The Ultimate Guide to Monetising a YouTube Channel.

The Ultimate Guide to Monetising a YouTube Channel.

A collection of highly valuable insights to help YouTube creators monetise their channels effectively.

Getting rewarded for the hard work you put into YouTube feels amazing. Imagine creating quality video content for loyal fans and receiving incentives for that. Isn’t that rewarding?

You may not be PewdiePieor Patricia Bright with millions of subscribers, but that does not stop one in gaining passive income with their YouTube videos. And this is what this guide is about, sharing effective strategies, essentials and answering your frequently asked questions about monetising your YouTube channel. As a bonus, we’ll be giving some insider tips on getting it done right. Not to mention, although these are great points – it is in your hands to make it work, it requires time, effort, and commitment to achieve the results you are after. So let’s dive in….

 

Content

The five essentials to earning money on YouTube

  1. 1. Apply for the YouTube Partner Program
  2. 2. Copyright and Monetisation Policies on YouTube
  3. 3. Traffic generation and watch views
  4. 4. YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  5. 5. Understanding your audience

 

3 bonus strategies to earning money through YouTube

  1. 1. Using ad revenue
  2. 2. Register for an affiliate programme
  3. 3. Paid sponsorships

 

Put your geeks on – Important metrics for creators

7 Important Tips to Maximise Your YouTube Video Monetization

FAQs About Monetising YouTube Channel

 

 

The five essentials to earning money on YouTube.

It’s rewarding to be able to earn money for the valuable content one produces consistently on YouTube. With YouTube being half the internet, drawing in billions of users every day, leveraging this effectively will see you through to earning healthy numbers. There are ground rules that need to be placed to create a strong foundation for your future marketing efforts. Follow these steps.

 

1. Apply for the YouTube Partner Program

Apply for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). YPP application comes with meeting certain requirements. These requirements are critical to your acceptance or rejection. Anybody can create a YouTube channel, but not everyone is eligible or is able to meet their requirements. Our advice would be to take the channel’s preferences and algorithms into consideration when producing videos, to build your appeal to becoming a YouTube partner.

The first requirement is to have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers on your channel. Honestly speaking, this can be achieved easily. Our advice would be to reach out to families, friends, colleagues, or any other communities you belong to – who wouldn’t want to see someone they personally know on screen?! And optimise your videos to improve stickiness online and utilise hashtags and keywords to increase visibility in search results. When you achieve this milestone of securing your 1000th subscriber, you know you can now sit back and watch the numbers rolls quicker – in terms of engagement, followers, comments and so on. One thing we may wish to warn you on is, is to not waste time buying or exchanging channel subscriptions to avoid penalties.

Another requirement is to have gained a minimum 4,000 hours watch time in the last year or past 12 months. Can you do that? Yes, take a step back and think does your content hook or engage viewers senses and interest throughout whilst ensuring what you give is unique, meaningful and entertaining? If any of these factors are missing, look to work on that. Now, going back to the 4,000 watch hours – this can mean different things to different people. Many confuse it with having lots of videos on their channel. This is not the point, instead it’s the quality of the videos – what YouTube is looking for, is the number of views each of your videos receive. There’s a number of hacks to gain these views within a 12-month period. Ensure you are driving a linear viewing experience, whether that’s through playlists or recommended videos, to give the user experience a flow of watching one relevant video to the next, this will make it more likely for them to share or interact with the content. A ripple effect in terms of attracting relevant networks.

Going back to content quality, does the first point of call or the thumbnail and title show an interesting story that piques one interest to wanting to find out more or does it classify well? Whether it’s educational, informational or an entertaining piece, that’s captured effectively into a short, yet impactful thumbnail, title and description? If you nail that, you’ll see a better ratio of lengthier watch hours and unique viewers. 

Bonus tip: It all comes down to understanding the psychology of viewers, to really hook their attention and leave a lasting impression. Whether that’s by forming suspense, excitement or empathy in the beginning to create anticipation to wanting to stay until the end. Perhaps, start with a peak into the pinnacle highlight of the video to attract the viewers. 

One last, but not least important tactic to mention is to incorporate long tail keywords to better serve YouTube’s suggestions for your target audiences. This is SEO for YouTube. You can get pretty good exposure by optimising your videos for target keywords. This is another skill in itself. 

Now all the forementioned advice if applied smartly, should increase your watch time and subscriber number. The next step is YouTube reviewing your application while conducting an audit on your channel. Application review may stretch to 30 days.

2. Copyright and Monetisation Policies on YouTube

Copyrighted video content, materials, or resources is a huge discourse for YouTube monetisation policies. This has come round due to this being a common practice of video creators these days. Most don’t have original content to publish, taking the shortcut to extract existing video content without their permission.

As a result, YouTube is working round the clock to ensure the original creators are fairly rewarded. They want to ensure that those adding unique value to the community are receiving incentives for it. Even if one does receive permission to do so, it is not advisable. Even if you do generate revenue from it, but YouTube may use it against you sometimes down the journey. They may later decide against the monetisation of your content because of that.

Remember that you don't own YouTube. You are only leveraging the platform. If you are using video content with or without permission, YouTube has the ultimate power to decide what to do. Therefore, abide by whatever decision they make because you are flaunting the rules. Otherwise, we advise you to make use of your original content.

3. Traffic Generation and Watch Views

Traffic generation has a direct impact on watch views. Low traffic means fewer watch views. High traffic shows increasing watch views. One unsurprising thing we can’t help but mention is the channel generates the highest longest time spent on site with the lowest bounce rate in comparison to other channel counterparts from Facebook to LinkedIn. It could be because video content is the preferred way to consumer content and attracts viewers to want to investigate and learn about a topic further. This is why any referrals to YouTube content, in comparison to blogs, website landing pages and so on fares well as the traffic is usually higher and of better quality. Hence, we suggest utilising referrals whether that may be through your blog, email list, paid ads of social media pages to generate more traffic. 

The minimum watch view to earn on YouTube is 1,000 views. You get paid between £0.5 to £6 for 1,000 views. This explains that without 1,000 views on your video, it may not monetise. Thus, provide quality content while driving traffic to your channel.

4. YouTube SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

YouTube SEO as mentioned briefly earlier works in the same way asGoogle SEO. SEO is a goldmine for quality organic traffic to your YouTube channel. This increases your chances of increased earnings for each video. You will optimise your video the same way you optimise content for Google SEO.

Keyword analysis from understanding your target audience’s interests, searches that resulted in finding your videos or your competitors, to comparing different search engine popular search terms to give that extra boost in ranking for other channels. A keyword analysis is a very fun process, not only giving you an insight into how people find you, but what their intentions are when trying to find answers, solutions or what the style of video they are in the mood for – this will give you ideas on how to further optimise your content not only from an SEO keyword perspective but from a style, subject matter and material perspective. You can also use transcripts to help take your SEO that one step further. Once you found the right keywords to capitalise on, incorporate these within your descriptions, tags, and title to boost your rankings. 

Bonus tip: Ensure that you are using the primary keywords while mixing them with variant words in your content. Conduct your keyword research using tools like Keyword Everywhere, Keywordtool.io, or SurferSEO keyword extension. Lastly, don't forget to update your playlists as you optimise them.

5. Understanding Your Audience

The major reason you are running a YouTube channel is to attract the right audience. These are the people that will engage your videos and give you insight into how your content is valuable. It is important for your monetisation success. Without an audience, who will watch your videos, see the ads embedded, comment, or like your videos? No one.

However, you must understand their needs. You can deduce this from their comments or questions they ask while commenting or to take it a step further, be savvy and give them interactive polls or feedback. Some questions in the comments may appear repeatedly, and that is a pointer that your audience needs more clarification on a particular area. 

Likewise, check your analytics. This is effective in knowing which discourse or topics your audience interacts with more than the others.

 

Bonus strategies to earning money through YouTube

While it is good to start your earning process on YouTube by enabling the monetization option, it is fair that you explore other options. These other options allow you to gain control over the medium you are exploring. So that you are not only depending on YPP.

1. Using Ad Revenue

It is the first thing that comes to your mind when you are accepted for the YouTube Partner Program. It is a crucial income stream on YouTube. All you have to do is enable ads for videos that meet the advertisers’ needs.Their ads will automatically play while your viewers see your videos. Then, YouTube will pay you a certain percentage of the earnings obtained from the advertisers. You receive the money through your Google AdSense account.

YouTube analytics will help you find where your most lucrative markets are. You can have two of the same videos, with the same amount of audience retention, views and cooperation, however, what determines the money you make is the market. Videos played in different markets will effect the degree of money made per monetised view. Look at your revenue reports to decipher which streams of revenue make the most and use this to inform your video strategy.  

2. Register for an affiliate program

Now, this is the section we’ll really be delving in because after all affiliate marketing is our forte. You’ve obviously seen your favourite YouTubers recommending or giving their authentic, non-biased review of products or services that are highly relevant to you. It tempts you to purchase, and so you follow their unique affiliate link placed in their video description. Really, it’s a simple process, where if you associate yourself with a brand or product, you will earn commissions every time a purchase is made by your audience. One crucial note to make is,be transparent to audiences that you are participating in an affiliate relationship and this is something you have to abide by to avoid landing in troubled waters. 

Signing up for an affiliate program usually is straightforward, find the niche that would appeal to your audience or maybe scout your competitors to give you ideas. Combine this with what would give you the best commissions or returns. You can explore your preferred brand or niche in reputable affiliate networks such as ShareASale, Impact or RevGlue. Once done, share your views, the benefits, pros and cons of the affiliate promotion to your audience and see the earnings coming in. 

Bonus tip: Have you thought about rebillable programs? Recurring affiliate programs may be the key to maximising your earnings – where you get paid every month for recommending products. 

3. Paid sponsorships

Paid sponsorship is the money bag on YouTube. It involves brands paying you to endorse them through your videos. All you need to do is share with your audience the benefits and features of the products. But maximise on the benefits over features. This convinces your audience to patronise their brands. And you get paid, in turn.

Remember to disclose this is a paid partnership and make a mindset shift to seeing this as your normal vlog or video that doesn’t feel like you are advertising. 

Although this may not be easy when you are starting, brands want to partner with individuals who influence their audience's decision and convince them to patronise the brands. It comes with a certain number of subscribers and average views.

However, don't deny yourself the opportunity while growing your channel. Pitch those brands through their social media platforms or their "Contact Us" page on their websites. At least you are on their radar, even if they are not partnered with you yet.

 

Put your geeks on – Important metrics for creators

Ads views, donations, subscriptions – the many ways YouTube creators can earn money comes in the form of a new monetisation metric: Revenue Per Mile (RPM). Those already familiar with YouTube metrics, will have the Cost Per Mile (CPM) ring in their heads. Both possessing different intelligences or knowledge about your capability and returns.

Where CPM measures the cost of every 1k ad impression, before YouTube takes the cut – RPM (more geared towards affiliates or YouTubers who want to dissect the sources of their monthly income) is designed to share the breakdown of revenue stream to help YouTube creatorsstrategise better. RPM is the total revenue earned per 1k views. It also translates the different monetisation areas, decoding videos that are missing out on revenue or the total number of views.

 

7 Important Tips to Maximise Your YouTube Video Monetization

You should not make the mistake of lagging after you have been able to activate your monetisation option. One important thing is to keep doing what brought you to that time. Otherwise, you will lose subscribers, and your channel may die off.

It will help if you keep up with the value you've been putting out. And there are some ways you can do this to maximise your monetisation option.

1.    Be consistent with publishing your video content.
Your audience wants to see you showing up every time. This is not the time to lag.
2.    Stay true to releasing quality video content.
You don't want to appear as an individual after the money because you now have your monetisation option turned on. Your audience will see through that, and they won't trust you again.
3.    Strive to understand the needs of your audience.
It helps you to remain relevant in their mind.
4.    Be an ambassador of products or services you would use.
That is, sponsor products or services that you have used or may use.
5.    Invest in other platforms.
You can use your channel to direct traffic to your blogs or social media pages.
6.    Have an incentive system for your loyal subscribers.
7.    Enhance your SEO game.
It will increase your channel visibility and may cause an increase in subscribers.
 

FAQs About Monetizing YouTube Channel

How many subscribers do you need to get paid?
For you to make money through your YouTube channel, you must have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers. They based this on the requirements of YouTube Partner Programs. This makes you eligible for the program. Then, you can start the application process and set your preferences for monetisation.

How many views do you need to get paid on YouTube?
The number of views required to get paid on YouTube is otherwise known as Cost Per Mile (CPM). It is the reward in pounds given to an average number of views for a video. The amount ranges from £0.5 to £6 for 1000 views. However, it depends on the viewers’ location and your target audience.

Often, a large percentage of channels are paid £0.5 per 100 views. This explains why you need to get active subscribers on your channel. Although, you need to understand that you are not getting paid for the number of views on your video. They rather paid you for the number of views ads get on your channel.

How many views do you need for monetisation?
As a video content creator on YouTube, your channel won't be turned on for monetisation, except you have reached 10,000 lifetime views on your channel. YouTube published that this will make them understand the genuineness of your channel through the information gathered.

Then, YouTube will start bringing you ads corresponding to your channel content. They believe this will help them keep original creators and give revenue to those abiding by their community rules.

Can I watch my YouTube video to get 4000 watch hours?
The first thing to do to get 4000 watch hours to make your video public. You can make a live stream and enlist it or delete a video six months after publishing it. Make it public and available in the next 365 days to make it count.

As a result, you can’t set your videos to private and watch them yourself. YouTube places preference on public videos over private ones because you can only view your videos in private mode.

Do YouTubers get paid for video likes?
There is no absolute correlation between your YouTube earnings and video likes. Most of your YouTube income comes from the number of views ads get on your channels. It depends on the number of clicks the ads received through your channel.

Do YouTubers get paid for skipped ads?
You will only earn money from ads as a YouTuber provided your viewers watch the ad on the video for about thirty seconds. If your viewers skipped the ads before the thirty seconds are up, you would not get paid for the ad. The advertiser will not pay any money, YouTube will not earn any money, and you will not get paid in return.

Can you monetise your first YouTube video?
First, you don't need to have one million subscribers before you can monetise your YouTube channel. Your earnings are not dependent on the number of subscribers and the video views. They depend solely on the community you are creating and your engagement system. This implies that your first video may be monetised and maybe otherwise. There is no absolute answer to this.

What to do if my YouTube Partner Program application is rejected?
Your application was rejected because they believe you do not follow some guidelines while posting your videos. Although, they won't give you a specific reason. You are left to figure out what causes your rejection.

But here is the good news. You can apply 30 days again after your rejection. However, we advise you to change your channel and videos before you reapply for YPP again. Otherwise, you will keep getting rejected, and you may be frustrated. You will find advice on what to do to your YouTube videos after receiving a rejection mail here.

 

Conclusion

They should reward original content creators for the values they impact in the community. That is why YouTube creates the monetisation system. There are different ways to earn enough through your YouTube channel. But if you are considering the monetisation program, you need to meet some requirements.
You need to build an audience of at least 1,000 subscribers and have 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months. This requires some time to achieve, but it is worthwhile. It may look impossible, but consistent quality content makes it more possible. With this, you can monetise your YouTube channels alongside other means.
We hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. If you want to get excel as an affiliate, expert advice on anything affiliate marketing, start by subscribing to our newsletter. 

 

Are you a YouTube creator? Look to monetise your channel?

RevGlue provides a creative, custom set of tools to help new and upcoming, ambitious YT creators save time and money whilst reaching their highest commission earning potential. So go on and create a free account on RevGlue.com today. 

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