Whenever it comes to making money online, people seem to over complicate things. While most people could tell you how a tv show or magazine makes money, they are all of a sudden confused over how people make money online. As I wrote about previously, making money online is not that complicated or mysterious.
Today I want to talk about making money on YouTube. As almost everyone knows, YouTube is a website where pretty much anyone can upload, view, and share videos. Just like television, these videos can have advertisements integrated and the maker of the videos can make money based on how many views their videos get.
To illustrate how it is possible for some people to make full-time income off of YouTube, I am going to share my favorite case study: Internet Killed Television.
Internet Killed Television is essentially a YouTube “show.” Charles Trippy, along with his wife Ali record their day-to-day life and post a video. Every. Single. Day. They’ve been doing it for years now and their videos usually net over 100,000 views.
Here is a recent video of theirs:
They have been able to make a full-time income off of their YouTube videos for the past few years. The statistics don’t lie – they currently have over 594 thousand subscribers and over 298 Million views. If you can create that kind of product on YouTube, you can most certainly make enough income off of the advertising to live off of, not counting the ability to leverage this viewership in other ways (t-shirt sales, product placement, etc.).
So you are convinced that you can make YouTube videos that will get views, and you want to give it a shot. What are some things to keep in mind?
- It takes a lot of time and effort to gain enough views to actually make a profit – The time commitment alone, not counting any sort of monetary investment it takes in making YouTube videos will be a huge drain until your videos “take off” and gain momentum that can be leveraged. Don’t expect to post one video and have thousands of hits. Plan on consistently posting new content day-after-day or at least week-after-week before you have any sort of significant viewership
- There are a lot of other people trying to get views on YouTube – Like anything on the web, it’s a crowded market. Make sure you have the skills and equipment to put out high-quality videos that others will view and refer on to others. Anyone can post videos on YouTube, but it takes a special person to post videos that will actually gain a following and eventually bring in advertising revenue.
The reality is that people do make money on YouTube, both from the advertising and leveraging their viewership in other ways. If it’s something you are considering, make sure you are committed for the long haul – it could be quite some time before you gain a large viewership. Most importantly if you do gain viewers, don’t kill your momentum – stick with it!
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It appears that making money on YouTube and making money blogging are very similar:) It takes a lot of effort and patience.
@GregatClubThrifty Yeah definitely. I think Charles Trippy was becoming a more well-known video maker before he launched this daily project, and I’m also sure it started out with a LOT less viewers per video than they get today.
@GregatClubThrifty I just wanted to add that key words are very important as well. People can’t find your video or will be attracted to watch your video if the title of your video and the description is not strategice. Very similar to blogging :)
I never thought of being able to make money off of YouTube, but it does make sense. I agree with Greg that it sounds a bit like blogging. I’ll leave YouTube to others though..not certain anyone would want to watch anything I produce.
@FrugalRules Yep I am also leaving YouTube to others, unless I can convince my bro and some ppl who actually want to be on camera to make videos for the site haha
I have always thought that Youtube traffic would be a great way to drive traffic to your blog… After all, there are a lot more people out there who are flipping through youtube, than who are reading finance blogs!
@seedebtrun Definitely, I have seen some personal finance bloggers try to leverage YouTube. It’s not for me, at least I could never see myself using it. Maybe if this site became huge and I could hire ppl to make videos ;)
That is insane. I can’t believe people get on youtube to watch that! LOL
@Holly at ClubThrifty I think ppl get on YouTube to watch just about anything haha
I think anyone who’s able to find their own UNIQUE niche on youtube and can dedicate a lot of time and effort to it certainly has a chance of making it big aka full time job. Thanks for pointing out the tough realities of trying to make a living doing this, I think my last article might have made it sound a bit too easy.
@Veronica @ Pelican on Money Well, it really could be pretty “easy” to get videos made and uploaded, but it would just take a lot of consistency in the postings to really make money doing it.
I actually have a Youtube channel but it’s not directed toward personal finance at all. All my videos are of motocross races and I haven’t found a way to put the two together. Not sure if it would mesh well anyways.
@DebtnTaxes I wouldn’t try to mesh those two haha I would just focus on one or the other.
I feel like I should get involved in YouTube on a personal/funny basis rather than a PF basis… too many projects!
@Money Life and More I think pretty much every personal finance blogger on here assumed that if they started a youtube that it would be personal-finance related. There’s nothing wrong with having more than one project, and a youtube channel does not have to be about personal finance just because you have a personal finance blog!
I have a YouTube channel for my food blog, but I only just posted my 3rd video in about 2 years!
@edwardra3 Wow 2 years! That’s pretty spread out.
I don’t even like to have pictures taken, so I can’t ever see doing YouTube. It only takes the right video to go viral. If we only knew the magic formula!