Complimentary Ways to Profit with Youtube

In part 2 of our How to Make Money on Youtube series we talked about Google's Partner Program. While there are people making large sums of income from just Google's Partner Program, it can be rough starting off. For most of us just beginning, the checks will be small if we see them at all. It takes time to build an audience that's engaged and clicks on the ads, which is the main source of income generation from Youtube. This is why it's helpful to have a few other sources of income that compliment your Youtube channel and vice versa. Having several small checks can add up, and it can be a great motivator to keep going and building your network. Without further ado, here are several strategies that can compliment your new and growing Youtube channel.

Get a Website

There are a bunch of ways to make money off of a website. If you've got a product or provide information about different types of products, a website is a great tool and a perfect compliment to Youtube. With open source platforms such as Wordpress, setting up a basic website has also never been easier.

If you have a product, you can do Youtube videos that discuss your product, and include links back to your website for purchases. If you like the idea of reviewing different products, there's the possibility of doing affiliate marketing and selling the products of others. For those unaware, affiliate programs allow you to link to an affiliate's website and you get paid a set rate or commission for everyone that clicks that link and buys the product from someone else's website page. Maybe you like cameras and photography. Do partial reviews of the cameras in your Youtube videos, and include links back to your website for the full review along with an affiliate link to purchase the product. If you have your own product, and would like to do reviews of similar products also, you can combine the two above ideas for even more income.

The bonus to this is that as your videos and website get more popular, you can do exactly what Google's Partner Program does with selling ad space on your own website, or using Google's Adsense program which serves ads basically the same way google does on Youtube.

Include Affiliate Ads in Your Videos

Affiliate ads don't have to just be on a website or appear in links. While it might be a bit more difficult, you can even incorporate them into your videos. In an article on filmmaking we mentioned film tutorial videos done on a channel on Youtube called Film Riot. If you've watched their videos they take a few minutes every episode to mention their affiliate links, for instance web site services that those making movies might want to use to post their work. They include the info for an affiliate link, along with mentioning any discounts the person might receive when using their affiliate link.

In some of their videos, particularly their older ones, they took this a step further. Half way through a tutorial they'd cut to talk about their sponsor, usually an affiliate, and show a link to the page. The interesting and ingenious way they went about it was that they did their own version of a commercial for the product. Depending on what the affiliate allows, this may not work for everyone as not all affiliates will be okay with someone making a commercial for their company.

The reason this idea was so great was that it gave them several different ways to make income. First, it appears as though they're part of the Google Partner program which brings in the first bit of income. Second, the commercial was based on an affiliate program and they mentioned the link, so anyone using the link would make more money for them. Third, they're filmmakers so obviously besides shooting their own films, they make money shooting films or commercials for other people. By doing their own commercial for the affiliate they could show what they were capable of doing for someone else, thus giving themselves a chance to get hired by others for making videos.

Since then, Film Riot has also added a product page where they sell sound effects, along with the affiliate marketing links on their website adding even more sources for them to produce income. Also realize that while they want to make films, by doing the filmmaking tutorials that other filmmakers will want to watch, they add to their audience for videos that aren't tutorials. They are literally building an audience for their dream while also creating several different ways to profit from it. Talk about complimentary ways to profit from Youtube!

Advertise for Others

In our first article on making money on Youtube we talked about how tv networks worked, and how they charged for placing commercials during their shows. If you have a talent for shooting videos you can do the same.

While affiliate programs and google's partner program can pay well with the right audience and a large engagement it takes time to build. We don't always have that time. While shooting videos might not pay as much as a large Youtube audience and affiliate network that's working well, starting off it can pay enough to live off of while you're building your Youtube channel. Companies, and even small businesses, are willing to shell out a few thousand dollars and sometimes more for commercials. Those cheesy commercials you see during the day time for lawyers or local services probably paid several thousand dollars alone just to have them shot, and another several thousand dollars for air time.

Basically, shooting a commercial for a company that sells their product will pay more than affiliate programs until you've garnered a large audience. Why not capitalize on that while building your Youtube network. Offer to shoot a commercial and place it up on your own Youtube video as a short break for a price. Or offer to do solo video reviews about a particular product for a company on your Youtube channel for a price. As long as they're quality videos, the service of shooting the video will bring in short term income. As you're network and followers grow, you can charge a set price for shooting the video like any video service company does, and then charge another price based on the number of followers that will see it if you upload it to your Youtube channel. Remember, tv networks charge companies for commercials based on viewership, and some companies even pay a large price to have their product placed in movies because of the number of people that will likely see that film. There's nothing stopping you from applying that same line of thought to your own Youtube channel and growing it in a similar fashion.

Viral Offshoots

We saved the most difficult for last. Obviously we'd all love to upload a video and see it go viral. The number of views alone usually brings in big dollars because a certain percentage of people will click the video. These are tough to do, and you never know what might catch on fire. Some just capture funny moments and they take off. Others have learned to manipulate videos with special effects programs or clever editing, such as the guy who who made fun special effects videos with his 3 year old.

We'll go over several more ways people did things like this in the final part of our "How to Make Money on Youtube" series, but for now I'd like to point out one final way someone used Youtube and created a secondary source of income through what was a viral video. Remember viral videos are here one day and gone the next as a newer viral sensation takes over. Creating as much profit as possible during this time is important as you'll never know when it will end.

A perfect example of someone who understood this was the father who taped his son after a dentist appointment, David After the Dentist. After their video went viral, they created a line of T-shirts and other items that they could sell while things were going well. This doesn't include the other offers they received and accepted from companies looking to use parts of the video for commercials and other advertisements. Not only that, because their channel was getting so many views it opened the door for them to offer exposure opportunities for artists and other unknowns to the public, likely for a price. Talk about thinking like a TV network executive!

That wraps up part 3 of our 4 part series on How to Make Money on Youtube. Be sure to check out part 4 of our series 5 Profitable Ideas for Youtube Channels for examples of what we've seen people do that have garnered success on Youtube.