Do you want to make passive income as a YouTube creator? Everything you need to know is right here.
Making YouTube videos is a great way to earn passive income. You create the video once and earn money while you sleep from that video 24/7, 365 days per year. What are the requirements, and how do you get paid.
Just get a camera, some guts, and start filming. Then, you can create your YouTube account and post your video, and get paid. Well, it’s not that easy to get paid, so let’s go through what it takes actually to make money.
Table of Contents
Make Passive Income As A YouTube Creator
Create Your Account
- You will need a Google account first before you can create a YouTube channel. For details on how to set one up, go here.
- Go to YouTube.com and sign in.
- Click on your picture/icon and choose to create a channel.
- You will need to verify your channel by providing a phone number, and you will get sent a verification code. Now you are ready to upload a video.
Add A Video
Up at the top of the screen on YouTube, you will see a camera with a plus sign. If you scroll over it, you will see the word create. Click on the camera, and you have a choice to upload a video or go live. First, let’s upload a video. From there, follow the prompts, and you will have your first video uploaded. The whole process takes a matter of minutes.
How Do You Earn Money
YouTube will put advertising on your videos. You have seen those annoying ads that interrupt what you are watching. Companies pay YouTube to place those ads there, and in turn, YouTube will pay you a percentage of that. You do not get paid just for creating a video and posting it on YouTube. The more people that view your video, the more revenue you can share from the advertisers. YouTube will pay out about half their income from advertisers to the creators. (that’s you). Advertising revenue paid to you is in the range of $3-$5 per 1000 video views.
Additional Income Methods
I’m sure you are used to hearing this said by video creators. “I put a link in the description.” The link is their affiliate link to a product that if you buy it that creator will earn a commission. It may also be a direct product or course they are selling. It’s just another way of adding income.
One more way is viewer support with Patreon. The Patreon platform lets its viewers support creators and is an excellent way of showing your appreciation and helping them keep their channel going—you pay for your entertainment.
YouTube Qualifiers
You will have to have the following accomplishments before you can even begin monetizing YouTube ads.
- 4,000 public watch hours.
- More than 1000 subscribers.
- Have a linked Google Adsense account.
I know this sounds daunting, but here is an example of the possibilities. Take a look at Mr. Beast’s channel. If you look at his about page, it says in his stats provided by YouTube (so we know they are real) twelve billion views over nine years. The payout comes to about $450,000 per month of income. I had never even heard of him until my kids told me about him. All I can say is WOW!
Just for comparison, I looked at another channel I like to watch, CheapRVliving. This one brings in roughly about $4000 per month. Not bad for a guy interviewing people living the RV life. You can see there is a wide range of incomes from YouTube, and there is a large number that makes nothing.
Tips For Success
- Pick a niche. Don’t just post random videos If you think about the videos you have watched I’ll bet most of them have a niche, or at least the succesful ones do. I just think about the ones I watch such as Sailing Project Atticus, Sam The Cooking Guy, Kara and Nate and it goes on and on. You can probably guess what the first two niches are and the third is a travel channel. Take a look at these channels for examples of how to do it right.
- Don’t let not having all the fancy equipment hold you back from starting. I would guess most everyone starts with just a phone and have evolved to having fancy, expensive equipment.
- Do the best videos you can but put some effort in to it. Don’t have a pile of dishes in the sink in the background of your video. Just make it reasonably nice.
- Invest in a microphone ASAP. Sound quality is important. Nice, inexpensive microphones can be found on Amazon.
- Don’t have anything distracting such as music playing, kids, dogs. You want the focus to be on you.
- Have fun and relax.
- Look nice. Don’t have a big stain on your shirt:)
Conclusion
To make passive income as a YouTube creator, keep things realistic and your expectations in check. You may or may not be the next MR.Beast, but you can make some extra money. Just like all money-making endeavors, it will take hard work, perseverance, and some thick skin. However, creating videos is the key to growing your channel. More is better. Be sure to ask people to like and subscribe, and don’t hesitate to utilize Patreon. Many friendly people in the world are more than happy to contribute to your success.
Lastly, this article intends to give you the basics to get started, and then you can seek out more and more information to move your channel forward. I would love to hear from you on how your passive income journey is going.
