in INFORM
How Do Youtubers Make Money?
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
We are in the era of online businesses, and one apparent amongst the plethora of these online-based businesses is YouTubing.
Despite having the lowest entry barrier, far less (or no) upfront investment, and available to everyone to venture into, YouTubers rank the boards of the highest-paid.
That makes people wonder how they achieve this.
How do YouTubers make money?
YouTubers continue to upload free content until they have at least 1,000 Subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, then they can monetize through;
Google AdSense Network
At a time, this was virtually the only way available for a YouTuber to make money from their videos.
Now, creators on the YouTube platform have several other means of monetization, yet, joining the Google AdSense network has remained the core way to make money.
With AdSense, advertisers pay YouTube (for every click and impression), which in turn commissions content creators with 55% of this revenue and 45% for itself.
Affiliate Marketing
Another business model that allows YouTubers to make money from their videos is affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based digital marketing model that allows non-product owners to have a product to sell and stand a chance to make a significant share of the money made from each sale; in the form of commissions.
Many top paid YouTubers utilize this model by adding affiliate links in video descriptions and as part of the main video. This way, they get double pay at the end of the day.
Sponsorships
Finally, content creators on the YouTube platform make money through brand sponsorships. Channels that consistently upload videos that resonate with a brand get attention and may stand a chance to have a sponsorship deal.
Alternatively, YouTubers can also approach an organization for a deal.
Getting sponsorship is not as easy as the other methods of making money on YouTube. A channel must have uploaded a sufficient number of videos, recorded thousands of subscribers and significant views per video.
Those are the three main ways YouTubers make money.
How Long To Start Making Money From YouTube
YouTube is a source of entertainment, inspiration, education and above all, a viable source of passive income.
CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, in her first letter to creators of 2021 revealed that their platform has paid more than $30 Billion to content creators in the last three years.
I mean, think about that insane number.
Interestingly, you practically have everything you’ll need to run a successful YouTube channel and partake in this bandwagon of wealth.
Happily, you’re probably thinking about it now and since you are reading this, you want to know how long it could take to start making money from YouTube with your new channel or before you even start.
Welcome on board!
There are two sides to the question of how long to start making from YouTube.
It could the next second after uploading your first video. Nah– Just kidding .
On a serious note though, it solely depends on how long it takes you to get your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers.
If that be in one week, as long as you have also had up to 4,000+ watch hours within the last 12months.
How Is This Money Made on YouTube
YouTubers can make money through multiple streams, including selling their products and services.
But overall,
- ad revenue and
- affiliate commissions
… are two of the most popular methods of YouTube channel monetization.
How Is Ads Revenue Calculated
The pay rate of ads revenue is calculated based on per 1,000 views and niche CPM value.
Higher CPM niches make more money, even with fewer views.
If the channel niche is “e-commerce software” that has a CPM of $9, multiplied by the 55% advertiser’s payment to YouTube pay creators, then per 1,000 views, you make $4.99.
We also need to consider how many people watched the ads versus how many skipped.
List Of YouTube Niches and Their CPM
| Niche | Low Bid | High Bid |
| Email Marketing | $14.55 | $50.0 |
| Insurance | $15.63 | $49.52 |
| Sell House | $10.87 | $47.31 |
| Website Hosting | $13.6 | $39.86 |
| Ecommerce Software | $9.22 | $33.29 |
| Donate | $5.16 | $32.36 |
| Lawyer | $5.74 | $24.43 |
| Credit Card | $6.75 | $20.3 |
| Attorney | $4.67 | $20.29 |
| Casino | $2.64 | $19.35 |
| E Commerce | $7.26 | $17.99 |
| Mortgage | $5.45 | $16.21 |
| Seo | $3.38 | $15.3 |
| Online Business | $2.88 | $15.25 |
| Vpn | $2.73 | $14.5 |
| Loans | $4.19 | $13.22 |
| Cryptocurrency | $2.26 | $11.94 |
| Drop Shipping | $2.5 | $11.82 |
| Home Repair | $3.44 | $11.04 |
| Weight Loss | $2.55 | $9.98 |
| Content Creation | $9.73 | |
| Credit | $2.01 | $9.67 |
| Career Advice | $2.53 | $9.16 |
| Auto Repair | $3.0 | $8.87 |
| Degree | $2.22 | $8.63 |
| Trading | $1.6 | $7.18 |
| Personal Finance | $2.26 | $6.97 |
| Invest | $1.48 | $6.74 |
| Software | $1.74 | $6.72 |
| Business Services | $1.95 | $6.4 |
The low and high bids are the minimum and maximum amount of money an advertiser has to pay for an ad spot on a video, respectively.
How Profitable Is Affiliate Marketing On A YouTube Channel
On this other end of the spectrum, we have affiliate marketing which could make YouTubers a lot more money than ads revenue.
The two usually go hand in hand.
Companies that own products or services are willing to give out as much as 50% commission to partners which are sometimes worth between $20 – $1000+ per sale.
That’s a lot of money. And when paid with display ads, becomes even massive.
Make Money Faster
How do you reduce the wait time and make money on YouTube sooner?
It takes three simple steps.
Create More Videos …
By creating more videos, more videos can be watched. It’s easier to generate, say, a thousand views from 10 videos than just one video.
With 10 videos, if each video drives a hundred views, then the cumulative of all the views has already hit the target of a thousand views.
By the way, what is most important to us, in the beginning, is a way to get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, amounting to 240,000 minutes of watch time.
Diversifying the number of videos on your channel will allow reaching a wider audience and in turn, gets more subscribers and watch hours.
… that are value-filled
Talking about publishing more and more videos, I mean more videos that are valuable to viewers in a particular way.
It’s all about the value.
If your niche is about entertainment, your videos should deliver a lot of entertainment value. What if the purpose of the channel could be to inform your audience, motivate or educate, the same principle holds.
Value could mean different things to different audiences, so doing your due diligence before settling for a niche will put you in a better position to know what that value is for them and focus your energy on catering to that need.
… and of good quality
Always shoot your videos with the equipment that can deliver the right quality.
The birth of smartphones and filters will surely help to get video quality that people will want to watch.
When we need even better quality HD videos, smartphones are not yet where digital cameras are yet.
Getting your lighting right, and shooting with great equipment, coupled with well-to-do editing skills are super important to delivering clean and eye-catching videos for your YouTube channel.
… then promote your channel/videos
With a few value-filled quality videos on your channel, creating awareness and getting the attention of your potential viewers becomes your new strategy to make money from YouTube faster.
Because the sooner people get to know about your channel and the fact that it’s about their interest, the earlier you can onboard new subscribers.
When you have more subscribers, your videos start generating more views which boosts watch hours.
Pro-Tip
You’ve probably heard, “Please subscribe to this channel, like, comment, and share,” uncountable times.
The reason for that is because it works.
By doing this they are actually playing with human psychology. Most of the viewers don’t subscribe to the channel of their own will, nobody does.
But when a creator productively asks them to do so, they are creating some chances of people subscribing to their channel if they want to see more videos from the same creator.
Bang On
That was a great drive with you. I hope it was informative and entertaining. Let’s get your thoughts, advice, suggestions, and opinions in the comments section below.
See you in the next post.
You got this!
CID
