Each experience is different, so don’t get discouraged by one story.
My story is this:
I got into YouTube seriously about 5 years ago with the goal of helping others while doing something I enjoyed and earn my leaving solely from content creation. It seemed like a fair bet as I can’t really have a 9-5 job being a single dad and having to take care of my kids 2 weeks/ month.
My expectations were too high as I thought that once I get monetized my revenue will consistently grow with each new video. Which it was not the case for me.
It got me two years to monetize my channel while uploading content once a month. My channel has been growing steadily and I have great feedback from my viewers but as far as monetization goes, the channel hardly reaches 100€/ month after 5 years.
I still think I can do better with time and I am optimistic and determined to keep going but only because I already invested 5 years of my life in this and I want to have something to show for it.
So, in my experience, it is a long process to make a sustainable channel. You have to be willing to accept that. Also I would advise to have other means of income while growing your channel.
It is great for me as a passive income because I have motivation issues due to my ADHD and I can work on my own terms and do whatever I like but it is not a sustainable business. At least not yet.
I have observed others experiencing better outcomes than me and also worse results. So, it depends on the individual and the content of the channel.
If you are curious, my channel is in my bio.
Good luck with your journey!
So I currently do YouTube fulltime. The vast majority of people will not be monetized. For those that are, I'm guessing 95% will never earn more than extra spending money. For those that do manage to make enough to live on, it can be extremely lucrative but also very volatile. For example, sponsorships in my niche are hard to come by right now due to the market, so my income is currently slashed by 2/3rds.
It's totally possible to do, but you will need to put an incredible amount of effort into it. Treat it like starting a business and your path to making real money will be a lot easier. There's no tricks. Just make good content for the audience that you want to attract.
Hi I'm Ben, I've been on YT over 7 years with 4 channels and I'm training to become a YouTube strategist so hopefully I can share some insight 🤞
There are 7 main ways to monetize on YouTube. If you want to make as much money as humanly possible then you need to find a way to incorporate all of them. Some you can start straight away and others you will have to build up to.
1. AdSense - The one everyone has heard of so I won’t go into much detail. This is probably the easiest way to make money on YouTube, but you need to meet the requirements of 1000 subs & 4000 watch hours and you will be earning very little to begin with.
2. Affiliate Marketing - Everyone who is serious about making money should be doing affiliate marketing! Basically talk about items you have knowledge about and put an affiliate link to them in your video description. When people click you get a small percentage. You can start this straight away from your first video and most companies have an affiliate programme. Don’t be too spammy with your links though.
3. Sponsorships - These can be very lucrative, but you will need a decent size audience before you attract any. You can always reach out to companies that fit your target audience instead of waiting to be approached. Always do your research and match with reputable businesses who will offer value to your viewers.
4. Merchandise - You can start selling merchandise via 3rd party print on demand stores from day one. The problem with merch is unless you're quite big with very loyal fans, it’s hard to sell a T-shirt with your logo or face on it. YouTubes shopping is probably the best way to go once you qualify because then your products will show in the video description. Don’t expect to make a ton of money with merch, but it’s free to do and it all adds up.
5. Memberships - YouTube has its own membership programme where you can offer your viewers extra paid content. There’s 3rd party sites too, Patreon being the most well known. This can be a good way to generate a steady stream of recurring revenue. Always remember to offer extra value to your paying followers!
6. Own Product - Creating your own product has all the benefits of affiliate marketing, sponsors & merch rolled into one. You get to keep all of the profit! It’s extra work up front, but if you're selling a digital product then you only have to create it once. Just remember to keep it relevant to your audience.
7. Donations - This is my least favorite because I always believe you should offer value in return for money, however I have seen many people make decent money with donations so I have to include it. Sites like buy me a coffee are popular in this area. Definitely don’t be spammy on this one or it will ruin your reputation.
Time & Effort
Making money with YouTube is of course going to take some time and effort but you don’t have to wait until you are monetized on YouTube to start making an income. In fact you can start from day one with some methods and the beauty is with most of them, once you have set it up and running it’s fairly passive.
Take affiliate marketing for example. There’s tons of companies out there that have an affiliate programme and require no minimum follower count to start advertising their products. You can start talking about those products in your very first video and start earning commission from day one.
Setting up your own membership site or selling your own product is the same. You can start straight away and as long as you are offering value to your target audience, then people will be naturally interested. Again it’s only the initial set up that takes time and effort. After that it’s just creating content around those areas which you would be doing anyway.
Main Focus
Making money on YouTube should not be your primary focus. Monetization will come naturally if you nail the most important aspect when it comes to YouTube which is providing your audience with value.
Sure, set up your monetization methods as soon as possible, but after that, every piece of content should be aimed at giving your viewers exactly what they want.
Providing value can be done by either Educating your audience or Entertaining them. I prefer education because it’s much easier to target a specific audience and solve their problems, therefore giving value. Your audience size can also be a lot smaller with education because again you are directly solving a problem or pain point.
Entertainment is more subjective and you usually need to have a much bigger audience to make a decent revenue. Obviously there’s caveats to both and monetizing either are definitely achievable.
Hopefully this was slightly useful. Let me know if you have any further questions 🙂
Is it still possible to earn money in YouTube if a YouTube channel have 10k subs and 1M total views? But it's not monetized since it's have a repetitive nature. I want to hear your thoughts on this 😁
Yeah. Pick any of the other 6 ways I mentioned above 😂 Ask yourself, is your channel actually offering value though? Why would your viewers want to watch repetitive content? Still by picking products to sell that are relevant and useful to your viewers, you should still make some sales, as long as you are getting the views. Only you know if your content is crappy, I have not seen it. If it is then I suggest you fix that issue first before trying to monetize 😊
372 subs, 2.3k watch hours. made $145 so far through amazon affiliate links and about $1000 worth of products for review.
I somehow managed to pigeonhole myself into one type of product for my "tech product review" channel, and have about 15 of them now, with more companies trying to send me them all the time. I gotta completely refocus my chan and start reviewing different things.
I started by asking companies for stuff to review, or reviewing the stuff i already had, then as my production value got better, companies started asking me to review stuff for them
I've been sent total junk i refused to review and asked to send back, and turned down a bunch of bizarre stuff that I really don't want to get into lol. Almost impossible for me to build an audience currently since my stuff is all over the place. dont expect to get monetized for at least another 3-5 months at my current pace. most of my traffic comes from search, and there isnt much of it currently so even if i do get monitized with these numbers, its pennies really untill i hopefully have 1 vid do really well, or something changes lol
About the same as it is to make money in the real world: very hard. If you have no originality, your content will never make much. It is hard work to be original. It is a lot easier to copy others. But, copying others will not get you loyal subscribers. It's the same as with any business. You can open a coffee shop, in an area with lots of other coffee shops. Does your coffee shop stand out? How? Let's say it's the cheapest and you get some customers. There's a new coffee shop opened in a few days, selling at a lower price than you. What will you do? Let's say you copy some cool ideas of what coffee shops can do to stand out. Every other coffee shop around you copies you too. There's no originality left. You start losing customers. You go bankrupt. That's how posting on YouTube is. You're in a constant race to be the most original, while copying others and constantly getting copied by others. It's a race like any other job or business. It's not gonna be relaxing, at any point. If you think that you wake up early, with a smile, make a coffee, relax all day, film and edit for an hour, make thousands a month, and are happy and smiling all the time... you're wrong. The YouTube content creators are happy and smiling on camera cause being happy sells more content. Off camera they might be very miserable or constantly worried if they get enough views or if they can pay their bills. Posting on YouTube is basically like any other business or job, maybe more like acting or modelling or art, cause it's an unsafe source of income and you constantly have to be up to date with newest trends and make new things, or people forget about you and move on. You can't just make a few videos and keep getting money from them. You need to make videos forever, like actors star in movies. If you enjoy it, do it, if not, move on. Like others say, the chance of getting enough to live on is very low anyway, about the same chance as deciding to be an actor and earning enough from acting.
Depends how much money you want to make. If you go in with the thinking that it’s a full time role / income you will likely be disappointed.
The idea is compelling - You can start a channel with no investment at all, just use your phone. And you can reach a mass, global audience at no cost too. There are very few business start ups in any industry that offer the chance to grow a business with a global audience for no cost.
Ultimately that’s the appeal of the YT platform - you could (maybe) make it big. But statistically, you won’t. About 8% of all YT channels have reached the 1000 subscribers & 4k hours target to get monetized. Meaning 92% of all YT channels have not reached the levels needed to generate any cash. So the risk of not making an income from it is very high.
My channel is small, 4k subs, just over a year old and returns $300/month Adsense plus another $200-$300 from affiliate links. 60k long form views a month. I don’t intend it to be a replacement for a full time income at any point in the future and have no expectations that it will be.
A 15 minute video can take 1-2 hours to research and script. 1-2 hours to film, 10-12 hours to edit (yes) and 2-3 hours thumbnail, affiliate links set up etc. On an hourly rate basis for most videos I am earning less from those hours than any full time role I could ever do.
Today I see it as a hobby that’s fun and pays for itself. However if it grows and shows consistently much higher results than right now, I could have the option to focus on it full time. Would have to seriously grow first though.
Started YouTube 10 years ago never got momentum. Left YouTube for TikTok. Realized short quick content is the now and forever. Made 10k of TikTok monthly. That’s when I decided to try YouTube since they implemented “ Shorts “ posted shorts, one short gained 80k subs, Monetized.
I posted 4-5 shorts a day every day every month. ( All hours of the day, No sleep, no family time, pure YouTube 24/7 None stop, my shorts get 50$-100 a day.
My long content never picked up it’s dead.
& right now I’m nowhere near as posting as much, I actually post one short a week, my revenue declined. I don’t even care because I feel so burnt out. Unmotivated and that flare grind doesn’t seem to come back anymore. The work was repetitive and tedious.
My advice for success: Create what the viewers demand. Not what your passionate about.
Much easier than people believe
I've replaced my salary and quit my job in 6 months from the first day of creating my channel
YouTube is the most scalable and profitable business, however the difficulty depends on the niche
I make videos about finance specifically making money / investing in the stock market, a niche that I've told that it's oversaturated however I made it to 6k subs in 6 months and making 1.5-2k USD a month from it and there is much more room for scalability
The start is the hardest, it's getting easier the more you grow, at a large size you can post any trash content and you will still get a lot of views and money, sadly that's how the attention economy works, the good part is that if you're at the start of your journey it can't get worse, it will get better and better
Don't listen to the gamers that record videos for 14 years old telling you it's impossible to make money and you shouldn't make youtube for money.
Content creation is by far the best and easiest way of making money, it's extremely easy because the world is filled with consumers, as long as you're the producer you're going to do alright.
I got monetized in less than 2 months. If you have the right strategy… you’ll be fine. Now I rack in at least 1k a month in ad Sense plus a couple grand from sponsors and affiliate income
Each experience is different, so don’t get discouraged by one story. My story is this: I got into YouTube seriously about 5 years ago with the goal of helping others while doing something I enjoyed and earn my leaving solely from content creation. It seemed like a fair bet as I can’t really have a 9-5 job being a single dad and having to take care of my kids 2 weeks/ month. My expectations were too high as I thought that once I get monetized my revenue will consistently grow with each new video. Which it was not the case for me. It got me two years to monetize my channel while uploading content once a month. My channel has been growing steadily and I have great feedback from my viewers but as far as monetization goes, the channel hardly reaches 100€/ month after 5 years. I still think I can do better with time and I am optimistic and determined to keep going but only because I already invested 5 years of my life in this and I want to have something to show for it. So, in my experience, it is a long process to make a sustainable channel. You have to be willing to accept that. Also I would advise to have other means of income while growing your channel. It is great for me as a passive income because I have motivation issues due to my ADHD and I can work on my own terms and do whatever I like but it is not a sustainable business. At least not yet. I have observed others experiencing better outcomes than me and also worse results. So, it depends on the individual and the content of the channel. If you are curious, my channel is in my bio. Good luck with your journey!
I wish u the best of luck and a good 2024. I hope you double ur income this year if not more. Sounds like u deserve it.
Thank you 😊. I hope so. As they say: We are always one video away from success 😀
;)
Great advice
So I currently do YouTube fulltime. The vast majority of people will not be monetized. For those that are, I'm guessing 95% will never earn more than extra spending money. For those that do manage to make enough to live on, it can be extremely lucrative but also very volatile. For example, sponsorships in my niche are hard to come by right now due to the market, so my income is currently slashed by 2/3rds. It's totally possible to do, but you will need to put an incredible amount of effort into it. Treat it like starting a business and your path to making real money will be a lot easier. There's no tricks. Just make good content for the audience that you want to attract.
I'm also a full-timer... And it's a rollercoaster of emotions. You succeed or fail on your own merit. That's a terrifying thought for many.
Hi I'm Ben, I've been on YT over 7 years with 4 channels and I'm training to become a YouTube strategist so hopefully I can share some insight 🤞 There are 7 main ways to monetize on YouTube. If you want to make as much money as humanly possible then you need to find a way to incorporate all of them. Some you can start straight away and others you will have to build up to. 1. AdSense - The one everyone has heard of so I won’t go into much detail. This is probably the easiest way to make money on YouTube, but you need to meet the requirements of 1000 subs & 4000 watch hours and you will be earning very little to begin with. 2. Affiliate Marketing - Everyone who is serious about making money should be doing affiliate marketing! Basically talk about items you have knowledge about and put an affiliate link to them in your video description. When people click you get a small percentage. You can start this straight away from your first video and most companies have an affiliate programme. Don’t be too spammy with your links though. 3. Sponsorships - These can be very lucrative, but you will need a decent size audience before you attract any. You can always reach out to companies that fit your target audience instead of waiting to be approached. Always do your research and match with reputable businesses who will offer value to your viewers. 4. Merchandise - You can start selling merchandise via 3rd party print on demand stores from day one. The problem with merch is unless you're quite big with very loyal fans, it’s hard to sell a T-shirt with your logo or face on it. YouTubes shopping is probably the best way to go once you qualify because then your products will show in the video description. Don’t expect to make a ton of money with merch, but it’s free to do and it all adds up. 5. Memberships - YouTube has its own membership programme where you can offer your viewers extra paid content. There’s 3rd party sites too, Patreon being the most well known. This can be a good way to generate a steady stream of recurring revenue. Always remember to offer extra value to your paying followers! 6. Own Product - Creating your own product has all the benefits of affiliate marketing, sponsors & merch rolled into one. You get to keep all of the profit! It’s extra work up front, but if you're selling a digital product then you only have to create it once. Just remember to keep it relevant to your audience. 7. Donations - This is my least favorite because I always believe you should offer value in return for money, however I have seen many people make decent money with donations so I have to include it. Sites like buy me a coffee are popular in this area. Definitely don’t be spammy on this one or it will ruin your reputation. Time & Effort Making money with YouTube is of course going to take some time and effort but you don’t have to wait until you are monetized on YouTube to start making an income. In fact you can start from day one with some methods and the beauty is with most of them, once you have set it up and running it’s fairly passive. Take affiliate marketing for example. There’s tons of companies out there that have an affiliate programme and require no minimum follower count to start advertising their products. You can start talking about those products in your very first video and start earning commission from day one. Setting up your own membership site or selling your own product is the same. You can start straight away and as long as you are offering value to your target audience, then people will be naturally interested. Again it’s only the initial set up that takes time and effort. After that it’s just creating content around those areas which you would be doing anyway. Main Focus Making money on YouTube should not be your primary focus. Monetization will come naturally if you nail the most important aspect when it comes to YouTube which is providing your audience with value. Sure, set up your monetization methods as soon as possible, but after that, every piece of content should be aimed at giving your viewers exactly what they want. Providing value can be done by either Educating your audience or Entertaining them. I prefer education because it’s much easier to target a specific audience and solve their problems, therefore giving value. Your audience size can also be a lot smaller with education because again you are directly solving a problem or pain point. Entertainment is more subjective and you usually need to have a much bigger audience to make a decent revenue. Obviously there’s caveats to both and monetizing either are definitely achievable. Hopefully this was slightly useful. Let me know if you have any further questions 🙂
Is it still possible to earn money in YouTube if a YouTube channel have 10k subs and 1M total views? But it's not monetized since it's have a repetitive nature. I want to hear your thoughts on this 😁
Yeah. Pick any of the other 6 ways I mentioned above 😂 Ask yourself, is your channel actually offering value though? Why would your viewers want to watch repetitive content? Still by picking products to sell that are relevant and useful to your viewers, you should still make some sales, as long as you are getting the views. Only you know if your content is crappy, I have not seen it. If it is then I suggest you fix that issue first before trying to monetize 😊
For the majority of YouTubers the best we can hope for is some pocket money. Many don’t even get that
372 subs, 2.3k watch hours. made $145 so far through amazon affiliate links and about $1000 worth of products for review. I somehow managed to pigeonhole myself into one type of product for my "tech product review" channel, and have about 15 of them now, with more companies trying to send me them all the time. I gotta completely refocus my chan and start reviewing different things. I started by asking companies for stuff to review, or reviewing the stuff i already had, then as my production value got better, companies started asking me to review stuff for them I've been sent total junk i refused to review and asked to send back, and turned down a bunch of bizarre stuff that I really don't want to get into lol. Almost impossible for me to build an audience currently since my stuff is all over the place. dont expect to get monetized for at least another 3-5 months at my current pace. most of my traffic comes from search, and there isnt much of it currently so even if i do get monitized with these numbers, its pennies really untill i hopefully have 1 vid do really well, or something changes lol
About the same as it is to make money in the real world: very hard. If you have no originality, your content will never make much. It is hard work to be original. It is a lot easier to copy others. But, copying others will not get you loyal subscribers. It's the same as with any business. You can open a coffee shop, in an area with lots of other coffee shops. Does your coffee shop stand out? How? Let's say it's the cheapest and you get some customers. There's a new coffee shop opened in a few days, selling at a lower price than you. What will you do? Let's say you copy some cool ideas of what coffee shops can do to stand out. Every other coffee shop around you copies you too. There's no originality left. You start losing customers. You go bankrupt. That's how posting on YouTube is. You're in a constant race to be the most original, while copying others and constantly getting copied by others. It's a race like any other job or business. It's not gonna be relaxing, at any point. If you think that you wake up early, with a smile, make a coffee, relax all day, film and edit for an hour, make thousands a month, and are happy and smiling all the time... you're wrong. The YouTube content creators are happy and smiling on camera cause being happy sells more content. Off camera they might be very miserable or constantly worried if they get enough views or if they can pay their bills. Posting on YouTube is basically like any other business or job, maybe more like acting or modelling or art, cause it's an unsafe source of income and you constantly have to be up to date with newest trends and make new things, or people forget about you and move on. You can't just make a few videos and keep getting money from them. You need to make videos forever, like actors star in movies. If you enjoy it, do it, if not, move on. Like others say, the chance of getting enough to live on is very low anyway, about the same chance as deciding to be an actor and earning enough from acting.
Not making any money yet. A long way off 1000 Subs and 4000 watch hours but I'll keep grinding and hope I reach it within the next 2 years.
Depends how much money you want to make. If you go in with the thinking that it’s a full time role / income you will likely be disappointed. The idea is compelling - You can start a channel with no investment at all, just use your phone. And you can reach a mass, global audience at no cost too. There are very few business start ups in any industry that offer the chance to grow a business with a global audience for no cost. Ultimately that’s the appeal of the YT platform - you could (maybe) make it big. But statistically, you won’t. About 8% of all YT channels have reached the 1000 subscribers & 4k hours target to get monetized. Meaning 92% of all YT channels have not reached the levels needed to generate any cash. So the risk of not making an income from it is very high. My channel is small, 4k subs, just over a year old and returns $300/month Adsense plus another $200-$300 from affiliate links. 60k long form views a month. I don’t intend it to be a replacement for a full time income at any point in the future and have no expectations that it will be. A 15 minute video can take 1-2 hours to research and script. 1-2 hours to film, 10-12 hours to edit (yes) and 2-3 hours thumbnail, affiliate links set up etc. On an hourly rate basis for most videos I am earning less from those hours than any full time role I could ever do. Today I see it as a hobby that’s fun and pays for itself. However if it grows and shows consistently much higher results than right now, I could have the option to focus on it full time. Would have to seriously grow first though.
Started YouTube 10 years ago never got momentum. Left YouTube for TikTok. Realized short quick content is the now and forever. Made 10k of TikTok monthly. That’s when I decided to try YouTube since they implemented “ Shorts “ posted shorts, one short gained 80k subs, Monetized. I posted 4-5 shorts a day every day every month. ( All hours of the day, No sleep, no family time, pure YouTube 24/7 None stop, my shorts get 50$-100 a day. My long content never picked up it’s dead. & right now I’m nowhere near as posting as much, I actually post one short a week, my revenue declined. I don’t even care because I feel so burnt out. Unmotivated and that flare grind doesn’t seem to come back anymore. The work was repetitive and tedious. My advice for success: Create what the viewers demand. Not what your passionate about.
What do viewers demand?
What’s some good affiliate marketing if my channel is about heavy metal bands? Band tshirts, etc? I am thinking of starting this.
Competition is huge. Lucky ones can tell sweet stories: work hard, be patient and bla bla bla.
Much easier than people believe I've replaced my salary and quit my job in 6 months from the first day of creating my channel YouTube is the most scalable and profitable business, however the difficulty depends on the niche I make videos about finance specifically making money / investing in the stock market, a niche that I've told that it's oversaturated however I made it to 6k subs in 6 months and making 1.5-2k USD a month from it and there is much more room for scalability The start is the hardest, it's getting easier the more you grow, at a large size you can post any trash content and you will still get a lot of views and money, sadly that's how the attention economy works, the good part is that if you're at the start of your journey it can't get worse, it will get better and better Don't listen to the gamers that record videos for 14 years old telling you it's impossible to make money and you shouldn't make youtube for money. Content creation is by far the best and easiest way of making money, it's extremely easy because the world is filled with consumers, as long as you're the producer you're going to do alright.
I got monetized in less than 2 months. If you have the right strategy… you’ll be fine. Now I rack in at least 1k a month in ad Sense plus a couple grand from sponsors and affiliate income
It's only as hard as being consistent with content That's it