How To Make Money on YouTube in 2024: 7 Easy Strategies

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

When you enjoy success on YouTube, there are also many creative ways to generate profits—even when that won’t have been your reason for starting your channel.

Your audience might unlock your YouTube channel’s earning potential, as is commonly the case with Instagram influencers or bloggers, but it surely’s the creation of multiple revenue streams, through side hustles or businesses, that helps you generate profits.

In this text, learn seven strategies for easy methods to generate profits on YouTube and discover just how much money successful YouTubers could make.

generate profits on YouTube

1. Join the YouTube Partner Program
2. Sell products or merchandise
3. Crowdfund your next creative project
4. Let your audience support you thru “fan funding”
5. License your content to the media
6. Work with brands as an influencer
7. Turn out to be an affiliate marketer

1. Join the YouTube Partner Program

The primary revenue stream you’ll likely explore is ads. Whether you need to earn money on YouTube without creating videos or as a content creator, joining the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) and organising monetization is a crucial step.

You’ll need to comply with follow all of YouTube’s monetization policies and live in a rustic or region where the YPP is obtainable. Then, you may apply for monetization when you:

• Hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months, or,
• Hit 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views inside the past 90 days

Here’s easy methods to enable monetization on YouTube:

1. Check in to the YouTube account you need to monetize
2. Click the icon to your account in the highest right corner
3. Click YouTube Studio
4. Within the left menu, select Earn
5. Read and comply with the YouTuber Partner Program terms and eligibility requirements
6. Create a brand new Google AdSense account or connect an existing one to your channel 
7. Set your monetization preferences

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

What’s YouTube Premium?

YouTube Premium is a paid membership program that lets fans watch and support their favorite content creators without ads. For creators, not much changes, as they’ll receives a commission for content consumed by non-members on YouTube, together 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 subscribers as a secondary revenue stream along with what you’re already earning through ads.

While it’s easy to establish, earning money through promoting as a YouTube Partner is much from essentially the most lucrative revenue stream you may create for yourself.

Why it is best to look beyond ads for revenue

YouTube has been demonetizing content it doesn’t deem advertiser friendly since 2012 via an automatic process. It was originally done all of sudden and without the content creator’s knowledge.

Now, creators are notified when their content is flagged and may contest any time they feel a video was mistakenly excluded from YouTube’s promoting network.

Promoting is perhaps a typical technique of generating passive income for creators, however the trade-off is that YouTube’s parent company, Google, keeps 45% of ad revenue from standard YouTube videos and 55% from YouTube Shorts.

2. Sell products or merchandise

You’ll be able to sell different products to generate profits through your YouTube channel. Selling merch—t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, snapbacks, you name it—has advantages beyond revenue.

Merchandise increases your exposure by putting your online brand and personality out into the offline world, and deepens the connection between you and your fans as they literally “buy” into what you’re doing. Creator Roman Atwood sells a wide range of merchandise in his store under the Smile More brand.

Selling branded swag is simpler than it might sound at first. You’ll be able to order reasonably priced designs tailored for specific products, like t-shirts, using freelance sites resembling Fiverr.

And in terms of handling orders, you may integrate your store with services like DSers or certainly one of the various print-on-demand providers that handle shipping, achievement, and customer support, letting you reap all the advantages of a print-on-demand business that requires less effort in your part.

Alternatively, you may partner with an existing merchandising network for creators, resembling DFTBA (Don’t Forget to Be Awesome). Nonetheless, you’ll need to compete with other YouTubers and you will have less control over adding products, offering discounts, integrating your content, and all of the benefits that include owning your personal ecommerce site.

As a YouTuber who’s already earned an audience, you’ll have two benefits from the beginning that other store owners can be jealous of:

• A content engine that consistently drives traffic to your store
• Your audience’s trust, which you’ve earned by commonly serving them your personal brand of content without cost

3. Crowdfund your next creative project

When money is all that stands between an idea and its execution, crowdfunding is a very good strategy to make it occur.

Whether you wish help buying higher equipment, hiring actors, or covering other production costs, you may call upon your personal audience and the crowdfunding community to pitch in, in case your idea is compelling enough.

Many successful crowdfunded creative projects are likely to offer a sneak peak or “trailer” that gets people excited, so consider shooting a video explaining your project or offering a taste of what it’ll be like, resembling this popular Kickstarter for Kung Fury, a brief film paying homage to Nineteen Eighties motion movies.

Popular crowdfunding sites with a proven track record of campaigns from YouTubers include:

• Kickstarter. Some of the well-known crowdfunding sites, great for funding cool products and inventive projects. Remember to set an attainable funding goal since you’ll only secure it in case you actually meet the goal you set.
• Indiegogo. A Kickstarter alternative that gives more flexible funding options.

4. Let your audience support you thru “fan funding”

Just like crowdfunding a project, you may also arrange “fan funding” streams to source donations out of your audience.

As a creator, you’re contributing your voice to the web without forcing your audience to pay for admission. So, in case you’re offering good content, your audience is perhaps inclined to support you on an ongoing basis.

Many fan-funding platforms offer creators one other place for people to find their content and a strategy to engage their most loyal audience and reward them for his or her support.

Wait But Why creates more long-form written content than YouTube videos but is a terrific example of receiving support from the Patreon community.

When you select the crowdfunding route, you’ll want to follow a few best practices. First, create transparency around how the cash will probably be spent. This may get your fanbase invested in your story or mission, and they’ll literally buy into the worth of your content.

Second, offer enticing rewards for higher pledges. The more you may make donors feel like they’re getting something exclusive for being a loyal fan, the more likely you might be to get donations and better pledges.

Some popular fan funding options include:

• YouTube Super Chat & Super Stickers. Super Chat is a feature used when doing live streams on YouTube. It permits you to create a tipping jar to your viewers to donate at any time when and nevertheless much they feel like contributing. Super Stickers are animated images that users can surface in a live chat. You’ll need to establish your YouTube account for promoting, as outlined above.
• Channel memberships. Channel memberships let viewers support your channel through monthly payments in exchange for members-only perks. Just like Super Chat, you need to be an element of YouTube’s Partner Program to access this feature.
• Patreon. The membership platform that makes it easy for creators to receives a commission. Fans can subscribe to their favorite creators for as little as a dollar a month and receive exclusive rewards.
• Tipeee. This platform permits you to get a mixture of each one-off and recurring donations.
• Buy Me A Coffee. Buy Me A Coffee lets creators and artists accept donations and membership fees from their fans. It’s known as the “#1 Patreon Alternative,” with over 300,000 creators. The differences are it’s easier to just accept payments with Buy Me A Coffee, there’s a flat 5% fee for all features (versus as much as 12% for Patreon), and payouts are quick.

5. License your content to the media

When you occur to create a viral video with mass appeal—say, a funny clip featuring your dog—you may license your content in exchange for money.

TV news outlets, morning shows, online news sites, and other creators might reach out about rights to make use of your videos in the event that they occur to go viral.

You can even list your videos in a marketplace, resembling Jukin Licensing, where your content will probably be easier for the correct people to search out and buy.

When this video of a girl wearing a Chewbacca mask went viral, tons of media outlets wanted in. 

6. Work with brands as an influencer

Brands are investing increasingly in influencer marketing and sponsorships, spending their typically large promoting budgets on influencers who’ve already won the loyalty of their audiences.

This creates an enormous opportunity for you as a creator in case you can negotiate the correct deals.

Brendan Gahan, a YouTube marketing expert and influencer, recommends establishing your baseline flat fee by taking a look at the variety of views your videos typically get and multiplying it by 5¢ to fifteen¢ per view (which is around what many brands are willing to pay for views via YouTube ads).

In line with data from WebFX, the potential prices for influencer marketing on YouTube are:

• $20 per video for a YouTuber with 1,000 subscribers
• $200 per video for a YouTuber with 10,000 subscribers
• $2,000 per video for a YouTuber with 100,000 subscribers
• $20,000 per video for a YouTuber with 1,000,000 subscribers

Depending in your leverage—your audience, content quality, and the way unique and profitable your area of interest is—you would possibly give you the chance to barter a greater deal if the brand is a very good fit.

The important thing when partnering on brand-sponsored content is to be transparent about it, not endorsing anything you don’t actually like or imagine in, and being upfront along with your audience about why you’re doing it.

Listed below are only a couple of the various influencer marketing platforms you may add your channel to and get discovered by brands each big and small:

• Crowdtap. Complete small content creation “tasks” in exchange for money and other rewards. There’s no restriction on what number of followers you want to join.
• Upfluence. A full-scale influencer platform with a database over 3 million influencers. Clients can search through Upfluence to search out creators by keyword and phone them to form a partnership.

Some influencer marketplaces offer influencer gifting, while others are known for having big brands who’re willing to pay more. Capitalize on the opportunities that best fit your needs, but list yourself in as many places as you may to make sure maximum visibility to your channel.

7. Turn out to be an affiliate marketer

Affiliate internet marketing refers to earning a commission by promoting a services or products made by one other brand. You’ll be able to grow to be an affiliate marketer for brands and include product placements, endorsements, or other sorts of content. Nonetheless, you need to disclose the partnerships to viewers in your videos.

This works especially well in case you review products as a part of your YouTube channel. Since there’s no risk involved on the brand’s end (they only pay after they make sales), there’s often a low bar to getting began.

ClickBank is a well-liked associates program offering 1% to 90% commission, depending on what the seller sets. You can even reach out to brands in your area of interest which might be running their very own affiliate programs, which isn’t unusual within the ecommerce space.

receives a commission on YouTube

To start out earning money directly through YouTube, you need to have not less than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours up to now 12 months, or 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views inside the past 90 days. When you reach either of those, you may apply to YouTube’s Partner Program and monetize your channel.

What number of views do you wish on YouTube to generate profits?

The common YouTube channel receives around $0.018 per view, which equals $18 per 1,000 views, in keeping with data from Influencer Marketing Hub. 

The variety of views you get doesn’t correlate to revenue earned. In case your video gets hundreds of views but nobody watches or clicks on the ad, you won’t make any money. It’s because of YouTube’s criteria for billing advertisers: a viewer must click an ad or watch the video ad in full (10, 15, or 30 seconds) so that you can receives a commission.

How much money do YouTubers make per 12 months?

Top YouTubers like MrBeast can earn tens of tens of millions of dollars every year through their channels. While what they earn is big, smaller accounts can still earn a living on YouTube.

Take Justine Leconte’s YouTube channel, for instance. She has 1,000,000 subscribers for her channel which helps people dress higher and understand fashion. Based on her total video views and just off ad revenue, her estimated earnings are around $259,304, earning $979 per video, on average, in keeping with Influencer Marketing Hub’s YouTube Money Calculator.

Based on these estimated numbers, Justine could earn a living off her YouTube channel by posting one or two videos per week. It’s vital to notice that these are only estimates. Justine might be earning kind of than the numbers above, depending on the YouTube monetization strategies she uses for her business. 

How do YouTubers receives a commission?

YouTube channels might be monetized even in the event that they don’t have tens of millions of subscribers. Your earning potential isn’t determined solely by the variety of subscribers and views you’ve got, but additionally by the extent of engagement you generate, the area of interest you cater to, and the revenue channels you explore.

Second, this list of top YouTube earners might offer you the impression that the tens of millions of dollars made comes directly from YouTube. In truth, each of those channels has its own line of merchandise. These channels found and built their audiences first, before launching other revenue streams. If being profitable on YouTube is in your marketing plan, step one is identical for everyone: have a transparent understanding of your audience.

Suggestions for selling on YouTube

Most of the above strategies for monetizing involve promoting products or campaigns (e.g., crowdfunding a video series). But you’ll need to make certain your promotions don’t sabotage the integrity of your high-quality content.

“Selling out” is an actual concern for quite a lot of creators. But in case you never ask, you’ll never get. There are a lot of “placements” you may select from for promoting products or campaigns.

Understand your audience on YouTube

Constructing your personal audience puts you in a terrific position to monetize content in a wide range of ways. But you’ll only give you the chance to take full advantage of the opportunities you’ve got in case you understand the makeup of your audience.

For a lot of YouTubers trying to monetize, the more area of interest your channel, the higher position you’ll be in to work with brands trying to goal specific audiences (more on that later).

You’ll need to pay close attention to:

• The gender of your audience, to see if it 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 greater understanding of your personal audience and give you the chance to work higher with brands. All demographic insight might be pulled out of your YouTube analytics, but to match your personal channel against others, try a tool like Social Blade.

Record a call to motion in your videos

“When you liked this video, then hit the Like button and subscribe.”

Many YouTubers include a call to motion along those lines at the top of their videos to grow their viewership. By suggesting the intended motion you would like them to take, your audience is more prone to take it.

You’ll be able to adapt this approach to direct your audience’s attention to a revenue-generating opportunity.

Add info cards to your videos

Whether it’s a part of your cope with a brand otherwise you’re promoting your personal products, info cards (formerly YouTube Cards) offer an attention-grabbing strategy to get the eye of engaged viewers.

Use free video editing software so as to add a pop up at just the correct moment, after they’re most relevant and least distracting, to extend their impact. 

Add links in your video descriptions

You’ll be able to funnel viewers to your store, Patreon page, Kickstarter campaign, or other revenue-focused a part of your online presence by adding links to your video descriptions.

When you’re creating videos about your personal products and also you own or manage a Shopify store, you may incentivize latest customers to purchase your products with “buy X get Y” promotions or discounts.

Promote your offer on other platforms

Simply because your content is hosted on YouTube doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be benefiting from all the opposite distribution channels on the market.

Spread the word about latest campaigns or discounts on Twitter, Facebook, and every other profiles you own.

The more places your message lives, the greater the possibility it’ll be seen. So it’s all the time a very good idea to grow your following beyond YouTube with social media marketing.

The rise of the “YouTubepreneur”

What compels most creators to create is never money. It’s the thought of constructing something for the world to enjoy. Many famous YouTubers started off with humble beginnings, like MrBeast, who began at age of 13 under the handle MrBeast6000; his early content ranged from Let’s Plays to “videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers.”

But satirically, that puts creators in a terrific position to truly generate profits in a content-obsessed world.

While the hard part for a lot of businesses is getting and keeping their audience’s attention, YouTubers have already figured that bit out.

All that’s left is to get creative and channel the entrepreneurial drive to explore ideas with how you select to monetize your audience and your passion.