If you’re a content creator on YouTube, whether you’re looking to turn your passion project into a profitable venture or are looking for ways to increase monetization opportunities as an entrepreneur, learning how to make money on YouTube can be a bit challenging at first.
One reason is that YouTube has millions of videos and publishers competing for the same thing: audience attention and views, making it hyper-competitive to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
In fact, YouTube has over 2 billion active monthly users, making It the most popular streaming platform on the planet. With that volume of users, YouTube presents a unique monetization opportunity.
YouTube provides publishers and creators with a unique opportunity to reach a vast audience and, if done correctly, diverse monetization options.
You can tap into various revenue streams, from ad revenue from the YouTube Partner Program to merch sales.
This guide is designed to help you understand the multiple options available and how to stand out so that your channel and videos perform optimally and give you the best opportunity for revenue generation.
At Raffiti Media, we’ve helped generate billions of organic views, meaning we’ve helped our clients gain viewers and helped them generate millions in profits, so we have the expertise to get you to where you want to go, namely, how to make money on YouTube.
Being a content creator on a platform like YouTube can be exhilarating and a lucrative opportunity. Still, it takes understanding how to maximize your content and best position your channel for success.
Ready to get into it?
Let’s go.
It’s All About The Base (Your True Fans)
First, it won’t matter what type of content you’re producing or whether it’s any good if you don’t have an audience to watch your videos. So, with apologies to Meghan Trainor, it’s all about the base.
Your base audience is your true fans, those who would like, share, and purchase from you if you only do one thing first, and that is to make content that solves what they’re looking for.
In other words, your interests and subject matter won’t mean anything if people aren’t interested in consuming them. So, when you devise your content strategy, regardless of the material being discussed, keep in mind your target audience.
Think about their pain points–what makes them stay up at night, what stressors they are experiencing, and what they need help with. Address these points and create a base of loyal fans who will be more than willing to support you by liking your videos, clicking on external links, or subscribing.
Another reason to consider your target audience is that, depending on the monetization model you explore, they will ultimately pay for your services, goods, or subscriptions.
To paraphrase, you want to engage and entertain your target audience to create monetization opportunities. Focusing on them and their interests first gives you a better, more realistic chance to make money on YouTube.
And the way you can enhance your earning potential is to solve your target audience’s most pressing needs and interests. The key is to serve them and provide value for something they’re searching for.
A great way to enhance your target audience’s experience and motivate them to take a desired action, namely, help you monetize your YouTube channel, is to provide them with the following:
- Quality content
- Relevant to the search intent
- Solve and answer your audience’s questions
- And don’t forget to ask (CTA)
Create quality content: The content you create for your target audience should be the best material you offer. To make money on YouTube, you’ll want to stop thinking that people are interested in anything more than what they can get from you. This means giving away your best content for free on your channel and making it high-quality.
If you provide tutorials, ensure they’re high-quality and well-edited, and use professional lighting and audio.
The same goes for videos designed to entertain, such as a review channel, or even one where you provide entertainment, such as a comedy channel or routine.
Make sure that your lighting is solid, the audio is perfect, and that you can stage each scene to provide your viewers with a polished, finished product.
By providing high-quality production values, you increase your authority and expertise in the minds of your audience. This perception will benefit you even more when the type and depth of content you offer are the best your target audience can find anywhere.
Standing out in production value and the quality of content you provide for your audience will showcase your expertise and build brand loyalty and trust that would otherwise take a long time to develop.
Be relevant: Besides providing superior content and quality in your finished product, provide relevant solutions to your target audience’s search intent.
For marketers, this means providing relevant solutions for common issues your target audience seeks.
For example, if your target audience is looking for solutions on how to get 1000 subscribers on YouTube, producing content on topics unrelated to these searches will end up annoying and wasting their time.
Solve issues and answer questions: How do you know what your target audience is looking for? A straightforward way is to ask them for comments and engage with them in the replies. You can also poll your YouTube channel or engage with your audience on forums and social media to find the right type of content to create.
Once you know what type of content your audience wants, you should strategize how best to create more of it.
For example, suppose you’re running a DIY channel focusing on solutions for craft ideas for toddler parents.
Once you know the type of content your target audience wants, you’ll want to create your content around those crafts and activities.
Be sure to test what content and videos perform the best and get the most views, and double down your content strategy on those types.
Don’t forget to ask: Finally, one thing to guarantee that you’re building the type of trust and loyalty from your audience is not to be shy about asking.
If you’re building a group of avid fans through addressing their needs and interests first, asking them to support you by clicking or purchasing products and services will be received well.
This is because people like to help others reciprocally, meaning if you help someone, they’re more included in assisting you in return.
So, include a CTA–a call-to-action at the end of every video, whether to subscribe, check out other content on your channel, or click an external link.
Understanding The Various Monetization Opportunities On YouTube
Once you’ve developed a content strategy around what is most relevant to your target audience, the next thing you’ll want to do to make money on YouTube is understand the monetization opportunities on the platform.
There are many ways to monetize a YouTube channel, but finding a combination of two or more options is the wisest thing you can do.
- Ad Revenue
- Brand Deals and Sponsorships
- YouTube Shorts
- YouTube Partner Program (YPP)
- Super Chat and Super Stickers
- Channel Memberships
- Merch Sales
- Driving Traffic To External Sites
Ad Revenue
Even though ad revenue is the most well-known way to make money, the amount you can earn is based on a share of the total revenue you generate from ads displayed before, during, and after your content.
The total amount you can earn is based on several factors, including ad engagement, demographics, and total number of views.
Truthfully, making money on ad revenue is hard. It takes a ton of impressions and subscribers to make enough from ads to be beneficial and lucrative.
However, ad revenue can be part of your monetization strategy, especially if you do tie-ins with other brands, deals, and sponsorships, which can be an excellent way to double your earning potential.
Brand Deals and Sponsorships
As you build your following, the opportunity to tie in your channel with brands looking for creators to partner and promote their products and brands increases.
By collaborating with brands and finding sponsorships, you can create a lucrative channel as long as your engagement and viewership grow.
Brands often pay for products and services to be included or mentioned in videos or integrate them into sponsored videos to show how to utilize a product.
What’s even better is that depending on the brand, you may be able to collaborate and cross-promote your brand to their audience as you promote their products and brand to yours, increasing your reach and viewership further helping generate exposure to monetization opportunities.
If you go this route, you should be very transparent about any sponsorship to best represent to your audience that the content may be slanted in favor of the brand or product.
YouTube Shorts
Short-form video is becoming trendy, with attention spans shortening and more content being consumed on mobile devices.
And, YouTube Shorts is the platform’s answer to this trend and is relatively new as a feature for creators to expand their audience reach. YouTube Shorts are typically 60 seconds or less.
They are featured on both the homepage and dedicated Shorts shelves, which increases visibility for craters and also improves the odds of a video going viral.
One thing is that currently, Shorts don’t allow for direct monetization opportunities such as display ads, but the short form can be used as a lead generation tool to drive viewers to the main channel.
YouTube Partner Program (YPP)
Creators must join the YouTube Partner Program, or YPP, to make money on YouTube, a prerequisite for paid advertising.
To qualify, creators and channels must meet a threshold of 4,000 watch hours within a year with 1,000 subscribers. For new creators, this can be quite challenging; however, with YouTube Shorts, reaching those milestones has become much more manageable.
While YouTube Shorts are harder to monetize, they can be a lead generation tool that drives viewers to longer-form content on your channel and boosts your brand’s visibility.
The more snappy and entertaining your YouTube Shorts are, the greater audience engagement and views you can generate. If you include a quick CTA on the end card, you should reach that viewer and subscription threshold relatively quickly.
Once a channel is accepted into YPP, creators are granted additional monetization options like Super Chat, channel memberships, and merchandise shelves.
Super Chat and Super Stickers
An exclusive feature of YPP is Super Chat and Super Stickers, which allows for live chat and other ways for users to support your content through purchased highlighted messages or animated stickers.
These paid interactions allow viewers to support their favorite creators while providing creators with a tool to create deeper engagement with their audience.
The benefit of Super Chat and Super Stickers is that they provide an engagement tool to foster a community of loyal audience members so you can further promote other offers and products that are specific to their interests and preferences.
Since the platform prioritizes engagement and views, any opportunity to increase your interactions with your viewers will positively affect how your channel and content are ranked.
Channel Memberships
YouTube provides creators with a membership opportunity known as YouTube Memberships. This allows creators to easily add exclusive deals, benefits, and perks for subscribers in exchange for a monthly fee.
There may be perks like members-only live chats, badges, exclusive behind-the-scenes access, and early access. These features provide popular creators with added revenue channels on a recurring subscription model.
Merchandise Sales
In addition to various ad and subscription models, once approved for the YPP, creators are provided with an integrated merchandise shelf feature.
This feature will allow you to sell branded merchandise and showcase other items directly beneath videos being watched by users.
And suppose you’re creating a community on top of a brand. In that case, people will want to grab swag and other gear from you, so having a merchandise shelf where you can highlight different items is an excellent way to increase monetization opportunities.
You can sell everything from t-shirts to mugs to stickers—truthfully, anything you want to showcase and promote during your videos’ consumption.
Driving Traffic to Exterior Blogs and Websites
To make money on YouTube, creators should consider options outside the YouTube platform’s ecosystem. This external monetization option outside the platform provides creators more control over their opportunities in case your viewership changes or something else impacts your channel.
While you grow your brand and audience loyalty, creating content that drives viewers to an outside website and blog or other online stores, such as through affiliate marketing, digital products, or other external products, creators can leverage their viewership for other profit opportunities.
Creators can leverage the YouTube platform by strategically linking their content to external sites using video descriptions, end screens, and pinned comments to expand other potential revenue streams.
To make money on YouTube will take a multi-pronged approach, but at the root of it all is providing your target audience with the resources and content that they are searching for. If you focus your efforts and content on them and their needs first, the rule of reciprocity states that they will return in kind.
That means answering your audience’s pain points, crafting solutions around them, whether it’s instructional, reviews, or even simply being entertaining. Once you become audience-centric, it will make monetization strategies easier to implement.
And once your channel has some traction, devising a diversified monetization strategy that ranges from ad revenue, brand collaboration and sponsorships, memberships and subscriptions, and physical merchandise, as well as links to external websites, blogs, and online stores, are the best way to generate a lucrative opportunity that stems from your YouTube channel.
If you’re a marketer or entrepreneur, regardless of how many subscribers, likes, and videos you may have, to make money on YouTube should be one of your objectives. It won’t be easy and there aren’t any magic potions or solutions, but with a dedicated strategy to grow your audience, serve their interests first, and a diversified earnings strategy, you should see just how lucrative your channel can become.
But it takes work and time. And if you don’t have those limited resources, don’t worry, we can help.
Raffiti Media is a full-service YouTube management agency devoted to helping our clients grow their channels, increase views and subscriptions, and enhance earning potential through leveraging social media and other channels to create an automated sales machine without having to spend a dime on social advertising.
We are experts in organic growth strategies for brands seeking to build their audience and revenue potentials.
With hundreds of clients happily served and over a billion organic views, we’re the experts in maximizing your growth for sustained profitability.
If you’re looking for a hand and ready to get started learning how we can help you make money on YouTube, contact us today for a FREE one-on-one consultation strategy call.
