DISCLAIMER:

This post isn’t for everyone, I’m well aware that many people like uploading to YouTube because it’s “fun”. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But personally, I HATE fun. In my opinion, nobody should be allowed to have it, EVER. So this post is specifically for people who want to eventually make a living from YouTube, and having fun is a second priority.

INTRO:

First of all, to qualify this, YouTube is my main and only job at the moment. I don’t have a ton of subscribers, and I really don’t make that much money, but I do make a living. For me right now, I’ve managed to turn YouTube in a low-paying job, the same as any other low-paying job. But if you ask me, that’s still a pretty big jump from when I used to not make enough for YouTube to pay it out every month. Also, what other job has an unlimited bonus amount? I could make up to five figures a month if my channel was doing super well, but for now I’m happy with where I am. All this to say, I know what I’m talking about somewhat, but there are lots of other people who make more from YouTube and I’m sure would have better advice. But this is Reddit and I’m the OP, so as far as we’re concerned, I’m the ultimate authority on making a living from YouTube.

Part one of this post will go over how to get monetized, and part two will go over what happens once you are.

PART 1: NOT MONETIZED YET

UPLOADING: The thing that stops 99% of people from their YouTube goals: you have to upload videos. Stop making excuses! Obviously there are plenty of reasons that people don’t upload (school, family, jobs) etc. But if that's the case, you should drop out of school, disown your family, and force your boss to fire you (showing him your YouTube videos should do the trick).

So that was obviously a joke, don’t drop out of school, don’t abandon your family, don’t terrorize your boss (unless they deserve it). Instead, look at how you spend your free time. Many people I talk to immediately bring up their obligations when talking about why they don’t upload (well I have to do this, I have to do that). But what do you not have to do? Do you spend a lot of time watching Netflix? Do you play a lot of video games? Do you spend a lot of time reading Reddit posts (can’t deny that one, can you)? If you gave up an hour of your free time a day, you’d have 7 hours a week. That’s plenty of time to get a small video together. Again, this is absolutely NOT a requirement, I’m specifically directing this to the people who want to make YouTube their main job. You have to do the job first.

So now that you’ve determined you can upload videos, you may have the usual questions. I’ll answer most of them right now!

How often should I upload? It fully depends on the content and your workload, but I would say aim for once a week. You can make one really compelling video in a week, vs 7 mediocre videos daily.

What should I upload? This question always gets me. I don’t know? Figure it out! But if all fails, upload the same kinds of videos you enjoy watching the most.

How do I edit my videos without expensive software? DaVinci Resolve is free, and not many people know that it’s more than capable of editing YouTube videos to a pretty high quality.

So that is my spiel on uploading, the first step to getting monetized that many people skip for some reason. Stop not uploading! “Fun” extracurricular activities aren’t a reason to neglect your uploads, and we’ve already established that I hate fun. This is a NO-FUN ZONE!

But at the same time, you need to know when to have fun. I made the mistake of attempting to switch to uploading twice a week, and I wound up getting burned out. You can’t completely cut out your free time, but you most certainly can re-balance it.

GETTING MONETIZED: The thing that stops 90% of people from ever seeing a penny from ad revenue: you have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch-time within the last 12 months. And I have some sad news . . . it’s impossible to reach those numbers. All the YouTubers you watched who were monetized in the last couple of years? They’re faking it. It’s all an elaborate ploy. Looks like you dropped out of school and abandoned your family for nothing . . .

Okay so that was obviously a joke as well, literally millions of channels have surpassed the monetization requirements, so you can too. It only takes one good video to pass 4,000 hours of watch-time. However, if you sub4sub or self-promote your way to 1,000 subscribers, you won’t have anywhere near the necessary amount of watch-time. 

If you don’t have 1,000 subs or 4,000 hours, my advice is to focus on getting the hours first. I promise you it’s not as impossible as it seems. So let’s say every video on your channel is exactly 10 minutes long (obviously this would be ridiculous and a desperate money-grab, but it makes the math easier so bear with me). 4k watch hours is 240,000 watch minutes. Assuming your retention is a fair 50%, you get 5 minutes of watch-time per 1 view. So in conclusion, you would need about 48,000 views on your video. Or 24,000 views on two videos. 2400 views on 20 videos! That is nowhere near impossible. And once you pass that, you’ll be well on your way to 1k subs, if you haven’t already gotten that.

Now, once you pass those magic numbers, YouTube reviews your channel and monetizes it, and that’s part one: uploading videos and getting monetized. Congratulations, you’re making 20 cents per video! As you can see there’s still a long way to go.

PART 2: MONETIZED

INCREASING YOUR PAYOUT: You worked your whole life to get to this point. Well, your whole life for the last 6 months or so. But now that fateful day has come. You open your analytics to see how much money you made on your first day as a monetized YouTuber-- Oh no. You close your laptop in disbelief, as you unknowingly say the amount out loud to yourself. “Three dollars and two cents.” You shed a single tear at the futility of it all as you think of a way to make your favorite YouTubers suffer for making it look so easy . . .

Again. Joke. Don't hunt Susan Wojcicki down just yet, there are plenty of ways to get those measly entry numbers up. Your new YouTube paycheck is not entirely dependent on the amount of views you get, but the CPM as well. I would say it’s 50% views and 50% CPM, since CPM has been the difference between a couple of my videos making thousands of dollars versus a couple hundred dollars. 

Unfortunately, there’s no surefire way to raise your CPM, since YouTube is very tight-lipped about how exactly it’s influenced. But I’ve noticed that the general consensus seems to be true: the cleaner your videos are, the more money you’re going to make. For example, I don’t curse in my videos because I know for sure that that’s going to bring down the CPM pretty significantly. If you do, you can just easily censor them by cutting the audio, so you don’t have to change who you are or how you speak. I assure you that “f**k” is just as groundbreaking, genius, comedically mind-blowing, emotionally impactful, and imortant to your commentary as “fuck”. 

Another thing is to watch your language about controversial subjects. I tend not to get into politics on my channel (I’m just voting for myself in 2020 anyway). But I’ve still gotten videos hit with low CPM because I repeatedly mentioned things like religion or children or the government, albeit not in a controversial way. But the YouTube bot can’t read your tone, just like you can't read my tone right now (it's very condescending! I laugh at you! ha HA), so my best advice is to look at how your favorite YouTubers censor/change certain words when they’re talking. Maybe don’t say “pedophile” or “terrorist organization” or “Satan” fifty times in your video, or at all if possible. I’ve worked on my CPM and it’s gone up from around $6 average to around $10 average, which makes a huge difference. 

That’s the CPM part, but what good is a $12 CPM if you only get 12 views? You'll have to figure that part out yourself, there are plenty of resources on that already. I just haven’t seen many talk about CPM.

Next stop: demonetization!

EXPANDING YOUR OPTIONS: You did everything right. You censored all the words. You blurred all the pictures. You resisted the urge to flash Satanic imagery onscreen for no reason (you and that darn Satanic imagery! get it together). You checked off all the boxes and you finally upload your video and it's—DEMONETIZED. The word flashes across the screen in bold yellow letters, sending you into a quiet resignation. You’ve come so far but Satan couldn’t help you this time . . .

Sadly, that one is not a joke. Sometimes, it’s truly impossible to avoid the demonetization. If you really did follow the rules, you can just as easily get your video re-monetized, but you’ll have often lost out on the majority of the money you were going to make. So you have to branch out!

Sponsorships are the easiest way. You can get them pretty easily once you pass a certain average viewcount, and they mostly come from agencies working on behalf of the companies. So for example, Wix doesn’t email you, a middleman agency will email you because Wix needs something made. Establish relationships with these agents because they will consider you for other sponsorships in the future! But don’t get too friendly, because you need to stand your ground. Don’t get strong-armed into accepting less money. I can make a post in the future that’s a complete guide to sponsorships, because I’ve done ones for NordVPN, Skillshare, and Wix among others.

Another way is Patreon! I don’t have Patreon! I know nothing about Patreon! Figure it out. Some creators make upwards of 10,000 a month on Patreon, and they don’t even have millions of subscribers. It’s all about whether or not you’re providing videos that people feel strongly enough to support financially.

Don’t beg for money, but don’t prevent your audience from giving you money either.

CONCLUSION:

TL;DR for all of you: Upload, get monetized, make money, lose that money for no reason, and then find other money!

I hope this post helps kind of de-mystify the very un-magical world of YouTube monetization.