Since you probably found this article on a Google search, you already know that a Google search for “how to make money on youtube” will yield an insane amount of results.
In addition to organic results, the ad sections will be filled with links to “Easy Steps”, “sure-fire”, and other “guaranteed” techniques to make money on YouTube.
While many of these techniques are genuinely effective, I use some of them, these sites usually have something in common, they want you to purchase their e-book, video series, or another form of information product. I don’t have anything against information products, some of them are really great, it’s just to make money on YouTube you don’t really need to pay anything, the best information is all available for free on various websites, like this one. 😉 BTW, my hobby, it’s golf!
80/20 Principle To Making Money on YouTube
If you’re not familiar with the 80/20 principle check out, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle, but simply put 20% of your input or effort will yield 80% of the result. Countless times in life I have seen this principle work, and it works with creating money making YouTube videos. So let’s focus on the 20% of YouTube related activities that generate 80% of our results and leave the rest to the info-marketers.
Quality: Choose Audio Over Video But Content Above All
Many of the make money on YouTube info products will tell you that you need to have a high quality professional looking video to do well on YouTube. Good news, this is simply not the case. High-quality video is great, and I prefer it when watching, but the truth is that people click and watch videos based on factors other than how crisp and sharp your HD video is. Filming with your iPhone will work fine.
Audio quality needs to be, at a minimum, not annoying. If you have terrible static or inaudible voices, viewers will bounce from your video, and they will bounce quickly.
The most important quality factor to focus on is your content. Is your content valuable? Your content but be something that viewers would search for and share. How-To’s and product reviews work well on YouTube. Since your goal is to make money, create content that will stay relevant for a long time. This way your videos will still be producing money two years down the road. Even if it’s not very much per month, over the long haul it will pay out nicely. See the section “To Make More Money, Make More Videos”.
Keyword And Competition Research
This is important. We are trying to be efficient with our YouTube money making efforts so we need to make sure that we can get our video listed in the first couple of results for our target search term. If we can’t, then we don’t make the video.
Where and what should you look for? Come up with search terms around the idea you’d like to create a video on and use Google’s Keyword Planner to see if those search terms are often searched. Once you have some search terms, that are popular use them in YouTube and take a look at the top few videos. You are looking to see if they are using the search terms in the title, description, tags, and most importantly if they have accurate closed captioning and mention use the search terms often in the dialogue.
If the top videos do not utilize all of the mentioned areas well with the targeted search term, then it’s ripe for the picking. Create your quality content video using the strategically placed search terms and within a few weeks your video should climb the results list.
A great way to get keyword ideas is from YouTube itself. Start typing in your desired topic and take note of the suggested searches. These are usually the most searched terms related to your topic on YouTube.
Closed Captions
I know I mentioned this in the previous section but a lot of you are probably just scrolling through this post and reading the subheadings and since this is a very effective tip I gave it separate section. Take the time to include accurately captions for your videos and be sure to use your targeted search terms in your dialogue often during your video. YouTube does use captions to help sort search results and a majority of YouTuber’s overlook this!
To Make More Money, Make More Videos
This one is pretty obvious so let me just cover the not so obvious reason for why it works. Related Videos. At the end of each of your YouTube videos, YouTube will suggest videos that it thinks are related to this one. It will give priority to videos that are created by the same YouTube channel which means most of the suggested videos will be yours and if the viewer clicks on one of yours then you get another ad impression and possible ad click on your other video.
Related videos also appear on the side of the YouTube website while you are watching videos. This means that even when someone is watching a video that is not yours, your video could be displayed and clicked from someone else’s video. This is another reason keyword and competition research is important.
Share Your Videos
Sharing your videos on your social profiles will put it in front of an audience who will watch simply because they know you, plus the backlinks will help your video rank higher. If you have a blog, be sure to put it there as well.
Case Study: GolfAtHomeTV
I have 7 (counting one that is on a different channel) videos that currently generate about $90 a month. That’s not very much, but I only have seven videos! And I haven’t had to touch or work on any videos since then. Though I’m going to, see the section “To Make More Money, Make More Videos”. An extra $90 a month means I get to play a decent golf course for free, every month! It’s pretty cool if you ask me.
For GolfAtHomeTV, I chose to target the term, “Optishot”. The Optishot is a golf simulator and viewers are steadily searching for reviews and to see the device in action. The steady traffic is what makes this successful. By following the guidelines above I was able to rank as the #1 search result for the term “Optishot” on YouTube. In fact, I have four videos that appear in the first page of results.
Here is the #1 video:
Are you currently using YouTube to make money? How are you doing it? What tips do you have? Share them with us in the comments.
