10 Ways to Make Money on YouTube

Are you interested in learning how to make money online by partnering with a popular online company like YouTube? Then below are top ten legitimate ways to make money online with YouTube.

YouTube attracts more than 1 billion users a month. That’s a huge audience. So, if you want to make money online, one of the ways to achieve that dream is to become more active on YouTube. In case you are wondering how possible it is to make money on YouTube, this explanation should enlighten you:

Just as you can monetize the content on a blog or website, you can monetize YouTube videos using the same strategies; Adsense, affiliate marketing, and so on. And the same requirement applies, you need huge traffic. Just as you need huge traffic to make a decent income from the content on your blog or website, you need huge traffic to profit well from your YouTube videos. You get it now?

Now, let’s look at 10 ways you can make money from YouTube.

1. Google Adsense

Having ads displayed before or during your videos is the most obvious way to make money on YouTube. To have these ads running in your videos, all you have to do is sign up for Google Adsense.

Once you set up your Adsense account, you can begin displaying ads in your own YouTube videos. One major benefit of this option is that you don’t have to search for advertisers on your own, since Google handles all of that. However, not everyone is accepted to become a YouTube partner.

2. Affiliate links

Another great way to monetize your YouTube videos is to add affiliate links within the text description of the video. This strategy works best if your video is about the same product you’re promoting as an affiliate.

You get a commission each time a viewer sees the affiliate links, visits the URL, and makes a purchase. It’s that simple. The more views your videos attract, the more money you will make, since more people will buy through your affiliate links.

3. Selling private ads

You can decide to ignore Google Adsense and sell ads directly to advertisers instead. However, you must bear in mind that you will need to search for advertisers yourself. Private ads typically fetch more money per view than Google Adsense ads. Whereas you can sell private ads for as much as $50 per 1000 views, Adsense ads typically pay around $10 per 1000 views.

However, to attract big advertisers, your videos must consistently attract tens of thousands; or even hundreds of thousands of views.

4. Sell links

If you are not into affiliate marketing, then you can sell links within your video descriptions. That is, you get paid for inserting links to other people’s websites or blogs.

However, you must be very careful with this method if you have a YouTube channel with an existing subscriber base. If you lease your description field to advertisers who link to unrelated content or trash, you may damage your channel’s reputation and lose your subscribers. If you accept relevant ads by reputable advertisers, then your audience won’t have a problem with that.

5. YouTube Rentals

This is another cool video monetization option, but at the moment it’s for U.S. based users only. The option enables users to produce “premium” videos and sell access to those videos for any fee they choose.

This option is suitable for anyone who has built a loyal audience and a reputation for publishing helpful and relevant videos. So, “expert guides” can be monetized with this option.

6. Sell access to unlisted videos

If you are not based in the U.S., an alternative way to charge for access to your videos is to publish them as unlisted videos, which means they will not show up in your channel or search results. You can then sell them through another medium such as another video or a blog post.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to host those videos on YouTube at all, then host them on Amazon S3.

7. Paid reviews

You can also make money from YouTube by selling the production of an entire video that reviews an advertiser’s product or showcases their benefits. This is similar to the “paid review” or “sponsored post” model that bloggers offer for written reviews.

While this method can be very lucrative, you need to be very careful if you have a channel with many subscribers. Producing a “salesy” video that gives no value to the viewer can affect your reputation negatively and make you lose subscribers.

8. Promote your own products or services

If you run a business that offers certain products or services, you can attract more customers by creating a video that promotes those offers and uploading it on YouTube. If you have already built a reputation for helpful videos, injecting such a video will not upset your subscribers, and you will even get more purchases.

9. Review affiliate products

While placing affiliate links within your video description (as described above) is a good way to make money from other people’s products or services, you can make even more money by dedicating a whole videos to promoting affiliate products.

A good way to boost your earnings with this method is to create a video of you using the product and the results you got.

10. Sell the channel

Just like a blogger can decide to sell his blog after growing it, you too can decide to sell your YouTube channel provided you already have a large subscriber base or generate huge search engine traffic, and the production of the channel isn’t tied to your personality.

Channels that attract search engine traffic are more valuable than those attracting visits only from subscribers.

How to Start a Social Media Marketing Company

By Emmanuel Akpan

Do you understand the ins and outs of digital marketing? Do you know how to create content that goes viral on social media and generate traffic? Are you interested in starting a social media marketing company? Do you need a sample social media marketing business plan template?

If you answered YES to the questions above, then I advice you read on.

Most businesses are now aware that social media could be a very effective tool for lead generation and increasing brand awareness. Ironically, only few businesses know how to use social media the right way. And this is because many business owners and executives are still holding fast to marketing models that have long lost their effectiveness, and they have yet to understand the social media phenomenon and how to use it for marketing.

But the truth is, most business owners and managers will jump at any idea that promises to grow their businesses. And since social media makes the same promise many times over, it is now being widely used as a tool for business growth.

 

The whole situation creates an ideal opportunity for those who really understand social media to offer social media marketing services to these organizations and businesses.

If you pride yourself on having a deep understanding of social media and how it works, and how you can use it to help businesses attract customers and increase their profits, then starting a social media marketing company might be the best option to consider.

The good thing about starting a social media marketing company is that it doesn’t really have to be a “company,” as you can run it from the comfort of your home. And you need very little budget to start the business.

Do you think you have what it takes to start a social media marketing company? Would you like to give it a shot? If you just answered yes, then read on to learn the guidelines for starting and running a successful social media marketing company.

1. Know what it entails

First of all, you must bear in mind that running social media campaigns for businesses is a lot of work. For each client, you will be required to maintain a constant presence with a consistent voice on multiple social media platforms. You will also be required to constantly monitor the social web for feedback about the organization or business, their competitors, and the whole industry. So, you need to be sure you really want to do this.

2. Getting started

One of the requirements of starting a social media marketing business is to have a strong social media presence yourself before you begin offering social media marketing to organizations and business. This is necessary for certain reasons.

First, it will help you convince clients that you can handle their social media marketing campaigns (remember the saying, “You can’t give what you don’t have.”) Second, you will use your own social media presence as a platform to build your business.

Because all you need is a computer and reliable internet connection, social media marketing is an ideal home-based business. And you can run your business from any location, even when you are away from your home.

3. Marketing your business

When it comes to marketing your social media marketing company, there are two options: the direct approach and the indirect approach. Both approaches have their place and are essential to the growth of your business.

One of the direct marketing approaches that can work well for your business is cold-calling businesses or organizations that might need your services, explaining how your services can help them, and encouraging them to give you a trial.

Before making a call, you will need to conduct research as to whether the business or organization had an active social media presence. If they don’t have a strong presence, you can focus your conversation on how you can help them establish an effective and discoverable presence. But if they already have a strong social media presence, then you should focus instead on how they can expand and improve it.

Indirect marketing entails marketing your business without directly contacting potential clients. This could involve setting up and maintaining a blog that discusses social media marketing and how businesses can make the most from it, contributing guest posts to high traffic sites visited by your potential clients, and participating actively on social media forums and online communities.

These activities will help you increase awareness of your business and increase the value of your brand. With time, you will be recognized as an authority in social media marketing, and this alone will attract clients to your business.

A note of caution

Like other aspects of online marketing, social media marketing is a rapidly changing business. The changes in the social media world can be so quick that staying abreast of the latest trends could be difficult. Strategies that worked magically last year may have lost all their significance this year.

In conclusion, I want you to know that even though social media is a fairly new industry, it creates huge opportunities for social media marketers. Starting a social media company could be very lucrative, yet it can be started on a little budget.

By Emmanuel Akpan