Are You Considering a Career in YouTube? This is For You!
YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world behind Google, its parent company. It enjoys tremendous popularity across all age groups and boasts over a billion users. This largest video sharing service lets users watch, share, comment on, and upload videos.
With such a great reach, YouTube is a promising business opportunity. You can get your videos monetised, and start earning revenues from the ads.
How to earn money from YouTube?
If you want to earn money from YouTube, the first thing to remember is that it won’t be an immediate income source. It can take months or years to reach a decent income level. If you have a unique story to tell and can back it up with a video, you can make the first move to start a youtube channel.
The following factors will determine your earning potential:
- The number of subscribers and views that you receive.
- The niche you cater to. This is important because brands tend to appeal to specific audience segments.
- The level of engagement you generate.
- The revenue options you choose.
Here we take you through the necessary steps of learning how to how to make money from YouTube:
1. Build an audience
To start making money on YouTube, you have to enable monetisation in your account settings. Then you have two options: one, to have your videos listed on YouTube Premium, or, second, to join the YouTube Partners Program.
You must first build up a large subscriber base to increase your monetisation. The size of revenue is based on Revenue Per Mille (or, RPM). It is a metric that determines how much money you will earn per 1000 views of your video. For every 1000 views, you can expect to be paid around $ 1.
You can apply for monetisation once you reach the landmark of 1000 subscribers or over 4000 hours of watched content. You also will need an AdSense account to get paid.
You have to upload unique content frequently and try to keep your audience engaged. You can interact with your audience by answering their comments, or producing specific videos to their requests.
2. Paid Promotion
The more subscribers that you get, the more noticed your youtube channel becomes, and the more ads you get from advertisers. Ads are the most important revenue stream for your channel. So, your focus should be on creating engaging content to draw in viewers.
Monetisation will allow YouTube to place ads on your videos. A viewer must click an ad and watch it in full for you to get paid. When your channel becomes famous, brands will approach you and will ask you to promote their products, either through content or indirectly through merchandise display.
3. YouTube Premium
It is a paid subscription program that allows fans to watch their favourite content without ads and indirectly support the creators. Creators get paid for their content, based on the time the members watch their videos. The content partners receive a share of the total revenue from the subscriptions.
4. Sponsorships
Brands know that influencer marketing is an effective way to gain customer’s trust. To obtain sponsorships, you can do product reviews or tutorials on your channel as part of the promotion campaigns.
How to increase views on youtube?
YouTube is the most popular medium of video sharing with hundreds of new channels sprouting every day. Naturally, there is fierce competition among different channels to grab your eyeballs. Today we will discuss some tactics by which you can increase the views on your channel:
1. Make the title interesting
The first thing that draws the viewer’s attention to a video is its title. Only when they find it interesting, do they click on the ‘play’ button. So, your title should be as catchy and simple as possible. Viewers can easily remember a simple title, and if they like your videos, they will come back for more.
Often creators use a title that does not clearly describe the contents of the video. Also, it might lack the required keywords that will help it rank higher on SEO. You can try out Google’s AdSense to find out what are the trending topics. And, your title should clearly describe the contents of your video. When viewers search for any specific topic, they should easily see the topic of your video.
2. Make Thumbnails
Thumbnails are the tiny clips that act as trailers of your videos. They are important to attract viewers. Instead of using the default template that YouTube provides, you can customise it to make it more interesting.
Even if you don’t have a title, viewers can tag onto your video with the help of its thumbnail.
3. Deploy Meta-Tags
Meta-tags are favoured by the YouTube algorithms and can get your video noticed in search results. These are certain words or phrases that describe your video.
4. Share
Post links to your videos on other social media sites like Facebook or Twitter so that your audience can find you. The earlier you share it, the more likely it is to be a hit.
How to increase subscribers on youtube?
YouTube is exploding like anything with content creators uploading 500 hours of video per minute. A great way to succeed in your YouTube goals is to add to your list of followers. Here we will explore some hacks to increase the subscriber base:
1. Live interactions
The viewer needs to engage with the content creator. With YouTube Lives, you can increase the number of subscribers very fast. Firstly, it gets ranked very high by the YouTube algorithm. Secondly, you can interact with your audiences or casual visitors in real-time. This can make your ‘subscribe’ button very busy!
Popular YouTubers like CarryMinati and Amit Bhadana use the Live feature extensively to host Q&A sessions, unbox new products, and more.
2. Make high-quality videos
The contents of the videos should be useful to the viewers and they should be of high quality. Also, you should upload them frequently. For this, you would have to invest in a good quality camera, microphones, and editing software.
3. YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts is an application that allows users to upload short videos of duration 60 seconds or less. The aim is to compete with TikTok and draw in more viewers.
Is there any career or future in the YouTube channel?
The Covid-19 pandemic this year has caused a lot of activity on the YouTube platform. But it is as tough as any other profession, and very demanding. But, if you are creative, then it is a vocation like no other. YouTube has become popular in certain categories like education, entertainment, gaming, etc.
A career in YouTube will offer you the following benefits:
- Tremendous scope for growth.
- You can let your imagination run free. Whether you are a writer, producer, or director, there is no limit to creativity.
- There are no rules. Work is flexible.
Your work on the channel will include researching new and exciting topics, recording, editing, uploading videos, and make thumbnails. If you are a student, you can study and make videos simultaneously. It can be as few as one video per week, or two per month. But you should be regular in what you do.
The only catch is that the initial one or two years might be dull. You should utilise that period to improve your content and to upload it regularly. If you have around 10,000 subscribers at year-end, then it is not a bad figure to start with.
YouTube is a great means to promote your channel, but monetising it is not a lucrative option. YouTube takes a large commission, sometimes exceeding 40%, from the $ 1 to $ 2 that it will pay you per 1000 views.
The genres of channels on YouTube are vast, ranging from academics to sports. Here we take three examples:
1. Gaming
If you have a passion for gaming, you can have a YouTube career by starting a gaming channel. Creators of gaming have seen a massive increase in audience, subscribers, and views. If you are an avid gamer yourself, viewers can also watch you play, instead of playing themselves. Many people are not interested enough to buy a new game based only on the trailer. So, if they can watch you play the game, they can be compelled enough to buy it.
2. Stock Trading
If you are a successful trader, you can share your insights through YouTube. You can start a Vlog, short for a video blog, and show interested people what you do.
3. Private Lessons
If you are good at something like dance or music, you can give private tuitions on YouTube. This can have another advantage. Many schools nowadays hire teachers in performing categories, based on their YouTube profile.
If you are considering a future on YouTube, you should be prepared for the fact that the growth may be slow, and the money not so great in the beginning. But, there are also lots of success stories all around you. So, why not give it a try?
Also read:
1) How to start a YouTube Channel? Become a YouTuber in easy
2) How to Start a YouTube-Based Media Company?
3) How to Start a YouTube Channel for Your Business?
4) How to Promote My Business on Youtube?