How to Develop a YouTube Monetization Strategy for Your Channel

Updated November 25, 2023
Alex Lefkowitz

A huge part of becoming a professional YouTuber is figuring out how to actually make money on the platform — to develop a YouTube monetization strategy for your channel.

Now, more so than ever, it’s absolutely possible to make YouTube your full-time job. In one year, the number of channels earning over $10,000 rose by 50%, and the number of those earning over $100,000 went up 40%.

Furthermore, 43% of full-time creators say they earn over $50,000 annually.

However, earning that sort of income doesn’t come overnight – it takes some planning. In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to draw up a successful monetization strategy.

1 - Check out YouTube Monetization Options

First off, do some digging to see which avenues of monetizing your channel are open to you, and which ones you want to aim for.

On the platform itself, you can earn money from YouTube’s AdSense program. You can also get paid for views by YouTube Premium subscribers.

However, revenue from these sources often isn’t very stable. As a result, most successful creators see them as only one stream of income, but it’s rarely their main cash cow.

Additional monetization options include working with brands through affiliate programs or sponsorship deals.

Another popular option is to generate an income from your fans directly through subscription and tipping systems.

In the last few years, YouTube has added its own features — memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, and most recently Super Thanks — to help creators monetize their content.

Otherwise, you can opt for established third-party platforms like Patreon, Ko-fi, Buy Me A Coffee, or Tipeee.

Finally, you can create your own products based on your YouTube channel and sell them. This can range from online courses and e-books to merchandise and NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

For this purpose, YouTube itself has Merch shelf, and off-site creator platforms like Patreon and Ko-fi provide easy-to-use shop options.

Of course, there are also many specialized merchandise platforms out there.

However, all of these monetization strategies require that you have a decent-size following on the platform. For example, to use Merch shelf, you need at least 10,000 subscribers.

That being said, it’s also important to know that your follower count doesn’t directly translate to the size of your income. It also depends on what demographic you’re targeting, and on how engaged your audience is.

2 - Do Some In-Depth Market and Competitor Research

Before you decide how to make money off the platform, you have to find yourself a monetizable target audience. This, in turn, is very useful in deciding on your niche and content strategy.

This means market research.

One crucial factor is how much disposable income your supporters have. Given the same number of subscribers, you’ll likely have a lower income running a yoga channel aimed at stressed-out college kids, than if you tailor your videos to the needs of busy professionals in their late 20s and 30s.

Of course, if you already have an audience, you need to figure out which monetization strategies would work for it.

Is it large but generally not very engaged? Opt for ads.

Is your audience smaller, but with a bit of disposable income and very engaged? Consider fan funding.

Are you lucky enough to have an affluent audience? That’s an excellent negotiation position for brand deals.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this, you can start out by doing some competitor research.

Ask yourself:

What channels on YouTube are similar to yours?
What monetization strategies do they use?
Who is their audience?
And: How could you improve on their approach?

3 - Get, Grow, and Engage Your Ideal Audience

Once you’ve pinpointed your dream audience, it’s time to start doing what you do best as an aspiring YouTuber. Produce engaging content that’ll wow your viewers and have them coming back for more.

Part of doing this is picking the right niche to target — and coming up with a long-term content strategy that will help you build sustained engagement.

In addition, make sure to optimize your content for YouTube’s search engine to make sure that the platform’s algorithm finds it and puts it in the top search results.

Another way of building engagement is to interact with your viewers – a lot. Run livestreams, answer comments, ask questions, and request input. Viewer engagement is key to showing up in YouTube’s recommendations.

And audiences like engagement for its own sake. Because of this, live features and follower-decided content are the true YouTube trends of 2022.

We’ve also asked around among creators, and they came up with a few of their favorite YouTube growth tools.

Once you have been doing this for a while, you’ll observe how quickly your channel is gaining viewers and subscribers. Based on these growth stats – and on what you know about your audience – you can plan your in-depth YouTube monetization strategy.

4 - Join the YouTube Partner Program

A natural first step is to join the YouTube Partner Program, which will allow you to monetize on-platform. Additionally, being in the program is a promising signal for potential sponsors.

To join, you need to be over 18, have more than 3,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months – or 3M Shorts views in the last 90 days – have over 500 subscribers, and 3 public uploads in the last 90 days.

You can track your progess on all these on this Studio dashboard.

Play Video about youtube ryan walsh's walkthrough of the youtube partner program application

YouTuber Ryan Walsh’s walkthrough of joining the YouTube Partner Program.

In addition, you have to follow all the YouTube channel monetization policies and have no active Community Guidelines strikes on your channel.

As of 2022, the program is still geographically limited, so you need to live in a region where the YouTube Partner Program is available.

Finally, you need to set up a linked AdSense account. The video by Ryan Walsh above will walk you through the process.

Once you’ve ticked all these boxes, you can use the fan funding features such as Super Thanks and channel memberships. If you pass 1,000 subs and either 4,000 valid watch hours over the year or 10 million valid Shorts views, you can also start cashing in on the ads YouTube runs on your video.

Of course, even if you aren’t part of the partner program, ads will appear on your content — it’s just that YouTube won’t share that revenue with you. If you are, YouTube will hand over 55% of it.

5 - Look Beyond AdSense and Plan Ahead

Once you’ve established your channel at this level, you can do some more long-term planning and start looking to join affiliate programs, search for sponsorship deals and other brand collaborations, and think about creating merchandise.

At this point, you’ll also know your audience pretty well, which gives you a great perspective on what monetization strategies will work best with them.

In addition, there are invaluable resources for YouTubers looking for opportunities at this stage in their careers.

First off, marketplaces like PopularPays and YouTube’s BrandConnect program (formerly FameBit) make it easier to pinpoint brands to work with.

On Shoutcart, YouTube creators can post and share their gigs.

And most recently, F*** You, Pay Me (FYPM) — a kind of Glassdoor for creators — launched to help people avoid low-paying or exploitative brands.

Conclusion

It’s possible to make a decent income — millions, even — from YouTube. But not overnight. Instead, it takes some in-depth research, planning, strategizing, and time.

By thinking ahead to the sort of income streams you’re aiming at, and building your YouTube monetization strategy accordingly, you can create the right content and build the right audience from the start.