If you are hoping to make some money off of your YouTube videos, you should be aware of what it takes to actually get paid by YouTube. Being a successful YouTuber isn’t easy, and the path to making money can be extremely frustrating.
YouTube starts paying content creators once they have set up an AdSense account and they have accrued at least $100 in ad revenue. This is equivalent to having received around 30,000 views on videos. From there, YouTube pays content creators once per month.
Let’s discuss more on how to start having YouTube pay you for your content. Keep reading to learn more!
Getting Started
When an aspiring YouTuber gets started, there are a lot of choices that they need to make. If they want to be successful at making videos and earn a living through YouTube, they will need to have a solid strategy for success. The first thing to do is pick your niche. If you want a successful channel, you need to decide what kind of content will be on the channel.
The most commonly successful channels are those focused on product reviews, how-to videos, and vlogs. These three categories are often the shortest path to success, though they can be difficult to get into. You need a way to rise above the competition of established channels in all three of these categories, and you need a lot of influence if you want your channel to spread.
After product reviews, how-to videos, and vlogs, the most successful channels are those focused on comedy/humor, food, and gaming. Lower on the list are channels about science and technology, music, sports, and fashion. Generally, YouTubers look for their own niche inside of each of these main categories.
For example, you might choose to make videos on a game you love that isn’t as popular as other games. In this way, you can make gaming videos that appeal to the larger audience of gamers without having as much competition. Whatever it is that you chose to do, your main goal is to get as many views as possible as quickly as possible. It takes at least 30,000 views across your videos to start making money, but you won’t be making enough to live off of until you are getting at least that many views on every video you make.
You also need to ensure that your videos and your channel conform to YouTube’s requirements for content. You cannot have inappropriate language, violence, adult content, or other controversial issues on your channel if you want to be able to monetize your channel.
Ad Revenue
The way that YouTube pays its content creators is through ad revenue. Once a YouTube channel is created, a YouTuber can immediately sign up to a service called AdSense, which will put ads on that YouTuber’s videos and keep track of how many of those ads were actually watched. Because YouTube pays solely off of Ad revenue and nothing else, this service is essential to monetizing your work.
YouTube pays creators about 68% of the money that they get from ads, which averages to about 18 cents per ad view. Unfortunately, YouTube only counts the ads that viewers actually watch enough of; if a user immediately hits ‘skip ad’, you won’t get paid for the ad that was shown on your video.
On average, only 15% of ads that are shown actually get watched enough for them to count for the YouTuber, so you need 1000 views on your video in order to get 150 ad views. With each ad view being worth about 18 cents, you will get paid roughly $3-$5 for every 1,000 views on your channel.
As you can see, it takes a lot of views to make money. Furthermore, Youtube won’t pay you until you have accrued at least $100 of ad revenue. Most YouTubers don’t see this first paycheck until 6-12 months after they publish their first video. Because it takes so long to build up any interest or any kind of a following, those early months can be rough.
Not only are you not going to get paid for the videos that you make, but the lack of viewers will also mean that you don’t have much data to go off of when deciding how to improve your channel. This is where most YouTubers stop making videos (or at least trying to monetize their work). However, if you push through this time and get lucky with your exposure, your channel can eventually begin to grow exponentially.
Watch the video below to learn how to speed up this process and make money off YouTube faster.
Other Income
Once you have enough subscribers that your videos begin to get a consistently high number of views, you should begin to make real money from YouTube. YouTube pays content creators once every month, usually between the 10th and the 14th. Even if you only average about 10,000 views on each of these videos, if you make a video every week, you should get paid around $700 every month. The more people that watch ads on your videos, the more money that you will make.
Unfortunately, $700 usually isn’t enough to live off of. For this reason, most YouTubers turn to other sources of income in order to make a living from what they do. Thankfully, there are lots of alternate sources of income for a YouTuber aside from ad revenue.
The most common way for a YouTuber to increase their income is by accepting sponsorships. A company will sponsor a YouTuber by paying them money in exchange for endorsing their product and taking time in their videos to advertise for the company. Depending on how many views you get on your videos and depending on how many subscribers you have, sponsorships can make up a significant portion of a YouTuber’s earnings.
Aside from sponsorships, YouTubers can also earn money through donations and paid subscriptions from fans. As long as they create quality content while staying dedicated to their channel, a YouTuber can move from just making videos to making a living.
One Response
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