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‘Damn! My channel is taking too long to reach 1000 subs and 4000 hours’.
‘Eish! YouTube has demonetised my channel for no reason!’.
‘Eish! My channel is not earning significant amounts from AdSense’.
I have heard these statements over and over again for several years now.
Most people thinks that Ad revenue is the only way of monetizing a YouTube channel - which is not true by the way.
Although Ad revenue is the most common ways of monetising a YouTube channel, there are other ways that can be used to monetize a YouTube channel.
These includes:
Without further ado, let me explain each of these methods one by one.
1. Affiliate Marketing
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is probably one of the best ways of monetizing a YouTube channel since you can easily recommend other people's products and services to your audience and you get a commission in return.
For those of you who are not familiar with affiliate marketing, it is simply a method whereby you advertise other companies’ products and services on behalf of those companies and you get paid a commission whenever someone buys through your links.
You simply need to signup for various affiliate programs and networks and once you get approved, you will get a custom trackable link (affiliate link) and you can place that link in the description of your videos.
If you check big YouTube channels, they have some affiliate links in the description of their videos since they always recommend some products and services to their subscribers.
The easiest way to get started with affiliate marketing is to visit some websites of companies that sells goods and services related to your niche.
On the footer of their websites, you will find a button which says ‘Affiliates’ then you click on that button and you apply for their affiliate program.
Once you get approved, you can start promoting their products on your channel and you earn a commission when someone buys through those links.
You can also do some product reviews so as to show your audience how the products works so as to attract more customers to buy the product.
You can also recommend the tools that you use to record your videos e.g. camera, lighting equipment, microphone, tripod, etc.
Affiliate marketing can turn into full time passive if you do it correctly thus you need to research more about this business model.
If you want a more detailed explanation about affiliate marketing, check out this article.
2. Selling Merch
2. Selling Merch
This is also a great way of monetizing your channel, since you can easily sell your branded t-shirts, hoodies, etc to your audience.
You can utilise sites like Teespring where you can easily upload your designs to that platform and the company will do all the fulfilment for you when you get some sales.
Thus, you don't need to worry about printing the items, shipping, packaging, etc since Teespring handles everything for you.
NB: l know that most people are not good at creating t-shirt designs since we were not all born with graphic design skills.
But if you learn how to use Canva, you can easily come up with some great designs without any tech skills.
You can also look for some video tutorials on YouTube on how to use this software since there is a ton of video tutorials on how to use Canva.
However, if you have some few bucks to spend, you can choose to hire a professional graphic designer on Fiverr.
Whether you decide to create the designs by yourself or your hire a freelancer, the most important thing is to come up with some good looking designs that will attract your audience to buy.
People like to spend their money on something that is valuable hence you should provide something of great value.
However, it is important to note that some channels might not be able to display merch especially if you have less than 10 000 subs, thus you might need to manually advertise the merch during the beginning or end of your videos.
But either way, you customers will get to know about what you're selling.
3. Paid Sponsorships
3. Paid Sponsorships
This should not be confused with affiliate marketing since they seem like the same business but in reality, they are a bit different.
With paid sponsorships, you get paid a fixed amount per certain number of videos for promoting a company or a brand to your audience.
However, with affiliate marketing, you get paid a commission for every sale that you generate (performance based).
Paid sponsorship are also a great way of earning from your YouTube channel since you get paid for mentioning certain products during your videos.
Others companies might give you a coupon code that you can use to promote their products hence incentivising your subscribers to use your code in order to get a discount.
These coupon codes will allows the company to track sales which comes through your code hence they will know how much of your audience actually bought their products.
In order to get access to some brand deals, you can simply join a platform called Channel Pages since most companies uses this site to find potential channels.
4. Selling Your Own Products
4. Selling Your Own Products
This is probably one of the most lucrative ways to earn from you YouTube channel, since you can easily get leads and sales via your free content.
This is so because if you're able to control eyebrows through your content, you might as well manage to control the wallets of those people as well.
Once you build some trust with your subscribers, you can easily launch your own products or courses and you start selling those products to your audience via the channel.
However, this method might not be ideal if you're still new to YouTube since people only buy from someone who they know, like, and trust.
Thus, if you're still brand new, there won’t be some people who knows who you are and it might be difficult to get sales in the beginning.
But once you build some level of trust, you can then start selling your own products in the future.
But in order to gain the trust of people, you must first provide value for free since people needs some valuable content before they can trust you.
Aim at providing as much value as possible so as to gain the trust of your subscribers.
Thus, when you eventually launch your products, more people will buy from you based on the relationship that you may have built with them.
That's human nature (reciprocation).
5. Donations
5. Donations
This sounds a bit weird but it also works for other channels.
Donations works well if you have an engaging audience who really vibe with your content (real fans).
If someone really vibe with your content, he/she is willing to pay something to you as a token of appreciation.
This works well if you provide more valuable content to people for FREE.
If you're able to provide so much valuable information for FREE, there is high chances that most people will feel like they need to pay you something (they will feel like they owe you).
That's human nature.
However, this might not work when you're still brand new since most people will not have any idea about who you are during your early days.
But if you create a series of valuable content, the strategy will work in the long run since people will start to develop some trust over time.
Final Words
Final Words
YouTube monetization is not only limited to ad revenue, but you can monetize your channel using other various methods discussed in this article.
You can also combine two or more strategies so as to boost your earnings potential e.g. through selling merch whilst at the same time recommending the equipment that you use for recording your videos (affiliate marketing).
That's the key to creating a multiple income source from your YouTube channel.
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