the only options when it comes to affiliate marketing. Many digital products and services have affiliate marketing options attached to them. Indeed, services like Clickbank specialise in finding digital products that can be marketed through affiliate linking. There are also services, such as Fiverr, as we mentioned earlier.

Ultimately, if there are no affiliate products or services that you can tie into your content directly, you could go on the hunt for a product or service that you truly believe will be beneficial for your viewers, and promote that instead. For example, for a programming channel, you could promote an ergonomic desk chair. For a yoga channel, you could promote a particular type of yoga mat.

It’s a little like being sponsored by that product, only the people behind the product are not involved. And on that note, you should be careful not imply that you are sponsored, as that can cause problems with the company behind the product or service.

The important thing here is that the product or service you are promoting has some usefulness to your audience, even if it doesn’t directly relate to the content of your video. Again, you might find some people in the audience of a fishing channel who are interested in a mechanical keyboard, but it would be blind luck, and that’s no way to run a business.

Don’t go Overboard

Regardless of the exact method of incorporating affiliate links into your content you choose, it is a universal truth across all mediums that overdoing it will have negative results.

This can be because your affiliate content is overwhelming your actual content, or simply because your audience feels it’s a bit crass.

But, whatever the reason, if you stack your description full of affiliate links and hand out promo codes every two minutes in your video, you’ll almost certainly turn large portions of your audience off.

And affiliate programmes only work when you have an audience to click those links.

Will Affiliate Links Harm my Video?

To answer this question, we first need to understand a few things about the way YouTube works.

Firstly, affiliate links are very much allowed by YouTube, which is one of the main concerns YouTubers tend to have when first venturing into the world of affiliate marketing.

However, merely being allowed to do something does not mean it can’t have negative effects on your channel.

As we touched on above, YouTube is very concerned with viewer retention. Now, we’re not saying they have no interest in bringing new eyeballs to the platform, but they are more concerned with keeping those eyeballs on YouTube once they are there. This is why average watch time is one of the most crucial metrics of a video’s success in the eyes of YouTube because more watch time means that people are spending longer on the site because of that video.

With that in mind, there is no direct association that YouTube will admit to between external links—affiliate or not—and the YouTube algorithm deciding to recommend a video less often. But there may be an indirect association.

YouTube wants people to stay on the site as long as possible. The longer a viewer is on YouTube, the more chance there is to serve them ads, and the more money YouTube can make. But if a lot of users are coming to your video and then leaving the platform altogether and not coming back, that will reflect negatively in the eyes of the algorithm.

It’s something of a catch 22—you need plenty of viewers for your affiliate links to be useful, but if your affiliate links are too effective, YouTube might see that as users coming to your video and then leaving YouTube, which may lead them to recommend your video less, which means fewer viewers to click your affiliate links. Unfortunately, there is no way around this problem, and YouTube is typically quiet about the exact way that they handle things like this.

That being said, affiliate marketing is a game of percentages—you bank on a large enough percentage of your viewers clicking your affiliate links to make it worthwhile while accepting that the overwhelming majority of them won’t.

Many YouTubers have had a great deal of success through affiliate marketing on YouTube, so there’s no reason that you can’t, too. Just remember not to overdo it, and keep the subject of your affiliates in line with the content of your videos.

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Do YouTubers Get Paid Monthly?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 6 November 2020
1 Comment on Do YouTubers Get Paid Monthly?

YouTube can be—and often is—a labour of love.

Many people harbour a dream of paying the bills with the success of their channel, but only a small proportion of those people succeed in achieving that dream.

Still, success on YouTube—particularly modest success—is a very attainable goal, which has led to YouTube being seen as a legitimate career choice by many.

With any career choice comes a lot of, frankly, boring questions of a logistical nature. If you are just starting out and have no real financial goals, or, on the other end of the spectrum, if you are an enormously successful YouTuber who makes money faster than you can spend it, you don’t need to think about things like how often you get paid from your YouTubing ventures.

The reality of earning a living through YouTube is a little more grounded, however. There are far more people earning their living through YouTube who are just getting by or perhaps using YouTube to supplement other revenue sources. These people are rarely wealthy, and for them, YouTube is as much a job as any traditional employment you might care to reference.

Still, making an average salary through YouTube is often preferable to a lot of jobs out there.

Do YouTubers get paid monthly? – YouTubers who are eligible for the YouTube Partner Program will accrue income which is paid out a month in arrears. However, you must reach a total of £60 ($100) in the AdSense account to be paid for that month. YouTubers might also have external affiliate arrangements that pay on other terms.

In this post, we’re going to be looking at how often YouTubers get paid, which is a messy, sprawling topic that we can’t give a straightforward answer to since there isn’t one.

Keep reading, and we’ll go over all the ways a YouTuber typically gets paid, along with how often those payments come, and how much flexibility there is in this area. We’ll even through in a little financial advice for anyone just getting started.

How Do YouTubers Get Paid?

To properly understand the messy and complex nature of YouTuber payment schedules, it helps to first understand how they get paid. It is not, as many people seem to think, a single revenue source coming directly from YouTube.

YouTube does offer a monetisation system for which they pay you directly, but the money earned through this method is not typically enough to quit the day job over. In fact, you would have to be getting tens of thousands of views a day to make anywhere near a decent living from this method alone.

That being said, there is more than one way to convert the success of a YouTube channel into earnings… which is also why the topic of how often YouTubers get paid is messy and complicated. Here are some of the most common ways YouTubers earn money;

YouTube Partner Programme
Memberships
Direct Donations
Brand Deals and Sponsorships
Merchandise Sales

YouTube has created opportunities to leverage memberships and merchandise directly through the platform for channels that meet certain criteria—10,000 subs for merch, 30,000 subs for memberships—but the main way that YouTube pays you is through their Partner Programme.

Outside of YouTube, sites like Patreon can provide you with a way to offer membership style functionality to your viewers, while there are more merchandise platforms than you can shake a branded stick at!

And, speaking of branding, brand deals and sponsorships are possibly the most lucrative option but are only a feasible option for channels with a significant audience.

How Often Do YouTubers Get Paid

Now that you have seen just a sample of the many different ways a YouTuber can get paid, you should be able to appreciate how difficult this question is to answer.

Fortunately, we do have a common theme among the most popular earning methods, so let’s take a look at that theme;

Google’s Adsense—the vehicle through which YouTube pays you—and Patreon, both utilise a monthly payout system whereby you can choose to be automatically paid every month.

There is a caveat, however. Both platforms have a minimum threshold you must reach before you can be paid. This amount comes to $100 in the United States, and a rough equivalent in other countries. If you work on the average CPM of a YouTube video, that means you would need to hit 50,000 views a month to reach the AdSense payment threshold every month.

Patreon is a different animal. The threshold for getting a payout there is a much more modest $10, and your earnings are not directly tied to your views or audience size. In both cases, you can opt to hold your payments until a later date. In the case of Patreon, this allows you to set payouts to manual and take care of the exact payout times yourself.

AdSense is less flexible, their system allows you to hold your payments for up to a year, but you are stuck with their monthly payouts and payment thresholds if you want to get your money out of your Patreon account and into your bank account.

It is worth noting that many merchandise companies work on a similar system to Patreon—where you have to reach a certain payment threshold, but you can withdraw your money anytime once you have reached that threshold.

Payment Processors

Things are a little different for money that finds its way into your payment processor.

This could happen because you are accepting direct donations from your subscribers, but more likely it will be because you have opted to have your membership or merchandise platforms pay into a payment processer (like PayPal) rather than send you a physical cheque.

With payment processors, there are usually no restrictions on when you can withdraw your money and how small an amount you can withdraw, but there may be charges associated with withdrawing your money.

This is especially the case if you reside in a different country to the company who sent the money. For example, at the time of writing, Patreon can payout in USD ($), GBP (£), and Euro (€).

If you live in a country—or, more accurately, your bank resides in a country—that does not use one of these currencies, there will likely be a conversion fee from your payment processor in order to get that money into your bank account.

Financial Advice

If you are asking questions like do YouTubers get paid monthly, you are probably looking at YouTube as a potential career move or at least one piece of your financial puzzle.

After all, there is no law that says you have to make your entire income from YouTube or not at all.

But if you are looking at YouTube as a potentially serious income source, it’s important to plan carefully and be smart.

We could fill an entire post with an in-depth look at this topic, but for now, here’s a quick rundown of the key points.

Build Up a Buffer

YouTube is not the most reliable source of income, particularly if the bulk or entirety of your YouTube revenue is coming directly from the YouTube Partner Programme.

If you choose to make YouTube a significant part of your financial situation, be prepared for the lows that come with those highs.

Never let yourself be in a situation where you are relying on a particular amount from YouTube to pay the bills or meet any other financial obligations you have. YouTube is notoriously unreliable when it comes to making a consistent income, and if you are living paycheck-to-paycheck with YouTube revenue, you could find yourself in serious trouble the next time an adpocalypse hits, or during a month when revenue drops for reasons beyond your control, such as seasonal behaviour.

You can’t necessarily avoid these things, but if you have a reserve of cash, you are at least protected from the immediate damage they can cause.

At the very least, you should have a few months worth of money stored up in the event your earnings dry up, though conventional wisdom states this figure should be closer to six months, if not a year.

Having this cash gives you a bit of breathing room should something happen to severely impact your earnings, and will allow you to figure things out without the axe of defaulted bills hanging over your head.

Diversify Your Income – How To Make More Money on YouTube

Another way to protect yourself against the unreliable nature of YouTube revenue is to not have all of your eggs in one basket.

If the entirety of your income is coming from the YouTube Partner Programme, you are completely at the mercy of the next significant changes YouTube make to their platform, and YouTube rarely make changes that boost everyone’s earning potential.

Making use of things like membership platforms, direct donations, merchandise sales, and any other ways of bringing the money in will protect you against your income being wiped out by one company making changes to their policy.

If at all possible, try to diversify further so that your income sources are not directly tied to your YouTube channel. For example, a Patreon page for your YouTube channel is a good way to diversify your income, but it is still built upon your channel. If your channel were to be taken down for some reason, your Patreon earnings would soon follow.

If, on the other hand, you had a blog running alongside your YouTube channel, earning revenue in its own right, you are further protected from the adverse effects of YouTube changes. Other examples include selling online teaching courses or running sponsored podcasts.

The critical factor being that, even though they may be linked to your YouTube channel by content or branding, these other ventures would be able to exist on their own, should anything happen to your channel.

Plan Plan Plan

We can’t understate the importance of proper planning when you first start out. The first year or being financially independent with YouTube as one of—or the main—income sources is especially critical.

We would recommend setting up a spreadsheet and putting in everything you have going out on a monthly basis.

We mean everything.

Make sure the entirety of your financial obligations are covered so that you can clearly see whether you are making enough money.

Hopefully, you will have taken our advice about having a buffer in place, so you’ll have a bit of a safety net to right the ship if you are not pulling in enough money, but you don’t want to get three months into your new career and find you’ve been losing money and didn’t know about it.

One particularly important aspect of this process is to account for everything. It sounds over the top, but it works. If you spend a dollar buying candy, make a note of it. If you buy a video game on sale for only a few bucks, make a note of it.

Small purchases can be the undoing of a move to become financially independent—they add up in the background while we mentally dismiss them as insignificant.

Don’t Rush Into It

The final piece of advice we’re going to impart here is to take your time with the decision to “go pro”.

Too many YouTubers rush to quit their day jobs when they have a good month or two, only to find those month’s earnings were a bit of an exceptional spike, and then they struggle to pay rent the following months.

When you first hit that magical moment where you are making enough money from your online activities to pay all the bills, wait. At least give it a few months.

Put the excess money you are earning into the backup buffer fund we mentioned above. Once you’re sure that level of income is sustainable, pull that trigger!

Summing Up

Do YouTubers get paid monthly? Yes. Sometimes… if they want.

The exact frequency of payments to YouTubers depends entirely on whether they are successful enough to meet the criteria for joining the YouTube Partner Programme or making money through other avenues that also require a good deal of success.

It also depends on whether that YouTuber is consistently making enough money to meet the various payment thresholds many companies have in place.

That being said, “monthly” is as close as we can get to a typical payment schedule for your average YouTuber.

Most companies work on a monthly basis and, while some YouTubers may get paid far less frequently, very few—if any—YouTubers will be getting paid more frequently on a consistent basis.

Tags adsense, adverts, how to make money on youtube, money, youtube income, youtube money

DEEP DIVE ARTICLE HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE YOUTUBE

How Much Does it Cost to Start a YouTube Channel?

Post author By Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert
Post date 18 June 2020
2 Comments on How Much Does it Cost to Start a YouTube Channel?

PewDiePie, Dude Perfect, Whinderssonnunes, and Badabun: what do they have in common? They are the world’s top four YouTubers.

Between them, they have over 50 million subscribers. Their success on YouTube has inspired countless people to want to start their own YouTube channels. Many people, however, stop at the ‘wanting’ stage, and never really get to do it. They’ll give excuses such as “I don’t have time” or “I don’t have money” or “I don’t have the equipment.”

Stories about successful YouTubers only tend to focus on where they are at present and don’t mention how they started out. Nobody starts out successfully in their career. Success comes after years of hard, anonymous and thankless work, until one day that one video that you make goes viral and you become a sensation.

Even so, this doesn’t happen for everybody. Most people will plod along that road to success slowly, but constantly, until one day they look up in surprise and find themselves at the finish line. The key is to start.

In this article, we will look at some basic aspects of YouTube, what you need to start a channel, and how much it costs.

So, How Much Does it Cost to Start a YouTube Channel? – It can be surprisingly cheap. All you really need is a cheap device to capture video, this can be a smartphone, a webcam or a compact camera. This could start from as little as £30/$40 these days second hand. Video editing apps can be free, and uploading costs nothing!

YouTube – A Brief History

YouTube was started by three former PayPal employees after they were frustrated by their inability to find videos that they were looking for online.

It is a video-hosting platform that enables users to upload, view and share videos. True to YouTube’s mission to give anyone and everyone a voice, anyone could upload a video on YouTube.

YouTube’s popularity was such that Google noticed it and, with laudable foresight, purchased it for $ 1.65 billion. With the rise of terrorism and other hate crimes, this has changed, but only because hate crimes are illegal and no one should have the right to share videos about them anyway.

Why YouTube?

There are many reasons why you should have a YouTube channel. Some of these are:

Large audience- YouTube has a large and diverse audience, and is used by over one billion people all over the world.
Due to the wide-ranging nature of its content, YouTube also reaches a wide demographic of users, from teenagers looking for the latest musical sensation to middle-aged women looking for cooking recipes.
The ease of access of this platform also makes it desirable both as a search engine and a form of entertainment.
Uploading videos to YouTube is a simple process. All you have to worry about is producing the video.
Monetizing- Videos with enough views get monetized. YouTube has thus become a source of livelihood for many creators.
Marketing- Investors have also tapped into the business potential of YouTube. Organizations have started their own channels to market their products and penetrate new markets.

Who Can Start a YouTube Channel?

Anyone, and it’s free. If you have a Google account, you can sign into YouTube using your account details.

With these, you can watch videos, subscribe to them, and save videos to watch later.

However, to upload a video, you need a YouTube channel. You can easily create one while signed in to YouTube. Just attempt an action that requires a channel, like commenting on a video. You will get a prompt to create a channel.

If you need help in starting a YouTube channel and opening an account I wrote a full deep dive tutorial in my blog.

For your viewers to know more about you, complete your profile and description. Market your brand in a simple, attractive manner. You can also include additional links about yourself or your content here. Make sure your profile picture is clear and appealing.

In addition to a cover photo, you can also add cover art as a background for your profile picture. Again, it has to capture attention. Your channel is now ready to use.

So far, all you’ve spent creating your channel is the cost of your internet connection (if any) and time. We will now look at the basic items you need to run your channel.

What You Need To Run A YouTube Channel?

A Camera

Since YouTube is about making videos, you need some form of video recording equipment. If you are starting out, you probably don’t have a lot of money. Due to the growing population of video bloggers, or vloggers, a number of companies now produce cameras specialized for vlogging. This website gives a list of cameras you can get for not more than $100. Not to worry.

Start with what you have. Many YouTubers began their channels with nothing but a smartphone camera. Don’t wait until you can buy a good camera to start creating, because your channel will remain dormant. For your channel to grow, you need views.

If you need help in picking a some good starter equipment check out my resources page where I list my equipment and give you a few tips on tools you may find helpful too.

Tripod Stand

In addition to a camera, you need something to hold it steady while making your videos.

Shaky videos can be quite disconcerting to watch. A tripod stand is a three-legged piece of equipment with a head for mounting a camera. It helps to keep the camera steady during filming and maintains the right angle and height for optimal results. A suitable tripod stand can cost about $170 including shipping.

However, if you don’t have one yet, never fear! You can improvise with a stack of books placed on a desk or a table.

A Microphone

People lose focus when they can’t hear a speaker properly. No matter how good your camera is, without good sound, it will not hold your viewers’ attention.

Aim to own a good external microphone as mobile phones and laptops don’t have very good ones. A good microphone can cost upwards of $150. However, in the meantime, use your phone or laptop microphone. Remember, consistency is key!

I use the Boya BY-MM1 for filming on my camera. Its easy and cheap, great quality sound. I did a deep dive blog into the Boya BY-MM1, its features and how it works, youll be amazed how different microphones work.

Lighting

Lighting can make a great difference to your video. With good lighting, even videos and photos shot from a smartphone can look highly professional. Simple lighting equipment can go for about $110, with the cost rising as the equipment becomes more complex.

If you’re starting out, you probably won’t be able to afford quality lighting. Work on making your videos outside, during the day, as the quality of natural lighting is far better than the lighting in your room.

Video Editing Software

Established YouTubers have professional teams of video editors. Video editing can turn a simple mundane video into a piece of art. You won’t start out with a team of experts, but you can do your video editing yourself using video editing software available online. A good place to start with this is Movavi, an easy to use video editing software that comes with features like color filters, animated transitions, and captions.

I use however use, Adobe Premiere Pro. Its reliable, top of the industry tool with some great, easy to use features. I am not a video editing pro but I can make some great looking videos. The software starts from as little as $10pm and they even offer discounts. Why not check out their website for more details, discounts and deals.

A Screen- Capture Tool

This is software that enables you to take a screenshot of your entire screen or a part of it. If you plan to make how-to videos, this would be a useful investment to make.

A good screen capture tool is Camtasia, which enables you to record an audio as you capture the screen. You can get it at a one-time cost of $249. It also comes as a 30-day free trial. Alternatively, you can use the inbuilt screen-capture feature inn your PC, although the effect won’t quite be the same.

What if I can’t afford to make videos? Or what if I want to have a YouTube channel but I don’t want to use videos of myself? Well, enter Doodly.

Doodly

Depending on the content of your videos, you may not even need a camera, to begin with. For example, if you plan to upload explanatory videos, instead of making a video of yourself talking, you can use video tools.

A good tool you can start with is Doodly. This is a desktop software that allows you to create explainer videos using existing templates that you can suit your needs. It comes with a number of features that can turn you from a YouTube amateur to an expert.

Features that make Doodly an ideal companion for beginners on YouTube include:

Drag and drop- You can add images simply by dragging them onto the application.
Variety- Doodly uses a variety of boards as a background for the function of explaining. You can choose between whiteboard, blackboards, green board, and glass board.
Quality- Doodly offers low to high-quality videos so you don’t have to worry about how your videos look.
User-friendly- Doodly is designed to be used by people with little or no technical knowledge about making videos, so you don’t have to worry about lack of IT or video editing experience.
Voice recording- You can record your own voice while making the video, or upload a pre-recorded voice.
Extensive music and Image Library- Music and images can turn a dull video into a masterpiece. Doodly has a large library of free music and images that you can use to make your video more attractive. You can also add your own images to your video, which Doodly incorporates seamlessly into the presentation.
Different hand styles- Doodly has both right and left-hand styles to cater for everyone.

You can purchase a standard Doodly version for $39 per month with basic features. A yearly plan is cheaper and goes for $20 per month. A more advanced version, Enterprise, goes for $ 69 per month, or $40 per month for a yearly plan.

Reaching Your Audience

You now have basic knowledge of how you can start a YouTube channel. You can make high quality, entertaining and educative videos. How will your audience know about you?

First, you have to link your YouTube channel to all your other social media accounts, so that every time you upload a video it is seen on multiple platforms. As you consistently upload videos, more and more users will see your channel, and YouTube will begin to recommend it frequently.

You can also amplify your visibility on YouTube using Search Engine Optimization Tools. These are tools that increase your chances of getting more views by optimizing your presence online.

Successful YouTubers have made use of these tools to grow their audience and penetrate niches they would never have been able to reach. A good SEO tool you can use for this is TubeBuddy.

TubeBuddy

This is an extension you can add to your browser to help you manage your channel, is used by more than 3 million creators. It enables you to know the trending keywords relevant to your channel and how to maximize their use to amplify your channel visibility. With TubeBuddy you can ‘spy’ on your competitors and learn which keywords they use, search for relevant keywords, and constantly update your channel with the best selection.

Using numerous inbuilt templates and tools, you can also save time spent in publishing your videos. TubeBuddy comes with tools that amplify your channel presence across the web, making you rank higher in search results.

Thumbnails are crucial in getting your video quickly noticed. TubeBuddy has a feature that improves them to make them more appealing. The best thing about TubeBuddy is that it is free.

Conclusion

We have looked at the basic items you need to make a video for YouTube. We’ve seen that you don’t really need much money to start your own channel.

You don’t even need a formal location, like a production studio. You can do this from your basement or any other spare room in the house. We’ve seen why you should have your own channel and even how you can optimize it to increase your views and rank high on search results.

There is no shortage of easy to use tools to help you make professional, appealing videos. If you have your ideas ready and you know who you want to target, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have your own channel.

Investing in the items listed here will only bring you positive results quickly but it’s also possible to start your own channel even if you don’t have these things yet.

Start creating.

Tags how much, how much does youtube cost, income, money, youtube income, youtube money, youtuber