We’ve talked a lot about video marketing this week. I’ve given my video marketing tutorial and covered best video marketing software and best camcorder under $300, how to get YouTube views, and I’ve shared 10 YouTube alternatives with you while acknowledging that YouTube is the undisputed king of video sites.
How Much Money Can You Make On YouTube
Now let’s round on the week by talking about how much money you can make on YouTube. As I have mentioned, YouTube is the 3rd most trafficked site in the world. It’s easily the most popular video site, so you should be sure to include all of your videos on this site.
But how much can you make on YouTube taking advantage of those stats? The most typical way people make money on YouTube is through the partner program.
YouTube Partner Program
The YouTube Partner Program is a way in which users can get paid for the traffic to their unique videos. They can afford to pay you for that traffic because YouTube obviously has lots of advertising, the amount of which is constantly growing so that rather than just banner ads, there are commercials which preempt videos which get lots of views and which are on channels from YouTube partners.
Consider the qualifications and prerequisites for more info on whether you quality for the program or not:
- Your video MUST NOT contain content which you didn’t create or get permission to use from its owner (meaning you can’t make money on a video of you covering someone else’s song because you don’t own it, even if it gets billions of views).
- You video MUST NOT show people from whom you did not get permission.
- Your video CANNOT contain content not suitable for children.
- You need multiple videos on your channel which have received at least 1,000 views to even be considered for the program (in other words, you have to “regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users” – taken right from their site).
You can apply to their program manually yourself, or if you find that one of your videos begins to take off on in terms of views, you may find a message from YouTube at your email address which is associated with your channel. The partner program/your getting paid will only apply to the one video in particular in that case whereas applying to the program as a whole lets you monetize all of your videos (the ones which meet the requirements).
You can enable revenue sharing for all of your videos if they meet the criteria and you can rent out your videos and make money on them that way.
Make sure that you do qualify before you apply as if they reject you then you’ll have to wait 2 months before you can apply again.
There’s a minimum payment threshold of $100 which you need to make perform they’ll begin paying you. You can check your earnings for your videos from within your account.
How much money you make is measured by the amount of video views which you get and on top of that how many people are clicking through the ads on your channel and how much advertisers are willing to pay per impression.
So how much money can YOU make on YouTube through their partner program? This number will be unique for you and only you because your niche and audience is going to be completely different from someone else’s.
I’ve heard low estimates at about $1 for 1000 video views and I’ve heard over $5 for other channel owners – again it depends on your traffic levels. It may not sound like much, but once you get a viral video through viral marketing ideas and you get into the millions of views you’ll start making thousands of dollars each month on autopilot.
It just takes views and a good subscriber base to get started, so again I’ll refer to you to my post on how to get YouTube views for more information on that.
Other Ways to Make Money
Remember that the partner program 
is not the only way to make money on YouTube. Make sure that you use your videos to effectively leverage your website/email list/social network addresses so that people can check out your other content locations.
Consider these resources for learning how else you can monetize your other sites and leverage traffic which you send to them from YouTube so that you’re not limiting yourself to strictly making money from your YouTube views:
3 Ways to Make Money With Twitter
How to Make Money Email Marketing
Of course if you’re fed up with YouTube altogether, as a last ditch effort to make a buck you can also sell of your channel altogether to another marketer who is likely interested in having access to your niche’s subscribers (if you have any) and videos/view numbers. Just do a Google search to find services which exist to aide channel owners in selling off their channels for a profit.