You can make a lot of money on YouTube by not only delivering good value to your audience through your videos, but by also delivering good value through merch you sell. Merchandise doesn’t have to only be t-shirts, mugs, and iPhone cases, though. In this video we explain how you should think about making money on YouTube as well as how to integrate merch and sales into your videos so you can earn the money that’s necessary to make your content sustainable. Today I’m joined by Melissa from Clean My Space to talk about this topic.

On Clean My Space we make YouTube videos all about cleaning, de-cluttering, and organizing. Recently, we put a book out in March, and we also have a wonderful line of premium microfiber cleaning cloths. We also have a website. We’re busy people. And a cleaning company– I almost forgot to say that. And everything is pretty much called Clean My Space.

So one of the things you guys hear me talking about a lot around here is AdSense is great, you know. We love it. We take it. But there is plenty of opportunity beyond AdSense to monetize your audience. CleanMy Space mentioned products, services and courses.

Melissa: We had been making videos for years and one of the comments that we had always gotten– because we always use microfiber cloths in the videos– was, where do you get your microfiber cloths from? It’s something which is consistently in your videos, and we would love to know, and love to have, the same microfiber cloths that Melissa Maker uses.

So light bulb above the head– and that kind of led to us starting to talk about maybe producing our own line of microfiber cloths or figuring out a way to fill that need because it was something which was a pretty overwhelming amount of comments that we were getting through our videos. People would ask us, where are you getting these cloths? Or what kind of cloths do you really like? And I was just sort of using what I could find. It wasn’t necessarily that I thought they were amazing. It’s just what was available, and that was business problem number one.

And then number two was it was like leaving money on the table every time where people kept saying, where are you getting this great thing from? And we weren’t able to capitalize on that, and that’s why we decided to start our own line. It was those two reasons.

1. Listen to your audience

So first thing you guys can do is listen to your audience. Like a lot of times, they will just tell you what they want. In fact, that’s exactly what happened here on Video Creators. You guys were like, “Tim. You’re solving a problem for your audience that they have”.

And you’ve got some really easy ways to do this for your audience. Just simply ask– “hey, what problems are you guys trying to solve? What issues– or what are your frustrations that you’re facing?” Things that related to the audience you’re reaching in the niche that you’re making videos at.And just listen to the comments. People will just tell you.

Create a good product/service

Tim: So you heard from your audience, and you decided to go out. And  then what was next step in the upping that cloth, or the products, or whatever you’re going to do next?

Melissa: Well, I want to also say that we weren’t just excited about starting this cloth business for the sake of starting a cloth business, and getting the cheapest cloths, and just seeing if we’d make money. It was so important to us to find the best cloths. And in doing that, we sourced over 100 samples. And we tested them. I told you earlier I have a cleaning company. I’ve had it for 11 years now, so I know a thing or two about cleaning, and cloths, and what’s needed.

It was a lot of work. It wasn’t just like, oh, here’s a great manufacturer. I’m just going to sell these and slap our name on it. So much thought, effort, dedication went into it, and the audience– it’s apparent to them when they actually get the cloths. People time and again will give us the most incredible feedback about the cloths, and they love them. And that’s– when we put that line out, we were so proud of it.

And the thing that I really like about that is that then when you go to sell it, you are proud to sell it.

It’s not like you’re like, guys, hey. If you want to give me some money, I’ve got these cloths, or I’ve got this ebook. You’re like, this is going to change your life. You should totally get it. And you sell totally differently because you actually believe in what you’re selling. You know it has the potential to impact people, change their lives, because you’ve seen it do it time and time again, maybe even in your own life.

Credibility is important

And we also made sure that we gave samples of our cloths to family and friends and people who we knew were willing to be honest with us just because we wanted feedback, and we wanted to know how the product was performing, and if there were any tweaks or anything that we needed to fix. And the only feedback we got was, when can I get more? So we knew we had something really good. But that testing is really important to make sure that you know emphatically that you’re putting out an amazing product and that people are going to love it. So you ask honest people who you trust, and they’ll give you feedback. But you’ve got to give them the product for free.

Tim:  Before I launch a video course, I usually send about 50 people through the course before I launch it to you guys. And I give it to them for free in exchange for them giving me feedback.

And here’s the gaps in the content. Or this part was confusing. Or this quiz was– whatever, you know. And just iron out all the kinks so that when you guys pay for something, I feel good about the value exchange that we’re making together.

How to sell the product/service

So after you’ve come up with your product, how do you guys then sell it? How do you integrate it, and make it a part of your content and part of your videos in a natural way?

That actually happened somewhat organically as well, simply because we were doing videos that had cloths featured in them before. Because we do cleaning videos. So instead of just any old random cloth, it became a rule. Well, we went through first and we gave away every cloth in our house, and we replaced everything just with our cloths. And one of the other things that we did was we made the cloth a very unique color: purple, which is the color of Clean My Space. So therefore, in a very subtle way whether or not you could see the label, or the tag, or anything like that, you would see the purple cloth. And we were trying to make it where the purple cloth became something which was incorporated into every video.

We have four different types of cloths, and they’re used for different purposes around the home. So whenever we’re cleaning a certain area, we’ll use that particular cloth. I’ll always flag, oh, and when I’m cleaning the TV, I’m using this flat weave microfiber cloth. We always make sure we get a nice product shot of our label, which is my last name. We always make sure that that’s very apparent in the video. We put links in the description box. Every now and then, we’ll call it out too. And we notice. I mean, whenever we show a cloth on Saturdays when we launch videos, boom. We get a spike in sales. When we mention the cloth, we get like a double spike in sales.

And then the other thing that’s been great is just the use of hashtags on different social media platforms. One thing that we are trying to do is get reviews up on our website, which I think will be really helpful– and testimonials just from other people.

But the feedback that we’ve been getting, people posting photos of their cloths on social media, and then their friends becoming interested Facebook stuff. We recently had a sale that did really well. That was our first sale, so it was really exciting. But there have been a lot of different ways that we’ve been promoting the cloths. The audience sees them. They like them.

Trust

And I would say the other really important thing is just establishing trust with your audience. And the reason why they know that they can count on our cloths being amazing is because they know how much research went into them. And to prove this point, we have not had one set returned.

And we had a 100% money back guarantee.

You guys want to learn how to grow your YouTube audiences, and so I make training available that’s like the same type of things you’re getting for free in a video like this.

But then you go through my course. I’ll give you guys a perfect example. “Turn YouTube into Your Career”– we’re going to teach you how to make money on YouTube and go through the product development, the sales funnels, and all that stuff, so you can turn YouTube into a full-time income for you and your family.

So great, guys. I really want to hear from you guys in the comments below about how you integrate these things into your content. And one, why do people watch your content? And if you have ideas– maybe for products that you think would integrate really well into your channel– it’s a great way to monetize your audience.

– Check out Clean My Space
– Turn YouTube into your Career