To many people, YouTube is an online resource for accessing instructional videos; and to some others, it is a platform for watching free musical clips and movie trailers; but to some few, it is a place to make money – to earn a decent living.
Thousands of people make huge revenue from YouTube videos, and some of these include Lilly Singh who makes over $10 million every year and PewDiePie who made $12.9 million via YouTube videos in 2018.
You may not make $1 million a year using YouTube since various factors contribute to successful monetizations on the platform, but nothing stops you from making a minimum of $5,000 every month where possible. Here then are guaranteed ways to making a decent monthly income from YouTube videos using your laptop or even smartphone.
1. Become a YouTube partner
While it is not necessary to become a YouTube partner to make money on the platform, it is much better than relying only on Adsense revenue. Becoming a partner enables you to access premium features such as subscription fees, channel memberships and ad revenue among other unique perks.
To succeed as a partner, you must start a channel and acquire at least 1,000 subscribers. You must create an Adsense account; and activate monetization features such as ads, premium revenue, channel memberships, merchandise shelf, and super chat payments among others. And do not forget that your channel must be open to reviews to make it worthwhile.
2. Create and sell your own products
Apart from creating great videos, selling your own products should be your next concern on making money on YouTube. Your products must align with your personality or values on the platform, and you may have to create the products or get another company to do so for you. You may have to create a different website to take care of inventory and shipping and payments. Switch on your partner merchandise shelf and also promote your products in your videos as well as features others who do.
3. Create sponsored content
You create sponsored content when you get business brands to pay you to make videos that feature or promote their brands. With a large audience under your belt, you can negotiate with major brands to pay you as an influencer to talk about them in your videos. So find a partner to work with, strike a rewarding deal, and follow YouTube’s guidelines by making a disclosure in your videos that the content was paid for so that your audience may know this beforehand.
4. Get your fans to appreciate you via payments
You can get your audience to pay for your videos or for your Super Chat sessions. This is a live streaming feature where viewers can make their comments highlighted based on the amount they paid you. It is also good to ask your audience to join your channel as members and make payment in exchange for Live Chats with you and exclusive members-only perks. You may also encourage them to become premium subscribers.
5. License your content to the media
News and other media outlets might be interested in replaying your viral videos to their own audience and this is where they pay you to use such videos. To make this easy, you may need to leave your email or other contact details on your About page so that advertisers and the media can reach you for a deal. You could register with a video rights marketplace such as Jukin Media if you have exclusive videos that news media would love to pay for to play.