How To Make Money On YouTube (With A Small Channel)

what's up this is Simon and in this video I'm going to share with you exactly how much money I made on YouTube from zero to four thousand subscribers and also exactly how I did that so you can replicate what I did and get similar results if you're subscribed to me for some time already you know that I like to share business tips and strategies that have worked well for me so that you can benefit from it and personally I love to see these videos on YouTube where people share exactly how much they make because it shows me what's possible and it also inspires and motivates me to get there myself and hopefully this is what this video will do for you as well and if it does feel free to click the like button below this video at any time I want to show you that you don't need hundreds of thousands of subscribers to make some money on YouTube I try to be as transparent as possible so after watching this video you'll know exactly what you can expect if you decide to start your own YouTube channel and use the strategies that I share in this video that being said if this is the first time you watch one of my videos welcome to my channel on this channel you'll get the best tutorials tips and tools to grow your own online business so consider subscribing for more videos just like this one all right so you might know that there are multiple ways to make money on YouTube the most common one is by enabling monetization on your YouTube channel so that you can earn from the ads that YouTube shows on your videos this is called YouTube ad revenue for many channels though that's only a small percentage of their overall revenue and it's the same for my channel so from 0 to 4,000 subscribers I've made about 630 dollars from YouTube ad revenue so far I created my youtube channel in the beginning of 2018 but only started to earn from YouTube ad revenue about one year later that's because in order for you to apply for the YouTube Partner Program so that you can enable monetization on your channel you need a thousand subscribers and four thousand hours of watch time now I haven't been focusing really on YouTube in the past year so it took me 10 months to get to these 1000 subscribers at the time I got 1000 subscribers I had published 14 videos so once I've hit that mark I applied for the YouTube Partner Program it took a couple of weeks until they accepted me and after this I could on ads on my videos and earn from YouTube ad revenue as you can see I didn't earn very much in the beginning and it's still not very much compared to the second income stream that I'll talk about in a moment however once the video is uploaded all the work is basically done and if you continue to get traffic from search or from YouTube recommending your videos you continue to earn also from YouTube ad revenue which makes this a very nice passive income stream to have you can also see that since March the YouTube ad revenue almost doubled every single month as I've uploaded more videos to my channel so if you keep uploading videos and get more views each day these numbers can really add up to a full time income just from YouTube ad revenue what I also want to mention is that apart from reading a thousand subscribers to be able to apply for the YouTube Partner Program how much your earn from YouTube ad revenue has nothing to do with how many subscribers you have actually what counts is how many views your videos are actually getting because only when people actually click and watch your videos YouTube can show ads to your viewers what also has a big impact on how much you earn is the content of your video not every video earns the same amount per thousand views the metric cost per a thousand views is called CPM cost per mil and when you look at my videos you see that some of them make over 30 dollars and others make less than ten dollars per thousand views the reason some videos make more money than others is because people who watch these videos are more likely to buy something from advertising that again means that YouTube can charge more for ads on that particular video which means that YouTube makes more money for each view this video gets the video on my channel with the highest CPM is the one where I explain how to create a landing page the people who watch that video are interested in creating a landing page and they most likely won't get around to pay for a tool that helps them to create that landing page so that's perfect for all the advertisers that want to advertise their tool or service to the people who watch YouTube videos that's why compared to other videos this video it's very expensive to advertise on the cost per a thousand views for all of my videos on average is about 13 dollars right now and compared to most other YouTube channels that's actually quite high and the reason is again because people who watch videos about online business are a lot more likely to buy something from advertising than people who like for example prank videos or gaming videos alright so let's look at my second income stream from YouTube which is affiliate marketing from zero to four thousand subscribers I've made around seven thousand dollars with affiliate marketing obviously that's a lot more than what I've made with YouTube ad revenue if you've never heard about affiliate marketing here's how it works in a nutshell many companies have so-called affiliate programs that allow people to promote products of that company in exchange for a commission how it usually works is that you get a special link that you can put in the description of your videos and then when somebody clicks on your link and get to the home page of that company or to the product page of that company and then he buy something you'll get a commission so for example if you go to the description of my videos you'll see a list of tools and services that I'm using for my business most of these links are affiliate links these are all products and services that I'm using and that I'm happy with some recommending them to my audience and all of these links have a so called cookie attached to them which means that if somebody clicks on one of these links and doesn't end up buying something it doesn't mean that I won't make a commission from that click what that click did is install a cookie to the browser of the person who clicked on that link and if the person decides to come back to the website at some point and buy something I will still get a commission if the cookie is still valid for example one of my links goes to the website of Bluehost which is a very popular hosting service now the coca duration of that link is 90 days for Bluehost so that person who clicks on that link comes back within 90 days and signs up for Bluehost I will get a commission of $100 most people who make money on YouTube with affiliate marketing do it with the Amazon Associates Program which is the affiliate program for Amazon the advantage is that you can promote pretty much any product that you find on Amazon the downside is that the Commission is only four to ten percent which means that you have to generate a lot of traffic to your links in order to make good money we the Amazon Associates program the key to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing is to promote high ticket products that pay around 30% to even a hundred percent commission on each sale and/or go for recurring commissions so for example one of the products that I'm promoting right now is an affiliate marketing training platform called wealthy affiliate it's a great place for beginners to learn how to build an affiliate marketing business which is why I'm recommending it to people who want to learn that there's a free membership and there's a premium membership that cost $49 per month so if somebody decides to sign up for this platform through my link and at some point decides to upgrade their membership to Premium I'll earn 23 dollars 50 in every single month as long as this person is signed up for the Premium Membership so this would be an example of an affiliate program that pays out recurring commissions which is great for passive income and that's what's awesome about combining YouTube with affiliate marketing because if you know how to choose the right affiliate programs and if you know how to create these new videos and rank them by a keyword research and stuff like that you can really create a passive income system that can make you money for a very very long time you also get to help people with your videos and get paid for without needing to have your own product without having to ship anything and without having to provide customer support it's almost too good to be true now if you want to make money with affiliate marketing on YouTube here's my advice create reviews and how-to videos people who watch these videos are looking for a solution to their problem on YouTube now if with your video you're providing them the solution and recommend the product that will help them solving their problem chances are high your viewers will turn into customers and another advantage of creating these kind of videos is that you don't need any subscribers to get views because there are already people out there looking for these kind of videos and if you optimize your video for certain keywords you'll get ranked high in the search results of YouTube and you can still get views and sales from your videos what I noticed as a small channel is that YouTube takes a little bit longer to gather enough data from your video so that it's able to rank it for the right keywords and show to the right people that are actually interested to see your content so it can take a couple of weeks until YouTube ranks your video on the first page of search for your keyword but once your videos ranked you continue to get views and also sales from your video and like I said review and how-to videos are very effective take for example this review video I've made of Jarvey an Instagram automation tool I've already had affiliate links to jarv in my jarv tutorial videos but as most of the people who watch these videos already had the software I didn't make a lot of commissions once I posted this review video though my Jarvey commissions went from 250 dollars per month to 550 dollars per month so as you see review videos are very powerful another way you can also do a fillip marketing is by combining YouTube with email marketing which is what I'm doing as well when you go down to the description of this video you'll notice that I'm giving away a free ebook about how to create passive income with affiliate marketing now I don't make any money by giving away this ebook right away but what I get in return is the email address of somebody interested in affiliate marketing so what I can do is send out emails about products that are related to affiliate marketing and when somebody buys something from the affiliate link in my emails I will get a commission and make money and all of that is 100% automated once your emails are set up to automate all of this I'm using the email marketing software gut response I actually recently made a six-episode email marketing series where I explain step by step how you can set this up for your business if you're interested to watch that a live link to this down below in the description so with YouTube ad revenue and affiliate marketing combined I've made around $7,500 from zero to four thousand subscribers I should also mention though that through a YouTube I've also gained some clients for my Instagram business and for paid consulting calls I didn't really track how much I've made from these leads that came from YouTube but I estimate it to be an additional five thousand dollars so if I count that in then I've made around twelve thousand and five hundred dollars from zero to four thousand subscribers on YouTube now you might say this is a lot for a small channel or you might have thought it would have been more you can leave me a comment down below saying if you thought it would have been less or if you thought it would have been more I actually didn't create my first youtube videos to make money I just created them for my clients so I didn't have to answer the same questions over and over again so I actually didn't know that there are so many ways you can monetize a YouTube channel so what I wanted to show with this video is that even as a small channel there are ways you can make money on YouTube actually there are a lot more ways you can use YouTube to make money and a lot more than what I made with my small channel like for example if I would have created a course about Instagram automation or something and would have sold that for a couple of hundred dollars I would have made a lot more money than what I did with my affiliate marketing and my YouTube ad revenue and my clients for my other businesses but I decided to put out all my knowledge for free and just make some passive income with affiliate marketing and get some more leads for my business by the way if you want me to do an other video just like this one when I hit 10,000 subscribers let me know by giving this video a thumbs up if you want to learn more about affiliate marketing and creating a passive income online you can download my free ebook which you find in the description down below where I go over the 7 steps it takes to build a successful affiliate marketing business online and who knows maybe this video inspires you to start your own YouTube channel and create your own business from it personally I love YouTube and I love getting feedback from you guys on my videos and from a business perspective what I love about YouTube and affiliate marketing is the passivity of it the fact that you don't need your own product and that you don't really have any clients that you feel obligated to is great and it allows you to work whenever you want from wherever you want that being said if you want to learn more about that stuff you can download my ebook down below in the description give this video a thumbs up if you got any value from it and also if you want me to make another one when I hit 10k subscribers I really appreciate everything up because it really helps with the algorithm so that more people can find this video also don't forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and also hit that notification bell right next to that subscribe button so that you get notified once I release a new video thank you for watching this video until the end and I look forward to seeing you in the next video [Music]