How To Make Money on YouTube

YouTube stars are today’s self-made celebrities people who have earned an audience by creating video content geared toward teaching, entertaining, reviewing, and being awesome on the web.

Making money on YouTube might not be your reason for starting a channel, but the opportunities to earn are a pleasant surprise once you realize how many of them there are. Luckily, there are some creative avenues if you want to learn how to make money on YouTube.

Your audience might unlock your YouTube channel’s earning potential, as is often the case with Instagram influencers or bloggers, but it’s the creation of multiple revenue streams, through side hustles or businesses, that helps you make money.

How to make money on YouTube

1. Join the YouTube Partner Program

2. Sell products or merchandise

3. Crowdfund your next creative project

4. Let your audience support you through “fan funding”

5. License your content to the media

6. Work with brands as an influencer

7. Become an affiliate marketer

1. Join the YouTube Partner Program

The first revenue stream you’ll likely explore is ads. Whether you want to earn money on YouTube without creating videos or as a content creator, joining the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) and setting up monetization is a vital step.

You’ll have to agree to follow all of YouTube’s monetization policies and live in a country or region where the YPP is available. Then, you can apply for monetization once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year, or 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views within the past 90 days.

Here’s how to enable monetization on YouTube:

Sign in to the YouTube account you want to monetize.
Click the icon for your account in the top right corner.
Click YouTube Studio.
In the left menu, select Other Features > Monetization.
Read and agree to the YouTuber Partner Program terms and eligibility requirements.
Create a new Google AdSense account or connect an existing one to your channel. (You need an AdSense account to get paid.)
Set your monetization preferences.

Once that’s done, head back to the dashboard and click the Analytics tab on the left side. From there, you’ll need to choose Revenue from the tabs at the top, then scroll down to the chart Monthly Estimated Revenue to get an idea of your predicted YouTube revenue.

What is YouTube Premium?

YouTube Premium is a paid membership program that lets fans watch and support their favorite content creators without ads. For creators, not much changes, as they’ll get paid for content consumed by non-members on YouTube, along with content on YouTube Premium.

Creators are paid for YouTube Premium based on how much members watch their content. Consider revenue earned from YouTube Premium subscribers as a secondary revenue stream in addition to what you’re already earning through ads.

While it’s easy to set up, earning money through advertising as a YouTube Partner is far from the most lucrative revenue stream you can create for yourself.

Why you should look beyond ads for revenue

YouTube received a lot of backlash around its transparency regarding advertising on the platform and what qualifies as “advertiser friendly” content.

At the time, many YouTube creators feared they would lose out on advertising revenue due to the nature of their content.

Your content may get excluded from ad revenue if YouTube deems it:

Sexually suggestive, including partial nudity and sexual humor
Violent, including displays of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
Inappropriate in language, including harassment, profanity, and vulgar language
Promotional of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use, and abuse of such items
Controversial or sensitive, including events and subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters, and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

This is nothing new. YouTube has been demonetizing content it doesn’t deem advertiser friendly since 2012 via an automated process. It was originally done without warning and without the content creator’s knowledge.

Now, creators are notified when their content is flagged and can contest any time they feel a video was mistakenly excluded from YouTube’s advertising network.

Advertising might be a common means of generating passive income for creators, but the trade-off is that YouTube’s parent company, Google, gets to keep around a 45% share of ad revenue.

In short, YouTubers should explore other revenue streams to sustain their creative hobby. Below, we’ll share how to earn money from YouTube without AdSense.

2. Sell products or merchandise

You can sell plenty of different products to make money through your YouTube channel. Selling merch—t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, snapbacks, you name it—has a benefit beyond revenue.

Merchandise increases your exposure by putting your online brand and personality out into the offline world, and deepens the relationship between you and your fans as they literally “buy” into what you’re doing. Creator Roman Atwood sells a variety of merchandise in his store under the Smile More brand.

Selling branded swag is easier than it might seem at first. You can order affordable designs tailored for specific products, like t-shirts, using freelance sites such as Fiverr.

And when it comes to handling orders, you can integrate your store with services like DSers or one of the many print-on-demand providers that take care of shipping, fulfillment, and customer support, letting you reap all of the benefits of a print-on-demand business that requires less effort on your part.

💡 TIP: Use Shopify’s YouTube sales channel to promote and sell your products on YouTube. Sync your product catalog, tag or pin products in live streams, and manage all your sales from Shopify.

Alternatively, you can partner with an existing merchandising network for creators, such as DFTBA (Don’t Forget to Be Awesome). However, you’ll have to compete with other YouTubers and less control over adding products, offering discounts, integrating your content, and all the advantages that come with owning your own ecommerce site.

You can even go a step further by manufacturing and selling your own unique products and powering your business through your YouTube channel, like Luxy Hair did to sell its hair extensions with hair-related how-to video tutorials.

As a YouTuber who’s already earned an audience, you’ll have two advantages from the start that other store owners would be jealous of:

A content engine that consistently drives traffic to your store

Your audience’s trust, which you’ve earned by regularly serving them your own brand of content for free

3. Crowdfund your next creative project

When money is all that stands between an idea and its execution, crowdfunding is a good way to make it happen.

Whether you need help buying better equipment, hiring actors, or covering other production costs, you can call upon your own audience and the crowdfunding community to pitch in, if your idea is compelling enough.

Many successful crowdfunded creative projects tend to offer a sneak peak or “trailer” that gets people excited, so consider shooting a video explaining your project or offering a taste of what it’ll be like, such as this popular Kickstarter for Kung Fury, a short film paying homage to 1980s action movies.

Popular crowdfunding sites with a proven track record of campaigns from YouTubers include:

Kickstarter. One of the most well-known crowdfunding sites, great for funding cool products and creative projects. Be sure to set an attainable funding goal because you’ll only secure it if you actually meet the goal you set.

Indiegogo. A Kickstarter alternative that offers more flexible funding options.

4. Let your audience support you through “fan funding”

Similar to crowdfunding a project, you can also set up “fan funding” streams to source donations from your audience.

As a creator, you’re contributing your voice to the internet without forcing your audience to pay for admission. So, if you’re offering good content, your audience might be inclined to support you on an ongoing basis.

Many fan-funding platforms offer creators another place for people to discover their content and a way to engage their most loyal audience and reward them for their support.

Wait But Why creates more long-form written content than YouTube videos but is a great example of receiving support from the Patreon community.

If you choose the crowdfunding route, be sure to follow a couple of best practices. First, create transparency around how the money will be spent. This will get your fanbase invested in your story or mission, and they will literally buy into the value of your content.

Second, offer enticing rewards for better pledges. The more you can make donors feel like they’re getting something exclusive for being a loyal fan, the more likely you are to get donations and higher pledges.

Some popular fan funding options include:

YouTube’s Super Chat. Super Chat is a feature used when doing live streams on YouTube. It lets you create a tipping jar for your viewers to donate whenever and however much they feel like contributing. You’ll need to set up your YouTube account for advertising, as outlined above.

Channel memberships. Channel memberships let viewers support your channel through monthly payments in exchange for members-only perks. Similar to Super Chat, you must be a part of YouTube’s Partner Program to access this feature.

Patreon. The membership platform that makes it easy for creators to get paid. Fans can subscribe to their favorite creators for as little as a dollar a month and receive exclusive rewards.

Tipeee. This platform lets you get a combination of both one-off and recurring donations.

Buy Me A Coffee. Buy Me A Coffee lets creators and artists accept donations and membership fees from their fans. It’s referred to as the “#1 Patreon Alternative,” with over 300,000 creators. The differences are it’s easier to accept payments with Buy Me A Coffee, there’s a flat 5% fee for all features (versus up to 12% for Patreon), and payouts are instant.

5. License your content to the media

If you happen to create a viral video with mass appeal—say, a funny clip featuring your dog—you can license your content in exchange for money.

TV news outlets, morning shows, online news sites, and other creators might reach out about rights to use your videos if they happen to go viral.

You can also list your videos in a marketplace, such as Jukin Licensing, where your content will be easier for the right people to find and purchase.

6. Work with brands as an influencer

Brands are investing more and more in influencer marketing and sponsorships, spending their typically large advertising budgets on influencers who’ve already won the loyalty of their audiences.

This creates a massive opportunity for you as a creator if you can negotiate the right deals.

💡 TIP: Shopify Collabs makes it easy to find brands that match your vibe, build affiliate relationships, get paid for what you sell, and track everything in one place.

Brendan Gahan, a YouTube marketing expert and influencer, recommends establishing your baseline flat fee by looking at the number of views your videos typically get and multiplying it by $0.05 to $0.15 per view (which is around what many brands are willing to pay for views via YouTube ads).

According to data from WebFX, the potential prices for influencer marketing on YouTube are:

$20 per video for a YouTuber with 1,000 subscribers

$200 per video for a YouTuber with 10,000 subscribers

$2,000 per video for a YouTuber with 100,000 subscribers

$20,000 per video for a YouTuber with 1,000,000 subscribers

Depending on your leverage—your audience demographics, content quality, and how unique and profitable your niche is—you might be able to negotiate a better deal if the brand is a good fit.

The key when partnering on brand-sponsored content is to be transparent about it, not endorsing anything you don’t actually like or believe in, and being upfront with your audience about why you’re doing it.

Here are just a couple of the many influencer marketplaces you can add your channel to and get discovered by brands both big and small:

Crowdtap. Complete small content creation “tasks” in exchange for money and other rewards. There’s no restriction on how many followers you need to join.

Upfluence. A full-scale influencer platform with a database over 3 million influencers. Clients can search through Upfluence to find creators by keyword and contact them to form a partnership.

Some influencer marketplaces offer you free products, while others are known for having big brands who are willing to pay more. Capitalize on the opportunities that best suit your needs, but list yourself in as many places as you can to ensure maximum visibility for your channel.

Resources:

30+ Influencer Marketing Statistics You Should Know (2023)

Micro-Influencer Campaigns Are Far From Overhyped

Instagram Influencer Marketing: A Complete 2023 Guide