Is it possible to make some serious cash from your videos, even if you’re a small channel?
I’ve been on YouTube for the last 17 years and would’ve made a lot more money from my channel if I hadn’t made these serious mistakes.
Today, you’ll learn the monetization mistakes to avoid so you’ll make more money faster.
Discover my top strategies to get your first 1000 subscribers FAST, so you can join the YouTube Partner Program and start generating a passive income from your YouTube Channel
Click here for more info
Mistake #1, Expecting instant success
One of the easiest ways to generate a passive income from YouTube is with advertising revenue. This is where you display ads on your YouTube videos and the revenue is shared between YouTube and the creator. The big problem is you need to become a YouTube partner in order to earn advertising revenue. This means you need to fulfill the eligibility requirements of 1000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months. So you need a lot of patience to achieve that goal before your channel can be monetized.
Alternatively, you can make money with channel memberships, YouTube shopping, super chat, and super stickers and super thanks. These methods of monetization only require 500 subscribers and 3 public uploads in the last 90 days, and either 3000 public watch hours on long form videos in the last 365 days, or 3 million public short views in the last 90 days. This means you’ll still need some patience to reach those monetization thresholds. Later on, I’ll talk about alternative ways to make money on YouTube without relying on advertising revenue or becoming a YouTube partner.
Mistake #2, Falling for sub4sub
I often see a comment under my videos that says, “I’ll subscribe to your channel if you subscribe to my channel”. Don’t be fooled. Real growth comes from genuine engaged subscribers. People who ask sub4sub are not really interested in your content, but more interested in gaining subscribers to their own channels.
Even if they did subscribe to your channel, they wouldn’t keep returning to watch more of your content. The best way to grow your channel is to upload quality content that your audience is interested in and engage with them in the comments. If you do that, interested viewers will keep coming back for more of your content and you’ll continually grow your community on YouTube.
Mistake #3, Choosing the wrong topics
If you just upload videos on topics that you like without considering your audience, you’re not going to grow a community on YouTube and you’ll have a hard time monetizing your content. Think about your ideal viewer and the burning questions that keep them up at night. Then, offer solutions in your videos. If a question pops up in your comments, it’s probably the same question that many people have on their minds, but we’re too afraid to ask.
If you answer that question in a video, it’ll satisfy many viewers. Alternatively, you can enter your main keyword phrase in the YouTube search bar, and YouTube will spit out a bunch of suggestions. For example, if I enter “How to Get Fit” in the YouTube search bar, it suggests
how to get fit at home,
how to get fit in one week,
how to get a fit body at home for men,
how to get a fit body for girl at home,
how to get fit without a gym.
If you use keywords everywhere, it’ll show you the searches per month, as well as the cost per click for each keyword phrase, for example, “How to get Fit at Home”, gets 1600 searches per month and has a cost per click of 30 cents. I highly recommend targeting longer keyword phrases because they’re less competitive and easier to rank for.
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If your video ranks on the first page of YouTube, you’ll receive Evergreen traffic and revenue. Videos I uploaded several years ago. still generate evergreen traffic and revenue day after day, week after week, year after year.
Mistake #4, Neglecting thumbnail aesthetics
Which thumbnail would you click on from the above 2 images?
Obviously, the second thumbnail stands out much more than the first one. Your thumbnail is the first thing viewers see when they’re searching for a topic in the YouTube search engine. If they subscribed to your channel, it may also appear on the YouTube homepage along with many other thumbnails. It can also appear in suggested videos, which are the videos appear on the right side of the video that they’re watching. If your thumbnail doesn’t stand out from your competitor’s thumbnails, viewers are not going to click and watch your video. As a result, you’ll have wasted all that time making your video for nothing.
The first thumbnail doesn’t stand out as much because the background color blends in with the color of the background image. It also looks cluttered, and there’s too many words on the thumbnail, which makes it hard to read on a small screen.
Another mistake is that the words inthe title are repeated in the thumbnail.
Let’s look at the second thumbnail and see what’s improved over the first thumbnail. This thumbnail uses contrasting colors and an image that represents the title and one large word that makes people curious to want to click and watch the video. The puzzled look on my face will motivate viewers to want to check out the video to see what it’s all about. Typically, I’ll design my thumbnail and write the title first before filming my videos. I can always adjust them later based upon inspiration.
Mistake #5, ignoring SEO fundamentals.
If you master the art of SEO commonly referred to as search engine optimization, you’ll increase the visibility of your videos.
For example, this video currently ranks number one on YouTube search and still receives over 530 views every 48 hours. It also currently ranks number one on Google search for how to contact YouTube support in 2023 and shows a large thumbnail at top of the page. As a result, it generates evergreen ad revenue 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you want to generate evergreen traffic and revenue, you need to rank your video on the Ist page of YouTube and or Google. To do this, you need to optimize your video for the search engines as well as your audience.
Previously, I showed you how to enter your main keyword phrase in the YouTube search engine to get a bunch of suggestions for future videos. Instead of choosing a highly competitive phrase like how to get fit, I highly recommend choosing a less competitive keyword phrase that still has a good search volume.
“How to get Fit” gets 8,000 searches per month, but that’s too competitive to rank on the first page of YouTube. Therefore, I highly recommend going for “how to get fit without a gym“ or “how to get fit after 50, et cetera.” These phrases will be less competitive and easier to rank on the first page of YouTube and Google. They also contain your main keyword phrase, how to get fit in the title.
Always include your main keyword phrase in the title, description, and tags of your video.
Mistake #6, ignoring advertiser friendly guidelines.
4 years ago, I received a community guidelines strike on my channel because I violated one of YouTube’s policies. As a result, YouTube removes the videos so I could no longer receive advertising revenue. I also received a community guidelines warning that has remained on my channel for the last four years, so every time I log into my YouTube channel, I see the warning.
Therefore, I highly recommend reviewing YouTube’s community guidelines so you don’t violate their policies and have your videos removed. They include spam, a set of practices, sensitive content, violent or dangerous content regulated goods and misinformation.
I’ll include links to YouTube’s community guidelines and YouTube’s policies in the description below the video.
Mistake #7, Relying solely on ad revenue.
Many YouTube creators that are just starting a YouTube channel or have a small channel mistakenly believe the only way to make money on YouTube is through advertising revenue. This means they may wait for years to monetize their channel because they haven’t met their eligibility requirements of 1000 subscribers in 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months.
Instead, they can make money right away by promoting affiliate products related to the content on their channel. As a result, they’ll receive a commission every time they make a sale. Alternatively, they can create their own digital products and receive a 100% commissions or even offer coaching services.
Another way to generate revenue is to do brand deals or offer sponsorships. For example, if you’re a fitness channel, you can promote fitness products and do brand deals with companies that are aligned with your content.
For example, here’s a video I created two years ago that promotes a wireless microphone, which IÂ still use today. I receive a commission every time someone clicks on the link in the description and purchases the product. So if you’re just getting startled or have a small channel, don’t wait for your channel to be monetized, but diversify your income streams so you can generate revenue right away.
Keep in mind, you don’t need a ton of views or thousands of subs to generate revenue from your YouTube channel. You just need to focus on the right viewers by creating videos on topics that they’re interested in.
Mistake #8, ignoring YouTube analytics.
If you ignore the analytics for your channel and videos, you won’t know what to improve to grow your channel faster and generate more revenue. If I click on the earn tab in YouTube analytics, it shows me how much I’ve earned for last month, and also all the ways that I’m currently earning on YouTube, such as watch page ads, shorts feeds, ads, memberships, supers, shopping, giving, et cetera.
If I click on the revenue tab in YouTube analytics, it shows me how much I’m earning, how I currently make money, and also my top earning content.
If I click on the engagement tab for an individual video in YouTube analytics, I can see the key moments for audience retention. For example, in this video, I can see that 42% of my viewers are still watching around the 32nd mark. I can also see the top moments, 3 spikes and the 3 dips.
Spikes appear when more viewers are watching rewatching or sharing moments of your video. So you want more of those.
Dips mean viewers are abandoning or skipping certain parts of your video, so you want less of those. YouTube says that if you increase the watch time and the clickthrough rate of your videos, there’s a higher probability that your videos will be suggested on YouTube.
This means that your videos will appear on the right side of the watch page of the video that your viewers are just watching.
If you want to make even more money on YouTube with less effort, watch this video “how I make money on YouTube even while sleeping“.
You’ll be glad you did.
Discover my top strategies to get your first 1000 subscribers FAST, so you can join the YouTube Partner Program and start generating a passive income from your YouTube Channel
Click here for more info
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