The Ultimate Guide to YouTube Monetization
|
27 min read
Let’s take a deep-dive into the ways you can make money as a YouTuber. Here’s what you’ll learn about in this guide:
- Basic monetization timeline and strategy
- Monetizing on YouTube itself
- Membership and tipping platforms
- Working with brands
- Selling merch, goods, and services
- Raising funds to boost growth
Full calculator below!
Table of Contents
Share this:
YouTube monetization is a challenge, especially for up-and-coming creators. But even veteran YouTubers often only leverage a few of the income streams available to them.
From ad earnings and affiliate marketing to sponsorships and merch sales, there’s actually a huge range of opportunities for video creators to generate an income from YouTube.
In this mega-guide, we’ll take a deep-dive into all the different ways you can make money on YouTube. To do so, we’re relying on several sources (you’ll find links throughout and at the end):
- Our YouTube channel managers, whose expertise has earned creators +1.9 B views and +11 M subscribers.
- Official information from YouTube and Google (including the official Creators channel).
- An in-depth survey on YouTube monetization we sent to to 17,000 creators.
- Interviews with 10 YouTubers (1,000 to 9 M subscribers) to break down their income streams.
This guide is the result of all that effort. Additionally, we’ve developed a proprietary YouTube income calculator based on our extensive research to help you estimate your earnings! The first half is above, you’ll find the full calculator farther down.
No matter if you’re a seasoned pro or a rookie YouTuber: Below, you’ll find all the insights you need to fine-tune your monetization strategy, or build it from the ground up.
Ready? Let’s dive right in!
1 – Overview
How do YouTubers make money?
Let’s start with an overview of the main YouTube monetization streams you can leverage as a creator.
- The YouTube Partner Program
- Tipping & Membership platforms
- Brand deals
- Merch, products & services
- External financing
Let’s line up the income streams YouTube creators can leverage. We’ll be taking a deeper look at all of them later in the article, backed by the data we got straight from creators. There are five kinds overall.
First, there are the internal monetization features of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Joining the YPP is most creators’ first step towards making money off YouTube. We’ll explore how you can leverage every feature YouTube has added here over the years:
- Revenue sharing from ads and YouTube Premium
- Channel memberships
- Livestream tipping (Super Chat & Super Stickers)
- Video tipping (Super Thanks)
- Jewels and Gifts
- YouTube Shopping merchandise
- YouTube BrandConnect
Second, there are external tipping and membership platforms, ranging from Patreon and Ko-fi to OnlyFans. The main advantage of these platforms is that, unlike for the YPP, you typically don’t have to hit a subscriber or watch hour threshold to join.
Third, many creators work with brands to generate additional income. This can range from generic affiliate programs to custom-tailored sponsored content or even brand ambassadorships.
Fourth, there’s merchandise and other products, ranging from t-shirts to e-books and online courses. Some creators sell directly on YouTube, but many also leverage external platforms, from SpreadShirt to Udemy.
Fifth, some creators also get financial backing for larger projects. Some use crowdfunding sites, while others leverage investment models like OverSubscribe’s. Yet others sell the rights to their content catalog. We’ll take a detailed look at all of these options near the end of this article.
Indirect Revenue
On a different note: For many YouTube creators, revenue from their video content is not their main source of income. Many online course creators, coaches, or business owners create video content to showcase their expertise, get backlinks, drive sales, or find new clients, rather than to benefit from ad revenue. They might even disable ads entirely, forego most brand deals, and so on.
For example, take Eric Wise, who runs Skill Foundry, an educational company. In cases such as his, YouTube can be an amazing asset to boost your revenue from other sources of income by increasing your exposure and visibility.
2 – Your YouTube monetization launchpad
How to get monetized on YouTube?
The YouTube Partner Program is most creators’ first YouTube monetization milestone. Here’s where to go from there.
- Why having a strategy pays off
- Survey: Most creators have few income streams
- Building income one step at a time
As we just saw, there are quite a few options available to you. But how do you actually get monetized on YouTube?
For most creators, the first milestone to hit is to join the YouTube Partner Program. That means meeting certain thresholds in terms of subscriber numbers, watch hours, and video views. To use most of its features, you’ll need at least 1,000 subs as well as either 4,000 public watch hours or 10 million Shorts views. We’ll talk a bit more about that later.
You can absolutely also launch an account on a tipping platform like Patreon, irrespective of your YouTube audience size. Realistically speaking, though, you’ll only start making a proper income from a platform like that once your audience is big enough to exceed the YPP thresholds anyway.
The one exception? If you already have a sizable audience from a different platform (say TikTok or Substack), and you’re just now launching a YouTube channel. Here, an external tipping/membership platform can help you generate revenue from day one.
Once you’ve joined the YPP and your audience is growing, you can progressively add additional monetization options. Most creators start with affiliate programs and then develop brand partnerships along the way before launching their own products and merch lines.
The key is to tackle different income streams successively. Most established YouTubers have an average of two to four income streams active at any one time (3.14, to be precise), but that doesn’t mean they launched them simultaneously.
In fact, adding an income stream often means putting in more work – from filling out forms to joining affiliate programs descriptions, to reaching out to brands. Membership platforms often thrive on exclusive content. While all of this effort can pay off, investing the work too early in your career as a content creator can be futile.
3 – Your timeline for YouTube Monetization
How long does it take to get monetized on YouTube?
Success, fame, and cash don’t come overnight.
- Today’s YouTube stars have been at it for years.
- Only 8% of YouTube channels generate any income at all, ever.
- Rule of thumb: Expect at least 3–12 months of concentrated effort.
- Steer clear of scams!
That said, how long does it actually take to get monetized on YouTube?
The answer to that question, unfortunately, is “It depends.”
Many of the biggest YouTubers today – from MrBeast to Jake Paul – have been around for over a decade. While they are earning millions every year nowadays, they built their success gradually. MrBeast didn’t even hit 1 million subs until 2017 – five years after he launched his channel in 2012. He only became a full-time YouTuber the fall before.
Nowadays, many up-and-coming creators go pro much faster. Partly that’s because an entire creator economy has developed over the past decade, geared towards helping online creators make a living. And partly it’s because serious creators treat their channels as a business from the get-go.
However, competition on YouTube is also fiercer than ever. Only 8% of YouTube channels generate any income at all. And only 0.3% of YouTubers make a full-time living off the platform.
How long it takes you to get monetized on YouTube depends on your niche, the size of your audience, and how engaged your followers are. We’ll look at each of these factors in depth when we talk about building your monetization strategy below.
Realistically, though, it can take new YouTubers who put consistent effort into regularly uploading well-crafted content, anywhere between three months and a year before they can monetize their channels.
Scam alert: There are many schemes out there promoting the use of AI and “YouTube automation”, especially of faceless YouTube channels as a way to make money off the platform quickly. Most of them are unabashed scams. And for every creator who manages to make some money that way, a dozen more end up wasting their time and their cash.
While there is no guarantee for YouTube success, the best way to go about it is still slow and steady, and with your audience in mind. Organic growth is what counts.
Darryl Hodgson, a YouTube creator who first launched his channel to document his journey to rebuild a boat and take maritime trips across North America, says it best:
4 – YouTube Revenue Calculator
How much do YouTubers actually make?
A lot of factors go into this. Play around with our YouTube revenue calculator to get an idea of what you might earn in the future.
Or guess at somebody else’s income!
So, once you have managed to monetize your channel, how much will you actually make from YouTube?
Once again, it depends. On your niche. On your audience size and – just as importantly – its engagement. On the variety of income streams you’ve developed.
So, instead of giving you a catch-all estimate that may not apply to your case, we’ve cranked the numbers and developed a YouTube income calculator.
Check it out and simulate your potential YouTube income!
Ad Revenue Calculator
Additional Income Streams
Below, for comparison’s sake, you’ll find a very rough overview of what other YouTube creators might make on average. We’ve also previously covered how much YouTubers with 100K subscribers make (in three case studies) and how much a million views might be worth.
5 – Have a plan
Develop Your Monetization Strategy
- Your choice of niche
- Upload frequency
- Reinvesting and outsourcing
- Audience engagement
- Building your brand
Now that we’ve laid out an overview of all the different monetization options and what they could earn you, are you ready to develop your personal strategy?
There are three major elements you need to factor in before planning out which monetization options to target – and when. You need to consider your YouTube niche, your upload frequency, and your audience engagement.
Ultimately, these determine your potential for monetization – and they depend both on your personal interests and on your resources.
Let’s take a closer look.
Your Choice of Niche
To start with, there’s your YouTube niche. The vast majority of successful YouTubers focuses on creating a particular kind of content – whether it’s how-to videos, yoga tutorials, history deep-dives, or pop culture essays.
The reason for this is that it’s easier to build a loyal audience if your viewers know what to expect from you. If someone embarking on their personal bodybuilding journey knows they can expect a new video about workouts from you every week, they’re much more likely to check in regularly. Similarly, if a student is learning to code in Python and you have a series of targeted tutorials, you have a much better chance of winning them as a subscriber. You’ll also be building niche credibility.
However, not all niches on YouTube are created equal when it comes to monetizing your channel. That’s because advertisers pay different rates to run ads on different types of content. Typically, these rates are measured as cost per mille (CPM) – how much an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions on their ad.
YouTube Studio, by the way, focuses on RPM – revenue per mille – which is what you make on a thousand video views. Note that it’s not directly comparable with CPM.
Differences in revenue potential (CPM & RPM)
In some niches, CPM is much higher than in others. That can be because competition among advertisers is fiercer, or because they are selling expensive products and are thus more willing to spend on ads in order to win over customers.
For instance, the average CPM in the personal finance niche is around $12. In contrast, CPM in the gaming niche is only $1.40. That means a gaming creator would need more than 8.5 times as many views as a finance creator to earn the same amount of money from the YPP.
Going further, CPM also heavily depends on your geographical location and the location of your viewers. For example, a creator whose audience is primarily based in Central and Northern Europe earns much more than a creator in the same niche whose audience is based in South America.
The upshot? It’s not just your niche that you’ll need to pick carefully. You’ll also need to invest some time in making sure you reach the right target audience. This could influence the language of your videos as well as their contents.
Additional monetization barriers
Beyond CPM, it’s also important to factor in that some niches come with inbuilt hurdles when it comes to monetization. Adult content is tricky to monetize – or even promote – on YouTube, for instance.
The same goes for videos that partially use copyrighted material, such as reaction videos. For instance, the Vasquez family, who runs the popular reaction channel MaJeliv, told us:
You should keep a watchful eye on the YouTube community guidelines – and any changes to them. Check YouTube’s own resources here:
- Community Guidelines overview
- Channel monetization policies
- Advertiser-friendly content guidelines
Hit the Right Upload Frequency
Another factor you need to take into account for your monetization strategy is how frequently you can upload content to your channel.
In general, the YouTube algorithm rewards creators who upload regularly – and frequently. The more high-quality content you upload, the better your chance of gaining an engaged audience and appearing in search results and recommendations.
However, the most important thing is to consider your audience and put them first. Some niches – like gaming channels – definitely benefit from daily uploads. In contrast, if you run a science and education channel, that may not be the case for you. Daily uploads may actually hurt your channel because your viewers can’t digest that much information.
When you’re planning out your monetization journey, it’s important to stay realistic about your target content output. While you’re working on becoming a full-time YouTuber, you’ll likely still have a day job – or several – and your time for content creation will be limited.
It’s better to plan a manageable amount of content creation than to set an unrealistically high goal and be disappointed, or face creator burnout. 79% of creators struggle with burnout at one point in their careers!
As your channel grows, you can increase your content output and accelerate your growth. The best strategy to achieve this is by outsourcing parts of your content creation process, for instance by hiring a video editor or a YouTube channel manager. You can hand time-consuming tasks like editing your raw footage or uploading content to your channel off to these professionals, and focus on what you do best: creating amazing content.
Hiring a team and outsourcing has its costs, of course. However, professional creators find that their increase in productivity and revenue more than makes up for it. The investment tends to pay for itself.
Raffaello Urbani, alias Metatron, runs a wildly popular history channel, with over 900,000 subscribers. He recently started outsourcing video editing and thumbnail design to scale up his content output – with great results:
The bottom line? Plan for manageable, regular content uploads in the early phase of your channel development (at least 6-12 months). Once you’ve joined the YPP and generate an income from your videos, invest back into content creation. Outsource routine tasks to scale up your content quality and quantity to take your channel to the next level. Start with the biggest time sinks, like video editing.
Next up: Let’s talk about your actual viewers.
Audience Engagement
Finally, there is audience engagement as a major factor in your monetization strategy.
Ultimately, it is not only the size of your audience that matters, but also how active they are. And how invested they are in you as a person, and in your success as a creator.
This is one of the major reasons buying YouTube subscribers doesn’t work. A channel can have a million subs but hardly any revenue if they aren’t engaged – if watch time drops off after the first minute of each video, if hardly anyone leaves comments, if they don’t share your content.
In contrast, if you have a highly engaged but small audience, you have a great basis for monetization. If your viewers are true fans, they’re much more likely to watch your videos from beginning to end, interact in the comments, buy your merchandise, or click on affiliate links for products you recommend. Similarly, engagement stats can help you make a case for yourself in brand partnership negotiations, even as a micro-influencer. (But more on that later!)
Engage with them and they’ll engage with you
So how do you build true audience engagement?
Apart from showing your authentic self in your videos, there are several strategies you can leverage. Interacting with your viewers through comments is one of them. Building playlists and interlinking your videos through links in descriptions is another. Livestreams are also an excellent way of boosting engagement.
Plus, YouTube offers dedicated features for community-building, such as YouTube Community Posts. In the Community tab in your channel, you can make posts for your followers, including image uploads, GIFs, and polls. This is a great opportunity to ask for feedback or help brainstorm new content ideas!
Timing also matters. Uploads and posts will see more views and better engagement if you schedule them for when most of your usual viewers are online. YouTube Studio has an audience analytics report to help you do just that.
Using this graph has a few benefits: It lets you be certain about when your viewers are paying the most attention, removing stressful uncertainty. It also helps you schedule and plan your time more effectively. Finally, getting the time right can give you an algorithmic boost because there’ll be more – and more interested – viewers around, ready to engage with your content right away.
Remix, match and compile your content
Another strategy is to reformat some of your existing long-form content into Shorts. Statistics show that short-form videos are a huge driver of engagement and more and more viewers are using them to discover new channels. Besides which, of course, you can monetize them as well.
The reason you need to factor audience engagement into your monetization strategy is that building it takes up a significant amount of time. In addition to creating content, you’ll have to spend time writing comments and posts, maintaining playlists, and reformatting videos.
When you map out your future as a YouTube creator, that’s a solid chunk of your daily schedule.
As with video editing and graphic design, however, you can outsource some of these tasks as your channel grows. Professional YouTube channel managers are experts at engaging your audience and leveraging analytics and SEO to grow your audience.
Stay Coherent in Your Brand
Finally, one thing that’s crucial in generating audience engagement is to develop a coherent identity for your personal brand – and to stick to it. This encompasses everything from your logo, fonts, and color scheme, to the tone of your videos and their editing style.
The reason having a coherent brand is important for engagement is that it makes your channel easy to recognize. And to remember. Plus, viewers will have it much easier to pinpoint the vibes of your content – and to follow you if they match theirs.
Alice Inoue, an astrology creator and life expert based in Hawaii, says that branding was her major concern when she started outsourcing video editing:
6 – Monetizing on YouTube
Join the YouTube Partner Program
The YPP is most YouTuber’s first monetization milestone and a springboard for developing other income streams. Let’s dive into:
- YPP requirements
- The joining process
- How (and when) you get paid
- What features are available
For most newbie YouTubers, joining the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is the first step on their monetization journey.
What do I need to join the YPP?
To join, you need to tick a few boxes. You need to:
- Live in a geographic region that is eligible for the YPP
- Have 2-step verification enabled in your Google account
- Follow YouTube’s channel monetization policies
- Have an active AdSense account
- Meet minimum thresholds of subscribers and either watch hours or Shorts views
The thresholds for the classic YouTube Partner Program are:
- 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months
- 1,000 subscribers and 10 M public Shorts views in the last 90 days
However, in 2023, YouTube launched a limited version of the YPP that also gives smaller creators access to some of its features. In order to be eligible, you need one of the following:
- 500 subs and 3 public uploads in the last 90 days + 3,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months
- 500 subs and 3 public uploads in the last 90 days + 3 million valid public Short views in the last 90 days
This “expanded” Partner Program is available in most, but not all YPP countries.
While this entry tier of the YPP doesn’t give creators ad revenue sharing, it does let them leverage a few of the fan funding features: Channel memberships, Super Stickers, Super Chat, and Super Thanks. To get the full range of features, you still need to hit the traditional thresholds (see also YouTube’s information here).
So how can you check if you’re eligible? The easiest way to do so is via YouTube Studio. Just log in and navigate to the “Earn” tab. Here, you’ll get an overview of the number of uploads, subscribers, watch hours, and Shorts views you have over the relevant periods. You can even opt to get notified by YouTube as soon as you hit the monetization threshold.
How do I join the YPP?
Once you’ve ticked all of YouTube’s boxes, getting started on joining the YPP is relatively easy.
All you have to do is to hit the “APPLY NOW” button in YouTube Studio’s Earn tab. Then, you’ll be asked to review the terms and to sign up for an AdSense account if you don’t have one already. For your AdSense account, you’ll be asked:
- which Google account you want to connect it to
- what your billing country is
- which YouTube channel you’re connecting to (if you run multiple ones)
Once you’ve accepted AdSense’s terms and conditions, you’ll have to wait for a few days or even weeks until your account is verified. After that, your YouTube channel will be reviewed and – in the majority of cases – authorized for monetization.
But how do you actually get paid?
How to get paid by the YPP?
Before you get paid in the YouTube Partner Program, you’ll need to provide tax information and complete your personal details once you hit a minimum threshold of earnings. As part of this process, you have to verify both your identity and your address.
Identity verification is fairly straightforward. You have to upload a scan of an official ID to AdSense, such as a passport, residency permit, or driving license. For your address verification, you will get a 6-digit Personal Identity Number (PIN) in the standard mail within about three weeks.
Once that is done, you can select how you want to get paid and enter your payment details.
However, even after you have done all of this, you might not get paid straight away. Only once you’ve reached the payment threshold of $100 (or equivalent in your currency) will you get an actual transfer to your account. For some of the trickier details of revenue (including taxation in- and outside the U.S.), check out the earnings help page.
As you can see, joining the YPP does take a while, even after you’ve hit the monetization thresholds. However, it’s well worth it – and once your account is set up, you can have a relatively stable income from ads as well as additional monetization features.
Let’s next take a closer look at the different YPP features that creators can leverage to monetize their channels.
What monetization features are available in the YPP?
So what are all the different monetization features you get access to when you have joined the YPP? Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Revenue Sharing from Ads
To start with, there’s the classic revenue sharing from ads that YouTube runs on your content. YouTube keeps 45% of the ad revenue while the creator gets the other 55%. For YouTube Shorts, creators get 45% of revenue from the Shorts Pool Fund. You can influence your ad revenue directly by turning ads on and off on individual videos and livestream, as well as using mid-roll ads.
YouTube Premium
Second, we have YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium subscribers do not see ads, but creators still get paid in proportion to how many Premium members watch their content and for how long (more info).
You don’t have to do anything for this once you’re in the YPP.
Channel Memberships
Next up, channel memberships allow you to create exclusive communities of paying members for your channel. In return for a subscription fee, you can offer perks like exclusive content, live streams, and loyalty badges.
Tipping on Livestreams: Super Chat & Super Stickers
Next, there are two tipping features that creators can leverage to generate revenue from livestreams: Super Chat and Super Stickers.
Viewers can pay to have their messages or stickers appear for a certain period of time during the live stream.
Tipping on Videos: SuperThanks
Tipping features aren’t just available on livestreams. On regular videos, you can enable Super Thanks. This feature lets viewers who appreciate your content in particular to tip you at any time.
Jewels and Gifts
One of the more recent addition to YouTube’s monetization arsenal are Jewels and Gifts.
Fans can send creators Gifts during vertical livestreams. They are purchased with YouTube jewels, which your followers can get as bundles at various prices. That way, they don’t have to make a separate payment every time they want to send you a Gift.
YouTube Shopping
Another monetization option you get access to once you join the YPP is YouTube Shopping, which allows you to either sell your own merchandise or earn affiliate commissions (more on that below). In YouTube Studio, you can set up your own merch shelf and sell products from t-shirts to mugs, branded with your channel logo.
YouTube BrandConnect
Finally, there is YouTube BrandConnect, which functions similarly to other brand-creator matching services, including the TikTok Creator Marketplace. Here, creators can connect with brands that want to run influencer marketing campaigns. Find more information on how to earn money working with brands, see below!
7 – External community platforms
Use Tipping and Membership Platforms
Why consider off-platform monetization?
- Their cut is smaller
- Not bound by YouTube’s rules
- More direct audience interaction
- More familiar than YouTube’s own versions
Beyond the YouTube Partner Program, there are many other platforms you can leverage to monetize your YouTube channel. Tipping platforms like Patreon are first and foremost among them, not least because they’re so accessible.
Like internal YouTube features such as Super Thanks and channel memberships, these platforms allow you to set up subscription communities and tip jars.
The big upside is that most don’t have minimums with respect to your channel size, watch hours or Shorts views.
Especially if you already have an existing audience, built on platforms like TikTok, Substack, or Twitter, setting up a Patreon when you launch your YouTube channel can be a great way to hit the ground running. You won’t have to worry about waiting to validate your AdSense account or until you hit the payment threshold for the YPP before you can start earning.
Plus, platforms like Patreon and Ko-fi are also often more flexible when it comes to different membership tiers for subscription communities than YouTube channel memberships. And while channel memberships are a fairly new feature on YouTube, Patreon has been around for years and a lot of people are familiar with it.
Want to get the full scoop? Check out our ranking of the best tipping platforms for YouTubers and our guides for how to create your own Patreon for your YouTube channel.
8 – Influencer work
Work With Brands
Let’s explore the key ways of partnering with brands.
- Joining affiliate programs
- Making paid content
- Sponsorships and how to get them
- Becoming a brand ambassador
Another major income stream for established creators is working with brands. Based on the responses we got in our survey and in our interviews, most have two or three brand partnerships running in parallel. They can take different forms, though.
The most common ways of making money working with brands are through affiliate programs, different kinds of sponsorship, and brand ambassadorships. Let’s take a look at each of them.
Affiliate Programs
First off, affiliate programs are a very straightforward way for creators to make money through brands.
Becoming an affiliate typically means that you include links to products from a brand in your video descriptions. Every time someone clicks on your link and buys the product you recommended, you earn a commission.
This is a fantastic opportunity for many creators to share the products they love and trust with their audience – and generate some extra income at the same time.
Say you’re an artist doing watercolor tutorials. Recommending your favorite brushes or paper is only natural. The same is true if you’re a yoga creator recommending mats or blocks, or a makeup YouTuber sharing your top choices for foundations and lipsticks.
Plus, joining affiliate programs is often fairly easy. Large corporations like Amazon as well as YouTube Shopping offer generalist affiliate programs that offer a wide range of products you can recommend. Often, you need to hit minimum amounts of subscribers or monthly views in order to join – and a certain amount of sales to stay in.
However, individual brands also often offer more targeted affiliate programs. It is well worth checking the websites of your favorite brands, or even reaching out to ask if they offer affiliate opportunities.
For instance, David Tomen is a video creator who specializes in nootropics – supplements to boost your concentration, memory, and general brain performance. Since he talks about these products in particular, adding affiliate links to his content makes perfect sense.
Sponsorships
Next up, there are sponsorships – and they take many different forms.
Being sponsored by a brand can be as straightforward as including a shoutout to your sponsor in the intro section or description of your video. Often, brands will give you the text and all you have to do is read from the script in return for a one-time payment. We’ve all seen content that includes an interlude of “This video is sponsored by…”.
However, sponsorships can go much further than that. Many brands commission sponsored content, either paying you for creating dedicated videos for them, or providing you their products for free in return for showcasing them in your content or giving them shout-outs.
For instance, Dude Perfect filmed an entire video about their Alaska Trip, which included salmon fishing, ice climbing, dog sledding, and white water rafting. And the whole thing was sponsored by outdoor gear provider Bass Pro Shops.
Dude Perfect on their sponsored arctic adventure.
Many brands even go so far as to sponsor entire channels exclusively. Speaking of which…
Getting sponsored
So how do you actually find brand sponsorships?
If you want to go on the offensive – which smaller, newer creators often have to do – the best strategy is to put together a concise portfolio. Highlight the content you create, how engaged your followers are, and your top metrics from YouTube analytics. Then, reach out to brands in your niche and ask if they would be interested in sponsoring you.
Once you’re more established, however, and your audience is bigger, it’s much more likely that brands will reach out to you. All you need to do in order to facilitate this is to have your business contact information easily accessible on your channel.
Reaching out yourself – or having someone on your team to do that – will always be more targeted, though. The effort tends to translate into higher rates and encourages a more personal, less transactional business relationship.
Pro tip: Always be sure to get agreements with brands in writing. There are templates for sponsorship agreements out there (check out our blog post about this here!). Make sure to clearly define what your deliverables and deadlines are, and what the brands you work with commit themselves to pay for your services – and over what period. This can save you from huge amounts of frustration and conflict.
Plus, if you’re thinking about working with a brand, check them out on F*** You Pay Me. This is a website that works very similar to Glassdoor. Creators who have worked with brands can rate their experience and let their peers know if things went smoothly and they were paid fairly, or if they were ripped off.
Brand Ambassadorships
Finally, there are brand ambassadorships. These are the most comprehensive forms of sponsorships there are, with a creator basically incorporating the values of a brand and representing it across their channel.
An ambassadorship is typically an extensive, long-term commitment, so creators need to reflect very carefully on which brand they want to represent in this way. In return, however, it is also one of the most lucrative ways of partnering with brands.
Need more information on all these forms of working with brands? Read more here.
9 – Sell
Sell Your Own Merchandise (and More)
There are a lot of things you can sell, and a lot of ways to sell them. From merch on the YouTube shop to courses in your very own community app.
- Leverage YouTube Shopping
- Sell on marketplaces
- Open an online store
- Build your own platform
Another fantastic way to supplement your income as a creator is to sell your own merchandise. Whether that’s t-shirts branded with your channel logo, mugs featuring your signature catchphrase, e-books to supplement your tutorial videos, or an entire online course – your imagination’s your limit.
As mentioned above, YouTube now has its own Shopping function that you can leverage as soon as you’re in the YPP. Beyond that, though, there’s a huge range of platforms that specialize in helping creators launch their own merch – from SpreadShirt for branded clothes and accessories, to Teachable and Kasabi for online courses.
Selling your own merch is a particularly good strategy for creators who specialize in short-form content. Laura Clery, for instance, who has almost a million subscribers on YouTube, and over three million on Instagram, focuses on short comedy sketches.
“You’re not going to have many ads on a 30-second video, so you’re not going to make as much money from ad revenue,” Laura explains. And:
Build your own business
If you want to go further, you can even launch your own platform and app. This is just one fairly recent example of how the creator economy is constantly adding new monetization avenues. Check out the Yoga creators at Boho Beautiful, who branched out from selling online courses to having a mobile app with subscription options.
Boho Beautiful has expanded into an entire lifestyle brand.
10 – Creator funding
How to Raise Money as a Creator
Getting outside funding means you have a lot more resources to work with. This amplifies your own input – and can make bigger dreams into reality.
- Crowdfunding
- Fan investments
- Credit and banking for creators
- Sell leases to your back catalogue
To round out our comprehensive view of making money on YouTube, let’s take a closer look at how creators can raise funds to scale up their channels.
We talked about how it’s often necessary to reinvest some of your revenue back into video creation, for instance by hiring a channel manager to deal with the admin, or a video editor to increase your content quantity and quality.
However, you might just not want to wait for your revenue to increase significantly before you take your channel to the next level. Or you may have an idea for a big content project that requires a dedicated budget.
Fortunately, there are ways for creators to raise funds. Specifically, they can use crowdfunding or investment models, make use of credit, or sell the rights to their content catalog. Let’s look at these options more closely.
Fundraising Options
In terms of crowdfunding, pretty much everyone is familiar with platforms such as GoFundMe, Crowdfund, or Kickstarter. Here, a creator can set a goal, generate a donation link, and signal-boost it to their supporters on their channel. If your audience is engaged and enthusiastic about the project you want to launch, chances are you’ll hit your fundraising goal. To ensure it, it pays to do some polls and research first.
However, there are creators who might be uncomfortable with the “giveaway” aspect of crowdfunding, that is, just taking cash without any immediate benefit for the donors. For them, there is an investment-based alternative. Platforms like OverSubscribe allow fans to invest in their favorite creators, in return for a share of their profits further down the line. These services often also have a lot of expertise to offer on how to make the most of your fundraiser. Check out our interview with OverSubscribe’s CEO for more details!
In terms of credit, there are now specialized financial services such as Karat that cater specifically to the needs of creators. While YouTubers may still face difficulties getting credit cards from traditional banks, for instance, Karat offers them freely – with limits based on social stats rather than credit scores.
Finally, there’s the option of selling the rights to (part of) your content catalog. Spotter is one of the best-known buyers out there. They provide a one-time, up-front payment for licensing long-form videos on YouTubers’ channels. The agreements usually last between one and three years, after which a creator’s catalog is released back to them.
11 – The Bottom Line
Conclusion: Fine-Tune Your YouTube Monetization Strategy
In 2026, there is a myriad of monetization options that’s available to aspiring YouTube creators. The tricky part is knowing which ones to go with – and where to invest your efforts at each stage of your journey as a YouTuber.
This guide will help you fine-tune your monetization strategy, from joining the YPP to negotiating brand deals and finding investors for your channel.
By taking some time to reflect on your audience and your goals (and to play around with our income calculator!), you’ll be able to hone a strategy that’s custom-tailored to your individual needs.
FAQs
How do I qualify for YouTube monetization?
Whether you qualify to join the YouTube Partner Program and start monetizing your channel depends on the number of subscribers and views you have. You need at least 1,000 subs and either 4,000 public watch hours or 10 million Shorts views to get full access to all of YouTube’s monetization features.
Do you need 1,000 subscribers on YouTube to get paid?
Not necessarily. YouTube has expanded access to monetization features. If you have 500 subscribers as well as 3,000 public watch hours or 3 million Shorts views, you can start accessing channel memberships, tipping features like Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks, as well as YouTube Shopping to promote your own products.
How many views do you need on YouTube to be paid?
You need at least 3,000 public watch hours or 3 million Shorts views to start accessing some of YouTube’s monetization features. If you want full access to all available features, these numbers rise to 4,000 public watch hours or 10 million Shorts views.
How can I monetize my YouTube channel?
The easiest way to monetize your YouTube channel is to join the YouTube partner program. However, you can also join different affiliate programs, negotiate brand deals, or use tipping platforms like Ko-fi or Patreon.
How many subscribers do you need on YouTube to get monetized?
You need 500 subscribers to start accessing some of YouTube’s monetization features, like Super Thanks, Super Chat, and Super Stickers. To get full access to YouTube’s Partner Program, you need at least 1,000 subs.
Related Articles
