Video Creators Agency

The 6 Basic Revenue Streams of Top YouTubers

Tim Schmoyer

It’s important that you make money from your YouTube channel, because as it grows, it will demand more and more from you. Even to the point where it’s your full time job, your full time income, and you will then need to start hiring a team to join you in serving that audience. Today, I’m going to talk with you about the six most common revenue streams that YouTubers utilized and monetize their audience, and talk about how you can use them to do the same.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that this is not an exclusive list by any means. I have nine revenue streams total currently.

1. Adsense

The first is one you’re probably familiar with, and that is AdSense.

You create the video, you upload it to YouTube, you enable monetization, which means you’re giving YouTube permission to run ads, and display ads around your YouTube video. And, if someone engages an ad in some way, then you get a percentage of the revenue that came from the advertiser who paid for that engagement. And YouTube takes a cut as well. And if you’re using copyrighted music or anything like that, or an MCN, there’s multiple ways it can be split. But that’s one way of making money.

Unfortunately, most creators stop right there when they think about monetizing their audience. And the problem with that, is that, one, you don’t control ad revenue on your channel. You can get a copyright strike, you can get community guidelines strike, you can get monetization disabled on a really popular video, or on your channel as a whole. And you don’t control any of that. So I don’t really like it when someone else controls that much of my income.

And the second thing, is that you’re only going to make about $1 to $2 maybe $2.50, on every 1,000 views you get on your YouTube channel on average. That can be great money if you’re getting millions, and millions, and millions of views every month. But, even if you are, like here on this channel, I often get $300 for the same 1,000 views instead of $2. There are several ways that I do this, and you can do them, too.

2. Product Sales

Which leads into our second most common way that YouTubers monetize their audience, and that is directly through product sales. We’ve talked about this many times in the past, but what it comes down to, is that you need to know who your channel is targeting, what audience you are trying to gather around your content.

You need to know, also, secondly, what value you are trying to provide to that audience. And then you create a product that takes what your channel is doing but does it to the next level. You can offer this much value on your channel, but you can offer this much of that same value through a different means.

So here on this channel it comes in the form– one of the ways, many ways actually– but one of them is the form of my ebook, 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel. Each day in that book contains a teaching, something that you need to know. It contains action steps and tasks that you’re going to do on your channel right then. And then it also contains further resources if you really want to dig into that topic that you are learning for that day.

And it all is designed about optimizing your channel so that your channel starts converting viewers into subscribers. And then converting those subscribers into an engaged, passionate community around your content.

And every time I do that, guys, I usually convert about 1% of my audience into a sale. Which means that I just made $300 off of 1,000 views as a $30 book instead of $2. You guys can do the same thing, even if you’re not an information, training based channel, expert related channel like I am. And maybe you consider yourself more of an entertainment channel. People sell entertainment– that’s like a multibillion dollar industry in Hollywood, you can do the same.

3. Crowd Funding

Number three is crowd funding. And the most popular way to do this seems to be through patreon.com. I have an account, a page, over at Patreon where people can pay either $3 a month or $9 a month to support this channel and the work that I’m doing to serve you guys.

And as a thank you, you get different perks, which includes other news stories I don’t usually talk about here. It includes a monthly live hangout with me, just a private hangout with a group of us. It’s really a lot of fun, I love those people. I actually have a whole playlist that goes into more detail about how to generate a full time income just off of Patreon alone. Some of the top perks you should be offering, a lot of the other things, so check out the website for some ideas.

4. Brand Deals

Number four is brand deals. And this is when a sponsor, or a brand, comes to you and says, “we would love to pay you, Tim, to talk about our product, or our service, or whatever, in one of your videos”. And recommend it, tell people what you love about it. And help us gain exposure, awareness. We want some of the credibility that you have with your audience to transfer to us and to our brand. So there’s a lot of things people are paying for, that brands are paying for, when they come to you doing a sponsored brand deal.

If you were to get started with brand deals, this video is not sponsored by them, but here is a link  to a place called Famebit where you can browse their marketplace of sponsors and just pick the one that works best for you and your channel and get paid very quickly. You do you need a minimum of 5,000 subscribers to do that. So go check that out.

I also have a full playlist that goes into far more detail about how to pitch yourself to brands, and how to make money from those opportunities, and how to write proposals, and all that type of stuff.

5. Affiliates

Number five is affiliates. So you might not be sponsored by the brand, but often you can sign up for an affiliate agreement, or a referral agreement with them, where they pay you a small commission for every sale that you generate. And so you don’t have to have an official arrangement with the brand but you can still do that, talk about the products and services that you would otherwise want to talk about anyway. And then just send your audience to go click the link in the description to learn more about it. It sends a tracking link to the website and then if you do lead to a sale, then they’ll pay you.

Just make sure that if you are going to do brand deals or affiliates in your videos, that you’re giving full disclosure about your relationship with the advertiser or the sponsor in the video, in the description, and also, make sure you check the little box under the advanced tab of your video saying that your video contains a paid product placement.

6. Live Events

And number six, live events. Usually these are for creators who have a pretty sizable audience and they’re going to set up a show in a certain town, promote it, and get all these people to come hang out with them, meet them, have ticket sales. And so that’s becoming more and more of a thing.

I’d love to hear from you guys in the comments below about what revenue streams you implement on your channel and why. And any tips you have for other creators who are thinking about implementing that revenue stream on their channel as well. And if this is your first time here, I’d love to have you subscribe, because every week we help you guys with content just like this and know how to grow your channel and your audience.

Here are some more links on the information and resources discussed:

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