You may have heard of kids and their parents making Millions of dollars each year on YouTube playing with or unboxing new toys…
Or fitness stars who launch a YouTube channel and end up quitting their jobs to focus on YouTube full time.
How are these people making money through YouTube? Is it even still possible these days?
In this article I’m going to walk through how you can make money through a YouTube channel, and how to make it work for your business.
Is It True People Are Making Millions From YouTube Videos?
Yes, absolutely.
There are probably hundreds or thousands of channels out there where the creators are making over a million dollars per year from creating and posting videos on YouTube.
And on top of that there are probably multiple thousands of creators on YouTube that do it full time and make enough to live on (whether that be $30,000, $50,000 or $100,000).
Within just the fitness space I can name about 20 YouTube channels off of the top of my head where I would guess the creators are making at least $100,000 per year directly from YouTube (and I know there are many more around the world that I don’t know of).
In fact, the Hockey Training YouTube channel that Dan and I run has 28,000 subscribers and could allow both of us to make a good living just off of the revenue we generate from the videos.
Where Does The Money Come From?
While you can make a good amount of money from the YouTube Ads that you see running before videos start playing and alongside or underneath the videos, this usually isn’t where the majority of the revenue comes from.
In order to make money from YouTube ads you will need a lot of views on your videos, and you will need to get a lot of videos out there to rack up your overall view count.
Don’t get me wrong, YouTube Ads are definitely part of the strategy, but the real money made from YouTube comes from your viewer base or your fan base.
Let’s say you are a Yoga Instructor and start up a Yoga YouTube channel…
After months of hard work posting videos and working on ranking your videos
Now each week you post a new Yoga video you have roughly 1,000 people watching your video.
This is 1,000 potential customers that you can get in front of each week.
Here’s a look at different ways you can monetize your video views on YouTube with those potential customers:
Selling Your Own Digital Product or Course
Continuing with our Yoga example, you could create an online Yoga video course that provides members with a 30-day Yoga challenge.
This is 30 different yoga videos that they can follow along with, and become a mini yoga expert in one month.
You sell that course for $100, and now every-time you make a YouTube video you promote that course and make sales each week.
It isn’t tough to create an online digital product or course, either. We use Teachable for our Create Freedom Academy and it was extremely simple to get launched.
For our Hockey Training website, we sell hockey workouts to hockey players and promote those through our YouTube videos.
Coaching/Mentorship
As a Yoga instructor that has become an authority in the space because of your YouTube presence you may now be able to offer coaching or mentorship to Yogi’s who are looking to start teaching Yoga themselves.
This could be one-time calls with you, or on-going support simply through email or text messages. You can set up this up however you’d like.
Our hockey training company offers 1-on-1 high-level coaching for players who want the training customized to exactly what they need. This is a high ticket offer that sells for $2,500 for 4 months.
Affiliate Deals
As your YouTube channel gains traction you can now start working out affiliate deals with Yoga companies.
An affiliate deal is when you refer a customer to another company and they make a sale and give you a percentage of that sale.
For example, a Yoga mat company might be selling premium mats for $100 and they are willing to pay you $15 for every sale you refer to them.
Many large companies already have affiliate programs set up that you can sign up for online (search their website for ‘affiliate’), or you can set up deals privately with smaller companies.
We have a lot of hockey players who are looking for tools they can use on the ice or at home for their stickhandling, and because we don’t have anything to sell them we have worked out an affiliate deal with a company who pays us for each sale we refer to them.
Sponsorships/Brand Deals
Companies and brands are always looking for exposure, and one way that the smarter companies are doing this is partnering with influencers – such as YouTube channels.
They will pay a YouTube channel to talk about their product or review their product in one of their upcoming videos.
Sticking with the Yoga example, there might be a Yoga clothing company that would pay you $1,000 to post one video doing on a “try on haul” of their new clothing line.
If you are doing this just make sure you geniunely like the products, and if you’re reviewing products try not to have a bias towards it. Your audience will be able to see that and you will lose some trust.
Live Events/Seminars
When you’ve built up your subscriber count, a lot of those subscribers become your fans. And many of these fans would travel to an in-person event if you are providing them with some kind of value.
If you are a yoga instructor this could be a private yoga retreat, or for our Hockey Training
I even know of big YouTubers who host fan meetups and charge around $20 for these fans just to attend and meet the YouTuber.
When you grow a big enough audience through YouTube there are a ton of ways you can monetize your channel and make money besides just the stand YouTube ads.
Is It Too Late To Start Making Money Through YouTube?
Absolutely not.
Although there are probably plenty of channels out there in your specific niche, there are millions of new people searching YouTube each day for videos.
It will take hard work and time, but I think anyone can make money from YouTube within just a year or two. And you may even get lucky and publish a video that blows up your channel even faster.
My main pieces of advice for starting a YouTube channel right now if your goal is to make money would be:
#1 – Pick a pretty specific niche for your channel. Instead of just a general Yoga channel maybe you focus on Yoga for women over 50, or instead of a channel on healthy recipes you dial it into a gluten-free recipes channel.
#2 – Learn the proper strategies that are working on YouTube and that can help you grow quicker. You don’t want to waste a year or two trying to figure things out.
If you’re ready to start making money on YouTube and building up a channel that can generate revenue for your business or help you make a living you need to check out the YouTube Creator Masterclass course I created.
In this course I teach you what I’ve learned from making money on YouTube for the past 6-7 years, including how to find videos ideas that get you more views, what to do when uploading to get your videos found, and how to structure your videos to make more sales.
Recap
I hope this article helped you understand how you can make money on YouTube and gave you some ideas for starting (or building) your own channel.
Remember – it’s not too late to get started, and you don’t need to be a professional videographer or great on camera to be successful on YouTube!
I’d love for you to join my YouTube Creator Masterclass here so I can help you build a profitable YouTube Channel faster.
Kevin McClelland
Dan Garner
