1. Google Adsense
Having ads displayed before or during your videos is the
most obvious way to make money on YouTube. To have these ads running in your
videos, all you have to do is sign up for Google Adsense.
Once you set up your Adsense account, you can begin
displaying ads in your own YouTube videos. One major benefit of this option is
that you don’t have to search for advertisers on your own, since Google handles
all of that. However, not everyone is accepted to become a YouTube partner.
2. Affiliate links
Another great way to monetize your YouTube videos is to add
affiliate links within the text description of the video. This strategy works
best if your video is about the same product you’re promoting as an affiliate.
You get a commission each time a viewer sees the affiliate
links, visits the URL, and makes a purchase. It’s that simple. The more views
your videos attract, the more money you will make, since more people will buy
through your affiliate links.
3. Selling private ads
You can decide to ignore Google Adsense and sell ads
directly to advertisers instead. However, you must bear in mind that you will
need to search for advertisers yourself. Private ads typically fetch more money
per view than Google Adsense ads. Whereas you can sell private ads for as much
as $50 per 1000 views, Adsense ads typically pay around $10 per 1000 views.
However, to attract big advertisers, your videos must
consistently attract tens of thousands; or even hundreds of thousands of views.
4. Sell links
If you are not into affiliate marketing, then you can sell
links within your video descriptions. That is, you get paid for inserting links
to other people’s websites or blogs.
However, you must be very careful with this method if you
have a YouTube channel with an existing subscriber base. If you lease your
description field to advertisers who link to unrelated content or trash, you
may damage your channel’s reputation and lose your subscribers. If you accept
relevant ads by reputable advertisers, then your audience won’t have a problem
with that.
5. YouTube Rentals
This is another cool video monetization option, but at the
moment it’s for U.S. based users only. The option enables users to produce
“premium” videos and sell access to those videos for any fee they choose.
This option is suitable for anyone who has built a loyal
audience and a reputation for publishing helpful and relevant videos. So,
“expert guides” can be monetized with this option.
6. Sell access to unlisted videos
If you are not based in the U.S., an alternative way to
charge for access to your videos is to publish them as unlisted videos, which
means they will not show up in your channel or search results. You can then
sell them through another medium such as another video or a blog post.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to host those videos on
YouTube at all, then host them on Amazon S3.
7. Paid reviews
You can also make money from YouTube by selling the
production of an entire video that reviews an advertiser’s product or showcases
their benefits. This is similar to the “paid review” or “sponsored post” model
that bloggers offer for written reviews.
While this method can be very lucrative, you need to be very
careful if you have a channel with many subscribers. Producing a “salesy” video
that gives no value to the viewer can affect your reputation negatively and
make you lose subscribers.
8. Promote your own products or services
If you run a business that offers certain products or
services, you can attract more customers by creating a video that promotes
those offers and uploading it on YouTube. If you have already built a
reputation for helpful videos, injecting such a video will not upset your
subscribers, and you will even get more purchases.
9. Review affiliate products
While placing affiliate links within your video description
(as described above) is a good way to make money from other people’s products
or services, you can make even more money by dedicating a whole videos to
promoting affiliate products.
A good way to boost your earnings with this method is to
create a video of you using the product and the results you got.
10. Sell the channel
Just like a blogger can decide to sell his blog after
growing it, you too can decide to sell your YouTube channel provided you
already have a large subscriber base or generate huge search engine traffic,
and the production of the channel isn’t tied to your personality.
Channels that attract search engine traffic are more valuable
than those attracting visits only from subscribers.
