If you want to make money on your YouTube channel, there’s a lot of other ways to monetize your views and subscribers beyond Adsense. Here’s 8 ways I make money on YouTube from the audience I’m building here that let me earn a full-time income when I had only a few thousand YouTube subscribers.

Everyone wants to know, how do you make more money on YouTube. Well, today I want to share with you guys eight ways that I make money off of my YouTube, plus another two ways that I have coming up, and share with you guys how I was able to earn a full time income for my YouTube channel after only having a few thousand subscribers. That’s coming up.

Katherine Skipper wrote and asked this. “Can you direct me to any videos you made on how to understand in simple terms how you make money on my YouTube channel? For instance, do you get paid more if you get likes, shares, and favorites on your videos? I love your videos.”

Great question. Let me answer that specifically in just a second. First of all, I want to tell you guys that I think the smartest way to grow a YouTube channel in order to make money is to actually have a business model wrapped around it. Now, that doesn’t make sense for everyone, and 100% of the time. You know, there’s different cases where just pure AdSense that makes sense.

But I think a lot of people who are pursuing kind of the traditional audience development method of growing an audience, and subscribers, and getting viewers and fans here on YouTube on their channel, and then monetizing that, I think they’re usually kind of narrow focused, and only thinking about AdSense revenue. And I’ve already shared with you guys a little bit in a previous video about how you can make 120 times more money from the exact same number of views here on YouTube, and I’ll put a link to that in the description below if you want to go check that out.

But that’s really only just one way of doing it. I want to share with you guys eight ways I make money. And the first one is AdSense. And that is just when YouTube creators get a revenue split with Google when ads are displayed on their video content, and a user or a viewer interacts with that ad in some way, or watches it fully.

Adsense

So, no, you do not get paid or get any money for likes, for favorites, for subscribers even. You don’t even get paid for views necessarily. You only get paid when a viewer engages with an ad. So they’ve clicked on it to go learn more, or they watch the full ad in its entirety, or they watch it for longer than 30 seconds if it’s a clickable ad. Or maybe there’s a display ad somewhere around the video on the page and they clicked on that.

That’s the only time you get paid, because that’s when the advertiser pays YouTube. And then YouTube then splits that revenue with the creator, usually on a 55/45 revenue split, 55 of it going to the creator, 45% of it going to YouTube.

Products

But let me quickly give you guys a few other ideas for how I make money from this YouTube channel. Number 2, beyond AdSense, is I also have product sales. I have my ebook, “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel.” It just helps you guys in 30 days know how to grow your channel to be as highly subscribable as possible.

I have video courses on how to grow from 0 to 10,000 subscribers in 12 months using the exact methods I use here at Video Creators to do that exact same thing. I have other courses. They’re all linked up down there if you want. But I sell products directly. And I don’t pitch them in every video, but I do include them when it makes sense, kind of like I just did now.

Consulting

Number 3, kind of going along with that, is consulting. Various creators and small businesses pay me to evaluate their YouTube channels for them, to give them a review, to help them learn how to improve it. Sometimes just only do a one-off call, just one hour together. That’s all it takes sometimes, over the course of like six months and I work with them on an ongoing basis. And if that’s something you’re interested in, link in the description below.

Brand Deals

Number 4, I also do brand deals here. Maybe you guys have seen me talk about sites like FameBits, and VideoBlocks. And there’s others that are coming up here to where these companies pay me to talk about them, and their products and services, as a part of my videos.

Speaking Opportunities

Number 5, there are speaking opportunities that I get to do in various states, and even places around the world, where they hire me to come speak at their events, or to do a training for their company, or for their business. Come work with creators at their conference, or something like that.

License Content

Number 6 is that I also license some of my video content. Not from this channel normally, but from my family’s vlogging channel we have clips of cute kids doing their first steps, and being born, and things like that. And there’s brands out there who want to take that content and make it a part of their commercials. And so I license that content to them. And they pay me a fee in order to use my video clips in their commercials and for their promotional campaigns.

Affiliate Marketing

Number 7 is affiliate marketing. Sometimes in these videos I talk about different products or gear. I’m not getting paid necessarily from the brand to talk about them. But like if I’m reviewing the GoPro, like I did a few weeks ago, and reviewing that for vlogging, I put a link to it the description of the video where you guys can go check out the GoPro if it’s something you’re interested in purchasing. And if you use my link and buy that product that I’m talking about, then I usually get a percentage of the sales back. So I’m affiliates with B&H Photo, with Amazon, and a lot of other stuff.

Patreon

And at number 8 is I do have a page at Patreon.com/VideoCreators where a few of you guys are supporting me and Video Creators on a monthly basis to kind of help make this sustainable, in exchange for some cool perks that I give you guys and some cool hangouts that we do privately, just with you guys and me once a month, and some other stuff. So, again, that link is down there below.

Two New Ideas

And then two ideas that I have that I’m working on coming up sometime here in the future is, one, a paid membership site, were you guys who want more direct access to me can get that, and a lot of great training materials, and other perks and things. A paid members monthly fee, even a membership site, that is going to be really awesome, really. We’re going to be launching that for you guys.

And then also doing some live events with you guys, whether you fly out here or I come to you. I haven’t quite figured all that out. But doing events and selling access to that as tickets would be another revenue stream that I’m working on.

So that’s how I do it guys. And if you guys really get creative, I know a lot of you guys can think of a lot of really creative ways of how to earn a living off of your YouTube channel, doing what you love and spreading a message that changes their lives, and really serving other people well, and making that sustainable from the money that you’re earning from it.

So I’d love to hear from you guys in the comments below. What other ideas do you have? I know a lot of people sell merchandise, which is product sales I guess. That goes back to that. But there’s a lot of other ideas. Share them in the comments below. And if you want some other ideas, go read what other ideas people are sharing down there. I know you will learn a lot, and they’ll really help you guys out.

Now, if this is your first time here at Video Creators, I would love to have you subscribe, because every Thursday we do YouTube Q&A just like this to help you guys out with your YouTube channels, and your audiences, and making money on it, as is the case today. On Tuesday we take a look at all the updates happening to this platform on YouTube to talk about what it means for us as creators. On Wednesdays I give you guys some YouTube tips, ideas, suggestions, and advice.

And guys, I do all this, as many of you know, because I really believe that a lot of you guys have messages that need to spread, and the world needs to hear, and I’m going to do everything I can to help you guys grow your YouTube channels and your audiences so that the people out there who need to hear your message and what you’re talking about can simply and easily find you, hear your message, and hopefully have their lives be changed as a result. So thank you for letting me be a part of that.