YouTube is not just a social media that provides news, songs, movies, and other forms of entertainment to its users. It offers huge opportunities to make money and make a career out of it!
One just needs to be aware of the techniques that need to be used to benefit from this opportunity. Ad revenue and product sponsorships are the best sources of earning this money.
Let’s go into more detail on this subject.
How Much Do Sponsors Pay YouTubers?
When it comes to the payment that YouTube content creators receive from paid sponsors, the amount can range anywhere from $10 to $50 per thousand views.
Brand sponsorships can offer up to 10 times the amount generated via ads. For an average YouTuber, ads merely generate $5 per 1000 views while sponsored content offers much more than that amount.
Launched in 2005, YouTube has more than 50 million channels worldwide and a user base of 2.5 billion. Most users consider the platform to be the best source of entertainment and hence support it in large numbers. YouTubers on the other hand have made millions through this platform, leveraging its never-ending popularity.
Through an article by Forbes, we get to know that the world’s highest-paid YouTuber Mr. Beast, earned more than $50 million in 2021 through YouTube.
Glancing through the list of top 10 YouTubers in the world, we find their YouTube earnings to be more than $10 million. Except for a few, all these millionaires are young adults who have stormed the platform and have become its backbone now. Child YouTubers like Nastya and Ryan Kaji, who are around 10 years old, have also achieved big on the platform!
Factors That Affect Sponsorship Pay
There are many different aspects that go into determining how much a paid sponsorship is worth. Let’s dive into these topics in greater detail.
Number Of Subscribers
This is the most important factor among all others. YouTube channel subscribers function as regular users or more importantly, customers of your brand. Like for any other company, these users are the cornerstone of a YouTube channel.
YouTube subscribers are basically people who have chosen to follow a specific YouTube channel and receive instant updates when new videos are uploaded on the channel. When a user subscribes to a YouTube channel, they become a part of the channel’s audience and this number is indicative of a channel’s popularity and success.
So if your subscriber count is higher on the platform, sponsors will naturally have more trust on your channel and are likely to offer more lucrative sponsorship deals.
Number Of Views
The number of views is the element that directly affects the amount earned by a Youtube channel. A view is only counted if a user plays a video and watches for at least 30 seconds.
The video view count reflects the number of people who have come in touch with the content properly and hence, is a determining factor for the sponsorship payment.
The longer someone watches a YouTube video, the video or content is considered more engaging and the more likely it is that the creator of the video is an expert user of the platform.
YouTube ad revenue is calculated on the basis of the views a video generates. Sponsors also sign contracts with YouTubers, wherein they emphasize fetching high views on the sponsored video.
Watch Time
Watch time is an important YouTube analytics that sponsors take into account when giving out deals to the YouTubers.
Before we dive deeper into this, let’s understand what watch time exactly is:
Watch time on YouTube basically means — the total amount of time that people have spent watching videos on the platform. This metric is super important to understand how engaging a particular video or channel is to the viewers.
Now coming to how watch time is measured, it is measured in minutes and takes into account not only the time people spend watching a video but also any time they spend pausing or rewinding it.
So, being a video-based content platform, watch time of videos helps YouTube to analyze how much people like the video. For this reason, videos having high watch time are promoted heavily by the algorithm.
Also Read: How To Make Money On TikTok?
Content and Niche
A niche on YouTube refers to a specific topic or category that a YouTube channel or video focuses on. Some niches like finance for example pay well as it’s more lucrative and the sponsors really want their product in front of the people.
Other niches like entertainment on the other hand might not be as lucrative to the sponsors.
Here the trick is to select and stick to a particular niche. This will help you stand out from the competition and attract a specific audience that is interested in your content.
Now coming to the content side of things – the number of views, subscribers, likes, shares, comments and overall popularity of the video is not under their control but surely depends on the content of the video.
Therefore, you should focus on making content that is engaging and insightful. You should make sure that your content provides value to the viewer.
How To Find YouTube Sponsorships?
Getting paid by YouTube sponsors is the ultimate level of the earnings cycle of a YouTuber. Brands reach out to these popular YouTube stars for promoting their products and pay insane amounts in return.
Generally, after a certain level of growth, YouTubers are directly approached by brands. However, it takes much time and effort to touch that mark and until then the Youtubers have to make attempts on their own.
Cold Email The Brands Of Your Niche
Cold emailing is when you send an email to someone you don’t know, trying to introduce yourself and pitching yourself for something (in this case, a sponsorship deal)
It’s like knocking on someone’s door and introducing yourself, but instead you’re doing it through email.
In today’s time, some people might say that cold emailing is dead, but according to reports, cold emailing has helped some prominent YouTubers to get their first sponsorship deal.
Like a candidate applying for a job, YouTubers should constantly send emails to multiple brands sharing their area of interest. The more the number of emails sent, the higher the probability to grab a deal.
This technique is the most useful for YouTubers who have crossed a decent number of subscribers like 10k, 50k, etc. Usually, brands are familiar with popular channels that have more than a million subscribers but connecting with these amateur individuals is a tedious task.
Hence, such YouTubers should directly reach out to the brand through email and pitch their offer.
Influencer Agencies
Creators desirous of big deals and rapid growth can straight away reach out to influencer agencies for obtaining access to a pool of massive opportunities.
Influencer agencies like Tiddle are companies that connect businesses or brands with social media influencers.They are the roads that lead YouTube creators to their destination i.e. big clients via YouTube influencer marketing.
However, YouTubers should have cognizance that this mode of attaining sponsorship deals requires heavy investment as payment of service fees to the agency.
Usually, popular YouTubers and elite brands communicate with one another through an agency. These are usually million-dollar projects that require an organization in between for the smooth conduct of operations. Influencer agencies work bi-directionally and help both the brands and the creators.
Increase Your Engagement
Engagement is the deciding parameter for the popularity of a video. Viral videos on YouTube are the ones having the highest engagement. Engagement constitutes watching time, likes, shares, and comments made by people with respect to a particular video.
The engagement a video receives depends on various factors like number of subscribers, but the most important one is the quality and value of the content. The more engaging the video is, the higher engagement it will receive.
The ranking of videos in various sections of YouTube depends on the amount of engagement received by each video. YouTube influencers who have a good number of subscribers are generally able to generate decent engagement on every video.
YouTube sponsors ultimately get attracted by YouTubers whose videos go popular.
Networking
Quite similar to reaching out to influencer agencies, networking also helps in getting what’s needed. Tapping into one’s connections always helps in getting any goal accomplished.
For drawing the attention of YouTube sponsors, a YouTuber needs to ensure that they deliver the best results along with high-quality content.
Referrals from well-known peers can produce astonishing outcomes for a budding YouTuber. These come in the form of shout-outs in videos or even direct recommendations in their own community, to support the individual.
More Ways To Monetize Your Content
In addition to YouTube sponsorships and ad revenue, there are a number of ways through which a YouTuber can make money on YouTube. The wide acceptance of this social media app as a business platform has opened several doors of earning for not just YouTubers but brands as well.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing on YouTube helps in cash inflow. Certain reports suggest multiple ways of practicing affiliate sponsorships on YouTube. However, here it is not majorly dedicated to recruiting folks but the promotion of other brands’ products in the videos.
YouTubers add URLs of products or webpages of partner brands in their videos or video descriptions. This attracts the attention of their target audience toward the partner brands’ products and boosts their sales.
These brand deals pay the YouTuber as per the engagement generated by those affiliate links.
YouTube Partner Program
YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is the way through which YouTube recognizes its valuable community members who have gained sufficient attention from the public.
Through the YouTube Partner Program, creators get access to extended features like monetization, creator support, and other resources. This is a must-have for those who aim of building a successful career on YouTube.
The program has eligibility criteria that require a creator to have 1000+ subscribers and either 4000+ public watch hours on videos in the last 12 months or 10 million+ views on shorts in the last 90 days. YPP is the elementary step towards achieving monetization from YouTube content.
Selling Your Own Merchandise
YouTube allows the promotion of products for YPP-registered creators. Although, being an infotainment platform, it restricts direct selling of merch. On YouTube, a creator can post a catalog of his products along with the pricing.
Viewers willing to buy or know more about these products can go through the catalog and explore further details on the linked website. According to reports, Mr. Beast made over a million dollars through his merch sales in 2022 – this is how rewarding YouTube can be.
It is a smart way of marketing your products for no cost at all and hereby transforming from a creator into an entrepreneur.
Conclusion:
For most YouTubers, apart from content creation, generating heavy money and establishing YouTube as their first source of income is the ulterior motive to run their channel.
YouTube as a social media platform is used in almost every household and hence, has a huge audience base. This promising nature of the platform has made it another career option for many people worldwide.
