But it has so much more potential than just a tool to drive traffic. It can be a powerhouse for generating revenue, too.
Do you have a personal YouTube page or use one for marketing your business? Then you’ll want to keep reading ahead because you’re going to learn 5 ways to make money off YouTube.
Become an affiliate
Affiliate marketing is the definition of passive income. It’s a business model that works by promoting other businesses’ products and receiving a commission for successful referrals.
It’s one of the most popular ways how people make money on YouTube.
Let’s say that you get 10,000 views per video, an average commission of $5, and a 2% conversion rate. That’s an extra $100 per video just from affiliate marketing. That could greatly increase your overall revenue on top of other monetization strategies.
We suggest that you begin signing up for Amazon’s affiliate program. It’s free to join, and you can earn commissions on practically any product they list.
They will ask you to enter your name and email and create a password. Ensure that you use a strong password and keep it safe. You are not allowed under Amazon’s terms of service to share your account or have more than a single affiliate account.
After signing up, you are able to use the affiliate network instantly. But it comes with a catch. You must refer two sales within a 180-day period to have your account reviewed. If you have followed their terms of service, you will get accepted and can continue earning.
A good approach to affiliate marketing on YouTube is to include links to products you review or ones you use yourself. You can search for them by entering their name in the search bar on the affiliate dashboard.
When you find the exact product that you’re after, select the Get Link button. This will take you to a page where you can generate a shortcode link.
Select the Text Only tab and then the Short Link option below. This is Amazon’s shortening service that gives you a convenient link to share with your subscribers.
Include these in the descriptions of your YouTube videos with a call to action. Don’t limit yourself to only Amazon’s program, though. There are dozens of affiliate programs and networks available to join if you search for them.
Teach your subscribers something new with an online course
The online learning industry was worth $107 billion back in 2015, and continues to grow rapidly. As a content creator, you can use this as an opportunity to increase your YouTube earnings with courses. Knowledge will never go out of style, and people are always looking to learn something new.
Don’t worry if you’re not the best teacher, either. You can use a platform like Udemy to streamline the course creation process. They also will help you get more students through their search engine, further increasing your revenue.
Visit www.udemy.com and sign up for a free account from the top right.
Enter your full name, and email, and create a secure password. Consider using a tool like the strong password generator from LastPass. After signing up, Udemy will ask you to confirm your email.
Once you’re in the platform, navigate to the Instructor section next to My Courses.
Before you begin creating a course, you should first brainstorm the following things:
- What would your ideal customer or subscriber want to learn about?
- What are you knowledgeable about and have credentials for?
- How will you price your course?
Once you’ve put some thought into it, click Create Your Course to jump into the creation platform.
Take SEO into consideration when naming your course, too. Use descriptive keywords so more students can organically discover it. You will earn 50% of the course price when Udemy refers signups, and 100% for signups you bring yourself.
Udemy will guide you step by step through the rest of setting up your course. The next steps involve targeting an audience, structuring the units, and filming the content itself.
After you’ve published a course, share it with your YouTube subscribers and include it in video descriptions to generate sales.
Self publish an e-book
Gone are the days when writers needed a publishing house or agent to become successful. Now, it’s as simple as writing an e-book and self-publishing it online. With some time and effort, you can create a book that your YouTube fanbase will love. Did you know that e-books make up over 25% of the worldwide book market share?
Before you begin writing, though, you need a platform to publish it on. That’s where Amazon’s KDP steps in. This is their free Kindle authorship program that allows you to sell your books on Amazon’s website, and many famous content creators use it to make money off YouTube. You will receive up to 70% of the royalties, creating a great passive income stream from your YouTube channel.
You can sign up for free here. Just like with their affiliate program, they’ll ask for your name, email address, and password.
Complete the payment and tax forms to ensure that you can receive payments. You can do this by visiting the account page from the top navigation and then navigating to the two options on the sidebar.
With that done, it’s time to get writing! What topics would your customers or fan base be interested in? What questions do they commonly ask? Use this as inspiration for thinking of a genre and title.
Take the time to plan and structure your book after you’ve decided on the theme. You will be able to write faster as you already know what to talk about, and it makes the whole process easier.
Publishing it is simple once you’ve finished writing, too. Under Create a New Title on the KDP dashboard, select Kindle eBook. Enter a book title, your author name, and a thorough description.
You can also enter up to 7 keywords to help readers find your book. Be creative and specific. If you need a tool to help you out, consider SEMrush.
Upload your book as a Word document on the next page and select a fair price. $2.99 is a common strategy, as it keeps you in the 70% royalty bracket and isn’t expensive.
It will take up to 24 to 48 hours for your book to be reviewed and accepted. Once it’s live, make a video for YouTube to talk about the new launch. Focus on the benefits that readers will gain from purchasing your book and include a link so they can check it out.
Sell your own merchandise
Every business has a brand, and it creates the opportunity to sell branded merchandise for your followers to enjoy. This is the first approach that many YouTube channels take for monetizing, and for a good reason: it can generate plenty of revenue.
There are tons of products that you can stick your logo on, such as:
- Shirts
- Hoodies
- Mugs
- Posters
- Phone cases
Don’t worry if you don’t know any manufacturers or wholesalers either; creating branded products is a lot easier than you think.
Printful is a service that lets you place any graphic onto clothing, accessories, and home decor. You can start designing instantly by clicking Start on the homepage.
You can then choose from any of their categories. Clothing is a great place to begin and turns your subscribers into brand ambassadors. Navigate to a shirt or hoodie that you’d like to design, and upload a logo.
You can even change the inside and outside tags to make your merchandise look very high quality. The back can also include a graphic, along with the sleeves. There are dozens of colours to choose from, too. Take your time and make a product that you’d buy yourself.
These can then be directly shipped to your customers. You don’t have to worry about inventory or any big hassles. But you will need a storefront to list your merchandise.
Shopify or WordPress with the Woocommerce plugin is both affordable options. Shopify offers a 14-day free trial and costs $29 per month afterward. Woocommerce is completely free, and WordPress hosting can cost as little as a few dollars every month.
You can get the free Printful app for Shopify that instantly integrates with your store and automatically fulfills orders. They also offer the same kind of integration for Woocommerce.
Wear your merchandise in videos that you upload and ensure that your fanbase is aware of your store. Make an announcement about where they can get it and consider doing a discount promotion to generate more sales.
Offer coaching or consulting
The consulting industry is a $133 billion market, and you can take a piece of the cake, too. By creating valuable and informative videos on YouTube, you establish authority and credibility. This is the perfect base to begin consulting or coaching with.
What should you consult about? Any skills or field of knowledge that is related to the content you produce. For example, if you create videos about SEO, you could offer to consult for:
- SEO strategies
- Business motivation and coaching
- Website audits
One of the best parts about building a consulting business is that it requires absolutely nothing besides your knowledge. Next, you’ll need to determine how much you’ll charge clients. This is based on what you believe your time to be worth and how much you require to earn a living. It could be anything from $50 to $200 per hour or more.
Unless you plan to get cheques in the mail, you’ll need invoicing software to streamline the consulting process. Quickbooks enables you to send invoices, track expenses, and generate reports to analyze how your consulting business is progressing.
You don’t even need a personal website to get this off of the ground. You can begin by including an email address in the descriptions of your videos for viewers to contact.
At the beginning or end of every video, include a short clip that mentions you offer consulting. This, along with affiliate marketing or any of the other strategies you learned today, can easily generate your business revenue from YouTube.
Final thoughts on how to make money with YouTube
YouTube is an incredible channel for generating income and revenue. However, you have to know how to approach it correctly to maximize your earnings.
I can’t tell you how many channels I’ve seen that have a large number of subscribers and traffic, but weak monetization strategies. They are no doubt missing out on huge sums of money.
To recap, here’s how I would make money off of YouTube:
- Do affiliate marketing for brands and products you love.
- Teach subscribers through online courses.
- Self publish books using Amazon KDP.
- Sell your own merchandise.
- Offer consulting or another service.
You can learn more about marketing and making money online in my online courses.
