If you've ever wondered whether it's worth uploading your own content to the world-famous site, we're here to help. There are so many questions when you first start out making original YouTube videos, and one of those questions might be about how much money you'll make from advertising revenue once you reach popularity through the platform. But what happens if someone uploads your video without paying you anything at all? How does that affect your income in the long run? And do you even get any payment for your work until people actually click on your adverts? Let's take a look.
It depends on who you ask. Some say that increasing your view count will have an effect on your payout, while others argue that it doesn't really change things too much. It seems like there are two schools of thought - either views don't count towards earning money or they do. The truth lies somewhere in between -- yes, higher view counts may result in better earnings, especially with branded channels over 1 million subscribers, but ultimately it comes down to your individual performance. After all, no one can tell you which channel you should join based just off stats alone.
For example, I know several YouTubers (including myself) whose highest performing videos barely hit 100k views. In fact, some of their best videos only had 10k - 20k views. This means that simply having high numbers isn't enough to earn big bucks anymore. If you want to break into the top echelons of creators by producing quality content consistently, then you need to think outside the box and consider other ways to measure success.
So why do some popular vloggers still insist that views do come into play? Some believe that since these views were generated organically, they must not be counted as part of the total number of views earned per month. Others claim it has something to do with copyright infringement, where users copy your footage and use it elsewhere without permission. But the bottom line is that, according to most prominent YouTuber Casey Neistat, monetizing your videos shouldn't depend upon your view count. Instead, he says that your subscriber base is far more important than your view count.
In his famous TED talk, 'Why now?, Neistat explains that the real goal of anyone involved in online media should be to create an audience of passionate followers. He argues that the reason why certain creators succeed above everyone else is due to the way they engage with fans directly. By using social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, creators can connect with their audiences personally and offer something valuable in return. So instead of focusing solely on the amount of views each video gets, focus on building relationships with your viewers. After all, if you keep coming back to watch new episodes of your favourite show every week, wouldn't you rather support the creator financially than wait around for him/her to release another episode months later?
Unfortunately, there aren't any official statistics available regarding payments made to creators after they've reached the level of monetising their videos. However, many successful YouTubers agree that they receive nothing unless and until someone clicks on their advert. For instance, PewDiePie, one of the biggest stars on YouTube today, makes $7000 a minute via advertisements. His latest collaboration with Disney brought in $4 million in its opening weekend. Despite massive exposure, he still receives zero dollar compensation until actual views begin streaming in. He also explained in a recent interview that the company refuses to give him any form of cut or percentage of profit until the end of the year. This is likely to apply to many other popular YouTubers, including Jake Paul, Lilly Singh, and Zoella, among others. To put it bluntly, advertisers won't pay for exposure - they only care about eyeballs clicking on links.
So how exactly does a user get rewarded for watching a video? When you sign up to become a partner advertiser on YouTube, the company allows you to select specific keywords you'd like to target. These include broad terms such as "beauty," "clothing," and "video games." Once you choose a keyword, YouTube automatically places ads within your videos whenever possible. As mentioned earlier, however, you only receive monies when users click on said links. Nowadays, you could potentially make hundreds of dollars a day from placing simple text link overlays on your videos. According to AdWeek, the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for display ads on YouTube ranges anywhere from $0.04-$0.10. Of course, the price varies depending on your region, campaign type, placement, etc., but regardless of your location, you stand to make some serious cash once you manage to grow your subscriber base significantly.
One thing's for sure though -- you'll never see YouTube promoting your videos in search results. There's no incentive for Google to push your content forward. Instead, you rely entirely upon organic traffic. That being said, your chances of getting discovered on the platform increases drastically once you hit 5,000 subscribers. At that point, your channel becomes eligible for promotion on the Discover page on Google Search.
Now let's discuss the opposite scenario. What would happen if someone uploaded your video to YouTube without asking for permission first? If you created a copyrighted material, then you'd certainly deserve compensation. But that's not always the case. Many times, creators upload their own clips without giving credit to the person who originally composed the song or wrote the script. In these situations, companies usually contact the owner of the song or screenplay themselves, and try negotiating a fair deal.
As previously discussed, YouTube isn't going to promote your content manually. They only serve to place relevant ads throughout your videos. Even if you did somehow acquire a significant following, the company would probably refuse to compensate you for your hard work. Furthermore, if you didn't trademark your name properly, you could find yourself facing legal trouble. Unfortunately, as already highlighted, neither YouTube nor Google actively seek out content producers -- they only care about serving potential customers looking for products related to their niche.
That being said, many musicians have found creative solutions to this problem. One common practice amongst artists is to set up SoundCloud accounts specifically designed for independent music composers. While Soundcloud itself won't allow you to post your tracks publicly, they provide ample opportunities for listeners to discover them. Artists can upload free songs and albums, share their tunes with friends, and build a personalised profile for future promotions.
Another option is to crowdfund your project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Sites like these enable creators to showcase their ideas and projects to eager supporters across the globe. Supporters often pledge donations to fund particular goals, ranging anywhere from funding a concert tour to creating a movie adaptation of your book. Creators can access analytics showing how many pledges their campaigns received, along with detailed breakdowns of where funds came from. This helps them determine areas needing improvement.
Once again, the key takeaway here is that relying solely on YouTube for financial gain is risky business. Be wary of posting your stuff wherever you please without considering licensing agreements. Keep track of copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Don't forget to protect your intellectual property!
While you definitely won't get rich overnight, the good news is that the process of becoming a professional YouTuber is easier than ever. With tools like Patreon and GoFundMe readily accessible, aspiring content creators can easily raise thousands of dollars monthly via crowdfunding websites. Additionally, services such as PayPal and Amazon Payments exist to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers.
However, before diving headfirst into the world of entrepreneurship, remember to familiarise yourself with the basic principles of economics. Understand how supply and demand functions, prices, market forces, etc. Also learn about accounting practices and taxes. If you intend to pursue a career in marketing, perhaps web design is a suitable alternative. Whatever path you decide to follow, stay focused on your vision. Never lose sight of your dreams.
YouTube has been a popular platform for creators to share their content with the world. However, it's not always as simple as uploading some footage and hoping people will watch your video. There are many factors that can impact how long your viewers spend watching you — like what type of channel they're looking at or if there are any ads in between clips.
But one thing we know for sure is that the price tag you put on each individual view matters when deciding whether someone should stick around. If you want to make money from your channels, you need to consider the costs involved. So does monetization affect views? And do other things matter besides views when calculating revenue per viewer (RVPV)?
In this article, I'm going to explain everything you need to know about YouTube monetization and how it affects your viewership numbers.
No. Monetizing your account doesn't change anything else about your experience. It only changes how much money you earn every time someone watches an ad break within your videos. In fact, even if you have multiple channels, all those channels follow the same rules. You won't see different effects depending on which one you choose to monetize.
It might sound confusing why anyone would ever bother making a free app just to watch advertisements, but let me give you a few examples. A lot of apps require subscriptions to be able to use features such as push notifications or live streaming. Many services also offer perks for signing up for longer contracts. The main difference between these kinds of platforms and YouTube is the cost of entry. Instead of paying once for access, you pay over time by watching commercials.
This means that while advertising income may fluctuate based on certain conditions outside of your control, RVPVs will remain constant throughout your entire career. This could mean big savings for you if your goal is to maximize earnings rather than maximizing views!
If you've already set up your channel, you'll receive payments automatically via PayPal whenever someone plays the first 30 seconds of an advert. After that point, you'll start earning on-demand through AdSense. To learn more about setting up your own business here, check out our complete guide to building your online brand into a successful creator.
If you haven't yet created your channel, you can join now for free without worrying about losing your spot when Google decides to shut down its Creator Academy. Plus, new accounts don't have to worry about getting booted due to copyright claims either. All you'll need is a verified email address and payment information.
Unfortunately no, though it seems logical since monetized videos tend to get promoted more often compared to unlisted ones. But the truth is that most of us aren't lucky enough to capture the majority of clicks within the first five minutes of publishing. What happens instead is that the average person who comes across your clip tends to skip past it pretty quickly. That's called skippable viewing.
To prevent users from skipping your ad breaks, YouTube allows creators to add text overlays to indicate where the next advertisement will begin. These overlays appear during playback right below the player itself. People generally ignore them unless something catches their attention. For example, maybe they hear something interesting happening in the background or notice a pop culture reference.
However, if you take away the overlay itself, then the user knows exactly when to expect another ad. They might still decide to skip it, but it becomes harder to justify doing so. When you remove the ability to read your own text, you limit yourself to using words that aren't easily skipped. Also, try adding some kind of visual element to keep viewers' eyes moving forward—like playing music or having a relevant image show up.
Yes and no. If you have a high number of subscribers, then yes. Depending on your audience size, a large portion of your subscriber base won't care about seeing ads at all. On the flip side, when you look at smaller audiences, you run into problems. Unless you manage to convert everyone who visits your profile page into a full-fledged subscriber, you'll end up giving away free content to people who wouldn't otherwise tune in regularly.
A good rule of thumb is to split your followers evenly among the three types of subsets: casuals, committed fans, and hardcore fans. Casuals consist of folks who are interested in your work but probably don't consume every single piece of media you release. Committed fans enjoy your content on a regular basis but don't necessarily subscribe to your channel. Hardcore fans actively seek out your videos on a daily bases and love engaging with comments and discussion threads.
For smaller audiences, splitting your budget equally among all three groups gives you the best bang for your buck. Once you reach 10k subscribers, however, you should think twice. As far as possible, dedicate 90% of your budget to dedicated fans. Remember that you can always raise funds later on if you need extra cash flow.
Also, remember that not all viewers are equal. Some people will definitely watch your whole video, whereas others will stop after the first minute or two. Viewing patterns differ widely based on demographics, so treat your loyalists differently than newcomers who come across your stuff randomly.
Since advertisers target specific segments of your audience based on age, gender, location, etc., it makes sense to focus marketing efforts on those individuals. Even if a random viewer isn't interested in your content today, chances are he or she will find it somewhere else tomorrow. Be patient and wait until your fanbase grows organically. Otherwise, you risk wasting too much effort promoting content nobody wants to see.
Another important note is that if you plan to promote sponsored posts, you shouldn't rely solely on impressions alone. Impression counts measure how many times your post was displayed on someone's screen, but they don't reflect engagement levels. Since clicks result in actual conversions, you should reward people who clicked on your links with tokens instead.
Shortened URLs help reduce bandwidth usage, which saves data plans and keeps streams running smoothly. One downside to shortened versions is that it can cause confusion for viewers trying to figure out where the link leads. Fortunately, there's a way to avoid this problem.
When you shorten a URL, simply append ".bit" to the end. Doing this tells BitURL Hunter to include the bit extension when creating shortened URLs. Now, when someone tries clicking on a.bit version of your video, they'll actually go to the original source directly. This prevents them from being tracked incorrectly.
While this trick works fine if you're focusing primarily on traffic referrals from search engines, it's worth noting that some mobile browsers don't support it. Thus, you might encounter errors if you're linking to a.bit domain on Android devices. Users can fix this issue by installing Chrome Custom Tabs extensions, available for both iOS and Android.
You can also create custom domains for your channel pages. Unlike normal profiles, these allow visitors to visit your site without ending up on a third party service. Simply replace the default url with your custom domain name to achieve similar results.
Lastly, if you prefer to go the traditional route, you can manually enter shortened urls into your settings. Just click on the Shorten button located near your channel icon and paste the resulting code wherever necessary. Don't forget to delete the spaces afterwards.
Of course, sometimes life gets in the way. Maybe you're sick or busy working late shifts. Or perhaps you're under heavy competition from another streamer who's stealing your subscribers. Whatever the reason, it's common to lose steam midway through editing a project.
Thankfully, there's a quick solution. Click on More actions underneath your video and select Reduce Duration. This feature lets you chop off parts of videos that didn't play well or cut excess chunks entirely.
Remember to take advantage of automatic cuts as well. Most of the time, YouTube takes care of cutting unnecessary scenes on its own. Keep an eye on the Playback tab beneath your upload box to monitor progress. Use it to trim down unwanted sections of videos until they fit perfectly.
If you'd like to learn more about optimizing your content, you should review our tips for better thumbnail creation. Next time you publish a masterpiece, rest assured knowing that your viewers will appreciate the hard work you spent crafting it.
YouTube's most popular channels can make a huge amount of money from advertising. But what if those same creators decided not to use ads at all, and instead focus entirely on entertaining their viewers with original content? This would be an extreme case, of course, but it highlights one important question about the platform: does having advertisements affect how many people watch your videos in general?
If you're wondering whether or not your YouTube view count will go up when you start getting paid for streaming, here are some tips on increasing your viewing numbers...
You might think that running a YouTube channel means you'll keep making new content forever -- which is partially correct! However, even though monetizing your video hosting account won't stop you creating new uploads, your income stream may well change as time passes. The reason being that advertisers will want to work with bigger channels, and smaller ones tend to disappear over time.
This isn't always easy to predict, so we recommend keeping a close eye on your analytics data and checking out other ways to earn extra cash (such as Patreon). If you find that your audience has diminished significantly, consider removing your main feed and replacing it with adverts, so potential customers no longer see your daily uploads. You should also check our guide detailing how to delete your channel altogether.
On top of these changes, there are several factors outside of your control that could cause decreased viewership. For example, Google takes down entire channels without warning. In 2016, PewDiePie lost his million subscribers mark due to poor management decisions by Disney. And then there are natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, where live streams could become unavailable.
Another thing to note is that while small channels often struggle to stay afloat, big names have been able to maintain high subscriber counts for years using only AdSense revenue. Of course, they've had help from other sources such as merchandising and sponsorship deals, so take these into consideration too before deciding whether or not monetizing really helps your viewer base grow.
Once you've made the decision to monetize your videos, it's worth taking steps to ensure that your subscribers continue watching once you've started earning money. There are plenty of things you can try to improve your engagement rate, including adding captions and annotations to your uploaded videos.
But perhaps the best way to boost view numbers is to encourage your audience to interact directly with the host. By doing so, you provide your fans with additional incentives to subscribe and engage further. Not only will this result in higher retention rates among existing members, but it will also attract new users who enjoy your content enough to share it amongst friends.
For instance, many creators choose to add polls to their vlogs, asking questions like "Who watches Game of Thrones?" or "Which Harry Potter character would YOU date?". These kinds of posts aren't just fun diversions for your followers, but can also drive traffic elsewhere online, especially if your polling results feature prominently on Reddit or Twitter.
Of course, it's not advisable to force interaction between yourself and your fanbase every single day. While this type of approach works well for many personalities, others prefer to let their vlogging unfold naturally—especially established creators whose following knows exactly when to expect fresh episodes and exclusive material.
In short, the key takeaway here is to experiment and adapt, but never lose sight of why you started uploading in the first place.
So now we know that having advertisements doesn't necessarily reduce the number of people who tune in to your video each week. What else can you do to improve your chances of maximizing your earnings through subscriptions and clicks? Here are three proven strategies that you can apply today.
1) Consider expanding beyond YouTube. Having a strong presence across social media platforms gives your brand greater visibility than ever before. So long as you remain consistent across all accounts, you can build up a loyal fan base wherever audiences congregate.
2) Focus on quality rather than quantity. It's hard for anyone to sit back and relax when they've spent countless hours crafting a masterpiece. That said, producing multiple clips per session is usually better for everyone involved.
While you shouldn't spend days editing together dozens of uploads for free, you'll benefit much more from prioritizing your efforts towards shorter productions that offer something unique compared to similar footage. Quality content will draw in both casual passers-by and dedicated superfans alike, regardless of its length.
3) Make sure your name gets mentioned. Most creators understand that they need to promote themselves regularly to maximize their exposure. Unfortunately, however, many forget that this applies equally to those who appear in their own videos. If someone notices you in another person's clip, please don't ignore them completely.
It's crucial that you acknowledge your appearance within the context of your larger project, giving credit where it's due. Don't worry, you don't have to say anything complicated—just thank your co-host/co-creator/fellow star in whatever tone feels right. Doing so encourages positive feedback and word-of-mouth referrals, plus lets your viewers feel appreciated for tuning in.
And remember, promoting yourself alone isn't going to cut it anymore. Nowadays, you need to create compelling branded merchandise to sell alongside your vids. As soon as you realize that you can make money off of your creations, put aside half an hour to brainstorm ideas. Then, give everything you come up with a catchy slogan and mockup design to test out. From there, you can expand your line of products until you hit the jackpot.
Here's an overview of what to include in your official branding kit:
A logo
Your tagline
An icon
Some background images
Finally, don't underestimate the power of good old fashioned SEO tactics. When used correctly, search engines will rank your page highly based on keywords associated with your product. A large part of this process involves optimizing your title and description tags, ensuring that relevant phrases show up under listings for related searches.
Additionally, don't neglect the importance of influencer marketing either. Once you gain momentum, you'll notice that celebrities and public figures endorse your stuff frequently. Getting featured next to a major figurehead puts you squarely ahead of competitors looking to capitalize on the same opportunity.
With these techniques combined, you can easily rack up millions of views. Just make sure you manage your expectations accordingly. After all, you didn't suddenly become famous overnight, nor did you magically learn how to run a successful business overnight.
Yes, there is! One powerful strategy that lots of creators swear by is boosting exposure through collaboration. Collaboration is nothing new, but it typically refers to joining forces with fellow artists to produce music or artwork. On YouTube, collaborating simply means working with other stars to bring forth interesting projects.
When executed properly, this technique increases your reach dramatically. Take Felix Kjellberg, aka Pewdiepie, for example. He collaborated with Jacksepticeye to form the sketch comedy duo PewDiePie & MEEEEEyes, resulting in hilarious shorts that gained popularity worldwide. Similarly, John Oliver teamed up with Stephen Colbert to release two seasons of Last Week Tonight.
Collaborating with others comes with certain risks, however. First, you must decide whether to partner with a creator who specializes in a field closely aligned with yours (e.g., gaming vs animation), or someone whose expertise lies somewhere along the spectrum. Second, you should avoid working with controversial individuals. Offending viewers can quickly turn away interest, and ultimately hurt your overall reputation.
Ultimately, the goal of this exercise is to expose your audience to different types of content—not to alienate them. Regardless of your opinion on specific topics, you should respect other peoples' opinions as well.
As long as you stick to your guns and deliver your own distinct style, collaborations can be incredibly rewarding experiences that lead to increased recognition and future opportunities. Plus, building relationships with partners allows you to establish stronger connections with your community. Who wouldn't want that?
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.