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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
With YouTube becoming more and more of a legitimate career path, and with the barrier to entry being so low that anyone can get started from the comfort of their own home or even bedroom, it makes sense that many young people would be eyeing YouTube success before they have even left school.
At the same time, increasing concern over the safety of children online has led to ever more restrictive guidelines regarding what you can monetise on YouTube, which complicates the matter for children looking to make money on the platform.
The only real restriction on children making content on YouTube is the minimum age of thirteen. You have to be at least that age to have a YouTube channel. There are ways to work around this that we’ll touch on later in the post, but that is the only real hard limit, but it is a limit on creation, not on monetisation.
When it comes to earning money on your channel, the content you produce is more relevant than the person making it. You could be fifty years old, but if your content is designed for children, it will be subject to the additional restrictions that apply there.
Similarly, if you are fifteen years old but making content that is primarily watched by adults, you would not be subject to those restrictions.
This may all sound a bit vague, but don’t worry, all will be explained. So, can you make money on YouTube if you are under 18? Let’s find out.
Videos With Underage Audiences
Thanks to COPPA regulations, there are now considerably stricter limitations on the information that can be collected from underage watchers. While this in and of itself is not an issue regarding monetising your content, it has an indirect effect that is an issue.
The fact that YouTube is not allowed to collect as much data on their underage viewers is a significant deterrent for advertisers since one of the most compelling factors of online advertising is the ability to target your ads at increasingly narrow demographics.
If YouTube isn’t allowed to collect the information that will allow them to identify what kind of demographic is watching, advertisers can’t be sure their ads are being shown to the right kind of viewer.
It is not just videos that are marked as “for children” that fall afoul of monetisation denial, however. YouTube’s can determine if a video is primarily made for children—if for no other reason than the audience will be predominately children.
Even if you do not mark your content as intended for children—even if you do not intend for your videos to be watched by children—YouTube will mark it as such if the audience turns out to be mostly youngsters.
Making Videos As An Underaged YouTuber
There are two ways to consider the term “underage” when talking about YouTube. The first is in the legal sense of you not being able to make certain decisions for yourself due to your age. Some kinds of decisions have different age limits (drinking alcohol vs living on your own, for example) and all of them differ from region to region.
The good news is YouTube does not make much distinction here. If you are over the age of the thirteen, you are free to make content and earn money on the platform.
If you are under thirteen, however, you are not allowed to have a YouTube channel under YouTube’s terms of service. That is not necessarily the end of the road as far as your YouTube dreams go, and we’re not just talking about waiting until you are old enough. You’re just going to need a little help.
Officially speaking, your channel won’t be your own, but you can enlist the help of an adult (typically a parent) who will be in charge of the channel, while you make the content. This is perfectly allowed under the terms of service, and many very successful channels have risen to prominence in this manner, both before and after YouTube clamped down on videos by and for underage people.
Being Responsible
Now, it is important to note that we are not trying to give you advice on how to circumvent YouTube’s terms of service here. There can be debate over whether YouTube’s approach is the best way, but few people would disagree with the intent behind it. The Internet can be a dangerous place for children, in both an emotional and physical wellbeing sense.
We are not advocating you get your parents to sign up for a YouTube account and just hand you the login details and leave you to it. And if you’re a parent, we strongly advise against doing this. The adult who officially runs the account should be overseeing the content that goes on it, even if it is just to cast a watchful eye over the final edit before it goes live. They should be moderating any contact the child has with people online, and they should be ensuring the child does not get taken advantage of.
There are always exceptions to the rule, but, for the most part, children need protection, so while we are giving you advice on how to make money on YouTube if you are under 18, it shouldn’t be taken as an encouragement to break YouTube terms of service.
How to Earn Money With an Underage Audience
As we mentioned above, there are restrictions on videos with underage audiences that all but rule out the conventional route of monetising your YouTube content through the YouTube Partner Programme, but that does not mean that you cannot monetise your videos at all.
Here are some ways you can make money with your videos even when your audience puts your channel below YouTube’s threshold for an underage audience.
Patreon
Patreon (and similar platforms) may be something a long shot if your audience is primarily underage since underage viewers are less likely to have money of their own to give. But, sites like Patreon have their own restrictions for who can use it. Patreon, for instance, has a minimum age restriction of thirteen years old to sign up, and eighteen years old before you can sign up as a creator or support another creator. They also allow under eighteens to be a creator or support one with written permission from a parent or guardian.
This means that if you have an audience that is prepared to support you through Patreon, you don’t need to worry about their age because Patreon’s terms of service will have ensured they are old enough or have permissions to do so. And, if you are too young to become a creator on Patreon, assuming you are over thirteen, you can get written consent from a parent or guardian and get started!
Promote Other Ventures
YouTubers with a young audience often build their content on top of something that appeals to that audience, such as video games. If you are able to, there may be a way to translate that appeal into a monetisable thing.
To take one popular example, Roblox—a video game where anyone can create their own mini-games for others to play—is especially popular among young gamers. It also provides the ability for people who create content for it to earn money through in-game transactions. If you have built an audience around such a thing, you could promote the games you create and potentially earn money that way. Another example would be an arts and crafts channel which also promotes an Etsy store where your own arts and crafts can be purchased.
If you go down this route, it is important to remember that the thing you are promoting needs to be relevant to your audience. There is no sense in building a channel around Marvel comic book-related content and then trying to promote a SquareSpace affiliate code. Of course, this is true of any age of audience, but it is especially true of younger audiences.
Target Older Viewers
Not everyone can shift their content in such a way that it changes the average ages of their audience—at least, not without drastic changes to the channel—but for some, it is definitely possible, and it may be the answer to your monetisation problems.
By shifting your content in a more mature direction and ensuring that your videos are not marked as made for children, you should be able to qualify for the YouTube Partner Programme—assuming you have met all the other criteria.
Of course, if you are making content aimed at very young children—seven to ten-year-olds, for example—this kind of shift will not be a practical solution. But, if your audience is a little older—fourteen to seventeen, for example—it may be worth looking into.
Tips for Being an Under-18 YouTuber
Firstly, if you are a parent or guardian reading this, we would recommend familiarising yourself with YouTube’s child safety page as a bare minimum. If you are the child YouTuber, it won’t hurt to read through that page either.
There are mean people on the Internet, and they often don’t have much to say in the way of being constructive. YouTube disables comments on videos that are intended for a young audience for this very reason, but if you find yourself in the comments of yours or another YouTuber’s video and people are being mean to you, do not let it affect you.
There is a way of delivering constructive criticism that you may take some time to learn recognise. As a rough example, someone telling you that your videos are too quiet is useful feedback that you should take on board. On the other hand, someone telling you that you are ugly is not useful, since being ugly is a subjective comment and even if it were true, you can’t change how you look.
Learning to separate the useful criticism from the just plain insulting is a skill that will take a lot of practice, but in the meantime, do not let any mean comments you might encounter ruin your day.
Hone Your Craft
If you have dreams of becoming a professional YouTuber, take this opportunity to get as good as you can at making content. There are two important factors for young people here;
Their developing brains learn things more readily than when they are older
You will likely not have as much free time later in life as you do as a child.
You may be currently trying to balance homework, a social life, and any extracurricular activities you have with YouTube and wondering how that second point could be true. But trust us, while there are always exceptions, most people will have far less free time when they get older, start working full time, have a family, etc. Take advantage of all the spare time you have now to improve your video-making abilities.
If In Doubt, Don’t!
If you are in any doubt that something you are planning might be a bad idea, don’t do it. Or at least get a more experienced opinion before deciding. This can include things sharing personal stories online, expressing controversial viewpoints, and more.
Many people who did not grow up with the Internet (and some who did) have said and done things online that have had a significant and negative impact on their lives. Don’t risk saying something you might regret for the rest of your life this early on.
Privacy Privacy Privacy
We can’t stress this enough, but privacy is crucial, especially for under-18 YouTubers. If for no other reason than the YouTuber will almost certainly be living with their parents or guardians at that age and any privacy violations will affect the people you live with as well.
Don’t share personal information in your videos, and make sure there is nothing in the video that someone might be able to use to work out your home address or phone number, or anything of that nature.
Final Thoughts
YouTubing when you are under-18 is something that can be a fun hobby or a solid foundation for a future career, but you have to be careful. And, if you are a parent, remember that there is a reason you are responsible for your children.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
There is a fairly pervasive stereotype regarding YouTubers, and it evokes images of fresh-faced young people eagerly greeting the camera with an over the top introduction that would, eventually, be bookended with a gleeful plea to like and subscribe at the end of the video.
There is, of course, a reason that this has become a stereotype—YouTubers certainly did seem to be made up mostly of this breed for a long time—but that is far from all there is on the platform these days. Indeed, many YouTubers have found success on the platform without even showing their faces in their videos.
In this post, we are going to look at some of the ways you can succeed financially on YouTube without showing your face.
In the interests of balance, we’ll also talk about why showing your face is often considered a good thing when making YouTube videos – and if you prefer NOT to show your face I have a list of channel ideas for faceless channels on my blog.
How to Make Money on YouTube Without Showing Your Face
We’re going to split this topic into two main sections—how to make videos without showing your face and how to make money on YouTube.
The reason for this is there is nothing significantly different about how you go about making money on YouTube with faceless videos than with videos featuring your face.
So, that information is relevant regardless of which style of video you are making.
Content is Key
It sounds corny and cliché at this point, but it is a cliché for a reason. Regardless of how you dress your videos up—face or no face, effects or not—the content you produce is what will determine your success as a YouTuber.
There are many different ideas of what successful content looks like, but as long as you are delivering what your audience wants to see, you are on the right path. It is important to find the core of what that is and ensure that it is always there. For example, if the root of your content lies in videos about retro technology, there is a lot of wiggle room for what the videos can be about and how you can format them, but you will need to make sure that that root of retro-tech is always present. Similarly, if you are running a food channel and your viewers come for recipe ideas, it would not be advisable to move away from recipe ideas. At least, not abruptly.
Even if your root content is your own personality—if your viewers come to see what you have to say or what you are doing—the rule is the same. Videos where you are not present or where you are acting differently will put your regular viewers off.
This leads us nicely onto…
Personality
Even if you aren’t putting your face on camera, you need to inject some personality into your videos. There is an audience for just about everything, but it is essential to remember that there are a lot of other YouTubers out there, and more than a few of them will be making similar content to you.
In short, the chances of you coming up with a niche that is completely unique are very slim, but that is okay because you do not need an entirely unique niche to succeed. By putting plenty of yourself into the videos—in your humour, opinions, and the way you speak—you give viewers a reason to come to you rather than someone else who is delivering the same kind of content.
Granted, you will invariably give some viewers a reason not to come to you over other people because they do not like your unique take on things, but you can’t please everybody, and you need to stand out to succeed.
YouTube Ideas That Don’t Involve Showing Your Face
Now that we’ve covered some generalised aspects of making videos without showing your face let’s look at some specific ideas for how you would go about making those videos.
The Hands-On Approach—If your video is of a tactile nature, such as product reviews, or cooking videos, you could always opt for the hands-only approach. In this kind of video, you would have the camera directed at the subject of the video, and the only part of you that would be on camera is your hands as they do whatever it is you are doing. You might be surprised at how expressive you can be with your hands, and you can inject plenty of personality into your video purely through the way you talk, and what you talk about.
Voice Over Content—Voice over content can cover a lot of ground. You might make a “Top 10 Sci-Fi Video Games” video where clips of the games you are talking about are on screen as you talk. It could be a pop culture video where the subject matters you are talking about is onscreen. There are even some successful YouTubers whose content is entirely audio-based, and the visuals they display has nothing to do with the actual content. If you have an existing platform, such as a popular podcast, or even a new podcast with little or no audience, you could just have a still image on your video. That being said, if you’re going to put a podcast on YouTube, it helps to give your listeners a reason to come to YouTube rather than some other audio-only platform.
Software Tutorials—There is an almost endless supply of niches within the software world, from simple office productivity to video game development, to music production. If you have expertise in a particular kind of software, you can make tutorials on that software without having to show your face on camera. Not only do you not need your face onscreen, but the software itself will be the focus anyway, and you could find your reluctant mug obscuring parts of the screen that your viewers need to see.
Meditation and Mindfulness Videos
Some people love to tune out of the world and take a moment with their own thoughts. The practice of mindfulness and meditation has been embraced widely over the last few years as a why to help people sleep, study or relax.
Fortunately, this section of the post is more or less universal, so you should find it useful even if you are happy to put your face on camera. We’ll go over some different ways to monetise your videos, but first, let’s cover some more fundamental truths about earning an income from your YouTube channel.
One crucial point to grasp when monetising your content is that numbers are rarely the be-all and end-all of success. More often than not, the quality of your audience outweighs the quantity, which is why some YouTuber’s with relatively small audiences are able to make a comfortable living from their channel while other YouTubers with enormous followings barely get by.
This is also the reason why “cheating” by buying subscribers and views rarely pays off since those numbers do not represent engaged viewers who are interested in your content, and so do not translate to financial success. The reason it doesn’t pay off is because the advertisers who pay to promote their products and services are doing so because your audience has been marked as consisting of the kind of people who would be interested in those products and services. If you have stuffed your subscriber-base with viewers who aren’t interested, it will not translate to ad engagement.
But what about the different ways you can make money from a YouTube channel? There are a few common methods (and even more less common methods) that can be used to monetise your channel, and many of them can be used simultaneously. It should be noted that, unless you are coming to YouTube with a following in place already, none of these methods are likely to yield immediate success. You will need to be patient.
YouTube Partner Programme
The most common way to earn money from your YouTube channel is through the YouTube Partner Programme, which is the built-in system that YouTube offers for YouTubers who have met specific criteria. The bullet points of those criteria are;
Not be in breach of any YouTube monetisation policies
Live in a country where the YouTube Partner Programme operates
Have at least 4,000 valid public watch hours over the last twelve months
Have at least 1,000 subscribers
Have a linked AdSense account.
If you meet these criteria and are accepted into the program, you will have the option to monetise eligible videos. YouTube will then show ads on those videos, and you will earn a cut of the revenue generated from those ads. You have quite a lot of control over when and what style of ads are shown on your videos, though you cannot control what ads are shown. In many cases, you can run YouTube ads alongside other means of monetising your content, though it is not always the case.
It’s worth bearing in mind that YouTube regularly changes their monetisation policies in ways that reduce—or even remove entirely—many YouTubers’ earnings.
Brand Deals and Sponsored Content
Essentially this is cutting out the YouTube middleman. Instead of relying on YouTube to serve ads, you deal with the advertiser directly and deliver the promotional content in your videos. For larger YouTubers, this type of monetisation represents a significant portion of their income. There is also a potential bonus in that brands are smart enough to know that numbers are not everything. While they will obviously want to reach a large audience, marketing reps today understand that a quality audience—one that is already interested in what you have to offer—is more valuable than a large audience. This means you may be able to strike a lucrative brand deal much sooner in your YouTube career than you would be able to make an equivalent amount of money through the YouTube Partner Programme.
Crowd Funding and Subscription Models
One of the most popular ways for YouTubers to monetise their work is through sites like Patreon, which allow viewers to opt into giving their favourite creators a regular payment in order to support them. This is popular with YouTubers because it tends to be far more reliable than ad-click-based revenue, and is not subject to the whims of YouTube policy change. It also shows real engagement from an audience, since they have gone out of their way to support you directly.
Affiliate Marketing
If your videos often involve products or services that are associated with affiliate programs, you could supplement your revenue—even form the bulk of your revenue—with affiliate marketing.
With affiliate marketing, you would have a link to a product or service and, should your viewers buy said product or service; you would get a cut.
A popular version of this for review channels involves using the Amazon Affiliates program to link out to products that have been reviewed in the video.
Need help in getting started with affiliate marketing? I have a deep dive article on my blog all about affiliate marketing for beginners and how to really make it work for you in the future.
Shyness—The most obvious reason is shyness. Someone people simply don’t want their face on camera, but that doesn’t mean they can’t succeed on YouTube.
Safety—Though it still sometimes struggles with a certain stigma of being a weird thing people do on the Internet, YouTubers can get as famous as any conventional celebrity, and there are inherent safety risks with that fame. For some, those risks may be too much to risk putting their face on screen.
Freedom—The world of late has been less than kind to controversial figures online, with more than a few people losing their jobs because of things they might have said on social media or in YouTube videos. If you are planning to make videos on controversial topics, you may want to keep your face out of the video to protect your livelihood, should you upset a large enough group of people.
Aesthetic—Sometimes, there doesn’t need to be a significant underlying reason for this decision. Perhaps the YouTuber just prefers to craft their videos in a way that doesn’t involve their face being onscreen. There is no objectively right or wrong way to format a YouTube video, and any reason that makes the creator more comfortable with their work should be considered a good thing. Even if the reason they are more comfortable is just that they prefer the look of the video.
In a little over a decade, YouTube has gone from an interesting online video platform that is fun but ultimately frivolous, to a legitimate career path that surprisingly attainable for almost everyone.
This may feel a bit “icky” to some—YouTube was originally this fun young thing that some people were lucky enough to succeed financially at, but now it’s a mature, grown-up platform with people of all ages eeking out a living, often making content that is far from exciting or creative.
That, unfortunately, is the reality of any career. And, with any career choice, there are a lot of mundane questions to answer. Things like “what is your earning potential”, “how reliable is this career”, and, as the title of this post asks, “how do YouTubers receive their money?”
The how of getting paid on YouTube is one of those small questions that may seem insignificant at first but can be quite important for reasons we’ll get into shortly. The quick and straightforward answer to “how do YouTubers receive their money” is through Google Adsense, who pay either directly into your bank by deposit or via a cheque in the mail.
However, as with most simplified answers, this doesn’t paint the full picture. For example, there are multiple common ways for YouTubers to get paid besides AdSense and a variety of different ways to get paid by those other methods.
Don’t worry; we’re going to go over the most common ways that YouTuber’s get paid for their content; all you need to do is keep reading!
How Do YouTubers Make Their Money?
Before you can understand how the money is received, it is important to understand where the money is coming from.
On the Internet in this day and age, there is a seemingly limitless selection of ways to leverage an audience into financial gain, both directly and indirectly.
That being said, the many years of YouTube success across thousands and thousands of YouTubers have allowed a few different methods to rise to the top of the pile in terms of convenience, effectiveness, and popularity.
YouTube Partner Programme/Google AdSense
Let’s start with the obvious. When we gave our simplified answer to the question of “how do YouTubers receiver their money” above, this was the method we were talking about. This is the built-in monetisation option that you can choose to enable when your channel has met the necessary criteria. That criteria include;
Have at least 1,000 subscribers
Have at least 4,000 hours of watch time over the last twelve months
Meet YouTube’s various policies for spam and community guidelines
Have an AdSense account
When you are part of the YouTube Partner Programme—and on eligible videos—YouTube will show advertisements that can earn you money. The exact amount earned per video depends on how many ads are served and what your viewer’s behaviour is in relation to those ads. For example, do they watch the whole ad, or do they skip it as soon as they get a chance?
These ads are actually served by Google’s AdSense platform, and any payments are handled through there. That is why you need to have a Google AdSense account before you can join the YouTube Partner Programme. Adsense supports a few different payment methods including;
Cheques
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)
Rapida
Bank Transfer
You might have noticed the conspicuous absence of PayPal in that list. PayPal may be the largest and most popular online payment processor, but it is not an option for Google’s AdSense.
Membership Platforms
Membership platforms allow your subscribers to commit to a small monthly sum to support your content. The incentive usually being that having a more reliable source of revenue compared to YouTube’s standard monetisation system will allow you to put more time into your channel, and thus create better or more content. Of course, there doesn’t always have to be an incentive—sometimes people just want to support their favourite creators.
YouTube offer their own membership option for channels with 30,000 subscribers or more, but the payment is handled the same way as their ad-based revenue. However, another option is to look outside of YouTube for a third party membership platform.
The most popular example of this is Patreon, a platform that allows you to set different tiers of supporters and offer unique perks to each of those tiers. Unlike AdSense, who do not support PayPal as a payment method, Patreon allows PayPal as well as fellow online payment processors, Payoneer and Stripe. Another example of this kind of service is Ko-Fi, which allows you to get paid through either PayPal or Stripe.
Merchandise
Another way to get paid from your YouTube channel is through the sale of merchandise. There are a plethora of services around that can facilitate this, including YouTube’s own inhouse solution for channels with 10,000 subscribers or more. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of alternatives, however. As a general rule, you can expect to find PayPal and cheque payments as an option for getting your money.
Direct Donations
It is also possible to receive direct donations from your viewers. How you receive this will depend entirely on your own preferences regarding the services you use. For example, PayPal allows you to set up a donation page for this very reason. Ko-Fi is essentially designed for small, one-off payments (the platform is built around the idea of your audience buying you a cup of coffee).
We strongly advise against just giving your bank details out, of course.
Brand Deals and Promoted Content
This monetisation option involves directly dealing with an advertiser. In this case, we can’t offer much insight into what would be involved since every deal will be different. Indeed, you could even request a particular method of payment as part of your deal.
Why is the Way YouTubers Receive Their Money Important?
If you are just YouTubing for fun and you are not concerned with earning money from it, it doesn’t really matter how YouTubers get paid. But for people who are interested in the earnings they could be receiving, and certainly for YouTubers who are looking to make their YouTube journey a career move, it is essential information.
For one thing, the part of the world you are in could determine whether or not you can earn money from YouTube directly. At the time of writing, AdSense is not available to people in the following countries;
Crimea
Cuba
Iran
North Korea
Sudan
Syria
It is also not available to individuals or businesses that are restricted by trade sanctions or export compliance laws. Granted, there probably aren’t a huge number of people who meet any of the above criteria that are looking to start a YouTube career, but it pays to know these things. The regions that AdSense is not available in are not set in stone, for example. Shifting political situations could see countries being removed from that list, or added to it.
The same reasoning applies to payment processors. For example, if you were unable or unwilling to use PayPal or Stripe, you would not be able to get your money out of Ko-Fi.
These are all things to factor in if you intend to make YouTube into a career move, but not necessarily something you should be concerned about when you are first starting out. After all, if you make it big on YouTube, but circumstances conspire to keep you from getting paid, you could always migrate to another platform. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be doable. And there are always other ways to monetise your channel.
Monetising Your Channel: Diversity is Key
YouTube goes to great lengths to make their platform financially viable. And, even though it doesn’t always feel like it, part of that viability is making YouTubers money, since YouTubers who are earning a decent amount of money for their efforts are more likely to continue putting that effort into the platform. Even when YouTube makes significant changes that seem to harm YouTuber earning potential, it is because they are trying to make the platform as appealing as possible advertisers.
Whether the changes they make are always effective or worth the grievances they cause is a different issue, but the motive behind them is clear enough.
Unfortunately, the ever-changing landscape of YouTube monetisation, combined with the whims of advertisers and shifting trends, makes the YouTube Partner Programme a somewhat unreliable source of income. In fact, not only is it unreliable, it is typically not a great earner for many types of video. YouTube revenue is mostly measured in CPM, which is essentially an amount you earn per thousand views you get. The actual figure is all over the place due to how large a factor viewer engagement plays—a video with a lot of views but where most viewers skipped their ads might earn less than a channel with a fraction of the views, but most viewers watched the ads—but as a rough average, you can expect around $1.50 to $2 per one thousand views.
Assuming you are making $2 for every thousand views you get, you would have to be getting an average of over seventeen thousand views a day to earn enough money to be considered above the poverty line in the United States. That’s a lot of views. It’s not an unachievable goal, of course, but it’s no small feat to reach an average number of views a day that is measured in tens of thousands. It’s also worth mentioning that most people don’t strive to be just above the poverty line. To bring your YouTube revenue up to something more in line with the average income in the United States, you would be looking at around forty thousand views a day.
Other Options
If you can build up a dedicated enough audience, direct contributions such as PayPal donations, or memberships such as through Patreon or YouTube’s own membership option are a great way to build a solid, reliable revenue stream from your YouTube channel.
Merchandise is also an option but should be considered a secondary option rather than your primary source of revenue. While you can realistically build a large base of people willing to contribute a few dollars here and there to support you, it is far less likely that you will be able to sell T-shirts or mugs with the same consistency, and in large enough numbers. Unless you are a fashion company, merchandise should be considered a side gig.
Brand deals are a little trickier as they typically require a brand to come to you. Pitching ideas to companies is not unheard of, but it is far more common for the company to go to the YouTuber. Sponsored videos and brand deals are by far the most lucrative of the many ways to get paid for your YouTube channel, though the exact amount you can earn will depend on your channel’s content and following.
Final Thought: Tax
There is a multitude of ways to earn money from your YouTube channel, but not quite as many ways to receive that money. The one absolute factor is that you will need a bank account. Whether you receive your money directly from Google AdSense, via a payment processor, or even via a physical cheque mailed to your home, you will need a bank account for the money to go into. The upshot of this fact is that your earnings will always be traceable, and as such, entirely discoverable by any governmental agency that might want to look into your finances.
Neither YouTube, Google, nor any of the payment processors mentioned handle taxes; that is all on you. Of course, tax law is different from region to region, and country to country. If you are not familiar with the law on taxes where you are, you should do some research to avoid getting a nasty surprise when tax collectors start knocking on your door.
In truth, the amount of money received by most YouTuber’s will not be enough to even register on a government’s tax-collecting radar, but that is not a risk we recommend taking. If you should be paying tax on your YouTube earnings, it’s better just to pay them and stay out of trouble!
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.
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.
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.
The numbers surrounding making money on YouTube are not always particularly transparent to those on the outside.
Indeed, even the methods of making that money can sometimes be a little opaque to the uninitiated. If you are one such person, fear not; we’re going to run the whole gamut in this post, from how many views do you need to make money on YouTube to how you can go about making that money.
But for those of you who are a little impatient, the short answer is – assuming your content is advertiser friendly, you need around 30,000 views per day to make money on YouTube. This could make you around $60-90 per day based on a fairly average $2-3 RPM. This can change with seasonal ad prices with winter being more profitable compared to New Year and early spring.
But before you run off to start making videos, you should be aware that there are caveats to that number. For one thing, there is no set-in-stone amount that you earn per view. Some people will be able to make a killing on 30,000 views a day, whereas others might get twice as many views but struggle to get by on their YouTube money alone.
It is also worth knowing how we reached this number. After all, it is possible to make money with far fewer views than 30,000, but, generally speaking, fewer views means less money, so what metric are we working from?
Keep reading, and all will be revealed.
How Much Money is Enough?
In order to make a judgement on how many views it takes to make money on YouTube, we first have to establish our standard for making money.
Technically speaking, if you earn a single cent from your YouTube channel, you are making money.
Granted one cent a month is not exactly cause for celebration, but it is technically money. On the other side of the spectrum, PewDiePie—by far the most popular individual YouTuber in the platform’s history—potentially makes as much as half a million dollars a month from YouTube ads alone! Most people can agree that, while they might like to be making that kind of money, they don’t need that much money.
We should clarify that we don’t know how much money PewDiePie makes, but based on the average YouTube CPM and PewDiePies average monthly views, we can make an educated guess. It’s also worth remembering that we’re just talking about YouTube earnings here—PewDiePie may have sponsorships and brand deals that further increase his earnings.
So, with all that in mind, what numbers are we looking at? Well, we’ll be honest, we’ve picked a relatively arbitrary figure that should represent an amount of money somewhere between the United States’ poverty line and the average salary earned by Americans. We’ve gone with this because we feel confident that no one wants to be on or below the poverty line if they can help it, but you might be prepared to earn a below-average income if it means you get to live the YouTube dream. So what are those numbers?
How we Calculate Our Numbers
According to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), a person in the United States is considered to be in poverty if they are earning less than $12,760 a year.
Meanwhile, the average annual salary for an American is a little over thirty thousand dollars a year. As mentioned above, we have picked a spot roughly in the middle of these figures on the basis that most aspiring YouTubers would be happy to earn a little less than average to chase their YouTube dream, but not perhaps so much less that they are officially in poverty. But how do YouTube views translate to these amounts of money?
And, just to be clear, we are only talking about YouTube Partner Programme money here—money earned directly through ads being served on your videos by Google.
The metric used for measuring the views to earnings ratio is CPM or cost per mille. CPM is a measure of how much you earn per one thousand views, and is used all over the Internet for a variety of audience-related statistics. The actual CPM your channel has will be entirely determined by the type of content you make, how engaged your audience is, how advertiser-friendly your content is, and so on. That being said, the average CPM on YouTube is around $2. That means that, on average, a YouTuber earns two dollars for every thousand views they get.
Using our 30,000 views a day average figure, you would theoretically make somewhere in the region of $22,000, which is almost right in the middle of our poverty and average salaries.
Why It’s Not That Simple
Unfortunately, YouTube CPMs are not nearly that simple. As we stated earlier, some YouTubers will be able to make enough money from far fewer views, while others will struggle with more views.
A great deal of factors come into play when talking about how much your views are worth. Firstly, you have to be part of the YouTube Partner Programme, which has certain eligibility requirements (more on that shortly).
Secondly, your individual videos have to be eligible for monetisation—if you get 50,000 views in one day, but 40,000 of them are on videos that are not eligible to be monetised, you are can only count 10,000 views towards your CPM.
The next factor is the kind of content you are making. CPM is not a static, universal figure that applies to every YouTuber—the actual number is determined by the ads that are shown on those videos, and the ads are targeted based on the audience.
Though it doesn’t necessarily translate directly to YouTube, it can help to think of a salesperson who earns a commission. If a salesperson going door to door selling small items that cost tens of dollars will make a very small amount of money per sale. On the other hand, a salesperson in a flashy showroom selling luxury cars will make a considerable sum of money per sale.
Granted, in this scenario, the door to door salesperson will probably make a lot more sales than the car salesperson, but on YouTube, we are comparing an equal number of views.
So, if you are getting an average of 20,000 views in a niche with a high going rate for ads, you stand to earn a much higher CPM than someone in a niche with low ad rates.
Another factor is the engagement of your audience. As a general rule, pop culture videos tend to have poor CPM because their audience is much more diverse in terms of their interests. They will have come to the video to be entertained and, as a result, are not necessarily interested in any particular product or service that might be advertised at them, even when Google is serving ads targetted to that person specifically. On the other hand, a channel that is specifically about reviewing computer hardware will have an audience that is likely interested in buying computer hardware—hence why they are watching review videos. That audience will be far more likely to view a full ad or click through.
This is the main reason why a channel with a smaller audience can earn more than a larger channel. To go back to our salesperson analogy, the door-to-door salesperson has no idea if the person answering the door is going to be interested in their products, whereas the car salesman can be relatively confident that anyone walking into their showroom is at least partially interested in purchasing a car.
Another critical factor to how high your CPM can be is the length of your videos and your average watch time. Longer videos represent an opportunity for YouTube to show more advertisements, which means the potential for more money.
You can increase your CPM and improve your channel income but you might need to change your content or mindset – for more information on how to boost your channel CPM check out my deep dive blog in how to increase youtube CPM.
That being said, if your viewers regularly only watch the opening few minutes of your videos and then click away, the rest of the video—and the ads that could have been served—are not doing you any good. Though you should always prioritise the quality of your content before that video’s earning potential, it is generally recommended that a video should be at least ten minutes long, as this is the minimum length of time for YouTube to make use of mid-roll ads.
YouTube’s Partner Programme
To make money directly through YouTube, you need to become part of the YouTube Partner Programme, and in order to become part of the YouTube Partner Programme, your channel has to meet certain requirements. Those requirements include;
Living in a region where the YouTube Partner Programme is available
Having more than 4,000 watch-hours over the previous twelve months
Having at least 1,000 subscribers
Having a linked AdSense account
Now, granted, none of these requirements guarantees that you are getting a particular amount of views by the time you qualify for the partner programme, but it would be difficult to reach a point where you are getting 4,000 watch hours a year and have 1,000 subscribers without at least amassing a few hundred—if not thousand—views a day on average.
The truth is, even with these requirements in place, most YouTubers who join the partner programme as soon as they are eligible barely make any money in the beginning. Given that AdSense has a $100 minimum payout threshold, it can easily be many months from you first joining the partner programme before you see any money in your bank account.
Other Methods of Earning
So far, we have been focussing exclusively on the YouTube Partner Programme as a means of earning money from your videos. In reality, the partner programme is not the best way to translate YouTube success into revenue, as CPMs are often too low, and the necessary viewing targets too difficult to achieve to make it a viable source of income. It is also the unfortunate reality of YouTube that, for some YouTubers, the number of views they would need to turn their CPM into a viable income is forever out of their reach. This is not because of any failing on their part, but a natural limitation of the niche they are creating videos in.
The more focussed your niche is, the more value each viewer represents, but the fewer viewers there are. Going back to our salesperson example, the door-to-door salesperson might not know if they are knocking on the door of an interested customer, but they have lots of doors to knock on.
In contrast, the luxury car salesperson knows that people walking in are interested in buying a car, but won’t get many customers walking through the door.
If you assume that you need at least 30,000 views a day and you are creating videos for a niche where there are perhaps a million interested viewers, that means that each of your videos has the potential for a little over thirty days viewing before everyone who is interested has seen it. And, truthfully, you’re unlikely to get a view from everyone who is interested in that niche, regardless of how popular you are.
This is where other methods of earning money from your YouTube success come in, methods like membership platforms, merchandise, and brand deals. With membership platforms—such as Patreon, or YouTube’s in-house solution—your viewers can chip in a small monthly sum to support your content, providing you with additional earnings and a more reliable source of income. Brand deals and sponsorships are less predictable since they can range from a single video for a few hundred dollars all the way up to a multi-video sponsorship for thousands of dollars.
The important part about these alternative methods of earning money is that they are not inherently linked to your number of views. Granted, more views means a bigger audience, and a bigger audience means it is more likely that you will be able to attract members to your membership platform, or brands to offer you a deal.
But viewing figures are not the hard barrier that they are for the YouTube Partner Programme and your earnings through that programme. You are not required to have a certain amount of views before you can sign up for Patreon, nor will a brand refuse to sponsor a video if the view count isn’t high enough when there are other factors at play. Marketing is evolving all the time, and brands are increasingly about quality over quantity.
You could, in theory, convince a brand to sponsor your content before you’ve even uploaded your first video.
The question of do YouTubers pay tax is perhaps not the right question—we can’t speak for every YouTuber out there. Should YouTubers pay tax is a much better question, and, in many cases, yes, if you earn enough money through your YouTubing exploits, you should probably be paying tax on those earnings.
The exact rules surrounding whether you should pay tax or not will be entirely dependent on how much money you make, the laws in your country of residence, not to mention your personal employment situation.
For example, two of the biggest countries in terms of YouTube usage—the United States and the United Kingdom—allow a certain amount of untaxed income. For the United States, it is called deductions and is around $12,200 a year. For the United Kingdom, it is called Personal Allowance and is around £12,500 a year.
In practical terms is that if someone in the United Kingdom made £10,000 from their YouTube channel in one year and didn’t earn any other income, they would not be required to pay tax on that money.
On the other hand, if they earned £13,000, they would have to pay tax on the £500 over the allowance. None of the above factors in other sources of income, such as a regular job.
Disclaimer
Now would be a perfect time to make it clear that nothing in this post should be considered financial advice.
We are only covering basic premises here, and the realities of accounting are far from simple.
The only financial advice you should take away from this post is that if you are not sure about anything regarding your taxable income, hire an accountant to take care of it for you.
Will YouTube/My MCN/Advertising Partners Pay the Tax?
No on all accounts. Unless you have a very unique agreement with your multi-channel network or advertising partners, you will be classed as a contractor, and responsible for your own taxes.
Also, though a relatively small detail in terms of practical importance, it’s worth noting that YouTube are not actually the ones paying you. YouTube is a video publishing platform, and nothing more, the money comes from Google AdSense.
Depending on your region, Google may be required to collect some tax-related data from you when you sign up for an AdSense account, but this is essentially to make it easier for your government to catch you not disclosing your income. You will have to record, disclose, and pay tax on your earnings yourself.
You can hire an accountant to do this for you, of course. And in many cases, that is probably the best thing to do. But an accountant acts on behalf of you and has no dealings with a company like AdSense or YouTube.
Can I Get Away With Not Paying Taxes on YouTube Earnings?
Again, this is a question of should, rather than could. You certainly can get away with not paying taxes on your YouTube earnings, but you really shouldn’t.
There is an ethical position to argue in that you are responsible for contributing to the society you live in. However, the more compelling argument for some would be the consequences if and when you get caught.
For the vast majority of YouTubers, it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, since most YouTubers earn very little money from their channel.
This not to say there couldn’t be consequences, and again, we must stress this is not financial or legal advice, but governments aren’t usually in the habit of immediately putting people in prison over a few hundred dollars. In the case of the UK, there are very few tax evasion prosecutions for amounts less than £50,000.
Given that the tax you pay is a percentage of your overall earnings, not to mention any allowances and deductions you are entitled to, you don’t have to do the exact maths to see you would have to have been earning a significant chunk of change to find yourself in prison.
That being said, it’s worth noting that if you get caught, even over a matter of a few dollars, you can still end up in a courtroom if you don’t cooperate. In other words, we’re not saying your government will turn a blind eye if the amount you owe is small; we’re just saying they probably won’t lock you up.
In general, though, various tax offices are happy to give you a slap on the wrist and let you just pay the amount you owe, rather than take you to court and put you in prison for it.
Where things can get dicier is if you repeatedly do not declare your income and pay your taxes. As an example, if you failed to report YouTube income that would have amounted to an extra £200 on your tax return, under UK law, the worst-case scenario would see you paying somewhere in the region of £500 after interest and penalties.
Granted, £500 is no small amount of money, but it’s not the end of the world, and it’s certainly better than going to jail. However, if you let that slide for a few years, it can quickly get into the thousands. And if your channel is enjoying growth over that period, which would imply your earnings are also growing, then things can really spiral out of control.
If you’ve ever wondered how these celebrities you see in the news manage to find themselves owing hundreds of thousands—even millions—in taxes, this is how.
Keeping Records
The key to avoiding this kind of situation is to keep precise records about your earnings.
Granted, there will always be a record somewhere in today’s connected age, but if you want to avoid having to trawl through all your AdSense payments for the past year on tax return day, it helps to keep your own records. Anytime you get an AdSense payment, make a note of it. If you get a brand deal or a company sponsor one of your videos, record it.
You don’t have to spend money on expensive accounting software; a simple Google Sheets spreadsheet will do the trick. In it’s simplest form, such a spreadsheet might look like this;
Date
Description
Amount
21/4/2021
Adsense Payout
$112.43
24/4/2021
Sponsored Video
$250.00
2/5/2021
Patreon Payout
$132.00
And that’s all there is to it. If you want to get fancy, you can tweak the spreadsheet to show you things like your projected earnings, the amount of tax you’re likely to owe, and more.
Now, you’ll have noticed that our sample spreadsheet doesn’t have any outgoings. You will need to check your region’s laws on tax deductions, but it is usually the case that “work” expenses can be deducted from your taxable income. How this works specifically in your country is something we won’t even attempt to describe, due to the many different rules from country to country, but regardless of how the deductions are calculated, you need to have a record of them if you want to take advantage of deductions.
It’s important to note that business expenses need to be justifiable as, well, business expenses. If you spend eight hundred dollars on a new camera for your YouTube channel, that can be justified as a business expense, even if you occasionally use it for personal things.
On the other hand, if you spend twenty thousand dollars on a car and your YouTube recording setup is in the spare room, you will have a hard time convincing anyone that you need the car for business reasons.
You may be able to deduct things like fuel if you used the vehicle to drive to a location to shoot a video, but the car’s primary use would have to be work-related if you wanted to class the car as a business expense.
Mixing Incomes
When you are classed as a freelancer, or self-employed, or a contractor, or whichever term you feel best fits what you do, it doesn’t necessarily matter what you are doing.
The government wants you to declare your income and pay your taxes, and as long as you are earning your money legally, they don’t care if you are making YouTube videos, selling mop heads door-to-door, or any of the other seemingly endless ways of making a living that is available to you these days.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that people are increasingly diversifying their income streams.
While being a full-time YouTuber is a dream for many, the reality of that dream for an increasing number of people is that YouTube forms just one spoke in a whole wheel of income sources. Perhaps YouTube is only making a quarter of what you need to cover your living expenses, but you also do a little Uber driving on occasion and write for a blog from time to time.
All of this income flows into the same pot as far as tax collectors are concerned. From your perspective, you would simply be adding an “Uber” line to that spreadsheet we talked about (and you might finally be able to class your car as a business expense!) if Uber was one of your income sources. As mentioned above, the important thing is that you keep clear records of it all.
As a slight side note, we mentioned above about YouTube being one spoke in a wheel of income sources—this is a good plan for any YouTuber, whether you are making a few dollars a month or a few thousand dollars a month.
The old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket is particularly apt for YouTube, as anyone who has fallen afoul of one of the many “Adpocalypses” will tell you. Even if your YouTube success is paying all the bills, it’s a good idea to spread your wings a little and make your money in other places. And definitely don’t rely on AdSense payouts alone.
Always Factor Tax into Your Decision to “Go Pro”
If you do decide to go full time with your YouTube channel, or you are planning to quit your day job in favour of being your own boss and YouTube will form a significant portion of where you expect your income to come from, be sure to take taxes into account when you are running the numbers.
Tax can be a little tricky to work out. For example, UK tax only applies after your personal allowance deduction has been applied. Getting £12,500 tax-free is great, but it can make working out your projected earnings a little trickier. For example, if you make £17,500 in one year, you are only paying tax on £5,000. The tax rate for that amount of money (currently) is 20%, which equates to £1,000.
It gets even more complicated if you make a lot of money. There are different tax bands in the UK, and each one only applies to money within that band. So;
£0 – £12,500 has a tax rate of 0%
£12,501 – £50,000 has a tax rate of 20%
£50,001 – £150,000 has a tax rate of 40%
£150,001 and above has a tax rate of 45%
This means that if you earned £150,400 in one year, you would get £12,500 tax-free. You would pay 20% on the next £37,500 (£7,500). You would pay 40% on the following £100,000 (£40,000). And, finally, you would pay 45% on the last £400 (£180). So your total tax on £150,400 would be £47,680.
Please note that these numbers assume a standard tax code, and were only accurate at the time of writing since they change every year.
All this number soup is to say that the amount of tax you will be paying is rarely intuitive, but you should make an effort to accurately calculate these figures before you hand in your notice at your day job. You don’t want to quit your job thinking YouTube can support you, only to find yourself struggling to pay a tax bill you weren’t expecting to get.
Remember, every nation is slightly different—and some are very different.
We’re using the UK tax system as an example because that’s what we’re familiar with, but be sure to check the specifics of your own region.
As users of the Internet, we have something of a love/hate relationship with advertisements.
Most of us understand that the blogs we read, the videos we watch, the content we consume—is made possible by the revenue generated from ads. At the same time, we see those very same ads as an inconvenience and an annoyance.
For creators of that content, it is a difficult concept to come to terms with. On the one hand, you want your viewers to watch ads on your videos. Still, it’s hard not to empathize with their desire not to be bothered by commercials for Fiverr, Monday.com, or whoever is turning the advertising firehose on your viewers lately.
In the case of YouTube, it’s not as clear cut as getting an ad view or not—YouTube often gives viewers the option to skip ads after the first few seconds. As welcome as this tool may be to viewers, it can leave YouTubers wondering if they get paid for those first few unskippable seconds.
We’re going to get into this subject in-depth, but do YouTubers get paid if you skip ads? Short answer is, no. However, the answer isn’t as clear cut as we might have liked. Generally speaking, no, YouTubers don’t get paid for skipped ads. However, there are situations in which a skipped ad will still result in some earnings for the YouTuber.
Let’s get into the details so you can understand when you are—and when you aren’t—getting paid.
YouTube’s Ad Options
Here, we are talking specifically about YouTube’s in-stream ads. These are ads that show up in your actual video, before (pre-roll), during, or at the end. There are other advertising options for YouTubers to monetise their videos, and we’ll touch on those later, but you can’t “skip” a display ad, so for now, we’re going to stick to the video ads.
YouTube has two options when it comes to in-stream advertising campaigns. The type of ad that gets shown on your video determines whether you get paid anything on skipped ads.
For YouTubers who have been around for a while, this could be considered the “traditional” YouTube advertising model. In TrueView ads, the advertiser pays per engagement.
The definition of engagement (or “completion”) is watching at least thirty seconds or interacting with the ad. If the ad is shorter than thirty seconds, then the viewer will have to watch the whole thing for it to count as an engagement.
If your viewer doesn’t meet one of these requirements, the advertiser is not charged and you, the YouTuber, don’t receive anything for the ad.
These are the ads that typically allow the viewer to skip after the first few seconds, which tends to be what happens a lot of the time. There is no CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model for these ads. As such, the number of people seeing those first few seconds of an advertisement is of no benefit to the YouTuber whose videos they are being shown on.
Should a viewer click on one of these ads, however, it is typically worth more to the YouTuber than the non-skippable bumper ads that we’re going to cover now.
Non-Skippable Bumper Ads
Like TrueView ads, these can show up before, during, or at the end of your videos. Unlike TrueView ads, these are only ever six seconds long, and cannot be skipped by the viewer.
These ads are charged (and, subsequently, paid) on a CPM basis. That means that, rather than earning you money every time a viewer clicks on the ad, they earn money for every 1,000 views they receive. Bumper ads are designed to gain exposure, rather than encourage the viewer to perform a specific action. That makes the number of people who have seen the advertisement is the more critical metric.
It is still possible for a non-skippable ad to not count, such as if a viewer hits the back button when the ad starts. But YouTube is using the industry standard of two seconds for an impression to count. That means the viewer would have to immediately leave your video for their view to not count.
Technically YouTuber’s get paid almost any time a bumper ad is played, however, these ads are unskippable. Also, as they pay per 1,000 views, the effective amount you earn for one view is tiny compared to engagement on a regular ad.
With the more traditional TrueView ads, a YouTuber will earn money if the ad is watched for at least thirty seconds, assuming the ad is longer than thirty seconds. So, a viewer can skip an ad and still count as an engagement.
For viewers that skip before those thirty seconds are up, however, no money is paid by the advertiser, and so no money is earned by the YouTuber.
Other Types of YouTube Ads
In-stream ads are not the only option for advertisers on YouTube, and, as such, not the only way YouTuber’s can earn money.
There are presently two other ways for advertisers to get their message across, so let’s take a look at them.
Non-Video Ads
Non-video ads are the ads that show up in the form of a small banner overlay in the video or a display ad in the sidebar. These ads are minimally intrusive, which is a double-edged sword in terms of viewer engagement.
On the one hand, they are less irritating to your viewers, meaning they are less likely to click away because of an ad. On the other hand, they are considerably easier to ignore, meaning there is less chance of engagement and, subsequently, less chance of revenue.
As a YouTuber, you can choose which kinds of ads you allow on your monetized videos, though not the content of those ads. So, it may be worth doing research and testing to find which ads work best for you and your audience.
Discovery Ads
Discovery ads, while they are clearly marked as an ad, show up in organic search results and watch feeds in the same style as the regular search results and recommendation videos around them.
This type of advertisement is ideally suited to YouTuber’s themselves, as it is designed to drive traffic to a particular video. The ad will show among related videos as though it were an organic result, meaning the people seeing the ad were already looking for that kind of content to being with. It is worth remembering that, as mentioned, the ads are marked as promoted content.
These ads are unobtrusive and, by their very nature, tailored towards the viewer’s interests because the viewer is already looking for the type of content being promoted in the first place.
Other Options for YouTuber’s to Earn Money
YouTube’s advertising platform has its strengths and weaknesses as a revenue source. Still, it’s not the only option for YouTuber’s to turn their channel into an income generator.
Brand Deals
For channels with enough interest, it is possible to cut out the middle man and go directly to the advertiser. Several brands have been open to making deals directly with content creators. That number continues to grow as the power of platforms like YouTube becomes increasingly evident.
With a brand deal, you will have to work out the details with the advertiser yourself, including price negotiations, but this added work comes with rewards. Namely: revenue.
The earning potential from brand deals is considerably higher than that of YouTube’s monetisation program. Of course, the barrier to entry is higher as well. You only need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours watch time to qualify for YouTube’s Partner Programme, but brands will require a considerably larger audience before they think about offering a channel a deal.
It should be noted that, if you do get a brand deal, you are required to inform YouTube via the “contains paid promotion” checkbox of your video details.
Getting started on YouTube can be hard so I wrote a deep dive step by step guide on how to start a YouTube channel on my blog – I even added pictures!
Crowd Funding
For YouTuber’s with an invested audience, crowdfunding is a great way to earn revenue from a relatively small audience. Traditional advertising does not pay very well with low viewing figures. Often earning pennies per 1,000 impressions, or more per click when only a small percentage of viewers ever click, you need a lot of views to make decent money.
With an engaged audience who like your content and are happy to send you a little cash to support you, you can earn considerably more revenue.
Crowdfunding suits smaller channels particularly well, as viewers are more likely to support a creator they feel connected with. It is easier to maintain that kind of relationship when you don’t have millions of subscribers.
Responding to every comment is feasible when you have a few thousand subscribers, but that’s not the case when you have a few million.
This dynamic extends to YouTube advertising as well. With a small, dedicated audience, you are more likely to receive ad revenue because your viewers are more likely to be interested in the ads. For larger channels with more casual viewers, this is not usually the case. It is this relationship that is why some YouTuber’s can go full time with an audience of around twenty thousand subscribers, while other YouTuber’s with ten times that amount of subscribers still have to work a regular job alongside their channel.
Affiliates
Affiliate marketing is usually thought of as a supplemental revenue source—rather than a primary earner—when talking about YouTube channels. Affiliate programmes will pay you a commission for actions carried out through your referral—a typical example of this being you sharing an Amazon affiliate link in your description. Amazon then pays you a percentage of the sale when one of your viewers buys something through that link.
Affiliate programmes are particularly useful for channels that feature products, such as unboxing videos and product or service reviews. If a viewer watches your video and decides they want to purchase the product or service being featured, they can click through your link, and you will earn a small commission.
Using affiliate marketing when it doesn’t organically tie into your content is unlikely to generate revenue, however. Worse still, it can sometimes be seen by your viewers as a cynical money grab and may turn some people off. And, on that note, always be upfront with your viewers about affiliates, brand deals, and product placements.
Most viewers won’t care if you are getting paid to talk about a product, but they will care if you aren’t honest with them about it.
Affiliate marketing has made me $1000’s over the last few years. It can be as simple as making content and picking the right links. But to help you get started I have written a Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing in this blog – It’s surprisingly simple once you get started!
Eyes on the Prize
At this point, it is worth enforcing the point that content is what matters. If you focus on making the best possible content for your audience, meeting a need they have, the opportunities to generate revenue will come.
If you are concerned over whether you earn money from skipped ads, you may not have your head in the right place for success. Many YouTubers consider the YouTube Partner Programme a poor option for revenue generation, and certainly not a good bet for your primary source of income. Obsessing on details such as whether you get paid for a few seconds of watch time on a skipped advertisement is not the best use of your mental energy.
Put that energy into your content. Find ways to expand your audience, or drill down further into your niche and become an authority. Consider other methods of monetisation when the time is right. There is no point in starting a Patreon with fifty subscribers, for example. Well, unless they are very dedicated subscribers.
YouTube monetisation has long been an unreliable source of income for its creators, with continually changing terms and multiple “adpocalypses”. The best way to approach this is not to think about it. Simply turn monetisation on when suitable, and forget about it. Focus on your content and other revenue sources. That way, any income you do make through YouTube’s Partner Programme will feel like a nice bonus.
And you won’t be caught short the next time YouTube changes their rules, and your revenue takes a hit.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
In 2019, the YouTube video with the most likes was Despacito by Luis Fonsi. Although the video was uploaded in 2017, it has ridden the wave of competition and is still at the top of the list, unbeaten, in 2019. Currently, it has 6 billion views and 38 million likes. This is every YouTuber’s dream – to go viral.
When Fonsi wrote Despacito, he never dreamed it would be such a massive hit. He released the song anyway because he believed in it. You, as a creator, never know which of your videos will become a sensation. You just have to keep making videos and putting your best out there.
So, What is the significance of YouTube likes? Do YouTubers Get Paid for Likes? – YouTubers do not get paid for likes. However, a like is a form of engagement that can help the video do better in the long term. The more likes, comments, and shares a video gets the higher it can rank. A good rank in search can mean more traffic to the video, more advert views and clicks.
How YouTube Likes Work
Up till 2012, videos on YouTube were ranked according to how many views they got – the view count.
This was a good metric, but if a video had a misleading title, people would only watch a few seconds of it then leave. A marketer who had attached their advertisement to such a video would feel short-changed, as their advert would not get watched. Marketers also objected to some of the content being uploaded.
A lot of the popular videos aired controversial topics like racism and terrorism. Marketers who didn’t want to be associated with such videos pulled out, leading to loss of revenue for YouTube.
This was bad for business. To stop this exodus, YouTube had to police the platform and suppress objectionable channels by not recommending them regardless of how popular they were.
YouTube then changed its metric to how much time viewers spent watching a video. Videos that captured viewer attention for longer time periods now got ranked higher. This was good for marketers as it would ensure that their product was seen by the viewer. This, however, meant that creators now had to spend more resources trying to make their videos longer while still retaining the viewers’ interest. Creators started delaying the core message of their videos for as long as they could without annoying the viewer.
They also had to change the frequency and content of uploads so as to make longer videos. This was not easy. An example of how this changed things for creators can be seen inthis video. Longer-duration videos also meant more resources spent on making and editing new videos.
Ultimately, two main factors now determine how often a video will appear in search results and recommendations:
· Behavior
· User Queries
Behaviour
The YouTube algorithm tracks viewer behavior for the purpose of making recommendations based on what they watch.
This is why your YouTube homepage will never be similar to someone else’s homepage. Your activity determines what other videos YouTube recommends to you.
This is because the goal of YouTube is to keep you on that platform for as long as possible because it increases your chances of seeing advertisements.
The goal of YouTube is to ultimately recommend videos that viewers want to watch. Its algorithm will, therefore, use the metrics above to determine whether or not to recommend a video and how often the video will appear in search results.
This means that your video not only has to be good, but it has to match keywords used in searches.
Can YouTubers Make Money from Likes? – Not directly. Likes show how good your video is, measuring its popularity. Depending on their number, the only effect is to increase the frequency of visits to your channel. When a viewer likes your video, they are ‘teaching’ YouTube that your video is good and should be recommended more often.
This is why YouTubers encourage their viewers to like, share, and subscribe to their content. The more the engagement, the higher the rank of the video, the more it will appear in results and the higher the number of viewers will increase.
So don’t underestimate the importance of YouTube likes. If anything, try to get as many as possible. Below you can see a number of things you can do to increase them.
How to Get More Likes on YouTube
Now that you know likes can be fuelling your channel growth, its time to start getting more of them!
Ask for them
At the end of your video, request your viewers to like your video. Don’t assume that they’ll like it anyway. Encourage them by also explaining how the likes will help your channel grow.
Make it easy
In addition to verbally asking for likes, include prompts at various points in your video to remind your viewers. Just be careful not to overdo it as your video will end up looking tacky.
Invite subscribers
Having subscribers means that your content is so good people want to receive more of it. In a way, you are assured that you will have a number of likes because your videos will have adedicated pool of viewers.
It also teaches YouTube that your channel is popular and should be recommended frequently.
Social media
Promote yourself on other platforms- share your videos on other social media networks. People who may like your work may not be frequent users of YouTube, so go out there and look for them. Don’t wait for them to find you.
If you can afford it, advertise. Some creators advertise their new uploads for a short period of time to increase their fan base. Cast your net wide.
Now that we have seen how important likes are and how they increase our chances of getting noticed on youtube, let’s see how we can turn that into money.
How YouTubers Make Money
The more money you make on YouTube the more you can invest back into content, growth and success. Making money on YouTube can be a burning desire but you don’t always have to use the YouTube Ads program.
I make a good chunk on my income from affiliate marketing and I wrote a huge deep dive into Affiliate Marketing for Beginners on my blog – it explains all the jargon and steps you through everything you need to do to get started.
Advertising Revenue
Channel owners can link their channels to advertisers and earn revenue based on how many people view the adverts. An example is Google AdSense.
This is a feature of the YouTube partner program, which enables you to monetize your channel. To make money from AdSense, you have to have at least 1000 subscribers and more than 4000 watch hours in the last 12 months.
This is why consistency in video uploads is important. Few uploads equal few watch hours. Lastly, you have to live in a country where Google AdSense is available. You can choose what ads will come with your video, and where they will appear.
When someone clicks on an ad or watches your video for at least 30 seconds, you earn revenue depending on the advertisers’ bid, the length of the video, and the type of content.
Affiliates
A company could approach you and ask you to endorse their product on your channel. You then talk about it, describe its features, and encourage your viewers to buy the product. You include a link in your video description where people can buy the product. To encourage a purchase and also reward their viewers, a number of YouTubers, in collaboration with the company, offer discounts for viewers who purchase a product through their channel.
Every time a purchase is made a percentage of that revenue goes to you as the owner of the channel.
Still, you don’t have to wait for a company to approach you. You could approach companies whose products are related to your content and make a deal with them. For example, if you have a food channel, you can advertise products for a company that produces spices.
You can make branded t-shirts and caps or sell products like makeup kits. If you upload how-to videos, you can offer more information through a premium subscription service or sell a how-to manual in text form.
Ensure your products are unique and high quality, as disappointed customers will spread the word about you and this could affect your popularity on YouTube. You want to go viral, but not for controversial reasons.
YouTube Premium
Many people find it annoying to have a video they are watching interrupted by advertisements. Well, this is the price we pay to enjoy YouTube for free.
HOWEVER, if you really cannot stand constant interruptions, why not tryYouTube Premium? This is a paid ad-free service offered by YouTube as a response to our grumblings against advertisements. Viewers can watch videos and listen to endless playlists without interruptions.
If you have a channel on YouTube premium, you earn revenue every time your video is watched. Viewers can also download your videos to watch offline, and this will still contribute to your watch times.
Donations
Donations are not necessarily a revenue stream, but they can support up and coming creators until they have enough views to generate their own revenue. When you make really good content, you gain many committed fans who wouldn’t mind supporting you financially so you can continue making more content.
To this end, MANY creators have aPatreon account through which fans make donations. Although Patreon takes 10% of this money, it can still be enough to keep your channel going.
Creators in turn offer their donors (patrons) extra content like behind-the-scenes footage as a reward or thank you for their support. Patreon is also a great platform for creators who need financial support for their work but want to maintain their independence.
So instead of signing contracts with commercial companies that will exploit their talent, they upload content on YouTube and earn revenue through their channel and the support of their Patrons.
Make Long Videos
Make your content as interesting as possible for as long as possible, at least for up to 10 minutes. The longer time people spend on your video, the higher the chances of earning more revenue, and the higher it will rank among search results.
Remember, YouTube wants people to spend time on videos so they can see adverts.
Collaborations
You can reach out to creators who post similar content to yours and suggest a collaboration. Not everything needs to be a competition, and we can also grow together. Collaboration will open up new horizons for your viewership and get your subscribers from a different niche category than the one you cater for.
A good example ofcollaboration was that of Lindsey Stirling, a violinist who dances while playing the violin and the Piano Guys, a group of men who make original instrumental music and do classical-style covers of popular songs. Their collaboration was actually demanded by fans and was a huge success, opening up new markets for both groups.
Targeted Content
Make your videos with a certain target market in mind. This will establish your niche, and also enable you to propose a brand endorsement to a company that targets that particular group of people. For example, if you have a food channel, you can focus on organic recipes and built viewership based on this.
You can then approach an organic food company and offer to advertise their products.
Use Targeted Keywords
Use top keywords in your video titles, descriptions, and video tags. Specific keywords attract different viewers with different interests. The type of viewer you attract will also determine the type of advertisers you attract.
Keywords that attract advertisers who pay more for adverts will also earn you more money.
Conclusion
In summary, likes will not directly earn you revenue on YouTube, but they will increase your channel’s visibility to raise your chances of earning marketing revenue.
If you need help in making better videos to get you more likes then maybe check out my resources page where I show you all my equipment, secret tools for amazing graphics and youtube seo tools!
You can follow these tips discussed in this article to get more subscribers and more likes. So keep creating!
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
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.
YouTube is the kingpin of social media; it remains the leader amongst all social media channels and consistently receives the highest traffic, so it makes sense that everyone now like the idea of having their own YouTube account.
Here is a quick overview of YouTube user stats to help inform your video creation:
2 billion logged in monthly users
Each visitor spends just over 11 minutes a day (so make your videos snappy!)
Over 70% of views are on mobile
70% of videos viewed are determined by YouTube recommended algorithm
50% year on year growth of channels earning over £10k per year
So, looking for a quick answer? Do you get paid for YouTube? – Yes! You can get paid many ways on YouTube. The most direct way is from the YouTuber Partner Program that needs 1000 Subscribers & 4000 Hours of Watch Time to apply. You will then get paid a small fee per 1000 advertisements displayed (CPM). You can also integrate affiliate links and sponsors.
But first you need to set up your channel and find your niche.
The audience is already present on YouTube, you just need to tap into their habits and create exciting and interesting content to capture them and ensure you are the video they’re spending 11 minutes on a day.
It’s clear to see that consumption has turned more mobile, and that YouTube still have a huge say in who’s successful on their channel but there is absolutely no reason why you can’t be the next channel earning over £10k per year.
There is every opportunity to get paid for being a YouTube creator and you don’t really need anything special to begin your journey, many of the most popular YouTube videos returning ad revenue every day were shot on mobile phones you just need to capture your audience and hopefully get your videos viral or a steady returning audience to increase your YouTube growth.
How do I start getting paid for YouTube?
YouTube has various methods for you to start earning money from advertising revenue, channel memberships and more. Each method has differing eligibility requirements whether that is a certain number of subscribers or views.
Before you’re able to apply to monetize your content and join the YouTube Partner Programme you need to have gained 1000 subscribers and have had 4000 public watched hours over the last 12 months.
Hopefully utilizing those tips and tricks you’re at a level where your channel is garnering views and you’re ready to monetize, your first step is to have an active Google AdSense account – Google owns YouTube so this is where your adverts will come from. You can now enable the monetization feature within YouTube and connect your AdSense account, this basically lets YouTube know that you are happy for adverts to be included on your videos.
What Adverts will I get paid for?
If you have joined the Partner Programme you’ve told YouTube that you are looking to make money on their platform and that you’re happy to include adverts on your videos.
These adverts can arrive in a variety of methods, each earning you different amounts. The main two methods are CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per mile). CPC is what it says on the tin, the ads are charged per click meaning that you get paid the more clicks you get on those adverts.
CPM is slightly different; these are usually if a viewer has watched an advert on your video and you will get paid a set amount for every 1000 views of the ad. The amount differs per advertiser so there is not a definitive answer, but it can be anything from 5p upwards. Within the two main advert methods are 4 different formats that become available to you
Pre-roll video ads (CPC) – These videos are shown before your video and can last up to 30 seconds
In Stream ads (CPM) – Very similar to Pre-roll video ads however the viewer can skip the ad after 5 seconds
Bumper ads (CPC) – 6 seconds non skippable clip that will be shown before your video
In Display Ads (CPM) – These adverts are not included on your video they can be found in the sidebar so are a bit more discrete
You can personalise what types of adverts you’d like to be included on your videos as a whole and also on individual videos which is really good for driving the adverts onto your most popular videos and making sure your balance of content / advert is how you’d like it.
Adverts are the most passive method of getting paid for YouTube, once its set up you can pretty much leave it in the background earning you money.
How else can I get paid for YouTube?
There are many other ways you can earn money and get paid for YouTube.
Depending on your content and niche you could reach out to brands within your niche for product placement campaigns, this would involve ticking the ‘paid promotion’ box when uploading your video but you can advertise the product and depending on the agreement you have you could earn a commission for sales via your video
In a similar vain you can use affiliate links throughout your video or in your description to earn via people clicking your links. Let’s say you are creating a recipe video; you could link the equipment you use in the description using an affiliate link. This should generate income via your affiliate network by utilizing your YouTube audience
If you want a deep dive into affiliate marketing and how to get started – check out my monster blog post on affiliate marketing for beginners.
If you have a loyal following and audience and a catchy slogan or name you might even, consider creating your own items and merchandise to sell. This gives your viewers a way to purchase an item you have created and if it’s branded can drive off site traffic to your YouTube channel – win win
When will I start earning?
Becoming a YouTube creator isn’t a get rich quick scheme, I’ve highlighted a couple of ideas for earning, There are a plethora of other ways to get paid for YouTube but don’t run before you can walk, gain your audience, set up your adverts and start building your YouTube empire.
It is important your focus remains on your content and keep a healthy balance of unsponsored content as well as paid advertorial campaigns. Your audience want to see you and followed you for your authentic voice so ensure you maintain that credibility throughout. Your audience are likely to stay longer if they trust you and don’t think you’re selling out for a quick buck.
Let your passive income build while you develop and build your YouTube account. Your AdSense must hit £60 before you can withdraw anyway so expect a slow burn
How close are you to monetizing your YouTube account?
– Anyone that’s serious on YouTube and making a business wants to know how to increase YouTube Video CPM income, improve their CPM, improve the adverts that get placed against your content. I’ve got a few tips for you…
If you’ve been creating content on YouTube for any length of time, you may now be monetized. The rollercaster that is YouTube CPM Rates can be a wild ride. The CPM rate is based on the things that are on your channel and it can seem frustrating that you have x amount of pounds per thousand views and somebody else gets many, many more. But, there are a few things that you can do to tweak this.
Evaluate The Existing Content On Your YouTube Channel
Have a look at your analytics. There will be some videos that have done much better than other videos. Pick through those. Have a look at your top five, top ten and see what themes may be occurring in those videos. Are those top ten videos mostly how-tos? Are those top ten videos mostly talking about a set product or service or game? Are they a certain length? Do they appeal to a certain demographic? Are they a specific niche? Are they put in a specific playlist?
Once you’ve figured out the clear front runners in your content, make more of that type of video to increase your chances of success.
In my case – I recently started to add business and money to my channel, as it gets a higher Cost Per Mille (CPM) compared to my normal YouTube Tutorials. It would behoove me more to go and make more business stuff, more business themed, more business titled, more business tagged because these are proven winners for my channel that get a proven track record of additional watchtime or a specific types of advert served against it. For example, Tai Lopez, who possibly spends a fortune trying to sell his e-course online (you know those bullshit ads where he’s stood in front of a mansion or in front of a fast car). He might be throwing 20, 30, 40 bucks at an advert that could hit your audience demographic – whilst he’s not gonna spend that kinda money if it’s against toys.
To increase your YouTube Channel CPM rate, make sure that you’re replicating the stuff that you know gets a higher CPM. I don’t mean neglect the ones that have a lower CPM, but understand the difference between the two.
Make Longer YouTube Videos – Double Your Video CPM Rate With Mid Rolls
CPM on YouTube is based on the advert served, how often and the video. Now If you’re lucky, and to increase YouTube Video CPM, adverts can play at the start, at the end and if you have a 10 minute video, they can also be placed in the middle of your YouTube video (YouTube Mid Rolls).
A case in point is Shane Dawson. Last year he dominated with his docu-series format. Each episode was over an hour long – like giant TV show. This gave him the advantage that he could add an advert every 15 minutes and it didn’t seem forced or tacky.
Now, if you imagine for every thousand views of that advert he got $5 – then the video that gets millions of views would do well for him. BUT, if he adds 3-4 mid roll adverts as well instead of $5 per 1000 advertisement displayed he can increase YouTube Video CPM 300-400% simply by adding midrolls into the longer video format. That’s the way to bump that video CPM because not only can you put one at the start, he could put multiple in the middle, he could put one at the end.
You’ll get more watchtime which might be an indicator to advertisers that people watch for longer, are more engaged and that video is very specific ’cause it’s 10 minutes of a very specific topic, so they could put specific adverts in. So, if you’re talking about how to rip apart a laptop and put it back together, advertisers could put adverts in and here, buy this part, here, buy a laptop from here, here’s Dixons, here’s PC World.
Pick Your Niche Carefully to Increase YouTube Video CPM
This is a lesson I learned, in the hardest possible sense, over the years. In the past I have managed channels that have had millions, millions of views. Those videos are in the entertainment sector. The problem with that is the entertainment sector can get thousands of views much more easily if you tweak it properly because you can pander to the topics, you can pander to the trends, the funny news, the weirdness, that kinda thing. But, that also means that you’ll get slightly lower or in some case, rock bottom CPMs.
Why? Because the topic might be inappropriate or the topic might be overexposed. So, therefore, there’s so many people talking about that, that the advertiser can bid less to get more traffic.
On the other side, let’s say you’re creating tutorials on how to create YouTube videos or educating people on business. This is a slightly harder, smaller niche. This kind of direct topic focus can attract a specific audience, an audience that other people may want to tap into, and can increase YouTube Video CPM. I have made video in the past where I talk about how to start a business.
In that video, I talk about how to start your own business. So, if you’re an accountant or if you’re some kind of business guru or some kind of e-book salesmen or anything that’s vaguely business related, insurance, etc etc – you might be tempted to advertise against that video. And, as you can imagine, the difference between someone trying to sell kids toys vs life insurance, real estate, e-learning masterclasses or anything like that – completely different market and potentially much higher CPMs.
Specific niches have better premiums. I’ve noticed with some of my clients that if you talk about money, you have a much higher CPM than over less business focused niches.
Cut Out The Swearing to Increase YouTube Video CPM
A bit of mild swearing, is not a huge problem. But, if you’re effing and jeffing all of the time, you can either be flagged as inappropriate or the algorithm kind of hears it, kind of sees it and certain advertisers will maybe stir away from you which means that they might be the higher paying ones or that means that you get one or two less adverts per hundred views, per thousand views which means you get less per thousand view CPM.
There is a rumor that if you avoid it in the first three minutes or so, or the first 30% of your video, then maybe, you’re kind of exempt from this, but I would advise that if truly your focus is in maximizing your CPM, either bleep it or avoid it entirely. I understand more than anybody how easy it is to just slip a swear out.
I’m born in Kent. I’m a council estate kid. That’s dragged his way up, effing and jeffing is like a second language to me. It’s ingrained and it’s very hard to stop. Try and curb it and it might help your pocket and you’ll feel a little better for it at the end of the month, at least on camera. Just be wary that swearing in youtube videos might hurt your bank balance.
Make Money Blogging YouTube Videos
This blog right here is proof that blogging YouTube videos can help raise awareness, bring in more eyeballs and even increase YouTube Video CPM in the long run.
Along side your very long article teaching people how to increase YouTube Video CPM you could place adverts from AdSense. This builds up a picture of behaviour within the mind of Google about your audience and helps them track or suggest your content to more and more relevant people.
I can also give you affiliate options or niche article oportunities you may not have considered before. If you’re talking about real estate, you could link to other articles, videos or affiliate links. People are still buying banner ads. People are still buying pop-ups. Yes, it may be part of the “old web world”, but it’s still equally as relevant. There’s still an audience that would prefer to read articles with visual aid whether it comes through pictures or video then specifically directly only watch your video.
You can always transcribe your videos. Turn them into blogs and then that way people could read three or fours pages of you talking that you fluffed up with nice content, infographics, and then you get double the income.
There are many tweaks you can make to your YouTube videos to increase your YouTube CPM.
When looking to increase your YouTube CPM consider the niche you are in. Some industries will pay a premium for advertising and attention. Avoid swearing. Videos that are over 10 minutes in length can have mid roll adverts to boosts its earning potential. Most importantly consider your video’s SEO.
YouTube adverts can earn you a little extra money on the side, but did you know it can be affected by what you talk about, how many adverts you show and what niche you are in?!
Evaluate your existing videos
Dive into your channel analytics and look at what currently gets you your best CPM (cost per thousand views). This will help you understand what topics on youtube channel make you the best money and attract the best adverts. You can then double down on those topics, making more of them to boost overall CPM income.
Videos over 10 minutes long on YouTube can have adverts at the start, the end and as many as you want in the middle called “mid-rolls”.
These can help multiply the money you can make from a single video. Imagine you get $5 per 1000 views for 1 advert and you add 4 more, that is 5x$5 so $25 per 1000 views, a huge jump in CPM rate.
Difference Niches Have Different CPM Rates
This is a lesson I learnt myself the hard way.
You could have an entertainment channel with a broad audience getting millions of views but if your niche is not advertiser friendly, or is too broad it might have a hugely negative effect on the overall CPM of your content.
However, if you target set niches you can boost your income.
Business, Money, Entrepreneurship, Real Estate and other “high end” niches attract higher paid adverts and therefore higher CPMs. Kids content, pranks, jokes, etc offer a wider reach but normally means easier to buy ads against as there are so many people making that content and less valuable transactions connected to it.
So consider the niche you are in if you want to increase YouTube CPM and boost your Adsense income.
Stop Swearing! – Yes this myth is true!
YouTube will listen and transcribe your content and there is statistics that show your channel and video income can and will be negatively affected by cussing/swearing.
When advertisers select what channel “buckets” they want to spend money on, you swearing might make you “less desirable” vs someone who has identical content with more family friendly language in their videos.
Make Money Blogging
If you have your content why not blog those videos onto a website and link that to adsense to maximize the income.
I have 500ish videos on my channel and over time I have been slowly adding them to my website blog.
This can help build search traffic, drive more people to the video and your channel but also gives you a chance to serve more adverts to the viewers. This means not only can you get in-video adverts but banner ads as well.
