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How to make Money online from home with YouTube

Most people don't believe that one can make money online, the truth is a lot of people have made money online. The most reliable means through which you can make money online is first YouTube and blog.

YouTube stars are today’s self-made celebrities—people who have earned an audience by creating content geared toward teaching, entertaining, reviewing, and being awesome on the internet.

Most of these small-screen celebs do what they do just to do it, to scratch an itch for creating things and being in front of an audience.

Making money might not be your reason for starting a YouTube channel, but the opportunities to earn are a pleasant surprise once you realize how many of them there are.


Do you get paid for uploading videos on YouTube?

Content creators aren’t paid by YouTube for the videos they upload. Neither are videos monetized by default. For you to start making money on YouTube, you have to enable monetization in your YouTube account settings. From there, you have options to join the YouTube Partners Program or have your videos listed on YouTube Premium.

How do you make money from YouTube?

There are a few takeaways from Forbes’ list, putting aside the millions of dollars made and subscribers gained. 

First, YouTube channels can be monetized even if they don’t have millions of subscribers. Your earning potential isn’t determined solely by the number of subscribers and views you have, but also by the level of engagement you generate, the niche you cater to, and the revenue channels you explore. That’s not to say subscriber count doesn’t matter.

Second, this list of top 10 earners might give you the impression that the millions of dollars made comes directly from YouTube. In fact, each of these channels has its own line of merchandise. These channels found and built their audiences first, before launching their own merchandise. If making money on YouTube is in your marketing plan, the first step is the same for everybody: have a clear understanding of your target audience.

Who’s going to watch your YouTube channel?

Building your own audience puts you in a great position to monetize content in a variety of ways. But you’ll only be able to take full advantage of the opportunities you have if you understand the makeup of your audience.
 

 

You'll want to pay close attention to:

  • The gender of your audience, to see if its skews toward one particular group.
  • The age range most of your audience falls into.
  • The geographic location countries or cities where your videos are being watched.
  • Your audience’s overall engagement, or “watch time.”

With this demographic information at hand, you’ll have a better understanding of your own audience and be able to work better with brands. All demographic insight can be pulled from your YouTube analytics, but to compare your own channel against others try a tool like Social Blade.

With that out of the way, we can start talking about the different ways your YouTube channel can make money.

 

How to make money on YouTube

Your audience might unlock your YouTube channel’s earning potential. But when you create multiple revenue streams, through side side hustles or businesses, it's easier to monetize.

Luckily, there are several ways to accomplish this let's take a deeper look at each of these streams.

  1. Become a YouTube Partner and earn money from ads.
  2. Sell products or merchandise.
  3. Crowdfund your next creative project.
  4. Let your audience support your work through “fan funding.”
  5. License your content to the media.
  6. Work with brands as an influencer or affiliate.

 

Join the YouTube Partner Program and earn money from ads

The first revenue stream you’ll likely explore is ads. Whether you want to earn money on YouTube without creating videos or as a content creator, joining the YouTube Partners Program and setting up monetization is a vital step. You can apply for monetization once you’ve hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year.

 

YouTube Monetization: Use affiliate links on YouTube.

Promoting affiliate links can be a massive earning opportunity for channels that offer in-depth tutorials as well as insightful product reviews. For example, if you recommend a product and a user visits your link to buy, you’ll start earning commissions. You can place these links in the first few lines of your description and speak about your link in your video content.

Posting affiliate links on YouTube shares a typical resemblance to promoting affiliate links on your blog. Thus, you shouldn’t pour affiliate links all over your YouTube content just for the monetary benefit. Don’t forget that viewers will only follow these links when they believe you are a trusted resource.

To build trust with your audience, help them solve concrete problems and provide tutorials. As a bonus, you can create videos that offer solutions you have previously accomplished yourself.

There are plenty of affiliate programs for you to join. You can join many different programs in one place on a popular affiliate network like Shareasale or Awin.

The best step to maximize revenue is to start a blog in unison with your YouTube channel and add affiliate links there too. That way, you’re monetizing YouTube and also have a website on a platform that you own yourself.

 

Master Your YouTube SEO.

For video creators who have not built a significant following yet, you have to step up your game and maximize YouTube SEO this year.

To do that, perform keyword research like you usually would – however, think a little differently based on what people are searching for on YouTube. Next, make sure you are using high-value keywords in your video title, description, and video tags.

Once launched, you can check your YouTube “Traffic Source: YouTube search” report to get an idea of what people are searching for when they find your videos.

In general, Google provides video results for keywords on how to, reviews, tutorials, and funny video terms.

There are also five key YouTube SEO ranking factors to consider:

  • Number of comments
  • Subscribes after watching a video
  • Thumbs up/thumbs down ratio
  • Video length
  • Click-through-rate on the YouTube search results

 

How to enable monetization on YouTube

  1. Sign in to the YouTube account you want to monetize.
  2. Click the icon for your account in the top right corner.
  3. Click YouTube Studio.
  4. In the left menu, select Other Features > Monetization.
  5. Read and agree to the YouTuber Partner Program terms.
  6. Create a new AdSense account or connect an existing one to your channel. (You need an AdSense account to get paid.)
  7. Set your monetization preferences.

Once that’s done, head back to the dashboard and click the Analytics tab on the left side. From there, you’ll need to choose Revenue from the tabs at the top, then scroll down to the chart Monthly Estimated Revenue to get an idea of your predicted revenue.

 

How many views do you need to make money?

The number of views you get doesn’t correlate to revenue earned. If your video gets thousands of views but no one watches or clicks the ad, you won’t make any money. This is because of YouTube’s criteria for billing advertisers: a viewer must click an ad or watch the ad in full (10, 15, or 30 seconds) for you to get paid. 

However, with the release of YouTube Premium, you no longer need to rely on advertisers to create engaging or enticing ads to earn revenue.

 

Check out YouTube Premium

YouTube Premium is a paid membership program that allows fans to watch and support their favorite content creators without ads. For creators, not much changes, as they will get paid for content consumed by non-members on YouTube along with content on YouTube Premium. 

Creators are paid for YouTube Premium based on how much members watch their content. Consider revenue earned from YouTube Premium as a secondary revenue stream in addition to what you’re already earning through ads.

While it’s easy to set up, earning money through advertising as a YouTube Partner is far from the most lucrative revenue stream you can create for yourself.

 

Why you should look beyond ads for revenue

YouTube recently received a lot of backlash due to its decision to be more transparent about advertising on the platform and what qualifies as “advertiser friendly” content. Essentially, many creators feared that, due to the nature of their content, they would lose out on the ad revenue that helps support their channel.

According to YouTube, your content could get excluded from ad revenue if it includes:

  • Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
  • Violence, including displays of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
  • Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity, and vulgar language
  • Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use, and abuse of such items
  • Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters, and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

But the reality is that YouTube has been demonetizing content that it doesn’t deem advertiser-friendly since 2012 via an automated process, without warning and without the content creator’s knowledge.

Now, the situation is actually better, as creators are notified when their content is flagged and can contest any time they feel a video was mistakenly excluded from YouTube’s advertising network.

Advertising might be a common means of generating passive income for creators, but the trade-off is that YouTube gets to keep around a 45% share of ad revenue.

In short, YouTubers should explore other revenue streams to sustain their creative hobby.


Making money on YouTube is possible, but it’s hard to make money with just YouTube alone. It’s vital to have a platform that you own like a blog and use YouTube as a secondary traffic stream. One benefit is that YouTube SEO is not yet as competitive as organic SEO. If you can get in now and start generating traffic, you’ll be a better place by 2020 when the competition is more fierce.

 



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