Brian Edmondson
With 5 billion videos viewed every day by more than 300 million visitors, and more than 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube is actually one of the world’s most popular media channels. Everything from viral funny cat videos to full-length, professionally produced TV shows are available. It’s come a long way from humble beginnings in 2005 to being bought by tech giant Google in 2006 to its current domination as one of the world’s top social networks, search engines, and entertainment venues online.
The cool thing is that this platform is also a great way for everyday people like you to make money through your own videos. You don’t need professional level equipment or experience to make it happen. You just have to know how to get paid by YouTube. And the rewards can be great.
Consider Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie, who was the highest paid YouTuber in 2016—bringing in $15 million. And he is just one of many users who have learned the secrets of how to get paid by YouTube.
At the basic level, here’s how it works.
Getting Paid Through Ad Revenue
Every time you upload a video to YouTube, you have the potential to make money… sometimes a lot of money. Remember that YouTube is owned by Google—the king of online ads.
So what happens with YouTube is not that people are paying you directly for your videos every time they watch. No. Instead YouTube pays you every time somebody clicks on one of the ads that plays before your video plays or clicks on one of the banner type ads that pops on videos while they are playing.
But for that to happen you have set up some things on the back end. Of course, you have to have a regular YouTube account first. Then you enable the monetization feature and connect your YouTube account to a Google AdSense account.
Now you’re ready to start making money per click. That’s how to get paid by YouTube.
Granted, most people simply click on the “x” or “Skip Ad” button to make the marketing messages go away. But a select number do actually click—that’s when you get paid. You get paid more from “rollout ads,” which are those that appear before a video, than “banner ads,” which pop up during the video. You also get a much smaller amount based on the number of views—if somebody watches an ad at least 5 or 30 seconds you get paid more. The ads are supposed to be related to the content of your video, so it stands to reason that people would click.
You can expect to be paid about an average of $5 to $8 per 1,000 views of your videos based on the average amount of people who click on rollout ads. It’s about 80 cents per thousand views if you have only banner ads. So it’s a good idea to try to get rollout ads on your videos.
So you could potentially make $5,000 to $8,000 a month—a very reasonable amount to replace a full-time job income—if you got a million views on videos with rollout ads. Of course, as a first time YouTuber, you’ll need multiple videos to reach those viewership numbers.
But it’s definitely do-able even if it’s a part-time job. In fact, if you don’t want to make it full time on YouTube, you could use it as a way to make some extra cash on the weekends.
What Should Be on Your YouTube Channel
The top YouTubers have dozens if not hundreds of videos online right now. The more videos, the more views, the more clicks, the more money. That means you need to do the same if you hope to have anywhere near the same level of success.
Take the guys in Smosh, which started with two guys making funny lip syncing videos about cartoons and video games and now have 19 channels—and more than 22 million subscribers. They’re multimillionaires.
Then there’s Michelle Phan, who has garnered 8 million subscribers and 1.1 billion views with 385 uploaded videos demonstrating make-up techniques. She was even invited to create her own make-up line.
Tyler Oakley was the sixth highest paid YouTuber in 2016, making more than $6 million. His channel covers topics like pop culture, mental health, LGBT issues, and more.
As you’ve noticed, the world’s top YouTubers cover all sorts of different niche markets. And that means there’s a good chance on of your interests can be the path to how you get paid by YouTube. One thing to note—all of these successful YouTubers are having fun!
You Need to Pick a Profitable Niche
That’s your first step to how to get paid by YouTube. Some examples that work well include video games, “unboxing,” how-to and tutorials, vlogs (video blogs), product reviews, weight loss, challenges, comedy, pranks, and many more. There's no shortage of profitable niche markets for you to choose from.Start Making YouTube Videos
Your videos don’t have to big budget pro productions. They do need to look decent. Focus on good lighting and good audio. Use basic video editing software like iMovie on Apple products (including iPhone, iPads, and laptops desktops) to add titles, music tracks, and more. Mostly you’re editing so the video is more dynamic and interesting to watch.
There are several free and paid options for PC users to choose from.
As you’ll see in the next step the most important part, after you have these basics, is the content.
Build Your Audience on YouTube
There are a few ways to go about this. One of the major elements is providing entertaining and useful content. You must give people a reason to watch your videos… and not only that… watch them until the end.
What this means is different for each niche. For example, in the video game oriented niche, you just need to show a screen capture of yourself playing popular games and narrate it in a funny way or in a way that helps people master the game themselves. For how-to videos, you should clearly show what you are doing in each step, with close ups as needed. Study what others are doing to get a model for your own videos.
In your YouTube account you should also include keywords about your channel and make sure all your videos are tagged with relevant keywords. You should also have a detailed description for each video. All of this helps people searching for your type of content find you.
A major benefit is that YouTube videos appear high in Google search results. So you can get a lot of traffic to your videos from that source.
Of course, it will also help if you spread the word about your video on Facebook, on your blog, in forums, on Twitter… wherever you hang out online, especially if it’s an audience that would appreciate your video, let them know.
Once you start getting some views, it’s important to go to your “back office” on your YouTube channel to check the analytics. There you can see numbers of views for videos, the earnings, and the demographics of the audience. This will help you create videos in the future that will make more money because they target what your audience likes.
Add New YouTube Videos on a Consistent Basis
Put out new videos on a regular basis. Always provide useful and entertaining content. And make sure that you follow the same format and stick to your niche. If you become known as the guy or gal that shows people how to do scrapbooking, you can’t put out a video about rebuilding race car engines.
And it’s also important that for each video you ask people to subscribe. This way they are notified when you put a new video. That’s like getting views virtually automatically.
Next you need to get involved in the YouTube community so to speak. When people comment on your videos or ask questions—respond. Keep the conversation going. Stay consistent here and you can gain thousands of views in each of your videos—you should always be adding more.
Getting Big Views in the Millions
Getting millions of views is difficult, but still possible. You have to go viral. It’s a rare thing. But do-able if you can provide very entertaining content that, usually, also imparts a message. You have to be unique. You have to make it work by pushing it to other social media too. And you need a bit of luck.
Final Thoughts on How to Get Paid By YouTube
With video taking the place of traditional online content as a preferred medium for many web surfers, the opportunity to make money is ripe. YouTube videos are fun way to make and setting up the process to monetize is easy.
There are some best practices and rules to follow. But in general it can be a low-investment opportunity to profit.
Your next step: make your first video and make it live on YouTube. That experience in uploading your first video will be invaluable and your first step to future success and the best way to learn how to get paid by YouTube.
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