YouTube attracts more than 1 billion users a month. That’s a huge audience. So, if you want to make money online, one of the ways to achieve that dream is to become more active on YouTube. In case you are wondering how possible it is to make money on YouTube, this explanation should enlighten you:
Just as you can monetize the content on a blog or website, you can monetize YouTube videos using the same strategies; Adsense, affiliate marketing, and so on. And the same requirement applies, you need huge traffic. Just as you need huge traffic to make a decent income from the content on your blog or website, you need huge traffic to profit well from your YouTube videos. You get it now?
Now, let’s look at 10 ways you can make money from YouTube.
Top 10 Legitimate Ways to Make Money on YouTube
1. Google Adsense
Having ads displayed before or during your videos is the most obvious way to make money on YouTube. To have these ads running in your videos, all you have to do is sign up for Google Adsense.
Once you set up your Adsense account, you can begin displaying ads in your own YouTube videos. One major benefit of this option is that you don’t have to search for advertisers on your own, since Google handles all of that. However, not everyone is accepted to become a YouTube partner.
2. Affiliate links
Another great way to monetize your YouTube videos is to add affiliate links within the text description of the video. This strategy works best if your video is about the same product you’re promoting as an affiliate.
You get a commission each time a viewer sees the affiliate links, visits the URL, and makes a purchase. It’s that simple. The more views your videos attract, the more money you will make, since more people will buy through your affiliate links.
3. Selling private ads
You can decide to ignore Google Adsense and sell ads directly to advertisers instead. However, you must bear in mind that you will need to search for advertisers yourself. Private ads typically fetch more money per view than Google Adsense ads. Whereas you can sell private ads for as much as $50 per 1000 views, Adsense ads typically pay around $10 per 1000 views.
However, to attract big advertisers, your videos must consistently attract tens of thousands; or even hundreds of thousands of views.
4. Sell links
If you are not into affiliate marketing, then you can sell links within your video descriptions. That is, you get paid for inserting links to other people’s websites or blogs.
However, you must be very careful with this method if you have a YouTube channel with an existing subscriber base. If you lease your description field to advertisers who link to unrelated content or trash, you may damage your channel’s reputation and lose your subscribers. If you accept relevant ads by reputable advertisers, then your audience won’t have a problem with that.
5. YouTube Rentals
This is another cool video monetization option, but at the moment it’s for U.S. based users only. The option enables users to produce “premium” videos and sell access to those videos for any fee they choose.
This option is suitable for anyone who has built a loyal audience and a reputation for publishing helpful and relevant videos. So, “expert guides” can be monetized with this option.
6. Sell access to unlisted videos
If you are not based in the U.S., an alternative way to charge for access to your videos is to publish them as unlisted videos, which means they will not show up in your channel or search results. You can then sell them through another medium such as another video or a blog post.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to host those videos on YouTube at all, then host them on Amazon S3.
7. Paid reviews
You can also make money from YouTube by selling the production of an entire video that reviews an advertiser’s product or showcases their benefits. This is similar to the “paid review” or “sponsored post” model that bloggers offer for written reviews.
While this method can be very lucrative, you need to be very careful if you have a channel with many subscribers. Producing a “salesy” video that gives no value to the viewer can affect your reputation negatively and make you lose subscribers.
8. Promote your own products or services
If you run a business that offers certain products or services, you can attract more customers by creating a video that promotes those offers and uploading it on YouTube. If you have already built a reputation for helpful videos, injecting such a video will not upset your subscribers, and you will even get more purchases.
9. Review affiliate products
While placing affiliate links within your video description (as described above) is a good way to make money from other people’s products or services, you can make even more money by dedicating a whole videos to promoting affiliate products.
A good way to boost your earnings with this method is to create a video of you using the product and the results you got.
10. Sell the channel
Just like a blogger can decide to sell his blog after growing it, you too can decide to sell your YouTube channel provided you already have a large subscriber base or generate huge search engine traffic, and the production of the channel isn’t tied to your personality.
Channels that attract search engine traffic are more valuable than those attracting visits only from subscribers.
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