YouTube has become a viable career for many around the world, and the United Kingdom is no exception. Aspiring content creators in the UK have the opportunity to turn their passion into profit.
But how exactly does one go about making money on YouTube in the UK?
Let’s explore the key steps, strategies, and unique challenges.
1. Understand the Basics of Monetization
Firstly, you need to understand how monetization works on YouTube. The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is essential for earning revenue. In the UK, you must meet the following criteria:
At least 1,000 subscribers
Minimum of 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months
2. Choose Your Niche Carefully
Selecting a niche that resonates with your interests and the UK audience is crucial. Whether it’s British culture, fashion, football, or gardening, finding your unique voice and target audience is essential for success.
3. Create Engaging Content
Quality content that engages viewers will make them return for more. Being authentic, entertaining, and informative can help you build a loyal community.
Ad Revenue: Through Google AdSense, YouTubers receive a share of the revenue from ads displayed on their videos.
Channel Memberships: Offer exclusive perks to subscribers for a monthly fee.
Super Chats: During live streams, viewers can pay to have their messages highlighted.
Affiliate Marketing: Partnering with brands and promoting products for a commission.
Sponsorships: Collaborating with businesses to create sponsored content.
5. Comply with UK Regulations
Understanding the UK’s regulations regarding taxes, copyright laws, and advertising guidelines is essential to operate legally and ethically.
6. Analyze Your Performance
Regularly analyzing your performance through YouTube Analytics helps in understanding what works and what doesn’t. Focus on metrics like watch time, audience retention, and engagement.
7. Network and Collaborate
Collaborating with other UK YouTubers can expand your reach and increase your credibility. Attending events and engaging with the community both online and offline can foster meaningful connections.
These tables give an overview of various aspects of YouTube in the UK, such as the requirements for monetization, average earnings, popular categories, and demographics of content creators. Keep in mind that these numbers are illustrative and should be cross-referenced with up-to-date sources for accuracy in specific situations.
Challenges and Unique Aspects in the UK
Stiff Competition: The UK’s YouTube scene is bustling with talent, so standing out requires creativity and perseverance.
Cultural Sensitivity: Understanding and appealing to the diverse cultural landscape in the UK can be a unique challenge.
Making money on YouTube in the UK is an exciting prospect but requires hard work, persistence, and strategic planning.
By understanding the UK market, abiding by the local regulations, engaging with the community, and leveraging multiple revenue streams, you can turn your YouTube channel into a thriving business.
Whether you’re in London, Manchester, or Edinburgh, the opportunities are vast, but the journey is uniquely British, filled with both challenges and rewards.
One of the most commonly asked questions about YouTubing is how much money a typical YouTuber makes, and it’s a tough one to answer because the variation between one YouTuber and the next can be substantial. A much less commonly asked question is what percentage of YouTubers make money?
Arguably, it’s a more enlightening question for someone considering getting into YouTube to ask. Here’s why;
If you ask how much a YouTuber earns, you could have an answer anywhere from $30 per month to £30,000 per month. It’s not a particularly useful question in that regard. But the question of what percentage of YouTubers make money at all will give you pretty good idea of how hard it can be to make money on the platform, which, for most users, isn’t as easy as they’d like.
What Percentage of YouTubers Make Money?
Firstly, let’s set a few ground rules for this section.
When we say “make money” we are talking about a substantial enough sum to be considered an income, be it a secondary income or the main thing. Technically speaking, someone who makes the equivalent of $3 a month from their YouTube channel is making money, but it’s hardly worth noting. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to arbitrarily put a cut-off point at $50 a month. This is still a very small amount when you consider the amount of work that goes into an average YouTube channel, but it’s at least enough to pay for a nice meal or the occasional upgrade of your gear.
The other rule is that we are talking exclusively about money made through YouTube. We’ll explore this a little more near the end of the post, but it is entirely possible for someone to make almost nothing on YouTube and still be earning a lot from Patreon or merch sales. We are looking exclusively at things like the YouTube Partner Programme, memberships, and super chats.
YouTubers That Are Eligible to Make Money
At the time of writing, there are around 31 million YouTube channels on the platform. If we start with the lowest barrier to entry for YouTube monetisation—the YouTube Partner Programme—we know that the criteria here requires the YouTuber to have at least a thousand subscribers. There are other factors, such as 4,000 hours watch time and good standing regarding the community guidelines, but we can’t easily find this information out for every YouTuber on the platform. However, according to AskWonder, the number of YouTube channels with over 1,000 subscribers is less than 80,000. Now, granted, these numbers are a little rough around the edges, but the disparity is clear, even if you allow for a substantial margin for error.
Based on these two metrics alone, we can estimate that at most, around 0.25% of all YouTube channels are making money. That’s not a lot.
And, when you consider that not all channels that are have over a thousand subscribers can actually make money, and that even those that can make money might not be making much money at all, it starts to paint a bit of a bleak picture.
Updated YouTube Earnings Statistics (2023)
With the ever-evolving landscape of YouTube and its creators, it’s essential to stay up-to-date with the latest statistics. Here, we present the updated earnings statistics for YouTubers in 2023, showcasing the growth and potential of this thriving platform.
YouTube Earnings Stats Table (2023 Projected)
YouTube Channel Subscribers
Percentage of YouTubers
Estimated Monthly Earnings (USD)
Estimated Yearly Earnings (USD)
1 – 1,000 subscribers
88%
$0 – $50
$0 – $600
1,001 – 10,000 subscribers
9%
$50 – $500
$600 – $6,000
10,001 – 100,000 subscribers
2.5%
$500 – $5,000
$6,000 – $60,000
100,001 – 1,000,000 subscribers
0.4%
$5,000 – $50,000
$60,000 – $600,000
1,000,001 – 10,000,000 subscribers
0.09%
$50,000 – $500,000
$600,000 – $6,000,000
10,000,001+ subscribers
0.01%
$500,000+
$6,000,000+
Key Takeaways
A significant majority (88%) of YouTubers have less than 1,000 subscribers, with earnings ranging from $0 to $50 per month.
Only 2.5% of YouTubers have between 10,001 and 100,000 subscribers, making it a competitive range to break into. These creators can expect to earn between $500 and $5,000 per month.
The top 0.1% of YouTubers, with over 1 million subscribers, make up the most successful and highest-earning tier. They can potentially earn over $50,000 per month and more than $600,000 per year.
These updated statistics demonstrate the income disparities between different levels of YouTube creators. While a small percentage of YouTubers make a significant income from their channels, the majority earn relatively small amounts. Aspiring creators should be aware of these realities and have a diversified income strategy to maximize their chances of success on the platform.
Why is the Percentage so Low?
There are probably a lot of complicated factors that play some role in this number, but the biggest, simplest explanation for this enormous disparity between channels and money makers is the low barrier to entry.
It costs nothing, financially, to set up a YouTube channel, and it doesn’t take much in the way of effort, either. This is great for giving more people the opportunity to create content, but it has the side effect of allowing people through the door that haven’t really thought about what they’re getting themselves into. For zero dollars and a minute or two creating a YouTube account and channel, you can have your very own YouTube channel. And, if it doesn’t pan out, you can just delete the channel, or even abandon it.
Potential YouTubers don’t need to ponder the implications or weigh up the pros and cons because there is no penalty for failing. If there was a fee to create a YouTube channel, there would be far fewer channels not making money, because YouTubers would put more thought into whether they really wanted to start a channel—and whether that channel could succeed—before they started.
Of course, we are not arguing for YouTube to raise the barrier to entry on YouTube, just highlighting this dynamic.
What Does This Mean?
We can’t tell you what to take away from information like this, but it is worth noting that there are two ways to look at this. On the one hand, the fact that such a vanishingly small percentage of YouTube channels are even in a position to make money through the platform (which, again, doesn’t guarantee that they are making money) is a bit grim if you are considering becoming a YouTuber and hope to make it a career.
On the other hand, the vast majority of the channels on YouTube are either hardly updated or abandoned entirely. We don’t know exact figures, but if YouTube ever decided to run an automated sweep and delete all the channels that have no videos, there would almost certainly be a noticeable drop in the total channels.
In other words, you shouldn’t be disheartened by the number of channels that fail. There is no external factor making them fail for the most part; it’s just them. Either a lack of ambition or drive. The truth is, if you can make semi-decent content in a niche that has enough interest, getting over a thousand subscribers is a matter of time and patience.
Other Ways of Making Money With a YouTube Channel
The above methods rely on YouTube’s moneymaking methods, and, as such, we can make inferences from other aspects of the platform, as we did with the subscriber count and the YouTube Partner Programme criteria. The reality of making money as a YouTuber is a little more complex than that.
It is entirely possible to make money from your YouTube channel away from the YouTube platform, and it is also possible to be in a position where you have a substantial following but can’t monetise your content on YouTube itself. Granted, we are not talking significant numbers here, but these channels do exist.
Now, if your YouTube channel doesn’t have a sufficient number of subscribers or watch time to meet the YouTube Partner Programme requirements, it’s unlikely you or your brand is known enough to be making any substantial earnings somewhere else, like Patreon.
But YouTube channels find themselves excluded from the YouTube Partner Programme—either on a video-by-video basis or channel-wide—on all the time.
The most common cause would be creating content that goes against YouTube’s monetisation policy (politics, violence, firearms, anything made for children, etc.). In this manner, a channel could have a million subscribers but be excluded from the YouTube Partner Programme and be unable to make money through YouTube directly. They could also be excluded because of copyright or community guideline strikes.
Still, given the above information about how many channels have over a thousand subscribers, we can’t see the percentage of YouTubers making money using systems other than the YouTube Partner Programme being significant enough to change the shape of things.
Multi-Channel YouTubers
In addition to channels that make their money from places other than YouTube, we could also quickly mention YouTubers with multiple channels.
It’s not uncommon among popular YouTubers to have more than one channel.
This typically happens because they are in a niche and their audience wants to see a specific type of content from them, but the YouTuber wants to branch out and do new things. Creating a second channel allows them to do that branching out without alienating any of their audience who might not be interested, since anyone who follows them to the second channel will know they are getting something different.
Now, we can’t practically find out how many of those 31 million YouTube channels belong to a YouTube with more than one channel. Almost certainly some of the 99.75% of YouTube channels that have less than a thousand subscribers will belong to a YouTuber with another channel that is making money. Still, we see no reason to believe the number is high enough to significantly change the landscape we have laid out.
After all, even if every single channel in the 0.25% that has over a thousand subscribers owned a second channel with less than a thousand, that would still only be a quarter of a percent shifted from the not making money side to the making money side.
Final Thoughts
At first glance, the number of YouTubers that are able to monetise their YouTube channel at all—let alone make a good amount of money from it—looks a bit depressing. Sure, 80,000 is a big number, but it’s a tiny fraction of the 31 million strong whole that is all the YouTube channels.
Just remember that most of that 31 million belongs to YouTubers who gave up, or perhaps never even got started in the first place. Let this post be a reminder that success is far from guaranteed when you start YouTubing, but don’t let it put you off starting at all. If anything, this should illustrate the importance of having some kind of plan.
Now get out there and be the 0.25%!
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
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.
There is a multitude of ways to monetize a YouTube channel. Still, the most popular method remains YouTube’s built-in monetization features.
You will need to meet several criteria before you can monetize a channel (more on that later), but once you do, YouTube will begin showing ads on your eligible videos, and you will start earning a cut of the profits those ads generate.
There are typically a lot of questions surrounding YouTube’s Partner Program, which you have to become part of if you want to monetize your videos. Many of these questions come from the perspective of branding; a critical ingredient in any online presence.
The question of whether you have control over the ads that YouTube play place on or around your videos is a reasonable one to ask. After all, public perception is not always as nuanced as you might hope.
If an ad for something controversial is played before your video, it can negatively affect your brand. Similarly, most YouTubers aren’t exactly keen on having ads for their rivals playing on their videos, either.
So can YouTubers control which ads are shown on their videos? – The short answer is no. YouTuber’s have no control over which specific ads are shown on or with their videos. However, you can disable specific advert categories in the Google Adsense settings to eliminate some niches you might wish to avoid like Gambling, Health etc
Still, you are not entirely powerless in controlling the branding of your channel.
Let’s dig in a little deeper.
The YouTube Partner Program
Know your enemy, as they say. Before you even consider how to handle YouTube’s built-in monetization, you need to understand what is required for your channel to qualify.
It used to be the case that anyone who followed YouTube’s community guidelines could monetize their channel, but this changed in 2018 when the barrier to entry was significantly increased. The current requirements to become a YouTube partner are as follows;
Reside in a country or region where the YouTube Partner Programme is available.
Have at least 4,000 hours of valid watch time in the past 12 months.
Have at least 1,000 subscribers.
Have a linked AdSense account.
Most of these requirements are self-explanatory with the possible exception of “valid watch time”.
Watch time consists of accumulated watch time across all of your videos by any viewer. So, sixty different viewers could watch one minute of a different video each. That would count for the same amount of watch time as one viewer watching a single sixty-minute video.
The “valid” part refers mainly to the fact that, previously, YouTube’s Partner Program would factor in all views across your channel. That includes private and unlisted videos. Now, for it to be considered valid, it must be a public video.
Once you have met these criteria, and provided there are no issues with your account, you can sign up to be part of the YouTube Partner Program. And, after YouTube approves your channel (usually a few days), you can start monetizing your videos. It’s also worth noting that being accepted into the YouTube Partner Program is a channel by channel process.
If you start a second channel after being accepted to the program, you will have to go through the same process for that new channel.
What Control Do YouTubers Have Over Ads?
Firstly, it should be noted that even though your channel is part of the YouTube Partner Program at this point, any individual videos you intend to monetize must meet their own criteria before they can be monetized.
When monetizing your video, YouTube will ask you to answer a few questions about the content. They will want to know if it has any offensive language, or if it is aimed at children, as well as a host of other things.
For the most part, the answers to these questions will affect the advertising that YouTube will show on your video. In the same way that you might not want certain things advertised with your brand, advertisers often don’t want their ads displayed with certain types of content.
For some types of content, this may mean YouTube won’t show any ads at all. If your content falls into this category, you should look into other ways of monetizing your videos.
Assuming your video is eligible to be monetized and you do decide to put ads on it, the only real control you have is where and how those ads are displayed. There are several options to choose from, and you can select some or all of them. These options are;
Display Ads
Overlay Ads
Sponsored Cards
Skippable Video Ads
Non-Skippable Video Ads
The timing of the in-video ads can also be set as “Before Video”, “During Video”, and “After Video”, with the further option of manually choosing the placement of “During Video” ads.
Overlay ads are those little banner ads you sometimes see in the bottom center of the video. The ones that you can close if you like. Display ads, on the other hand, are the ads that appear above the recommended videos (typically to the side of the video you are watching).
These ads are minimally intrusive and do not stop the viewer from watching the video. That means they are less likely to cost you views, but also less likely to make as much money as the more intrusive ads.
Cards are the little boxes that pop up in the video when you click “more information”, and, as you may have guessed, sponsored cards are ads placed in those boxes.
Finally, skippable and non-skippable ads are video ads that YouTube will play at the times you have allowed. These videos interrupt or delay your viewers from seeing your content.
Because of this, there is a higher risk that they will click away if the content is not grabbing them. That being said, this kind of ad is also worth considerably more money, so it’s a trade-off you will have to weigh up for yourself.
And that, along with not monetizing your video with the YouTube Partner Programme, is the full extent of control you have over YouTube ads on your videos.
Or is it?
Paid Promotions and Product Placements
Your earning potential through YouTube is not limited to the YouTube Partner Program alone. Indeed, some YouTubers do not use the program at all, feeling that the extra revenue does not warrant the added inconvenience to their viewers.
One of the more popular methods of monetizing a YouTube channel without using YouTube’s own methods is paid promotions and product placements.
This can be handled several ways, but typically takes the form of an in-video ad that you place in the video yourself, rather than leaving it for YouTube to do automatically. For this kind of arrangement, you will have to strike up a deal with an advertiser yourself, and so it’s impossible to say what constraints you might face on the content of the ad.
However, you will be in full control of what you do and don’t show.
If an advertiser demands something you are not comfortable with on your channel, you can choose to not work with them. Just be sure agree on the content of the ads before any legal documentation is signed. Failing to do so may result in you being legally obligated to show ads you are not comfortable with.
If you do implement this kind of monetization, there is a simple checkbox you will have to tick when you upload your video. This tells YouTube (and, consequently, your viewers) that your video contains paid promotion. In most cases, this will be an unnecessary precaution, as it is often obvious that there is paid promotion in the video.
For videos with product placement, however, or where it is not immediately clear that the video contains a paid promotion, this notice will act as full disclosure to your viewers.
Whether it is necessary for your content or not, you must make sure to check this box if it applies. Not doing so would constitute a breach of YouTube’s terms if you were ever found out. In extreme cases, you could even lose your channel!
Affiliate Programmes
Affiliate program are not suitable for all types of YouTube channels, but for those they do suit, it’s an excellent way of monetizing your content. To explain how affiliate programs work, we will use Amazon as it is the most popular example of this kind of service. There are many affiliate programs to choose from, however.
To make use of Amazon’s affiliate program, you first sign up with their program. From there you can access special affiliate links to Amazon products. From a customer’s point of view, clicking an affiliate link looks no different from clicking a regular link.
The item is the same, the price is the same, and the process is the same. The difference that we’re interested in, however, is that you get a commission of any products that are bought through your affiliate link.
Now, if your channel has no relevance to anything you can buy on Amazon, then an Amazon affiliate link wouldn’t do you much good.
However, if your channel reviews things, or you do some product spotlights, or even if you have a professional setup and frequently get asked about your gear placing affiliate links to the related products in your video description can be a great way to monetize your content. It is also a great way to add a revenue source if you are already monetizing through some other means.
Leaving the Amazon example behind, there are many affiliate services, and some companies even have their own affiliate program. For instance, Udemy, an online learning platform, has its own affiliate program. There are also affiliate program related to books, entertainment, and a host of digital products.
Crowd Funding
The final alternative to monetizing your channel that we’re going to cover is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding requires you to have a somewhat invested audience but is essentially your viewers choosing to compensate you for your content.
For this to work, you would need to be providing useful content that your audience is willing to pay for. People like to watch funny animal compilations, but they are probably not going to financially support you to make them when they can get that content elsewhere.
There are a few different ways to make this option available to your viewers, the most well-known one being Patreon. With Patreon, you can set different tiers that your patrons can contribute to, with rewards for each tier.
Patreon supports recurring payments, very much like a subscription. Another similar option is Ko-Fi, which is a little better suited to smaller, one-off payments. The theme of Ko-Fi is that your supporters are buying you a cup of coffee. It may help to think of this service as more akin to a tip jar.
For eligible channels, YouTube has an in-house alternative in the form of Memberships, which works in a very similar fashion to Patreon. Using YouTube’s system has the added convenience of not requiring your viewers to leave YouTube to support you.
Of course, you will have to meet YouTube’s requirements before you can use this feature.
Conclusions
While it is unfortunately true that you cannot control the ads that YouTube displays on your videos, you are not powerless in the presentation of your brand. You can choose not to show YouTube ads on your channel, and seek alternative ways of monetizing your channel.
It’s worth noting that YouTube advertising is not the most predictable source of income. In addition to fluctuating viewing figures, the type of video you make can significantly affect your earning potential. While some YouTuber’s have made a respectable income from a relatively small number of subscribers, other YouTubers have had viral hits with millions of views that only made a few hundred dollars.
Things like the length of your video and how long viewers watch for also has a significant impact on the earning potential of any specific video.
However you plan our your monetization strategies, remember that good content should be at the core of whatever you do. You can’t control YouTube’s ads, but you can control your content. Make it count.
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.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON YOUTUBE — HOW TO BECOME A YOUTUBER (EP 06) // Making money on YouTube can help you grow a brand and invest in equipment. To make money on YouTube you need a mix of income sources — YouTube Partnership, Affiliate Marketing Links, Sponsorship, Product Sales, Merchandise and more.
We can grow together, We can learn together… Start Creating!
► THANKS FOR WATCHING PLEASE REMEMBER TO LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE AND SUBSCRIBE — https://goo.gl/oeZvZr ◄
Note — Some of my links will be affiliate marketing links. These links do not affect the price of the products or services referred to but may offer commissions that are used to help me to fund the free YouTube video tutorials on this channel — thank you for your support.
YouTube Face YouTube Partner Program Issues – Monetization Broken & #YouTubePartnerCulling // YouTube are reporting issues with its new YouTube Partnership Program roll out. Monetization broke, money trapped, features not working and people are not happy. Channel monetization reviews have been delays for weeks and in some cases people have been demonetized even when over the threshold.
Is you YouTube adsense money trapped? Use this link and close the account – goo.gl/2onpt6
🔴 How To Make Money on YouTube Without Adsense – No YouTube Partner Program Monetization #YPP [CHAT & Q&A]
Losing YouTube Monetization? Being removed from the YouTube Partner Program? Make money without youtube adverts. You can make money on YouTube without YouTube Monetization. You can make passive income online without adsense. Make money online with YouTube.
Affiliate Marketing, Amazon Marketing, Referrals, Merchandise, Products and Services.
🔴 MORE YOUTUBE 2018 CHANGES — NEWS FROM YOUTUBE CEO [CHAT & Q&A] — New YouTube changes from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Policies, YouTube Future Goals, and YouTube’s Priorities for 2018. YouTube Famebit, Creator Blog, NewFeaturess, YouTube Reels, YouTube Community Tab and more.
YouTube To Demonetize All Small YouTubers – What Can You Do? – YouTube Partnership Changes // YouTube Monetization 2018 Update – YouTube has announced that they will be changing their YouTube Partnership Programme (youtube partnership requirements) to only allow monetization on channels with more than 1000 subscribers and over 4000 hours (240,000 minutes) of watch time over a 12 month period.
This has rightly or wrongly upset the small youtuber community and I wanted to pop onto a live stream to talk about this issue.
![MORE YOUTUBE CHANGES - NEWS FROM YOUTUBE CEO Susan Wojcicki [REACTION - CHAT & Q&A]](https://alanspicer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MORE-YOUTUBE-CHANGES-1200x675.jpg)
