YouTube currently has over two billion active users each month who watch one billion hours of video content every day. Did you know that the highest-paid YouTubers in the world are estimated to have earned approximately $211 million in 2020?

Finding out how to create a YouTube channel is the first thing you must do if you want to earn money as a YouTuber. Then, together with a strong social media strategy, you may benefit from the finest ways to monetize your content on the video platform.

Benefits of being a YouTuber

You’re Your Own Boss

You have creative control over your content as a YouTuber. You choose your working hours and whether to rent an office or work from home. You decide whether or not to cooperate with a management business, whether to recruit help, and whether to do everything yourself.

You are ultimately responsible for all job-related decisions. Having complete control over how to erect your structure is empowering. Most people dislike the rigidity of 9 to 5 work for this reason. It’s refreshing to have the final say in this situation.

No Prior Experience Needed

A specific level of education or degree is often required for mainstream occupations, in addition to experience.

You frequently get turned down when looking for employment since you don’t have the necessary experience. You’re left wondering what to do in order to gain the experience if you’re not getting recruited for jobs that both demand and build it. It’s an awful loop. None of it is necessary for YouTube. Pick up a camera and start recording if you want to become a YouTuber.

Building a Community

On YouTube, there is viewership for everything and everyone. You can so explore your area of interest at will. Once you do, you may build a group of individuals who share your views and actually appreciate what you are putting out there.

You’ll probably also have to deal with those who persist in putting you down because, yes, there are certain to be a few rotten apples. You can, however, rely on the encouragement and support of your community as a last resort.

Time Flexibility

You won’t have a defined routine as a YouTuber if you prefer freedom with your time. You are free to make and publish videos anytime and however often you choose.

However, maintaining a regular posting schedule aids in audience development. Multiple videos can be produced simultaneously, uploaded to YouTube, and scheduled to be live whenever you like.

Things to Note Before Starting a YouTube career

You Need Thick Skin

You should expect negative feedback and dislikes as part of the YouTube experience. Your material might be discussed in videos made by other creators. Some might criticize in a helpful way, while others can just be harsh for the sake of being mean.

Your mental health and confidence may suffer greatly if you are a sensitive person who takes everything to heart. It’s preferable to avoid going down that road entirely if you can’t manage the criticism and hatred that come with being a YouTuber.

Hobby Becomes Work

By sharing videos of themselves engaging in their activities, many people decide to become creators. If you enjoy gaming, showing others how you play seems natural. So does posting videos of your next website project, or your next hiking trip

Why not profit from what you’re already doing? But what was once a fun pastime can easily turn into labor. It may even start to seem stressful because you no longer find it to be pleasurable or relaxing.

As a result, you find yourself forced into performing something for views and likes that you no longer enjoy. Burnout is a key consequence of this.

Privacy Concerns

YouTubers have the potential to grow into little or major celebrities. You are still famous to those who watch you on YouTube even if you are just well-known to a small group of individuals in your niche.

With fame comes the understanding that others are curious about you, including your likes and dislikes, favorite color, eatery, cuisine, vehicle, place of residence, and so forth. You must be careful with what you display your audience to prevent being doxed. You must scrutinize your recordings, be circumspect about what you share, and conceal identifying characteristics.

Requirements to Start a YouTube Channel

To start a YouTube Channel, you’ll need

• A good camera. You can use your phone camera if it produces amazing videos. No one wants to watch pixelated videos
• A good video editing software. Depending on your content, you may need to invest in a paid video editor. If you’re using Mac and have access to Final Cut, that’s good to go. There are free video editors for PC users. Research the best one that will suit your video style, and you can easily work with
• A photo editor for your thumbnails. You can use your phone for this as well. I recommend Snapseed to mobile users but you can go for a more sophisticated editor for desktop PCs.

How to Start a YouTube Channel

• Head to YouTube and click ‘Sign In.’
• Choose or type in the details of the Google account you’d like to associate with your channel. If you don’t have a Google account, create one.
• On the YouTube user homepage, click on your profile icon in the top-right corner of the screen. A small dropdown menu appears, click the option to “Create a channel.”
• Choose a name for your channel. This should be clear and concise and should capture the essence of the channel’s purpose.
• Choose a profile picture for your channel.
• Write the channel description. Again, it should be clear and straight to the point. It doesn’t help to beat around the bush or use ambiguous words the average visitor may not understand.
• Create and upload a banner for your channel page. It should be captivating and grab visitors’ attention.

Monetize Your Channel

The YouTube Partners Program is accessible in many countries. This program pays creators for having ads in their videos. These ads are from their Google Ads Program, where businesses pay Google to advertise on their websites, including YouTube. However, not every channel is eligible for the program. In order to be eligible, you must

To be eligible for the YouTube Partners Program, the creator must;

• Be a citizen of supported countries
• Have original content,
• Have 1000 channel subscribers,
• Have videos with 4000 hours of video watch-time over the last 365 days. NB: This is not the same as 4000 hours of lifetime views,
• Make their videos public.
• Protect their account with 2-step authentication,
• Have no community guidelines strikes on their channel. If you do, wait until they expire before applying.
• Comply with all YouTube monetization policies and Terms and Conditions.

If you’re starting a YouTube Channel while reading this article, it’s obvious you aren’t eligible yet. But not worry, I’ll discuss later in detail how to grow your YouTube channel and start earning in no time.

To check your eligibility, Open YouTube Studio, and in the menu options, click on Monetization. Two different screens depending on your eligibility status.

If you’re eligible, there are three steps you must follow to get your content monetized.

You’ll see three steps you have to follow to apply for monetization:

Step 1: Review Partner Program Terms

To complete this step, you need to read and accept all of the Partners Program’s Terms and Conditions. You won’t be able to progress if you don’t do this.

Step 2: Sign up for Google AdSense: This is where you connect an existing AdSense account or create a new AdSense account. This AdSense account is the avenue Google will use to pay you for showing ads on your channel. If you don’t have a Google AdSense account, here’s how to get one.

Step 3: Get Reviewed: Google will review your application and channel in full detail. This review should usually take a month or less, and you’ll receive an email of approval or rejection. Google will tell you the reasons why if disapproved. You can still re-apply after 30 days when you’ve fixed the issues in detail.

If you are approved, you’ll receive an email that will allow you to set up your channel to start the monetization of your channel.

Making $1000 a Month on YouTube

While getting monetized is great and can be a steady stream of income, that alone is not enough to get you earning $1000 a month, especially in your early phases. On average, YouTubers earn between $0.001 and $0.002 per video view once they’ve monetized. Thus, you can’t only rely on the YouTube Partners Program alone. Here are some ways to make money on YouTube:

Create Sponsored Content

Brands are likely interested in you if you can provide them with a sizable and/or active audience, and your material is pertinent to their target market. Basically, with paid sponsorships, companies give you a fair sum in exchange for mentioning their product in your video. Although it could be challenging, if you can work with a few businesses, you can expect to earn a lot of money.

When working with brands to create sponsored content, it’s important to be open and honest with your audience about your motivations. This includes not advocating something you don’t genuinely like or believe in.

If you want to get discovered by big brands, you might want to join these marketplaces:

• Crowdtap: Complete quick “tasks” involving the creation of content to earn money and other benefits. There is no minimum requirement for joining in terms of followers.
• Upfluence: A comprehensive influencer platform with more than 3 million influencers in its database. Customers can conduct keyword searches on Upfluence to locate producers and get in touch with them to establish partnerships.

Be transparent when you create sponsored content. Transparency is beneficial not only to your legal standing but also to your relationship with your audience. To help you make sure your audience is aware that you are advertising to them, YouTube includes a visual disclosure function.

Become an Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing is the practice of advertising a good or service produced by another company in exchange for a commission. You can promote brands as an affiliate marketer and use product placements, testimonials, or other forms of content. You must, however, make the viewers of your videos aware of the partnerships.

We have a comprehensive article on becoming an Affiliate Marketer, click here to read

If you want to generate product review videos, affiliate marketing may be the most practical approach to monetizing your YouTube visitors. This is how it works;

• You look for a business or vendor that offers an affiliate program, like Amazon Associates, and submit an application to join.
• Once you’ve been approved, you’ll use their procedure to build unique links to the goods your videos will highlight.
• When uploading your YouTube videos, paste your unique affiliate marketing link(s) in the description section and demo, review, or otherwise mention the products.

Want to know more about affiliate marketing? Check out this article:  How to Make a $1000 Monthly through Affiliate Marketing- Winning Tips

Create and Sell Your Own Products

Let your viewers know about any products or services you supply if they are pertinent to them by including links in your videos.

You may need to purchase materials or locate a manufacturer in order to sell a tangible product, but you can also sell downloadable items like e-books, reproductions of art, or online courses. Before you advertise your products, have a safe payment system in place.

Even while developing your own items can be far more difficult than selling others’, you could be able to earn more money this way because you’ll be keeping the majority of the sales as the product owner.

Start Hosting Live Sessions

Super Chat took the place of YouTube’s prior Fan Funding feature at the beginning of 2017. Only YouTube Partners can use this function while they are live streaming.

In essence, depending on how much they pay, your viewers can pay to have their comments highlighted and pinned for a specific amount of time in the live chat stream.

Create Channel Memberships

YouTube offers the ability to let your viewers pay you to become members of your channel. In exchange, they get custom emoji, badges, and access to members-only exclusives like Live Chats with you.

You’ll need to develop a marketing plan to persuade individuals to join, which may or may not entail offering different levels of membership. This function is only accessible to YouTube Partners, just like Super Chat.

How to Grow Your Channel on Your Way to 1K Monthly

Create Unique Content

YouTube is saturated with all types of content. While it may be easy to just go with content that is tried and tested, you may find yourself struggling to get views in the beginning. That is because people tend to watch videos of YouTubers seen as authority. Authority on YouTube is established by the number of views on videos and channel subscribers.

Research and study your niche. Find out what other creators are doing currently. Find any gaps or aspects that aren’t usually addressed and tackle that as your channel goals. For instance, there are a lot of mobile phone reviews on YouTube but most of them just gloss over the gaming aspect of each phone they review. You can dedicate your reviews to only gaming. Mobile gaming has become huge over the last few years.

Create titles that are compelling and must-see

Presentation is key in YouTube marketing. When it comes to the success of your video, titles can either make or break. Do you portray your material as something that is “must-see” or “meh”?

The secret to writing compelling titles is to draw readers in without using clickbait headlines. People want engaging content, and they also want to know what your film is about right away.

Optimize for Search

The most effective strategy to increase traffic and expand your YouTube audience is to create your video around a specific keyword or theme. In and of itself, YouTube ranks as the second-largest search engine in the world.

On YouTube, individuals look for solutions to their issues and products much like they do on Google. Consider your YouTube videos to be just another type of content that needs to be optimized for things like keywords and tags. Marketers that are unfamiliar with SEO run the risk of skipping this phase in the video ranking process, but it is essential to do so if you want your videos to receive the most views possible.

Find the most popular keywords in the niche you wish to target by using a keyword tool, such as the YouTube-specific KeywordTool.io.

YouTube SEO tips:

• Write a keyword-optimized title, description, and tags
• Say your target keyword in your video
• Include accurate closed captions to not only increase accessibility but help search engines crawl text and discover relevant keywords
• Add the transcript to your video description to help rank for related terms

Engage with Audience

YouTube rewards channels that receive high levels of interaction, which includes comments, overall time spent on the channel, watch time, likes, and dislikes. In order to encourage users to interact with audio/visual prompts, attempt to reply to every comment you receive (if at all possible).

You can also take the time to engage with brands you admire or that are comparable to your own by visiting their channels. Likewise, don’t always wait for the audience to initiate conversation. Asking questions about the content or even just requesting feedback on what kind of content people like to see on your channel or would like to see more of can help you post comments or questions that can increase engagement.

Stay Consistent

If you intend to build a YouTube channel, post one video, and then completely disregard it, don’t anticipate success. It takes time and works to build a successful YouTube channel, and viewers need consistency in the channels they subscribe to. After your first video, make sure you schedule the following few videos in advance.

Cross-promote your own YouTube videos

There’s a good chance that you and your YouTube channel cover the same themes. Cross-promote your videos when appropriate to get the most out of your older content.

As a kind of call-to-action, you may insert links inside a video’s description and invite viewers to click on them. Linking old videos in your description entices visitors to watch your videos all the way through rather than clicking away.

Share Videos on Social Media

You may cross-promote content across platforms on social media, which is one of its wonderful features. The simplest strategy to increase your audience is to promote your YouTube videos on your other social media accounts.

There are tons of options and fantastic concepts for social media videos. Additionally, you can always create a teaser for the full-length video on YouTube if there’s a channel (like Facebook) where you want to broadcast videos straight in order to obtain the best engagement possible across all of them. Don’t overlook your blog either, as you can submit your YouTube videos there as well.

Run a YouTube Paid Ad

With marketing, in general, becoming more pay-to-play, you always have the option to get more visibility through paid YouTube ads. YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to choose from:

• Display ads: These ads show up on the right-hand sidebar of videos, and are only available on desktops.
• Overlay ads: These are semi-transparent ads that are displayed on the bottom part of a video. They’re only available on the desktop.
• Skippable and non-skippable video ads: These ads show up before, during, or after a video. Skippable ads can be skipped after five seconds, but non-skippable ads have to be watched all the way through before the viewer can watch their video.
• Bumper ads: These are non-skippable ads that have to be watched before the viewer can watch their video. They can be a maximum of six seconds.
• Sponsored cards: These are cards that get displayed within relevant videos. You can use them to promote your products or other content.

All the best on your journey to 1K with YouTube! Stay tuned for more content.