‘How to make money on YouTube?’ is a question that must have crossed your mind at one time or another. Hobo Video lists down tried and tested ways to achieve just that. Before that let’s briefly look into how to become a successful YouTuber.
“As the economy is shifting, you need to have legitimate and creative sources of extra income. There are opportunities available that people have been using for years now.”- Franklin Gillette, Author of How to Make Extra Money at Home Right Now
How to become a successful YouTuber?
To become a successful YouTuber, select your niche and kick-start your channel. To keep the ball rolling, stay relevant, consistent, and creative. Repeat, repeat, and then some more. With the huge volume of content being uploaded on YouTube daily, it is no easy task to generate a regular flow of income from your channel. Yes, there is no easy way to become a successful YouTuber. But you sure can make it fun.
How to make money on YouTube?
Making money on YouTube is not easy. But it is not difficult if you know the right way to do it! In this ultimate guide on how to make money on YouTube by Hobo Video, you will find not just one but eight ways, all explained in detail with added links to further guide you.
1. Join the YouTube Partner Program
YouTube Partner Program is one of the most popular ways to make money on YouTube. To qualify for the program, you need to be in good standing with YouTube and follow all its monetization policies. You need to have 4,000 valid public watch hours in the previous 12 months, and at least 1,000 subscribers. Further, you can only apply after you cross the watch hour and subscriber thresholds.
Moreover, you can apply through the monetization tab on YouTube Studio. Once your profile is reviewed by YouTube, you will be notified via email. Following it, you can sign the Partner Programme terms and sign up for a Google AdSense account. Read more about how to set up your AdSense account here.
You can start to make money on YouTube from ads and YouTube Premium subscribers watching your content. Once you are approved for the program, there are other revenue streams besides ads that you can tap into, such as channel membership and Superchat, as long as you meet the criteria and the services are available in your country. You can read more on how to become a channel member on YouTube here.
What if you haven’t met the requirements for the program yet? There is no need to worry! YouTube Partner Program is not the only way to make money on YouTube. There are plenty of other ways to start making money on YouTube that you can use no matter how small your channel is. Let’s look into these options.
2. Become an online influencer
With the exponential growth in exposure to social media, many popular brands are shifting their focus from traditional marketing techniques. Marketing directly to a huge base of consumers took a back seat and instead relevant influencers were paid by the brands for much more focused marketing. To know more about influencer marketing, check out this 9-minutes-read article.
“Consumers want to hear from people that they idolize and respect. They trust these recommendations more than advertising from brands.”- Jeff Bullas (featured on Forbes as a Top 20 influencer of Chief Marketing Officers in 2018).
Influencer marketing creates an opportunity to make money on YouTube. You can approach the brands that are in sync with your niche and negotiate mutually beneficial deals. If you are interested in knowing more about how to collaborate with a brand, read the influencer’s guide to land a perfect collaboration here.
The entire process of searching for relevant brands, approaching them, and negotiating deals can be accelerated with the support of influencer marketing platforms. The influencer marketplaces provide online influencers access to many companies that are looking for potential channels to publicize their brands. By utilizing these opportunities, you can collab with brands and make money on YouTube. One of the many services offered by Hobo Video is to provide a nurturing platform for micro and nano influencers to reach a wider audience and the brands to achieve targeted marketing.
Through these influencer platforms, you can also search and find sponsors who will be interested in footing the bill for filming and launching an entire video on YouTube. This can be another way to make money on YouTube. A sponsor can be a relevant brand that has utility in your niche. For example, a cooking oil brand is a sponsor for a cooking channel video. In this case, as part of the deal, you might have to display the brand and the product prominently while filming the video.
3. Tie up with revenue-sharing platforms
You can tie up with brands, or e-commerce platforms, or influencer marketplaces to make money on YouTube. You sell their products and get a commission on the sales you initiate. Every platform has its own rules on how this can be achieved. You can make money on YouTube by becoming a VIP member of Hobo Video for free.
Hobo Video is one of its kind social e-commerce platform driven by short videos. It is a vernacular fun video-based localized community. Further, it is a driven marketplace for Gen Z and millennials. It helps YouTubers to make money on YouTube via an engaging video commerce ecosystem. You get a share in the revenue from the sales you generate. The percentage of revenue share is highest at Hobo Video.
With its unique business model, Hobo Video protects the interests of both influencers and brands. It is the only platform that offers as high as 35% share in revenue for its huge network of micro and nano influencers. Hobo Video is a global network of over 900,000 micro and nano influencers in 63 categories with a following of 500 million. With Hobo Video, you can not only make money on YouTube, but you can also own an online store, sell products, build a follower base, make viral content, and connect with trusted brands. You read more on how to make money Hobo Video here.
4. Use crowdfunding
Many people use crowdfunding platforms to raise money. You can do the same to make money on YouTube. First, set up a crowdfunding account on one of the sites approved by YouTube. You can find the list of YouTube-approved crowdfunding sites here. Then create an effective crowdfunding video that clearly explains who you are, what you are raising money for, why your viewers should care, and ends with a call to action. There are different types of crowdfunding and check out the image below for more details.
You can use YouTube Cards to make your crowdfunding video more interactive by featuring your crowdfunding account link on a card. You can feature your crowdfunding video on a card as part of your regular content.
On your channel, you can add a donate button that can take your viewers to the crowdfunding website by clicking it. You can offer rewards to people making donations based on the amount they’ve pledged. Rewards can include either shoutouts or early access to your content advertisement-free access to your content hand-written thank you notes free products or a combination of them.
Transparency often increases donations in the case of crowdfunding. You can increase your funding by regularly updating your donors on the progress of the campaign and maintaining transparency throughout the process.
Patreon is one of the most sought-after crowdfunding platforms for recurring funding. Other popular crowdfunding websites approved by YouTube include Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Causes, and GoFundMe.
5. Raise money from fans
Raising money directly from your loyal fans is another popular way to make money on YouTube. This can be achieved in various methods. One way to do this is by sharing a link to your website where your fans can send you money directly.
You can access Super Chat or Super Stickers through the Supers option on the monetization tab of YouTube Studio. This gives your fans a new way to connect with you and also helps you to make extra money on YouTube via live streams and Premieres. Super Chat and Super Stickers when enabled, your fans can buy special chat messages and stickers while you are streaming to stand out from the crowd and get your attention.
Another way to make money on YouTube from your fans is through memberships. YouTube channel memberships are paid subscriptions to your channel. They allow your fans to support your work by paying a monthly subscription by joining your channel through the button on your channel’s page. Your fans can choose different levels of membership. Each level will provide them with different kinds of perks.
These perks typically come in the form of custom emojis, badges, live chat access, and bonus content. You can use memberships if you have at least 30,000 subscribers or 1,000 for gaming channels. Using memberships is free but YouTube will take a 30% share of the profits you earn.
6. Adapt affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is essentially where you will be paid a referral fee or a commission for referring signup or a sale of a specific product or service. So when you sign up to be an affiliate, you will be provided with a unique URL that you can use in your YouTube videos, description area, and comments section. When people click those links and sign up or register or make a purchase, then you make money on YouTube via the referral fee or commission for helping with that transaction.
“Being an affiliate marketer is very cost-effective. You don’t have to put much money in an affiliate program in order to gain a lot.”- Russell Brunson, Co-Founder of ClickFunnels
Affiliate marketing essentially allows you to sell a product without needing to have a product of your own. You don’t need to worry about ideation or manufacturing or warehousing or customer support. You will be able to leverage an existing network to facilitate a transaction and add another source of revenue for yourself.
It is a common practice for many brands to run their own affiliate programs. You can approach brands that fall in your niche or you can approach online platforms such as Hobo Video that connects popular brands and YouTubers and make money on YouTube.
7. Sell your own merchandise
It is important to create consistent branding throughout your videos so that your viewers can immediately identify you. You can use your banner to call out your channel links, merch offerings, and promo code.
You can add custom links to your channel to make money on YouTube. Add your merch store URL as your featured link to capitalize on channel traffic and make your products easily accessible for purchase. To update your links, head to the About section of your channel. Click Customize Channel and add your URLs.
YouTube’s merch shelf
You can activate YouTube’s merch shelf integration to sell your own merch under your videos. You can check your merch shelf eligibility under the monetization tab of YouTube Studio. Once you’ve activated the merch shelf, you can customize the products displayed across your video. You can even choose specific products to display for specific videos.
Once you activate a merch shelf, you will be able to create a channel store. This feature is another convenient tool for driving traffic to your product pages. You can customize the products featured within your store and the order in which they are displayed. If you are not sure about the order of display of your products, consider showcasing your newest products, top-selling items, or limited edition products first.
To make extra money on YouTube, you can also make promotional videos to boost the sales of your merch. Remember to display your merch in a prominent viewpoint in these promotional videos if possible. This add extra eyeballs and eyeballs will eventually help to make money on YouTube. For example, if you are making a promotional video to sell your own merch- say a t-shirt, wear a real sample of that t-shirt while filming for the promotional video.
If you haven’t unlocked the merch shelf yet
You can also make money on YouTube by providing a link to your product listing in the video description section. To make money on YouTube, many creators feature their products in video content and remind viewers that they can find a link to the products.
End screens, YouTube Live, and announcing a sale on the merch can also be used to sell your own merchandise on YouTube. Additionally, you can promote your merch on other social networks, implement YouTube SEO trends for better positioning of your product, and also collaborate with other YouTubers.
8. License your content
If one of the videos on your YouTube channel goes viral on the internet, you can use this as an opportunity to make money on YouTube. In such a scenario, other platforms such as traditional media or a celebrity influencer or online news channels might want to play your video for their audience. You can license your content in exchange for money.
You can also list your videos on an online marketplace for videos, where your content can be easily purchased by people who need it.
To conclude
Hobo Video believes there is never a single and prominent way to make money on YouTube. In order to maximize your revenue, the best way to generate income is by successfully implementing the maximum possible sources of revenue generation.
