YouTube is the world’s second most popular website, with over 2 billion active users. It’s also a lucrative platform for course creators and entrepreneurs who can use it to reach their target audience, build relationships, and generate leads and sales.
In this article, we’ll explore nine different ways to make money on YouTube by creating high-quality content.
Table of contents
Who Makes The Most Money On YouTube?
Here are the top YouTube channels by income:
| Channel | Earnings | Subscribers |
| Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson) | $54 Million | 92 Million |
| Jake Paul | $45 Million | 20.4 Million |
| Markiplier (Mark Fischbach) | $38 Million | 32.4 Million |
| Rhett and Link | $30 Million | 5 Million |
| Unspeakable | $28.5 Million | 13.2 Million |
| Nastya (Anastasia Radzinskaya) | $28 Million | 90 Million |
| Ryan Kaji | $27 Million | 32 Million |
| Dude Perfect | $20 Million | 57.3 Million |
| Logan Paul | $18 Million | 23.4 Million |
| Preston Arsement | $19 Million | 33.4 Million |
Those are just the top ten highest-paid channels. Beyond the top ten, a report by Oxford Economics found that YouTube’s total economic impact in the US was $16 billion (equivalent to 345K jobs) in 2019.
You don’t need to be one of the most popular YouTubers to make money on the platform. With a solid plan and the discipline to execute it, you can quickly start earning revenue from your channel.
10 YouTube Monetization Strategies for Creators
Armed with the right strategies, YouTube creators can navigate the challenges of fierce competition and changing algorithms and successfully maximize revenue potential.
1. Become a YouTube Partner
The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is the most popular way for creators to make money on YouTube. It allows you to earn money from ads that play before, during, or after your videos. The ads shown are based on the viewer’s interests and browsing patterns, increasing the engagement levels. Increased engagement levels result in higher earnings for YouTube Partners!
How much can you earn as a Youtube Partner? Ryan Kanji made $26 million in 2019 and almost 90% of his YouTube earnings were from the YouTube Partner Program (YPP).
YouTube Partner Program (YPP) Qualification Criteria
The program is open to everyone who meets the following conditions.
- Live in a country/region where the YouTube Partner Program is available.
- Have no active Community Guidelines strikes on your channel.
- Have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months.
- Have more than 1,000 subscribers.
- Have a linked AdSense account.
Once you meet the eligibility criteria, you can apply.
How To Apply to The YouTube Partner Program
Applying to the YouTube Partner Program is relatively easy.
Step 1: Sign into your YouTube account.
Step 2: Click on your account icon on the top right of your screen and click YouTube Studio.
Step 3: In the YouTube Studio, click on Monetization in the left menu.
Step 4: On this page, you get a snapshot of your performance against the eligibility criteria for the YouTube Partner Program.
For example, in the screenshot above, the channel has completed 1000 subscribers and has zero Community Guideline violations. But it still hasn’t completed 4000 watch hours which is required to join the YPP.
This means the channel will have to wait till it meets all the requirements. You have the option to enable an email alert from YouTube when you qualify for their partner program.
Step 5: Once you get the qualification email from YouTube, head over to the Monetization section of your account, and agree to the YouTube Partner Program Terms & Conditions to apply.
Step 6: You’ll need an active Google Adsense account to join the YouTube Partner Program. Apply for an account here if you don’t already have one.
Step 7: Your application will go into manual review and, if your channel doesn’t violate any of YouTube’s content policies, you’ll get a positive response in 15-30 days.
That’s it! You’ve successfully joined the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), where you can make thousands of dollars every month through advertising your content.
The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) has other monetization plans, such as YouTube Premium and Super Chat.
However, most of your earnings would still come from the regular advertising program.
2. Sell Online Courses to Your YouTube Audience
If you’re an online course creator or an e-learning professional, YouTube is an ideal platform to generate leads for your business, add students to your funnel, and drive more sales.
Here are a few of the methods you can use to promote your online courses on YouTube:
- Create Teaser Videos: Give your viewers a sneak peek of what they can expect when they sign up for your course.
- Create A Special Offer: Offer your YouTube viewers special discounts or downloadable products that they can’t get on your course website.
- Livestream A Class: Get your YouTube subscribers hooked on the learning content you have to offer by hosting a live stream.
- Interview Course Participants: Ask your dedicated online course participants for an interview. During the interview, have them explain how the course helped them personally.
Your YouTube channel allows you to demonstrate your expertise, build authority in your niche, and build a community. Don’t forget – it’s technically the world’s second most popular search engine!
3. Sell Products as An Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is among the most popular ways to make money online and on YouTube.
If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, here’s how it works.
You promote someone else’s products to your audience and earn a commission on every sale you refer.
Why is affiliate marketing such a popular business model? Because consumers do not trust advertising anymore and seek authentic third-party reviews before buying products online.
According to research, 9 out of 10 consumers check online reviews before a purchase decision. Similarly, 54.7% of consumers check at least four reviews before buying a product.
If you can establish yourself as an authority in your niche by publishing high-quality YouTube content regularly, you can easily persuade your audience to buy your recommended products.
While there are many branches of affiliate marketing, here are the two most profitable types you should pursue.
Become An Amazon Associate
Amazon Associates is the world’s most popular affiliate marketing program that allows you to sell products in every niche under the sun.
While Amazon’s commission rates are pretty low compared to other affiliate programs, its product variety and conversion rate make it the best affiliate program by far.
So whatever niche you’re in, you can find Amazon products to promote as an affiliate to your audience.
For example, if you’re a weight-loss consultant and regularly publish videos on fitness, healthy diet, juicing, etc., you can recommend the best juicers to your audience from Amazon.
To create successful affiliate content, don’t try to sell the product at all. Instead, help the buyer find the best solution for their needs.
In the case of juicers, show them various types of juicers, share their pros and cons, and help them reach the right decision.
Place your affiliate links in the video description from where your audience can purchase the product.
Software Reviews
Promoting various SaaS products and other software types is a hugely profitable niche within the affiliate marketing business model.
Again, don’t try to sell the product.
Instead, find the most useful SaaS products in your niche and show your audience how they can achieve different business goals using them.
For example, here’s a video that shows how marketers can use SEMRush, a leading SEO tool, to find lucrative search keywords.
You can find the creator’s affiliate link in the video’s description.
Most software companies offer affiliate programs on their websites. But you can also find them on platforms such as ShareASale, Partnerstack, and Awin.
4. Publish Sponsored Content with Brand Partnerships
Sponsored content is another popular way YouTubers make a lot of money.
It’s similar to affiliate marketing in the sense that you’ll promote someone else’s product. However, unlike affiliate marketing, you don’t get paid for generating sales or leads with sponsored content.
Instead, you partner with a brand and charge a one-time fee to create a video about their product or service.
You can start doing sponsored content even with a few hundred subscribers. However, you’ll be able to charge more money as your subscriber base and influence grows.
You’ll find sponsored content in all kinds of niches. For example, here’s a sponsored recipe video that uses a specific brand as an ingredient.
The most engaging sponsored content doesn’t directly promote or sell a brand. Instead, it naturally makes the brand a part of its process.
So, how do you find brands for sponsored content opportunities?
When a YouTube channel starts growing, brands often reach out themselves for sponsored content. However, you could also pitch your channel to the brands that actively invest in digital marketing channels.
Secondly, sign up to influencer marketing platforms like Izea, Upfluence, and other similar sites that connect brands with content creators.
5. Offer Services Through Your YouTube Channel
As your YouTube channel grows and you start building authority in your niche, many of your subscribers will reach out to hire your services.
For example, if you create content about real estate investment, people may want to hire you to manage their portfolios.
Similarly, if your channel is about website design, brands may reach out to you for hiring your design services.
You can use YouTube to set up your own agency business by hiring people to do the work for you, while you keep growing your YouTube channel.
6. Launch Your Speaking and Coaching Business
YouTube is also a great place to launch your coaching and speaking career.
Why? Because you’re already doing both of these things on your channel. Why not turn it into a separate business and diversify your income?
For example, Chris Ducker, an entrepreneur and author, used his YouTube channel to build a thriving coaching and speaking career.
Numerous other YouTubers have also transitioned into coaching and speaking businesses based on the authority they built with their Youtube content.
7. Launch Your Own Branded Merchandise
If you’ve built a sizable YouTube subscriber base, selling your own merchandise using Shopify or a Woocommerce store can be a great idea.
I specifically mentioned Shopify because it makes the process of building and growing an eCommerce business much easier.
For example, you could connect your Shopify store to sell T-shirts, mugs, caps, and other merchandise using a print-on-demand service like Oberlo.
This is how Roman Atwood, a famous YouTuber with 15 million+ subscribers, launched his merchandise brand.
Selling merchandise works really well for personal brand channels with highly engaged audiences.
Here’s how you can set it up.
Step 1: Come up with merchandise designs using Canva or hiring freelancers on Fiverr or 99Designs.
Step 2: Start a Shopify store and integrate it with Oberlo.
Step 3: List your designs in your store.
Step 4: Announce your merchandise on your YouTube channel and promote it in your videos by adding your store’s link in the description.
Step 5: When a customer places an order in your store, Oberlo fulfills and ships it directly to the customer.
Step 6: Oberlo deducts the product cost from the customer’s payment and credits the profit to your Shopify account.
All this happens backstage, which means your customer never knows that you’re using a print-on-demand service for your merchandise supply.
8. License Your Content to Media Companies
Suppose you’re a travel vlogger who’s shot stunning video footage of unseen places or run a viral content YouTube channel with unique videos. In that case, you can easily make thousands of dollars by licensing your work to different news channels and media companies.
In fact, many media companies will reach out to you themselves if your content interests them.
You can also upload them to a site like Jukin Media, where you can make hundreds of dollars per license for your video content.
For example, this video of a sliding dog got featured on several news channels and websites thanks to its viral nature.
9. Use Fan Funding to Support Your Channel
Fan funding is another monetization method that more and more YouTube content creators are using these days.
It’s basically a way to crowdfund your YouTube channel by offering monthly memberships to your YouTube subscribers who want to support your work.
With over 200,000 members, Patreon is the most popular platform YouTube creators use for fan funding.
In addition to your regular YouTube content, you can offer your members exclusive content to provide additional value.
BuyMeACoffee, Hy.Page, Tribe, etc., are other platforms you can use to grow exclusive fan funding groups to support your work.
10. Flip YouTube Channels to Earn
You’ve heard of real estate flipping and even website flipping, right? YouTube channel flipping works the same way.
You grow a YouTube channel, publish high-quality content regularly, increase your subscriber base, and start generating income from it.
And then you sell it to someone for 30x-60x your monthly earnings.
That’s YouTube channel flipping, and it’s becoming a huge business these days.
You can sell your channel by directly negotiating with a buyer or listing it on marketplace sites such as Flippa, Trustiu, or Fameswap.
While you can flip any kind of YouTube channel, specific niches are more suited to flipping than others.
For example, channels that share informational content without showing anyone are easier to flip because their audience doesn’t bond with the creator.
Similarly, channels exclusively publishing affiliate content and making a regular income are easier to sell than personal channels.
If you’re serious about YouTube flipping, here’s a really good strategy to follow:
Grow your main YouTube channel based on your personal brand with a loyal audience. Then create a side channel and use your main channel’s reach to grow its audience.
But make sure it’s not based on your personal brand like your main channel.
Once that channel has a few thousand subscribers and starts making money, sell it to the highest bidder.
This way, you can keep your main channel and use it to grow and sell multiple channels on the sides.
How to Make Money on YouTube | Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How many subscribers do you need on YouTube to make money?
You need to reach 1000 subscribers and complete 4000 hours of watch time in 12 months to qualify for the YouTube Partnership Program, enabling advertising on your content.
There’s no requirement for minimum views for other monetization methods like affiliate marketing, sponsored content, etc.
How many views do you need to make $1000 on YouTube?
Subscribers is one issue, but another is how many views on YouTube to make money. There’s no fixed answer to this question because YouTube’s advertising rates vary with industries and regions. However, based on the industry averages, you’ll need around 500K views to make $1000 from the YouTube Partnership Program.
How do you earn money on YouTube?
You can earn money on YouTube through advertising by joining the YouTube Partnership Program, selling affiliate products, publishing sponsored content, launching your own merchandise, and various other methods.
Is it hard to make money on YouTube?
Making money on YouTube requires consistency and hard work. You’ll be competing against thousands of other content creators, so you need to create high-quality videos that engage your viewers and provide them value.
How much time does it take to start making money on YouTube?
If you’re starting a YouTube channel from scratch, you need to be prepared to consistently create high-quality content for at least 6-8 months (unless one of your videos goes viral) to start seeing results.
How quickly can you start making money on YouTube?
As soon as you complete 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours (in 12 months), you’ll qualify for the advertising program on YouTube.
How many subscribers do you need to make 100k a year?
Again, there’s no fixed answer to this question because YouTube considers multiple variables in determining a video’s advertising fees. But on average, a YouTube channel needs around a million subscribers to make $60K a year. That would mean closer to two million subscribers to make $100K per year, but again, there are multiple variables that impact the math.
Are You Ready to Make Money on YouTube?
Making money on YouTube becomes much easier when you build a loyal audience around your channel. Once you have enough subscribers who consider you a niche authority, you can route them to various platforms like an eCommerce site, your course’s landing page, or an agency site to sell them your products and services.
Let me know if you have any questions about making money on YouTube.
I’ll be happy to respond to them in the comments section.
See also:
- How to Start a YouTube Channel and Grow It
- The Ultimate YouTube SEO Guide
- A Guide to YouTube Advertising for Course Creators
- 23+ Best YouTube Tools to Grow and Monetize Your Channel
- 10 Best Live Streaming Software For Multi-Platform Streaming
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
Table of Contents
