You may be wondering how to monetize your YouTube videos as a solo entrepreneur. How can you grow your business and therefore your income with your YouTube channel?
If you are a coach, consultant, service provider, etc., having a YouTube channel is a great way to grow your community with videos that will work for you day and night. I remind you that YouTube is also a search engine, not just a place to see videos. But it’s additionally a great way to make money. In this video or this article, I will share 8 ways to monetize your YouTube videos.
You want your time spent creating YouTube videos to be rewarded and help you grow your business. I agree with you and this is 100% possible.
I’m Lili from lilitanis.com and I started making money with my French YouTube channel after about 3 months. Which means you don’t necessarily need to have a big audience to make money. You just need to have a qualified audience, which means the people who have subscribed or who watch your videos are mostly part of your target audience.
I will share 8 methods to monetize your YouTube channel.
1. Ads on your YouTube videos
This is a well-known method on YouTube. How does it work? Advertisers pay YouTube to have their ads placed on YouTube videos that have the target they are looking for. As a content creator, as a YouTuber, you will get a commission on every ad placed on your videos. And the more time your audience has spent on watching those ads, the more interesting your commission should be.
Now, for this you need to be part of the YouTube partner program. That means you must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months.
How much can you earn? It depends on the channels. For my part, I have earned an average of 2 dollars for 1,000 views so far. Some earn less, some more. It is quite random.
2. Selling info products
Digital products – or info products – are mostly educational materials produced in digital format and sold online. It can be an E-book, or a video course for example. You can talk about it in your YouTube video and put it as a call to action. For example, you can tell them: ”to go further on these topics, you can get my online training xy”.
You will of course put the link in the description of your YouTube video. You can also put it in a comment below your video.
Finally, if you are part of the YouTube partner program and therefore have more than 1,000 subscribers, you can also put in a clickable link to a website directly in your video.
3. Affiliation
Affiliation is simply recommending someone else’s products or services. For example, if you have taken an online training course that you liked a lot, and the creator of this course offers for you to be an affiliate and with that offers you a commission on each sale of his course made thanks to you, it is a good way to earn money.
You can talk about it in your videos or make a specific video about what this training has brought you and put the link in the description.
It can also be affiliation with some kind of product. For example, you can create an affiliate account with Amazon.
When I talked about microphones in one of my videos, I added affiliate links to those products in the description. So, I get a small commission for each sale of a microphone made through this link.
Most software also has an affiliate system in place. You can put an affiliate link to the software you use that can help your audience in the description of all your videos. This is a good way to make money without overdoing it.
4. Selling small products
If you want to offer products such as mugs, tee-shirts, or bags, with your brand, the name of your channel or with motivating or funny phrases, for example you can do that by using a site like Teespring. You can create your small online store easily. And you don’t need to produce your products in advance, you can do it on demand. So, it can be a passive source of income if it’s well organized.
And if your channel reaches 10,000 subscribers, you can add a kind of banner under your videos promoting these products.
5. Partnerships
Via my French YouTube channel, I’m contacted more and more by companies to make videos about products such as video hardware or software. In exchange, these companies wanted to offer me the product. But these companies can also pay you to do a video. Up to now, I have refused those offers because I wasn’t really interested. But if you like the product, and you think it can help your audience, then it can be a good way to mix business with pleasure.
6. Asking for donations
You can use a site like Tipee or Patreon. You ask your audience to give you money to encourage you to keep creating all this free content. At the same time, you can create a community and share exclusive content for those who support you.
For example, the ‘’This Might Get’’ channel has created a Patreon account and to date has about 1,690 people paying between $5 and $500 per month. This means that even though the 1,690 people pay only $5, the creators of This Might Get receive a minimum of $8,450 monthly.
7. Getting leads
“Money is in the list.” Your YouTube channel should help you increase your number of leads, meaning the number of contacts who may become prospects and then customers.
It is therefore absolutely necessary to create a gift, called a lead magnet, which will be offered in exchange for an email. This lead magnet must be available in the link of your YouTube banner and also in the description of your videos.
After receiving the lead magnet, you must of course stay in contact with these people. So you need to think about a sales funnel to go from the lead to the prospect and then to the customer.
You will create emails that will be sent automatically to share more value, so they get to know you more and more, and start getting interested in your offers.
8. Selling your own services or coaching sessions
Most of the clients I work with are coaches or consultants. In each script they write, I invite them to add one or more calls to action. As a coach, you can offer them, for example a free call, which is also called a discovery session. I have several requests for discovery sessions every week thanks to my French channel and therefore, lots of new clients that I am happy to coach.
To summarize, we talked about 8 ways to monetize your YouTube channel.
- Ads
- Selling info products
- Affiliation
- Selling small products (Merch)
- Partnerships
- Donations
- Getting leads
- Selling your services or coaching sessions
If you want to go further and make your channel help you reach your financial goals, book a call with me !
Au revoir !
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